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Voices, Voices Everywhere
When we think about "voice" in fiction, we probably think about one of two things: 1) a story's overall tone or style, or 2) a character's manner of speaking -- what words she uses, what slang, their expressive style.
Within a story, you can readily observe its overall tone. Is it harsh, comedic, introspective, remorseful, hopeful? You may even use alternating tones, tied to character, for contrast.
Similarly, when a character speaks, if you've developed him fully, he speaks consistently with a specific style, and deviations make sense when they are driven by other emotions or events that have relevance for him.
But there's a third thing to think about, something trickier -- whether this character's "voice" also carries over into narrative that is told from his point of view (either directly in first person or indirectly in third person), or in other exposition. Should it?
First person novels or stories are effective illustrators of voice because it's very difficult to forget the protagonist who has control of the page. Voice is an easier concept to grasp in first person because one character is telling her own story, always speaking, always observing. A Southern grandmother will have a different way of speaking and narrating than a 25-year-old advertising executive or a 13-year-old singing sensation. It will naturally be colored with descriptions and observations that blossom from her own experience and perspective, her style and manner of thinking and speaking.
On the other hand, when you write in third person, it's easier for you -- the writer -- to take over by inserting your own vocabulary, style of speaking, ways of describing things, and especially memories, sensibilities, or introspection that might have meaning to you, but may not fit comfortably into your character's life. Maybe we even sometimes feel that expository passages are the writer's own "turf" -- no matter what the character is doing.
A great exercise is to take a scene with dialogue or a descriptive passage that you've written in third person, and rewrite it in first. You will see a greater immediacy, a greater closeness with the character, and a greater use of memory recall, because doing this forces you to see the world through your character's eyes instead of the comparatively weaker lens of your own more superficial vision -- superficial because you're not the one who's actually in the story. In third person drafts, it's not always as easy to focus on what's important to the character, or what the character would be most likely to observe and remember.There's less immediacy, at least at first.
Think of your own ways of doing things, your own emotions, as a filter through which your characters must pass to be fully formed and resonate on the page. How would they react? What equivalent experiences might your characters have had? Which of their experiences would result in those feelings you most want to express? Not your experiences. Theirs. Give them their own lives, past and present.
A good writer friend once called me out on one of my descriptions. I was trying to describe a man's overly large hands. In the draft, I used the word "potholders." My friend looked up in disgust and basically said I wrote like a girl. I might have described a man's hands, his working hands, as "catcher's mitts" or "coal shovels" or even "flapjacks."
See the difference? My character probably never picked up a potholder in his life. "Shovel" is a word he would actually use to describe his own hands and eclipse the writer, just as he should.
Let's take an example from dialogue, convert it a couple of different ways, and see if we can preserve the character's voice.
If you've written anything at all, you know the common tendency to fall back on dialogue tags or descriptions of sometimes inane or clumsy or clownish physical actions to convey mood or emotion. Remember to let your dialogue do the heavy lifting.
Character A: "Didn't he even get you flowers for your birthday?"
Character B: "He's a jerk," she said impatiently, her cheeks flushed red in anger.
--or--
Character A: "Didn't he even get you flowers for your birthday?"
Character B: "He's a jerk, a total monkey, just like Daddy always told me. Oh, he remembered, all right. He just doesn't have time to tramp all over town looking for flowers. Doesn't have time to tramp all over town to pick out a card or get a nice piece of cake down at Berman's. I'll show him 'doesn't have time' when he comes back here tomorrow all nice and palsy-walsy and whispering what he wants from me. You just wait and see what I do."
The dialogue in the second example conveys the character's frustration and disappointment much better than "cheeks flushed red in anger." It is her voice; she is speaking, so she says things that are meaningful to her -- in this case, she also mimics things that were said to her. But the fun part is that it speaks to a few other things as well -- "piece of cake" instead of a whole cake; either they're not living together or she's kicked him out for the night or he works the night shift; the character's immaturity; her father may no longer be living; the poor health of the relationship she's in; the desire for what a good bakery can offer might signal she's not too good in the kitchen, or that she likes Berman's icing better than her own.
Collectively, these clues give your character life and give your reader a greater sense of anticipation, of wanting to know who this character is, what happens next in her life and what form her revenge will take. Will she shoot him? Will she pick herself a bouquet of flowers and pretend they're from a rival? Will she dump a bucket of ice water on his head? Will she buy a cake for herself? In turn, what other reactions might be set off?
We tend to write "she said impatiently, her cheeks flushed red in anger'" because it's easy, and it conveys a set of known symptoms of emotion that readers recognize and readily understand. Most of us have experienced impatience and felt a slow burn of embarrassment or humiliation on our faces. These things are familiar, so we use familiar cliches to communicate them. But a writer's tendency to do this robs characters of the opportunity to express their emotions in terms that are meaningful to them within the expanses of their own lives. Just as important, this laziness, instead of advancing your story toward its climax, is likely to stall it because it doesn't tell us anything interesting.
Not all dialogue will be as long or as telling in a single passage, but whatever dialogue there is should be emotive. When a character reacts by saying what she's thinking, or by changing the subject, or by spinning a quarter on the countertop, or by defending the betrayer, or by folding napkins at an accelerated pace -- all speak volumes about who the character is. This is what keeps your reader engaged. It's what keeps your characters alive.
In exposition or narrative from a particular character's point of view, in addition to descriptive words, consider memory, observation, and internal thoughts. What kinds of things might your character remember, or think about, or regret? What makes them happy?
Now that we've looked at an example of more emotion-rich dialogue, let's convert it to third person in a couple of different ways using internal (unspoken) dialogue:
Character A: "Didn't he even get you flowers for your birthday?"
Character B: Genna folded a dishtowel in half. Bill was a jerk, a total monkey, just like her Daddy always said. He remembered, all right. He just didn't have time to tramp all over town looking for flowers. Didn't have time to tramp all over town to pick out a card or get a nice piece of cake down at Berman's. He'd learn about 'didn't have time' when he came back tomorrow all nice and palsy-walsy and whispering what he wanted. Just wait and see if he didn't.
Genna picked another towel from the basket and snapped the wrinkles from it. "He's had a lot on his mind."
--or another choice and a different "voice"--
Character A: "Didn't he even get you flowers for your birthday?"
Genna looked up from the laundry and gazed at the chipped blue vase on the counter. Her daddy would have remembered flowers for her birthday. He'd always sneak them into the house, or get Johnny to do it when Johnny was still home. They were always in surprise places too, where they knew she wouldn't see them right away, like that one year he put them in the washing machine, or that other time he put them in the treehouse. He bought different kinds, never even the same color, one year to the other. He must have put it all down somewhere so he wouldn't forget and buy the same kind twice. When she turned sixteen, he bought tea roses. White tea roses in that blue vase. They had shiny drops of water on them, and the buds and leaves looked so tiny and perfect. Like they'd just been born.
Genna folded a dishtowel in half, then in quarters. "I heard they got a boatload of ice cream for that new freezer down at the store."
What do we learn about Genna from these two alternate passages? What kinds of things might we speculate about? What do we learn when she doesn't answer her friend's question? Does she miss her dad? Does she miss Johnny? Does she regret being involved with someone who doesn't remember her birthday in the same way as her father did?
One thing we do learn -- characters who are angry can be a lot more interesting than characters who aren't!
A final tip that will help make your expository voice and internal observations consistent with who your character is is to have a clear visualization of your character and their mannerisms. Bad boy or suit? Steel-reinforced boots or wing tips? Faded blue jeans, black jeans, or khakis? Pink hair or straight brown hair? Punker or biker chick? Pumps or flip-flops? Midriff-baring top or sweatshirt? Toe tapper or finger drummer? Matches or lighter?
Now. Would they observe someone vomiting or hurling?
The voices of your stories -- whether spoken words, internal ramblings, memories, thoughts, observations, narrative, exposition, impressions, what your characters notice -- must always connect closely to your characters and the ways they live their lives. Express these voices -- observe and remember them -- in ways the character might.
Whatever voice you choose, don't write things just to have them there or to fill space, like "wringing her hands" or "cupping his chin" or "leaning back on her elbows." Dig deeper. You can even borrow my shovel! Everything should have a meaning to your characters or to the story, or it should reveal or foreshadow things of importance to your characters, or it shouldn't be there.
Within a story, you can readily observe its overall tone. Is it harsh, comedic, introspective, remorseful, hopeful? You may even use alternating tones, tied to character, for contrast.
Similarly, when a character speaks, if you've developed him fully, he speaks consistently with a specific style, and deviations make sense when they are driven by other emotions or events that have relevance for him.
But there's a third thing to think about, something trickier -- whether this character's "voice" also carries over into narrative that is told from his point of view (either directly in first person or indirectly in third person), or in other exposition. Should it?
First person novels or stories are effective illustrators of voice because it's very difficult to forget the protagonist who has control of the page. Voice is an easier concept to grasp in first person because one character is telling her own story, always speaking, always observing. A Southern grandmother will have a different way of speaking and narrating than a 25-year-old advertising executive or a 13-year-old singing sensation. It will naturally be colored with descriptions and observations that blossom from her own experience and perspective, her style and manner of thinking and speaking.
On the other hand, when you write in third person, it's easier for you -- the writer -- to take over by inserting your own vocabulary, style of speaking, ways of describing things, and especially memories, sensibilities, or introspection that might have meaning to you, but may not fit comfortably into your character's life. Maybe we even sometimes feel that expository passages are the writer's own "turf" -- no matter what the character is doing.
A great exercise is to take a scene with dialogue or a descriptive passage that you've written in third person, and rewrite it in first. You will see a greater immediacy, a greater closeness with the character, and a greater use of memory recall, because doing this forces you to see the world through your character's eyes instead of the comparatively weaker lens of your own more superficial vision -- superficial because you're not the one who's actually in the story. In third person drafts, it's not always as easy to focus on what's important to the character, or what the character would be most likely to observe and remember.There's less immediacy, at least at first.
Think of your own ways of doing things, your own emotions, as a filter through which your characters must pass to be fully formed and resonate on the page. How would they react? What equivalent experiences might your characters have had? Which of their experiences would result in those feelings you most want to express? Not your experiences. Theirs. Give them their own lives, past and present.
A good writer friend once called me out on one of my descriptions. I was trying to describe a man's overly large hands. In the draft, I used the word "potholders." My friend looked up in disgust and basically said I wrote like a girl. I might have described a man's hands, his working hands, as "catcher's mitts" or "coal shovels" or even "flapjacks."
See the difference? My character probably never picked up a potholder in his life. "Shovel" is a word he would actually use to describe his own hands and eclipse the writer, just as he should.
Let's take an example from dialogue, convert it a couple of different ways, and see if we can preserve the character's voice.
If you've written anything at all, you know the common tendency to fall back on dialogue tags or descriptions of sometimes inane or clumsy or clownish physical actions to convey mood or emotion. Remember to let your dialogue do the heavy lifting.
Character A: "Didn't he even get you flowers for your birthday?"
Character B: "He's a jerk," she said impatiently, her cheeks flushed red in anger.
--or--
Character A: "Didn't he even get you flowers for your birthday?"
Character B: "He's a jerk, a total monkey, just like Daddy always told me. Oh, he remembered, all right. He just doesn't have time to tramp all over town looking for flowers. Doesn't have time to tramp all over town to pick out a card or get a nice piece of cake down at Berman's. I'll show him 'doesn't have time' when he comes back here tomorrow all nice and palsy-walsy and whispering what he wants from me. You just wait and see what I do."
The dialogue in the second example conveys the character's frustration and disappointment much better than "cheeks flushed red in anger." It is her voice; she is speaking, so she says things that are meaningful to her -- in this case, she also mimics things that were said to her. But the fun part is that it speaks to a few other things as well -- "piece of cake" instead of a whole cake; either they're not living together or she's kicked him out for the night or he works the night shift; the character's immaturity; her father may no longer be living; the poor health of the relationship she's in; the desire for what a good bakery can offer might signal she's not too good in the kitchen, or that she likes Berman's icing better than her own.
Collectively, these clues give your character life and give your reader a greater sense of anticipation, of wanting to know who this character is, what happens next in her life and what form her revenge will take. Will she shoot him? Will she pick herself a bouquet of flowers and pretend they're from a rival? Will she dump a bucket of ice water on his head? Will she buy a cake for herself? In turn, what other reactions might be set off?
We tend to write "she said impatiently, her cheeks flushed red in anger'" because it's easy, and it conveys a set of known symptoms of emotion that readers recognize and readily understand. Most of us have experienced impatience and felt a slow burn of embarrassment or humiliation on our faces. These things are familiar, so we use familiar cliches to communicate them. But a writer's tendency to do this robs characters of the opportunity to express their emotions in terms that are meaningful to them within the expanses of their own lives. Just as important, this laziness, instead of advancing your story toward its climax, is likely to stall it because it doesn't tell us anything interesting.
Not all dialogue will be as long or as telling in a single passage, but whatever dialogue there is should be emotive. When a character reacts by saying what she's thinking, or by changing the subject, or by spinning a quarter on the countertop, or by defending the betrayer, or by folding napkins at an accelerated pace -- all speak volumes about who the character is. This is what keeps your reader engaged. It's what keeps your characters alive.
In exposition or narrative from a particular character's point of view, in addition to descriptive words, consider memory, observation, and internal thoughts. What kinds of things might your character remember, or think about, or regret? What makes them happy?
Now that we've looked at an example of more emotion-rich dialogue, let's convert it to third person in a couple of different ways using internal (unspoken) dialogue:
Character A: "Didn't he even get you flowers for your birthday?"
Character B: Genna folded a dishtowel in half. Bill was a jerk, a total monkey, just like her Daddy always said. He remembered, all right. He just didn't have time to tramp all over town looking for flowers. Didn't have time to tramp all over town to pick out a card or get a nice piece of cake down at Berman's. He'd learn about 'didn't have time' when he came back tomorrow all nice and palsy-walsy and whispering what he wanted. Just wait and see if he didn't.
Genna picked another towel from the basket and snapped the wrinkles from it. "He's had a lot on his mind."
--or another choice and a different "voice"--
Character A: "Didn't he even get you flowers for your birthday?"
Genna looked up from the laundry and gazed at the chipped blue vase on the counter. Her daddy would have remembered flowers for her birthday. He'd always sneak them into the house, or get Johnny to do it when Johnny was still home. They were always in surprise places too, where they knew she wouldn't see them right away, like that one year he put them in the washing machine, or that other time he put them in the treehouse. He bought different kinds, never even the same color, one year to the other. He must have put it all down somewhere so he wouldn't forget and buy the same kind twice. When she turned sixteen, he bought tea roses. White tea roses in that blue vase. They had shiny drops of water on them, and the buds and leaves looked so tiny and perfect. Like they'd just been born.
Genna folded a dishtowel in half, then in quarters. "I heard they got a boatload of ice cream for that new freezer down at the store."
What do we learn about Genna from these two alternate passages? What kinds of things might we speculate about? What do we learn when she doesn't answer her friend's question? Does she miss her dad? Does she miss Johnny? Does she regret being involved with someone who doesn't remember her birthday in the same way as her father did?
One thing we do learn -- characters who are angry can be a lot more interesting than characters who aren't!
A final tip that will help make your expository voice and internal observations consistent with who your character is is to have a clear visualization of your character and their mannerisms. Bad boy or suit? Steel-reinforced boots or wing tips? Faded blue jeans, black jeans, or khakis? Pink hair or straight brown hair? Punker or biker chick? Pumps or flip-flops? Midriff-baring top or sweatshirt? Toe tapper or finger drummer? Matches or lighter?
Now. Would they observe someone vomiting or hurling?
The voices of your stories -- whether spoken words, internal ramblings, memories, thoughts, observations, narrative, exposition, impressions, what your characters notice -- must always connect closely to your characters and the ways they live their lives. Express these voices -- observe and remember them -- in ways the character might.
Whatever voice you choose, don't write things just to have them there or to fill space, like "wringing her hands" or "cupping his chin" or "leaning back on her elbows." Dig deeper. You can even borrow my shovel! Everything should have a meaning to your characters or to the story, or it should reveal or foreshadow things of importance to your characters, or it shouldn't be there.
A New Novel is Born
Some people believe that creativity is stifled by quantitative measurement. For a writer, two such measurements are deadlines and word counts that produce a written work of a certain length within a certain amount of time.
Discipline is also a dirty word to some. Writing for a certain amount of time or writing a minimum number of words each day can feel stifling because it implies trying to force oneself to be brilliant.
National Novel Writing Month concluded last night at midnight. Though final numbers have not yet been published, with six hours to go there were more than 32,000 winners -- those who wrote a minimum of 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November -- and a total of 2.8 billion words written by what looks like well over 150,000 participants worldwide. To anyone who participated, congratulations!
Deadlines such as those that drive NaNoWriMo -- ones to which writers must hold themselves accountable and that carry no real penalty, such as job or income loss -- are tricky because they require heaping amounts of discipline and self-motivation.
But if you think about it, any kind of a writing life requires heaping amounts of discipline and self-motivation.
If there is a single lesson that emerges from a project like NaNoWriMo, it is this: discipline sparks creativity.
Myth #1
Myth #1 is that if you force yourself to sit in the chair in front of your laptop or pad of paper, nothing will come and you'll just sit there like a dumb fool while your loved ones will question your sanity. Ideas will shut down like a capped oil well. Characters will go limp on the page. Your plot will turn into a grinding tangle of rusty machinery.
- How to Dispel Myth #1: On some days, Myth #1 will be true. No doubt about it. But on most days, it is in the regular act of sitting down that a writer's machinery actually starts to run smoothly.
Myth #2This is not to say that there aren't phases to the process. Not every scene or chapter will survive to the final book or short story. You will delete things, add things, create and remove subplots and characters, and generally change the way things are worded and sequenced. But on more days than not, you will go to sleep knowing what you want to work on the next day.
Try these prompts: describing what a single character looks like; describing a character's first impression of a place or person; describing a character's first impression of a place; describing a character's reaction to a scene containing a conflict; using a single line of dialogue from which a more complete conversation can be written; building a full description from a single element of your "setting" -- something in a room, something on the horizon, always remembering that it has to be something important to your character and/or something important to your plot. Use all senses. As you write lines of dialogue or description, other lines and descriptions will come to you. It's like drawing a sketch with words. You'd like a lantern here, or a threat there.
Myth #2 is that if you get stuck and don't know where to go next, your story is flawed, or just rotten bad, or something that no one will ever want to read.
- How to Dispel Myth #2: If you get stuck, a common culprit relates to internal and/or external conflict that is not completely defined. Consider what your characters want, what they are fighting for, and/or what their struggle is. Now consider who and what gets in their way of obtaining or achieving what they want. Make sure these things are clear on the page, keeping in mind that conflicts can and will change (even get deeper) as you move forward. Try introducing something new -- a new character, a discovery, a weapon, an unexpected package, something seen, something overheard, something from one's past or future -- that will spark a disagreement or fight between your protagonist and another character, or introduce a challenge for your protagonist to overcome.
Myth #3
Myth #3 is that you have to know exactly how to begin a scene or a conversation before you start writing it.
- How to Dispel Myth #3: No, you don't. On about half the NaNo days, I didn't know when I sat down where exactly the scenes would begin, or how they should begin. So, what the November time pressure forced me to do was to start in the middle of scenes, in the middle of conversations or periods of reflection, with a single line, image, or reflection. (You always have glimpses of things that you feel pretty sure of.) From those single lines or observations, I built the chapters.
For those of you who who insist you can't write this way, try it a few times. It took several intense writing days for me to get used to it too, and I wasn't sure I agreed with it either. But I was very surprised at what emerged from using this technique of starting with a single component, and building something around it.
What emerged was 70,000 words.
Myth #4
Myth #4 is that you must have a full understanding of where your story is going before you begin, otherwise what you write is just going to be pile of stale jelly beans that smell like raw sewage or ear wax.
- How to Dispel Myth #4: Even when you have a full outline (and I have just gone through this myself), your story changes, intensifies, and introduces themes you didn't expect that then must be explored in scene and interwoven with your story line. Characters change, for the better or for the worse. They might get more understanding, or meaner. Your themes will acquire deeper resonance. You as the writer must allow these changes, have the confidence to allow them. (You can always go back.) It's good to have a general idea of where you want your story to go, but even when you think you have this locked, it isn't. And not every word that spills out of you will be a perfect pearl that resists revision, either.
In putting your first draft down on the page, however awful you may think it is initially, you create something that is attackable. It's like airing a concern for the first time, or discussing a problem with someone who matters to you. That is why this first step is so critically important to your story. In going from "idea" to "first words on a page" -- understanding that first words are very rough -- the story undergoes its first metamorphosis. It becomes something tangible. This word comes from the Latin verb tangere, which means 'to touch.'
As you see the words on paper or on the screen, you can start to think about what you've written -- because it's right there in front of you. You can touch it. You start to consider what should change, what you would have liked to do in the scene, what additional things you should consider, what's important to reveal about your character, what's important for your characters to experience and observe, what their true conflicts are, and how those conflicts are (or aren't) working toward resolution.
There were NaNo stories form many writers around the globe -- those who finished, those who didn't, those who couldn't find as much juice this time around, those for whom emergencies intervened, those who were working on two novels at the same time. But for most participants, they got a great start. They understood that others struggled with the same obstacles, the same inner voices that kept trying to rewrite everything. They found commonality, shared their excitement about how stories were developing, shared the trials of their characters and where they got stuck. Friendships were forged and new contacts made.
The NaNo novel was not the one I thought would be done now. I was working on another. But I'm glad I have this. It'll be a diversion, and probably finished sooner. It was a good month, time well spent.
Just begin.
Misery Loves a Foursome: National Novel Writing Month
Wednesday, November 17 - 11:45 PM
Tuesday, November 16 - 11:30 PM
50,327 words! The minimum goal met! "I hate writing; I love having written." Right? Who said it?
Still a ways to go to complete the draft by month end, but the plot is beginning to wind to a close. I'll put the protagonist through one more set of hurdles before finally easing up. And then the revision fun will start in December, a Christmas treat before getting back to the second thriller (which is probably what I should have been working on for NaNoWriMo, but, you know, it wasn't allowed, and we geezers have to set an example for the non-geezers so they'll do the right thing when they're geezers.)
I'll keep you posted about progress and track it on Facebook; I'll also report in on the NaNo write-ins, if I attend them later this week at the library and after Thanksgiving. I really would like to do that again and meet more people who are involved in this locally. You never saw so much support pouring out of one group of people. You never saw so many words.
But time to get back to regular blog posts, I think, and stop boring you with daily updates about a personal project that's like going to the gym. Going to the gym to the thirteenth power. Thanks for all your support and good wishes!
By the way...it was Dorothy Parker.
Still a ways to go to complete the draft by month end, but the plot is beginning to wind to a close. I'll put the protagonist through one more set of hurdles before finally easing up. And then the revision fun will start in December, a Christmas treat before getting back to the second thriller (which is probably what I should have been working on for NaNoWriMo, but, you know, it wasn't allowed, and we geezers have to set an example for the non-geezers so they'll do the right thing when they're geezers.)
I'll keep you posted about progress and track it on Facebook; I'll also report in on the NaNo write-ins, if I attend them later this week at the library and after Thanksgiving. I really would like to do that again and meet more people who are involved in this locally. You never saw so much support pouring out of one group of people. You never saw so many words.
But time to get back to regular blog posts, I think, and stop boring you with daily updates about a personal project that's like going to the gym. Going to the gym to the thirteenth power. Thanks for all your support and good wishes!
By the way...it was Dorothy Parker.
Tuesday, November 16 - 11:30 PM
47,475 words.
The plot twists have started to form like little tornadoes on the page, with more people drawn into the story's cover-up, its central secret. This is where the process actually gets fun for a few days, as you try to piece together your own puzzle. I think it's time for my index cards again, or another Excel spreadsheet, to keep the twists straight.
The sprinting technique worked well today again. Another WriMo reported 400+ words in ten minutes, which is definitely realistic. I know many people might perceive word counts and these mini-sprint deadlines as being counter-productive to the creative process, or inhibiting.
I'm finding just the opposite. Once you use the technique a few times, it can actually stimulate the creative process. And if your internal editor can hold its breath for those same ten minutes, I think you'll frequently be surprised at what comes out -- and how it comes out. It can be a real revelation, and though it takes a few attempts to get used to the feel of it, I really would encourage you to try it.
Doing this in a roomful of 100 people with music playing is a different story, but I'm hoping to get back to a few of the public writing sessions in the city between now and month end.
Monday, November 15 - 11:58 PM
45,461 total word count.
The plot twists have started to form like little tornadoes on the page, with more people drawn into the story's cover-up, its central secret. This is where the process actually gets fun for a few days, as you try to piece together your own puzzle. I think it's time for my index cards again, or another Excel spreadsheet, to keep the twists straight.
The sprinting technique worked well today again. Another WriMo reported 400+ words in ten minutes, which is definitely realistic. I know many people might perceive word counts and these mini-sprint deadlines as being counter-productive to the creative process, or inhibiting.
I'm finding just the opposite. Once you use the technique a few times, it can actually stimulate the creative process. And if your internal editor can hold its breath for those same ten minutes, I think you'll frequently be surprised at what comes out -- and how it comes out. It can be a real revelation, and though it takes a few attempts to get used to the feel of it, I really would encourage you to try it.
Doing this in a roomful of 100 people with music playing is a different story, but I'm hoping to get back to a few of the public writing sessions in the city between now and month end.
Monday, November 15 - 11:58 PM
45,461 total word count.
I love that point with a novel or short story where every idea just gets sucked right out of your head. It's like that episode of Star Trek where Dr. McCoy is performing brain surgery on Spock...and then forgets how to finish. Despite so many commonalities, our writing processes also have their own special idiosyncrasies -- like a fear of spiders or a taste for yams. It's another good reason to use outlines -- they can keep you on track through episodes of this kind of burnout. Mine saved me today.
The plot took a little twist today, where a minor character introduced something at least as sinister as what the Mom in the story is doing. Nothing planned -- it stemmed from a specific section of dialogue that I hadn't yet finished. A nice surprise that stems from spending some time in your characters' shoes, thinking from their point of view, and considering what's at stake for them, what they might do to protect it. Makes a huge difference to your understanding of who the people on the page really are.
Sunday, November 14 - 9:28 PM
Day off to enjoy with out-of-town buddies what may be the last warm-weather weekend of the season. Back to it tomorrow!
Saturday, November 13 - 11:56 PM
42,458 total word count. Was able to sneak some time in last night and tonight.
I sat down today without knowing what chapter I would work on, and just randomly picked one. I started writing random lines of dialogue, unsure of how to begin, and adding short descriptions of things in the room. Pretty soon they started to join together. I had the chapter's opening line, and while I tried a couple of different endings, I liked one better than the other and left it there.
It really amazes me how the ideas come, and sometimes how naturally they seem to come, after just sitting down and starting, even when initially unsure of how to proceed. I've blogged this before, but I wish there was a way to convey to writers and writing students with issues of procrastination, and I include myself in that group, how critical it is simply to begin, even if it's to write random thoughts about what characters are doing or saying. These individual lines so quickly bind together to create scenes, and often lead in directions or grant insights that were not expected. I just have the one novel so far, so I'm hardly an expert, but man if this doesn't happen more times than it doesn't. It's like watching snow accumulate.
We all have bad days writing. I was in a fog most of yesterday after an inexplicably sleepless night, and although I tried to concentrate, I found that all I could really look at was the outline, and not even that for very long. Life interferes, life distracts, and other hours are lost, whether to brief illness or discomfort, school and work, or other obligations. The point is to keep at it, and accept that not everything will go the way you plan it. It's a very good sign when it doesn't, a sign that your story is breathing on its own. Push past that resistance, let your stories carry you part of the way, and you'll see them come alive.
NaNoWriMo reports a 2010 word count total of 1,251,762,334.
Friday, November 12 - 9:10 PM
Day off for needed chores and errands, so I'm still at 40,304 words. Working on updating the outline.
The dust that collects in New York City apartments over a two-week period is like another life form.
Thursday, November 11 - 11:51 PM
40,304 words.
My internal editor was a caterwauling brat today. A few surprises with some scenes I hadn't planned for in the outline (good surprises), and tomorrow I'll address the second major plot point.
There will be much to add once I reach the 50K mark, mainly to show character and insulate some of the action against too fast a pace. I'm thinking the story will need about 90,000 words to be told completely, and will plan on getting through as much of this first pass this month as I can.
The scenes with Mom are more interesting to write, as she has to be villainous and manipulative without anyone plunging into parent-child histrionics. Interactions are calm so far, which to me makes them a little more chilling. I wanted to research whether the subject of maternal jealousy toward their daughters is a subject that has been dealt with thematically (and seriously) in young adult literature, even though mine is not a young adult novel. There is a surprisingly low number of online citations, although I understand this is a fairly common teen-age complaint, and one that can be quite destructive to a kid's self-esteem.
Is this really just an isolated issue, or does no one like to talk about / admit it? It seems to be socially taboo.
There are a couple of books out there, so I think I'll have a look.
Wednesday, November 10 - 11:26 PM
38,461 words.
Giving the mother a disorder = bad idea. Too easy. Watched the first half of Now, Voyager to reconvince myself that the simple mind-tripping and controlling reasons are enough. Now, one thing to make her a little sympathetic...but I may already have that.
Revised a few scenes today and resequenced the sections that deal with the truth -- the circumstances of the car accident that is the central plot point -- coming out for the first time. To create additional pressure for the minor protagonist, I'll be introducing 1-2 additional peers who also encourage her to remain silent about it. And of course, there needs to be texting, I think, to keep things real, but I shall defer to the opinions of certain nieces and nephews for authenticity on this point.
It's very difficult to resist the tendency to revise work the next day. This is my usual habit, to read over the previous day's work and make edits the next day before continuing. But I'm not supposed to do that here -- so my revision journal continues to grow, inconsistencies and all. It'll be interesting to see if the corrections will be easier to make at the end of the process because they'll be more effectively vetted. I suspect they will also take less time,
We'll see!
Tuesday, November 9 - 10:40 PM
34,866 words. With long writing projects, sometimes you develop little peccadilloes in your style that can infiltrate the piece before you know they're there. My bad habit this time is beginning sentences with "And" or "But." I noticed it today.
I didn't have this habit in college or even graduate school. I had professors who were sticklers for this kind of thing and would have red-lined me to the gates of hell. And I know I didn't just develop it this month, or else I could just blame speed writing and forget about it once December 1 rolled around. I don't think I'm trying to inflate my word count subconsciously, either, but just to be safe, I'll edit them out before it's submitted for verification -- there are probably about seventy or eighty.
Conjunctions are comforting. They make writing sound conversational. Trouble is, this habit comes out to play when I'm writing exposition, not dialogue. And if it belongs anywhere, it's in dialogue. An article I read recently stated that many bestselling authors recommend avoiding most compound sentences, even those that read, "Lighting a cigarette, he started his car," because theoretically you can't do both at exactly the same time. Am I trying to compensate by sticking a period in there, and just leaving the words intact?
The characters took a turn today I'm not sure I like, but I'll stick with it for a few more chapters to see how it goes. In looking for a motivation for the mother's jealousy, I wanted to see how it would work if she had a real disorder, which would also explain behaviors and interactions that are increasingly risky and erratic. But it seems that it may be the motivational equivalent of Deus ex machina. I think the old-fashioned "tripping" may be the better solution, although the interesting thing about introducing a real disorder is that the mother can have actual delusions about what's going on with her daughter, lending a bit of mystery to the plot until the mother's unreliability is proven. I don't know. Feels strange, like a breach of the space-time continuum, the second of the day.
Monday, November 8 - 10:00 PM
31,851 words. Researched skid marks (the kind tires make, not the other kind), yaw marks, aggravated vehicular homicide, crush injury, rhabdomyolysis (rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle), and how best to dry orchids (in silica gel). I'm exhausted!
I also had to read a little about parental jealousy (most typically a mother's jealousy of a child) and how it comes about. Most parents vehemently deny ever feeling it, at least publicly, since these feelings are considered a social taboo -- but it is surely out there and affects a lot of kids. It's an interesting subject, and involves all sorts of heinous things like sabotage and mind tripping and inflicting feelings of low self-worth. It's often exacerbated by a child's closeness with another parent or guardian.
It's tricky stuff and needs a light hand, and so I spent some time thinking again about motivations. Why would this woman act this way? Why would she not want the best for her daughter, actually wish burdens on her? Are her own deprivations (real and perceived) and low self esteem sufficient for her to "act out" in early middle age the way she might have done as a teen-ager if she'd had the chance? I'm betting yes, but I'll need a ruling from the center court psychological judge. Good thing there's one in the family!
Sunday, November 7 - 11:55 PM
Made the goal for the week, and currently stand at 28,296 words. Late start today, because I spent about two hours revising some of the last sections. What can I say? I'm an old dog.
A funny things happens at about the 20,000 word mark. Details start to occur to you in the frenzy of composition. Today they were like bullets being fired. I must have written four pages of notes in the revision journal -- details about the characters, what other characters know about them, and what are the things that finally push these people to the edge, and to that second major plot point. The details are richer than in the preliminary outline, sometimes even richer than what's in the first draft. I can start to see the story gaining some depth, and the characters growing more complex, more conflicted.
Of course, this usually precedes one or more plot epiphanies, during which you realize there's something amiss in the flow of the story's action, and then the details stop firing while you steam out the plot wrinkles.
But I'll worry about that next week.
The national website -- it really should be international -- indicates that, over this weekend, the aggregate number of words written for NaNoWriMo reached half a billion.
Saturday, November 6 - 11:04 PM
Up to 24,767 words today, along with a reminder about conflict.
When you really start to get to the heart of your story, you'll find that the central conflict is not just an event or an internal struggle, but how that event or struggle continues to build and resonate for your characters, particularly your protagonist, until it reaches its apex. If it's just a singular occurrence or realization, or one so small that its reach is short, you'll quickly run out of steam.
Think of conflict as a black hole. A black hole draws other things into it, swallows things up, and causes more distant things to feel its gravitational pull. Or, think of the ripples caused by tossing a stone into a lake.
I had an event happen in the story today, something peripheral to the major plot points, but I took some time to think about how I could tie it more closely to the moral and emotional struggle that this character's daughter would soon face - a major plot point. This peripheral event, a sub-plot related to one of her parents, became another "stressor" for the young girl because she became a witness to it, one of many things that will contribute to the severity of her pending emotional crisis.
The more connectivity you have like this, the less likely your individual scenes will seem disjointed, gratuitous, or unnecessary.
Friday, November 5 - 10:34 PM
20,746 words has gotten me through the first of two major plot points. What a week. Does anyone else get lost in their villainous characters? What a pig this one is.
Today it was easier to stop editing, particularly (like yesterday) scenes heavy with dialogue. I have a feeling this will continue to get easier. It finally sunk home that the ability to keep moving forward is just another kind of discipline, and may even be advisable in cranking out a first draft. I remember with the first novel that I looked at the story differently once it started to land on paper. You realize where the small gaps are, and what has to be foreshadowed. At this point, the characters start to direct some of their own fate and tell you what they need. Details about them start to emerge and have to be captured. You begin to answer more intuitively how they will handle a specific situation, or react to it.
Outlines are a great tool, at least for me, but they don't get you to this point. Only the writing gets you there.
Another good technique to use is the "swiss cheese" approach used in tackling project management problems. You may not know how a chapter begins or ends, but chances are you know how you want part of it to unfold, even if it's only a couple of lines of dialogue. Start there. And then write something else you're pretty sure about -- maybe it's a description, or a detail about what a character is wearing. And keep going, because the more holes you can knock in the wall that is the chapter or the paragraph or the section you're trying to write, the easier it will be to see, and write, what connects them.
National NaNoWriMo reports an aggregate international count of over half a billion words as of Day 5.
Friday, November 5 - 10:30 AM
Today I've started a revision journal to keep track of the things I want to review or change in December, and what do you know? Getting those things down on paper helps to placate the internal editing whack-a-mole that keeps popping up for a session of WriMo-plasty.
Short scenes or conversations that are needed to bridge certain actions continue to be added to the outline, which has been a dynamic document for me, but so far is holding up relative to major plot points, who the characters are, and who's involved in what specific actions. It's the small scenes, the bridges between certain actions or reflective periods that get scribbled down after key chapters are written.
My young protagonist's mother is turning out to be a real piece of work. I have to be careful not to unravel her pathology too quickly, and pace not only her revelations about herself and how she sees her family, but how she acts out her resentment, and what her particular showstopper is relative to the story's crisis involving her daughter -- the conflict that sends these characters into their spiral.
Thursday, November 4 - 9:15 PM
Rained all day, and chilly, so I'm up to a total of 16,679 words after a productive, 4,500-word day. It was dialogue day, which I can write much faster than exposition or description. I'm ready to tackle the story's major plot point, and looking forward to getting to that tomorrow.
I can't decide whether it's a blessing or a curse to know how much I can produce in one day if I'm working on only one thing and have nothing else to get done, like laundry or squeezing in a workout or going out on a consulting engagement. I'm sure the stats would make an editor or publisher happy, but such a pace has to be able to be sustained to make them really happy. After just four days, I know there will be an internal pressure to navigate 3-4 days a week that are "free" of administration, consulting work, laundry, cooking, seeing friends, and just taking some time for myself to learn a sonata or make a Christmas list -- if I want to keep this up.
I think of all the writers I'm meeting that balance a family life, an unrelenting full time job, taking care of their kids and pets and aging parents -- and still they manage to post a word count and get stories written and published. It's so much harder than what I'm doing with a little chunk of truly free time. So my hat's off to them, particularly in this month-long effort, for taking the time and sticking with it, for continuing to climb into that attic or spare room or favorite chair no matter how tired they are, and getting the job done.
The reported, international aggregate count stands at more than 417 million words.
Thursday, November 4 - 12:00 PM
Good writing weather - steady rain under dark clouds. I really should live in Seattle. Allowed myself one small diversion yesterday and picked the sheet music for a Schubert piano sonata off the Internet (one movement of the the A major sonata was the theme song to the TV show Wings). I don't practice much any more, but think I can still pound this out -- we'll see. Unlike outlines, printed notes don't change. An easier target to hit, and a beautiful piece of music.
Off to the mines.
Wednesday, November 3 - 10:00 PM
A good, productive day. Really trying to knock out about 4,000 words a day for the first week to get some breathing room so I can attend some of the gatherings here in the city. 4,000 words takes me about eight hours, but I'm still editing as I go along (as I always do), stopping to reread sections and add descriptions or dialogue instead of just plowing forward. My best laid plans to stop this keep getting waylaid, and I'm beginning to wonder about breaking the habit. Still, the sprints tend to show what we're capable of. Like piano scales, the more you do them, the faster the pace. So I time my own at a couple of points during the day, and maybe after a week or so, I'll be able to invoke longer ones.
I am pleased with the story. It has already surprised me in a few spots (which surprised me). The characters got a little darker today (wanna guess which ones?), and a couple of turns are making the stakes for the young woman a lot higher. You always want to stakes to be high -- put the characters through their paces and force them to make harder and harder decisions. We're probably not supposed to be too worried about character development and motivations at this point in the project, because these elements are so often affected by changes in plot, but for me, it's right on the front burner. This is why the editing doesn't subside. The good news is that, if I finish and make the target word count, some of this "fiction administration" will have already been taken care of during November.
The outline helps to keep me on track. Say what you want about outlines, but they really help to ground the writing when it needs grounding, and are flexible enough to steer around the roadblocks thrown up by your characters.
Will probably get to the story's first crisis point tomorrow or Friday. It is the event that turns the story sharply in another direction, and will set the tone for the rest of the book.
To my buddies, good job, everybody! You're doing great, so keep smilin'!
12,125 words.
Wednesday, November 3 - 9:33 AM
So I stopped writing last night around midnight, went into my kitchen, and found 37 little rum raisin truffle centers in pretty little rows, on cookie sheets, on parchment, on the countertops, little mini compact Red Bulls awaiting their final chocolate coating. I had completely forgotten about them.
We are working on our chocolate tempering skills for the holidays.
For those of you who know how what a tricky pain this is, I had a little unwanted bloom (grey discoloration of the chocolate) on the last batch and wanted to see if I could correct it, which involves cooling heated chocolate to the right four-degree temperature window and keeping it there. Many similarities to plotting fiction. Long story short, they're in Tupperware. Still waiting. Except now there are only 34, a Very Puzzling Inventory Shrinkage indeed.
Anybody want to predict what this day will be like?
Tuesday, November 2 - 11:56 PM
Beautiful autumn day in NYC, about 6 or 8 degrees above freezing, not a cloud anywhere. Had to dress warmly to go out this morning. The great thing about modern technology is that, with so many people wearing earpieces and talking into tiny phone devices, no one can tell a writer speaking draft lines of dialogue aloud from any other idiot on the street. Or on a running track. I have to watch it when the plots turn to homicide though.
I'm really glad I just read a short Richard Yates novel (Cold Spring Harbor), because I realized something about technique for shorter pieces. You can leave out a lot. You don't have to report anything on days that are missed along a timeline if nothing happens to advance the plot or reveal your characters, especially if a specific event has already been mentioned or foreshadowed, and is anticipated by the reader. This actually has the effect sometimes of shrinking the timeline, because to go too long between scenes is awkward anyway.
So I'm back to my movie analogies again. If this new novel were being filmed, what scenes would be most critical to convey? Writing the brief revelatory bits within other scenes -- which Yates does extremely well in Cold Spring Harbor and in Revolutionary Road too-- is a major goal for me. I read somewhere, and maybe it was on a NaNoWriMo post, that you never hear about or see anyone using a toilet on Star Trek. Same concept, "fictional overshare." It is possible to show or tell too much, so that's what I'll try to avoid with a target word count in view.
So many people from Knoxville in one Facebook reporting group! It's beginning to sound like the Iowa City of Tennessee with all the writing that's going on down there. Awesome.
The national organizers said that more than 55 million words were reported as having been written on Day 1 worldwide.
Laryngeal surgery on my internal editor did not go well. I still hear the voices. "Tomorrow is another day."
Time for Leno. I'm at 8,025 words, end of Day 2.
Tuesday, November 2 - 10:00 AM
So much for morning discipline. So it's up to the Central Park Reservoir first for a little workout. The job today is to perform a laryngectomy on my internal editor (the voice that tells me to keep redoing what I've just written). The "writing sprint" exercise is a great way to start -- just write and keep writing for 10-15 minutes without stopping, which keeps your internal voice mindful of the scalpel, and in check. This is a good way to warm up for anyone, actually, no matter what you're writing.
Monday, November 1 - 10:00 PM
Just got back from the kickoff gathering in Manhattan, which was held in the upstairs seating area of a deli a few blocks away from Grand Central Station. Delis in New York are not always these little hole-in-the-wall, no-chair places. Some are pretty big.This one seemed about half the size of a Hyatt Grand Ballroom.
Walking in, I wondered if there would be a sign, or how else I would be able to tell which tables the group had reserved. I got upstairs, and all I saw were laptops flipped open on shared tables. Half the room was full, and within the next half hour, it maxed out with 100-125 keyboard-pounding, Hershey kiss-snarfing writers who knew at once they were not in this thing alone.
A NYC cop walked in at one point -- seemed as if the poor guy came to this deli, his haven, every night (and it was in the low 40's tonight, too) -- and had no place upstairs to eat before he went back out to protect us from the city's scum. For a minute he looked really puzzled, as if he'd stumbled across some menacing, Cyber-hacking cult. But I guess we all looked too happy, and no one was screaming, so after a minute or two, he went back downstairs.
Someone else came upstairs to eat and asked what we were doing. "We're writing novels," someone shouted, and the woman nearly dropped her tray when the room broke into laughter. Even in New York, that response never would have been expected!
Writing "sprints" -- 10-15 minutes intervals where you just write as much as you can -- yielded one writer who produced 1,025 words, a new land speed record. 4-5 others were over 500 words. I'm going to have to practice. Even in the master workshops I've taken, we never topped 500.
I really encourage you to seek out these meetings in your communities. Noisy? A little. Cramped? Yes. Fearful of getting something spilled on your PC because of a wobbly table ("Can't I just rinse the coffee off my mother board")? Certainly. But when you can sit face to face with other writers who talk about having to carve out these hours for themselves, who tell you their stories, you can't help but feel supported and energized by all the dreams coming true in that room. Writing is so isolating, but this effort is bringing people together in ways I'm sure few of us first-timers ever imagined.
I'm at 4,102 words for the day, after four sessions.
Have a great afternoon (to my WriMo buddies Down Under), and a great night here.
Monday, November 1 - 12:00 PM
Finished a rough outline and got started with a late-night session at around 12:30 AM. I actually managed my first morning (post sun-up) fiction-writing session in a good long time, since I'm usually on the afternoon / late night-dawn schedule. I started a few chapters into the story instead of at the beginning, to get to a section where all key characters were interacting, talking. A gamble, but it has solidified their personalities a little, which will make the first couple of chapters, which includes background information, easier to write later. Here's hoping, anyway.
There's something about speed writing on this kind of schedule. It forces you to get to the point quickly and move forward. There is time to add emotional responses and inner dialogue and reflective observations and complete dialogues. But it feels more efficient. Instincts feel sharper because I'm spending less time ruminating about an exact word or phrase. Words are coming from a more visceral place. They were more honest.
But I'm still in the Enchantment phase and the energy has been pent up for a few days. It'll be interesting to see if the technique of just plowing forward continues through the week. I have a feeling that the shadow of Everest will soon be darkening my door.
What an incredible sense of camaraderie, though, that stems from knowing there are thousands of people around the world toiling with their pens and pencils in pursuit of the same goal. When I finally went to sleep, it was with an acute awareness that so many others were at work on their stories, by the light of a lamp or a candle or the sun. Their settings are as varied as any village or town or city we live in. What would it be like to read them all?
Sunday, October 31 - 10:30 PM
I feel like I'm starting a new job tomorrow, that nervous excitement. I have to resist the pull to get started early (against the rules), so I'm watching The Haunting on TCM, which is better than caffeine for ensuring a sleepless night -- great scary Halloween movie. Three other co-conspirators (that I know of) are in this with me -- two Fiction Writing Junkies and a good friend / workshop buddy who would be a Fiction Writing Junkie if he had a Facebook account. Maybe in December...
Sunday, October 31 - 3:30 PM
A few writer buddies and I -- including a couple of Fiction Writing Junkies followers on Facebook -- have taken the pledge and will be participating in National Novel Writing Month, which starts November 1. This project requires each of us to write 50,000 words of a new novel in 30 days, and though previous outlines and research are allowed (I lucked out there), the actual writing should be new -- that is, not already written. Those in Australia have already started!
It's pretty neat how this began several years ago (in San Francisco, talk about good karma). It now garners national media and bookseller attention, with indie booksellers and libraries "hosting" groups of writers, sometimes even loaning PCs, as we pursue that word count. Quantity is emphasized over quality -- meaning we just try to churn out a sizeable draft without stopping for much editing or revision, which is a good way to begin. Anyone who finishes and has their word count verified by the administrators is declared a "winner" and gets bragging rights for having accomplished their goal.
I'll post a report of daily progress to this blog entry throughout the month, so you probably won't be seeing any other new blog postings for the same amount of time. (I still have to make progress on the next thriller that actually has been started, which should be interesting, working on both at the same time. What have I done to myself?)
So what's the new novel about?
I had done a rough outline about 3 years ago and then put it aside to work full-time on Shakedown. I hadn't looked at it until Friday night, and was surprised at how complete it was. Its working title is A Lonely Place (which will obviously be changing -- too sentimental -- but I ain't revising yet).
It's about a lower middle class family on the verge of bankruptcy who decides to house sit one summer for a relative in a Hamptons-like place. There, they hope, they can regain their bearings and sort through their options. Initially contemptuous of the people they meet, the parents get caught up in a society lifestyle they hardly know, but come to envy and want -- even when a devastating secret threatens to destroy their daughter's life.
It's not a young adult novel, although one of the main characters is a 17-year-old young woman. Ordinary People was about a young man's guilt and healing after the accidental death of his brother, but we suspected from the beginning he would be okay. What resonated were the parents who realized they could no longer maintain the masquerade that their lives had become. Conceptually, I always thought this lifted it out of exclusive "young adult" territory.
I look forward to seeing if my outlined premise stays intact. You know how it is with outlines: everything starts changing once the writing begins. Should be an interesting, excruciating month.
But a lightning bolt is going to land in my living room, because my Mom, who was wonderful, would want to know what exactly I have against women in my stories. They're either shrews or dead, gross, evil, selfish -- not like my Mom at all (more like one or two bosses I've had, actually). The next thriller might redeem me, but not soon enough. Sorry, Mom, just remember, it's only a rough draft. Plenty of time for redemption.
8 1/2 hours to liftoff.
The plot took a little twist today, where a minor character introduced something at least as sinister as what the Mom in the story is doing. Nothing planned -- it stemmed from a specific section of dialogue that I hadn't yet finished. A nice surprise that stems from spending some time in your characters' shoes, thinking from their point of view, and considering what's at stake for them, what they might do to protect it. Makes a huge difference to your understanding of who the people on the page really are.
Sunday, November 14 - 9:28 PM
Day off to enjoy with out-of-town buddies what may be the last warm-weather weekend of the season. Back to it tomorrow!
Saturday, November 13 - 11:56 PM
42,458 total word count. Was able to sneak some time in last night and tonight.
I sat down today without knowing what chapter I would work on, and just randomly picked one. I started writing random lines of dialogue, unsure of how to begin, and adding short descriptions of things in the room. Pretty soon they started to join together. I had the chapter's opening line, and while I tried a couple of different endings, I liked one better than the other and left it there.
It really amazes me how the ideas come, and sometimes how naturally they seem to come, after just sitting down and starting, even when initially unsure of how to proceed. I've blogged this before, but I wish there was a way to convey to writers and writing students with issues of procrastination, and I include myself in that group, how critical it is simply to begin, even if it's to write random thoughts about what characters are doing or saying. These individual lines so quickly bind together to create scenes, and often lead in directions or grant insights that were not expected. I just have the one novel so far, so I'm hardly an expert, but man if this doesn't happen more times than it doesn't. It's like watching snow accumulate.
We all have bad days writing. I was in a fog most of yesterday after an inexplicably sleepless night, and although I tried to concentrate, I found that all I could really look at was the outline, and not even that for very long. Life interferes, life distracts, and other hours are lost, whether to brief illness or discomfort, school and work, or other obligations. The point is to keep at it, and accept that not everything will go the way you plan it. It's a very good sign when it doesn't, a sign that your story is breathing on its own. Push past that resistance, let your stories carry you part of the way, and you'll see them come alive.
NaNoWriMo reports a 2010 word count total of 1,251,762,334.
Friday, November 12 - 9:10 PM
Day off for needed chores and errands, so I'm still at 40,304 words. Working on updating the outline.
The dust that collects in New York City apartments over a two-week period is like another life form.
Thursday, November 11 - 11:51 PM
40,304 words.
My internal editor was a caterwauling brat today. A few surprises with some scenes I hadn't planned for in the outline (good surprises), and tomorrow I'll address the second major plot point.
There will be much to add once I reach the 50K mark, mainly to show character and insulate some of the action against too fast a pace. I'm thinking the story will need about 90,000 words to be told completely, and will plan on getting through as much of this first pass this month as I can.
The scenes with Mom are more interesting to write, as she has to be villainous and manipulative without anyone plunging into parent-child histrionics. Interactions are calm so far, which to me makes them a little more chilling. I wanted to research whether the subject of maternal jealousy toward their daughters is a subject that has been dealt with thematically (and seriously) in young adult literature, even though mine is not a young adult novel. There is a surprisingly low number of online citations, although I understand this is a fairly common teen-age complaint, and one that can be quite destructive to a kid's self-esteem.
Is this really just an isolated issue, or does no one like to talk about / admit it? It seems to be socially taboo.
There are a couple of books out there, so I think I'll have a look.
Wednesday, November 10 - 11:26 PM
38,461 words.
Giving the mother a disorder = bad idea. Too easy. Watched the first half of Now, Voyager to reconvince myself that the simple mind-tripping and controlling reasons are enough. Now, one thing to make her a little sympathetic...but I may already have that.
Revised a few scenes today and resequenced the sections that deal with the truth -- the circumstances of the car accident that is the central plot point -- coming out for the first time. To create additional pressure for the minor protagonist, I'll be introducing 1-2 additional peers who also encourage her to remain silent about it. And of course, there needs to be texting, I think, to keep things real, but I shall defer to the opinions of certain nieces and nephews for authenticity on this point.
It's very difficult to resist the tendency to revise work the next day. This is my usual habit, to read over the previous day's work and make edits the next day before continuing. But I'm not supposed to do that here -- so my revision journal continues to grow, inconsistencies and all. It'll be interesting to see if the corrections will be easier to make at the end of the process because they'll be more effectively vetted. I suspect they will also take less time,
We'll see!
Tuesday, November 9 - 10:40 PM
34,866 words. With long writing projects, sometimes you develop little peccadilloes in your style that can infiltrate the piece before you know they're there. My bad habit this time is beginning sentences with "And" or "But." I noticed it today.
I didn't have this habit in college or even graduate school. I had professors who were sticklers for this kind of thing and would have red-lined me to the gates of hell. And I know I didn't just develop it this month, or else I could just blame speed writing and forget about it once December 1 rolled around. I don't think I'm trying to inflate my word count subconsciously, either, but just to be safe, I'll edit them out before it's submitted for verification -- there are probably about seventy or eighty.
Conjunctions are comforting. They make writing sound conversational. Trouble is, this habit comes out to play when I'm writing exposition, not dialogue. And if it belongs anywhere, it's in dialogue. An article I read recently stated that many bestselling authors recommend avoiding most compound sentences, even those that read, "Lighting a cigarette, he started his car," because theoretically you can't do both at exactly the same time. Am I trying to compensate by sticking a period in there, and just leaving the words intact?
The characters took a turn today I'm not sure I like, but I'll stick with it for a few more chapters to see how it goes. In looking for a motivation for the mother's jealousy, I wanted to see how it would work if she had a real disorder, which would also explain behaviors and interactions that are increasingly risky and erratic. But it seems that it may be the motivational equivalent of Deus ex machina. I think the old-fashioned "tripping" may be the better solution, although the interesting thing about introducing a real disorder is that the mother can have actual delusions about what's going on with her daughter, lending a bit of mystery to the plot until the mother's unreliability is proven. I don't know. Feels strange, like a breach of the space-time continuum, the second of the day.
Monday, November 8 - 10:00 PM
31,851 words. Researched skid marks (the kind tires make, not the other kind), yaw marks, aggravated vehicular homicide, crush injury, rhabdomyolysis (rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle), and how best to dry orchids (in silica gel). I'm exhausted!
I also had to read a little about parental jealousy (most typically a mother's jealousy of a child) and how it comes about. Most parents vehemently deny ever feeling it, at least publicly, since these feelings are considered a social taboo -- but it is surely out there and affects a lot of kids. It's an interesting subject, and involves all sorts of heinous things like sabotage and mind tripping and inflicting feelings of low self-worth. It's often exacerbated by a child's closeness with another parent or guardian.
It's tricky stuff and needs a light hand, and so I spent some time thinking again about motivations. Why would this woman act this way? Why would she not want the best for her daughter, actually wish burdens on her? Are her own deprivations (real and perceived) and low self esteem sufficient for her to "act out" in early middle age the way she might have done as a teen-ager if she'd had the chance? I'm betting yes, but I'll need a ruling from the center court psychological judge. Good thing there's one in the family!
Sunday, November 7 - 11:55 PM
Made the goal for the week, and currently stand at 28,296 words. Late start today, because I spent about two hours revising some of the last sections. What can I say? I'm an old dog.
A funny things happens at about the 20,000 word mark. Details start to occur to you in the frenzy of composition. Today they were like bullets being fired. I must have written four pages of notes in the revision journal -- details about the characters, what other characters know about them, and what are the things that finally push these people to the edge, and to that second major plot point. The details are richer than in the preliminary outline, sometimes even richer than what's in the first draft. I can start to see the story gaining some depth, and the characters growing more complex, more conflicted.
Of course, this usually precedes one or more plot epiphanies, during which you realize there's something amiss in the flow of the story's action, and then the details stop firing while you steam out the plot wrinkles.
But I'll worry about that next week.
The national website -- it really should be international -- indicates that, over this weekend, the aggregate number of words written for NaNoWriMo reached half a billion.
Saturday, November 6 - 11:04 PM
Up to 24,767 words today, along with a reminder about conflict.
When you really start to get to the heart of your story, you'll find that the central conflict is not just an event or an internal struggle, but how that event or struggle continues to build and resonate for your characters, particularly your protagonist, until it reaches its apex. If it's just a singular occurrence or realization, or one so small that its reach is short, you'll quickly run out of steam.
Think of conflict as a black hole. A black hole draws other things into it, swallows things up, and causes more distant things to feel its gravitational pull. Or, think of the ripples caused by tossing a stone into a lake.
I had an event happen in the story today, something peripheral to the major plot points, but I took some time to think about how I could tie it more closely to the moral and emotional struggle that this character's daughter would soon face - a major plot point. This peripheral event, a sub-plot related to one of her parents, became another "stressor" for the young girl because she became a witness to it, one of many things that will contribute to the severity of her pending emotional crisis.
The more connectivity you have like this, the less likely your individual scenes will seem disjointed, gratuitous, or unnecessary.
Friday, November 5 - 10:34 PM
20,746 words has gotten me through the first of two major plot points. What a week. Does anyone else get lost in their villainous characters? What a pig this one is.
Today it was easier to stop editing, particularly (like yesterday) scenes heavy with dialogue. I have a feeling this will continue to get easier. It finally sunk home that the ability to keep moving forward is just another kind of discipline, and may even be advisable in cranking out a first draft. I remember with the first novel that I looked at the story differently once it started to land on paper. You realize where the small gaps are, and what has to be foreshadowed. At this point, the characters start to direct some of their own fate and tell you what they need. Details about them start to emerge and have to be captured. You begin to answer more intuitively how they will handle a specific situation, or react to it.
Outlines are a great tool, at least for me, but they don't get you to this point. Only the writing gets you there.
Another good technique to use is the "swiss cheese" approach used in tackling project management problems. You may not know how a chapter begins or ends, but chances are you know how you want part of it to unfold, even if it's only a couple of lines of dialogue. Start there. And then write something else you're pretty sure about -- maybe it's a description, or a detail about what a character is wearing. And keep going, because the more holes you can knock in the wall that is the chapter or the paragraph or the section you're trying to write, the easier it will be to see, and write, what connects them.
National NaNoWriMo reports an aggregate international count of over half a billion words as of Day 5.
Friday, November 5 - 10:30 AM
Today I've started a revision journal to keep track of the things I want to review or change in December, and what do you know? Getting those things down on paper helps to placate the internal editing whack-a-mole that keeps popping up for a session of WriMo-plasty.
Short scenes or conversations that are needed to bridge certain actions continue to be added to the outline, which has been a dynamic document for me, but so far is holding up relative to major plot points, who the characters are, and who's involved in what specific actions. It's the small scenes, the bridges between certain actions or reflective periods that get scribbled down after key chapters are written.
My young protagonist's mother is turning out to be a real piece of work. I have to be careful not to unravel her pathology too quickly, and pace not only her revelations about herself and how she sees her family, but how she acts out her resentment, and what her particular showstopper is relative to the story's crisis involving her daughter -- the conflict that sends these characters into their spiral.
Thursday, November 4 - 9:15 PM
Rained all day, and chilly, so I'm up to a total of 16,679 words after a productive, 4,500-word day. It was dialogue day, which I can write much faster than exposition or description. I'm ready to tackle the story's major plot point, and looking forward to getting to that tomorrow.
I can't decide whether it's a blessing or a curse to know how much I can produce in one day if I'm working on only one thing and have nothing else to get done, like laundry or squeezing in a workout or going out on a consulting engagement. I'm sure the stats would make an editor or publisher happy, but such a pace has to be able to be sustained to make them really happy. After just four days, I know there will be an internal pressure to navigate 3-4 days a week that are "free" of administration, consulting work, laundry, cooking, seeing friends, and just taking some time for myself to learn a sonata or make a Christmas list -- if I want to keep this up.
I think of all the writers I'm meeting that balance a family life, an unrelenting full time job, taking care of their kids and pets and aging parents -- and still they manage to post a word count and get stories written and published. It's so much harder than what I'm doing with a little chunk of truly free time. So my hat's off to them, particularly in this month-long effort, for taking the time and sticking with it, for continuing to climb into that attic or spare room or favorite chair no matter how tired they are, and getting the job done.
The reported, international aggregate count stands at more than 417 million words.
Thursday, November 4 - 12:00 PM
Good writing weather - steady rain under dark clouds. I really should live in Seattle. Allowed myself one small diversion yesterday and picked the sheet music for a Schubert piano sonata off the Internet (one movement of the the A major sonata was the theme song to the TV show Wings). I don't practice much any more, but think I can still pound this out -- we'll see. Unlike outlines, printed notes don't change. An easier target to hit, and a beautiful piece of music.
Off to the mines.
Wednesday, November 3 - 10:00 PM
A good, productive day. Really trying to knock out about 4,000 words a day for the first week to get some breathing room so I can attend some of the gatherings here in the city. 4,000 words takes me about eight hours, but I'm still editing as I go along (as I always do), stopping to reread sections and add descriptions or dialogue instead of just plowing forward. My best laid plans to stop this keep getting waylaid, and I'm beginning to wonder about breaking the habit. Still, the sprints tend to show what we're capable of. Like piano scales, the more you do them, the faster the pace. So I time my own at a couple of points during the day, and maybe after a week or so, I'll be able to invoke longer ones.
I am pleased with the story. It has already surprised me in a few spots (which surprised me). The characters got a little darker today (wanna guess which ones?), and a couple of turns are making the stakes for the young woman a lot higher. You always want to stakes to be high -- put the characters through their paces and force them to make harder and harder decisions. We're probably not supposed to be too worried about character development and motivations at this point in the project, because these elements are so often affected by changes in plot, but for me, it's right on the front burner. This is why the editing doesn't subside. The good news is that, if I finish and make the target word count, some of this "fiction administration" will have already been taken care of during November.
The outline helps to keep me on track. Say what you want about outlines, but they really help to ground the writing when it needs grounding, and are flexible enough to steer around the roadblocks thrown up by your characters.
Will probably get to the story's first crisis point tomorrow or Friday. It is the event that turns the story sharply in another direction, and will set the tone for the rest of the book.
To my buddies, good job, everybody! You're doing great, so keep smilin'!
12,125 words.
Wednesday, November 3 - 9:33 AM
So I stopped writing last night around midnight, went into my kitchen, and found 37 little rum raisin truffle centers in pretty little rows, on cookie sheets, on parchment, on the countertops, little mini compact Red Bulls awaiting their final chocolate coating. I had completely forgotten about them.
We are working on our chocolate tempering skills for the holidays.
For those of you who know how what a tricky pain this is, I had a little unwanted bloom (grey discoloration of the chocolate) on the last batch and wanted to see if I could correct it, which involves cooling heated chocolate to the right four-degree temperature window and keeping it there. Many similarities to plotting fiction. Long story short, they're in Tupperware. Still waiting. Except now there are only 34, a Very Puzzling Inventory Shrinkage indeed.
Anybody want to predict what this day will be like?
Tuesday, November 2 - 11:56 PM
Beautiful autumn day in NYC, about 6 or 8 degrees above freezing, not a cloud anywhere. Had to dress warmly to go out this morning. The great thing about modern technology is that, with so many people wearing earpieces and talking into tiny phone devices, no one can tell a writer speaking draft lines of dialogue aloud from any other idiot on the street. Or on a running track. I have to watch it when the plots turn to homicide though.
I'm really glad I just read a short Richard Yates novel (Cold Spring Harbor), because I realized something about technique for shorter pieces. You can leave out a lot. You don't have to report anything on days that are missed along a timeline if nothing happens to advance the plot or reveal your characters, especially if a specific event has already been mentioned or foreshadowed, and is anticipated by the reader. This actually has the effect sometimes of shrinking the timeline, because to go too long between scenes is awkward anyway.
So I'm back to my movie analogies again. If this new novel were being filmed, what scenes would be most critical to convey? Writing the brief revelatory bits within other scenes -- which Yates does extremely well in Cold Spring Harbor and in Revolutionary Road too-- is a major goal for me. I read somewhere, and maybe it was on a NaNoWriMo post, that you never hear about or see anyone using a toilet on Star Trek. Same concept, "fictional overshare." It is possible to show or tell too much, so that's what I'll try to avoid with a target word count in view.
So many people from Knoxville in one Facebook reporting group! It's beginning to sound like the Iowa City of Tennessee with all the writing that's going on down there. Awesome.
The national organizers said that more than 55 million words were reported as having been written on Day 1 worldwide.
Laryngeal surgery on my internal editor did not go well. I still hear the voices. "Tomorrow is another day."
Time for Leno. I'm at 8,025 words, end of Day 2.
Tuesday, November 2 - 10:00 AM
So much for morning discipline. So it's up to the Central Park Reservoir first for a little workout. The job today is to perform a laryngectomy on my internal editor (the voice that tells me to keep redoing what I've just written). The "writing sprint" exercise is a great way to start -- just write and keep writing for 10-15 minutes without stopping, which keeps your internal voice mindful of the scalpel, and in check. This is a good way to warm up for anyone, actually, no matter what you're writing.
Monday, November 1 - 10:00 PM
Just got back from the kickoff gathering in Manhattan, which was held in the upstairs seating area of a deli a few blocks away from Grand Central Station. Delis in New York are not always these little hole-in-the-wall, no-chair places. Some are pretty big.This one seemed about half the size of a Hyatt Grand Ballroom.
Walking in, I wondered if there would be a sign, or how else I would be able to tell which tables the group had reserved. I got upstairs, and all I saw were laptops flipped open on shared tables. Half the room was full, and within the next half hour, it maxed out with 100-125 keyboard-pounding, Hershey kiss-snarfing writers who knew at once they were not in this thing alone.
A NYC cop walked in at one point -- seemed as if the poor guy came to this deli, his haven, every night (and it was in the low 40's tonight, too) -- and had no place upstairs to eat before he went back out to protect us from the city's scum. For a minute he looked really puzzled, as if he'd stumbled across some menacing, Cyber-hacking cult. But I guess we all looked too happy, and no one was screaming, so after a minute or two, he went back downstairs.
Someone else came upstairs to eat and asked what we were doing. "We're writing novels," someone shouted, and the woman nearly dropped her tray when the room broke into laughter. Even in New York, that response never would have been expected!
Writing "sprints" -- 10-15 minutes intervals where you just write as much as you can -- yielded one writer who produced 1,025 words, a new land speed record. 4-5 others were over 500 words. I'm going to have to practice. Even in the master workshops I've taken, we never topped 500.
I really encourage you to seek out these meetings in your communities. Noisy? A little. Cramped? Yes. Fearful of getting something spilled on your PC because of a wobbly table ("Can't I just rinse the coffee off my mother board")? Certainly. But when you can sit face to face with other writers who talk about having to carve out these hours for themselves, who tell you their stories, you can't help but feel supported and energized by all the dreams coming true in that room. Writing is so isolating, but this effort is bringing people together in ways I'm sure few of us first-timers ever imagined.
I'm at 4,102 words for the day, after four sessions.
Have a great afternoon (to my WriMo buddies Down Under), and a great night here.
Monday, November 1 - 12:00 PM
Finished a rough outline and got started with a late-night session at around 12:30 AM. I actually managed my first morning (post sun-up) fiction-writing session in a good long time, since I'm usually on the afternoon / late night-dawn schedule. I started a few chapters into the story instead of at the beginning, to get to a section where all key characters were interacting, talking. A gamble, but it has solidified their personalities a little, which will make the first couple of chapters, which includes background information, easier to write later. Here's hoping, anyway.
There's something about speed writing on this kind of schedule. It forces you to get to the point quickly and move forward. There is time to add emotional responses and inner dialogue and reflective observations and complete dialogues. But it feels more efficient. Instincts feel sharper because I'm spending less time ruminating about an exact word or phrase. Words are coming from a more visceral place. They were more honest.
But I'm still in the Enchantment phase and the energy has been pent up for a few days. It'll be interesting to see if the technique of just plowing forward continues through the week. I have a feeling that the shadow of Everest will soon be darkening my door.
What an incredible sense of camaraderie, though, that stems from knowing there are thousands of people around the world toiling with their pens and pencils in pursuit of the same goal. When I finally went to sleep, it was with an acute awareness that so many others were at work on their stories, by the light of a lamp or a candle or the sun. Their settings are as varied as any village or town or city we live in. What would it be like to read them all?
Sunday, October 31 - 10:30 PM
I feel like I'm starting a new job tomorrow, that nervous excitement. I have to resist the pull to get started early (against the rules), so I'm watching The Haunting on TCM, which is better than caffeine for ensuring a sleepless night -- great scary Halloween movie. Three other co-conspirators (that I know of) are in this with me -- two Fiction Writing Junkies and a good friend / workshop buddy who would be a Fiction Writing Junkie if he had a Facebook account. Maybe in December...
Sunday, October 31 - 3:30 PM
A few writer buddies and I -- including a couple of Fiction Writing Junkies followers on Facebook -- have taken the pledge and will be participating in National Novel Writing Month, which starts November 1. This project requires each of us to write 50,000 words of a new novel in 30 days, and though previous outlines and research are allowed (I lucked out there), the actual writing should be new -- that is, not already written. Those in Australia have already started!
It's pretty neat how this began several years ago (in San Francisco, talk about good karma). It now garners national media and bookseller attention, with indie booksellers and libraries "hosting" groups of writers, sometimes even loaning PCs, as we pursue that word count. Quantity is emphasized over quality -- meaning we just try to churn out a sizeable draft without stopping for much editing or revision, which is a good way to begin. Anyone who finishes and has their word count verified by the administrators is declared a "winner" and gets bragging rights for having accomplished their goal.
I'll post a report of daily progress to this blog entry throughout the month, so you probably won't be seeing any other new blog postings for the same amount of time. (I still have to make progress on the next thriller that actually has been started, which should be interesting, working on both at the same time. What have I done to myself?)
So what's the new novel about?
I had done a rough outline about 3 years ago and then put it aside to work full-time on Shakedown. I hadn't looked at it until Friday night, and was surprised at how complete it was. Its working title is A Lonely Place (which will obviously be changing -- too sentimental -- but I ain't revising yet).
It's about a lower middle class family on the verge of bankruptcy who decides to house sit one summer for a relative in a Hamptons-like place. There, they hope, they can regain their bearings and sort through their options. Initially contemptuous of the people they meet, the parents get caught up in a society lifestyle they hardly know, but come to envy and want -- even when a devastating secret threatens to destroy their daughter's life.
It's not a young adult novel, although one of the main characters is a 17-year-old young woman. Ordinary People was about a young man's guilt and healing after the accidental death of his brother, but we suspected from the beginning he would be okay. What resonated were the parents who realized they could no longer maintain the masquerade that their lives had become. Conceptually, I always thought this lifted it out of exclusive "young adult" territory.
I look forward to seeing if my outlined premise stays intact. You know how it is with outlines: everything starts changing once the writing begins. Should be an interesting, excruciating month.
But a lightning bolt is going to land in my living room, because my Mom, who was wonderful, would want to know what exactly I have against women in my stories. They're either shrews or dead, gross, evil, selfish -- not like my Mom at all (more like one or two bosses I've had, actually). The next thriller might redeem me, but not soon enough. Sorry, Mom, just remember, it's only a rough draft. Plenty of time for redemption.
8 1/2 hours to liftoff.
Marketing and Media Part II: The Media Summary
Once you start getting media and critical attention for your book, it's time to develop a media summary. This tells media people, or allows your publicist to tell them, what kind of coverage you've gotten in different markets, and who provided that coverage.
As with the marketing plan, there are a number of different formats you can use, but the key things are to keep it simple and organized. You don't need background information about publications or radio stations, even if they're small or local - just a one-liner about where and when the coverage occurred.
These are the sections I included in my media summary, following a centered title naming the book and each edition's ISBN:
Key Accomplishments
In this section, list award placements, other trade recognition (e.g., the American Booksellers Association Indie Next List), regional bestseller lists (compiled by independent bookstores), bookseller "best of" picks -- things that demonstrated a cross-section of interest from recognized industry sources and sales channels. The key thing here is "recognized." Reviews or awards from friends' blogs if they're not an established book source isn't the same thing. You want to cite sources that media people can respect as being objective. Other elements to include might be blurbs from very well-known authors, major review sources, or film options by known studios.
If you're a few months away from publication and haven't accumulated anything like this yet, just leave the section out or summarize key elements of the other sections that are likely to garner interest.
Review Excerpts
I divided this section into four parts, and mentioned the best ones in each category:
As with the marketing plan, there are a number of different formats you can use, but the key things are to keep it simple and organized. You don't need background information about publications or radio stations, even if they're small or local - just a one-liner about where and when the coverage occurred.
These are the sections I included in my media summary, following a centered title naming the book and each edition's ISBN:
Key Accomplishments
In this section, list award placements, other trade recognition (e.g., the American Booksellers Association Indie Next List), regional bestseller lists (compiled by independent bookstores), bookseller "best of" picks -- things that demonstrated a cross-section of interest from recognized industry sources and sales channels. The key thing here is "recognized." Reviews or awards from friends' blogs if they're not an established book source isn't the same thing. You want to cite sources that media people can respect as being objective. Other elements to include might be blurbs from very well-known authors, major review sources, or film options by known studios.
If you're a few months away from publication and haven't accumulated anything like this yet, just leave the section out or summarize key elements of the other sections that are likely to garner interest.
Review Excerpts
I divided this section into four parts, and mentioned the best ones in each category:
- Institutional Review Excerpts - These include reviews from recognized trade sources that specialize in book reviews. Mine were the Midwest Book Review and Kirkus Discoveries. Yours might be any of the newspaper book reviews (those that are left), and sources such as Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, or School Library Journal.
- Media Review Excerpts - These include reviews from journalists covering books for their newspapers or publications, book columnists, and bloggers whose blogs specialize in books and book markets.
- Bookseller Review Excerpts - If a bookseller posts a review of your book on a store website or their own blog, you want to capture it. These reviews speak volumes to other booksellers and can be very valuable.
- Reviews by Other Authors - If you're lucky enough to know traditionally-published authors willing to blurb your book favorably (and these sources include your workshop instructors and professors), definitely take advantage of this. Just understand that there's a chance they won't be able to accommodate your request. Be very polite when you ask, and don't push it or get weird if they balk or say no. Just smile and move on.
Media Bookings
This is a list of actual media interviews and appearances. They include radio interviews, webcasts, and television appearances. Include the date, the station's call letters, city, and state, the host's name, and the purpose of the booking (e.g., 1/19/10 - WXLM 104.7 FM, (New London, CT), Lee Elci, host - Interview / Book Discussion).
Other Media / Internet Coverage
This is usually a chronological listing of all the media sources that gave you any kind of coverage that you haven't already mentioned. Lump together calendar entries for your book signings, or create another section to indicate cities in which your events were held. Include the date, the source and/or name of the publication or station, and a brief description of the coverage (e.g., review, interview, bylined article, podcast).
* * *
A Few Words About the Press Kit
Before I hired a publicist, I distributed a press kit based on a sample kit distributed in a book marketing course I took. It was in a folder with inner flaps on both sides. On the left side were the key reviews (full reviews, not excerpts), and on the right, a letter to a producer / editor indicating why the book would be of interest to them, the initial press releases related to the book, the book tour schedule, a brief author bio, and a Q&A.
The Q&A is something you develop. Mine included questions about the book, my protagonist, my writing habits, the book's themes, the book's use of different genres (more a hot topic now than it was then), and what my other interests were, and why I thought the story was of interest given current headlines of Wall Street corruption,.
The Q&A was the most valuable thing about the press kit. It's valuable because it makes a prospective interviewer's job a lot easier by allowing them to determine quickly how good a "fit" you'll be -- how interesting you'll be -- to their audience. Because the nature of the relationship between show producers and their hosts is such that the host is pretty much told who's going to be on the show by the producer with little notice, hosts are rarely well-prepared and frequently rely on tools such as the Q&A to guide their initial questions -- at least for unknowns or non-celebrity authors. Once you get into the interview, of course, they can pretty much steer the conversation any way they like.
In the Q&A, you want to include a cross-section of questions that deal with the book and how it came about, your "writing life" stories and related anecdotes, and how the book crosses over into real life or current events. The idea here is that if you produce a Q&A that has appeal across a wide variety of subjects, you'll potentially have appeal to a wider variety of programming, and therefore be more likely to get a booking because you'll have demonstrated an ability to speak about several different topics. (I used far more media summaries than press kits, but it may also depend on the type of marketing you're doing and the type of book you've written -- non-fiction still being the easier sell. Press kits are easier to design for non -fiction because target audiences and markets are easier to define and, more importantly, quantify.)
I'm not sure what components my publicist actually used, but multiple press kits were tailored based on the types of programs being targeted. Book programming got one version, for example; business and financial programming got another.
But if you're going to use a press kit, my advice would be not to develop the final components on your own unless you have publicity / marketing experience and know the book trade/book markets very well. If you're in college, see if you can approach a marketing professor (found in the business schools or undergrad business departments) during office hours, explain what you're trying to do, and ask if they know any book publicists or marketers that might be willing to help or advise you.
However you proceed, media summaries and marketing plans can help to expand your growing reputation and sell your work, no matter where you live or what kind of book you're writing. Putting these documents together is a good exercise in thinking about the different markets you'll be targeting in which to sell your book -- fiction or non-fiction. Believe me, actually doing this -- writing the Q&A, drafting a letter to an editor or producer, and defining your target audience and how you plan to reach them -- is beneficial because it makes you really think about how your book can grab someone's interest.
Marketing and Media Part I: Your Marketing Plan
Two important tools that help you sell your finished work are your book's Marketing Plan and its Media Summary. I'll discuss the marketing plan in this post, and the media summary in the next post (in a few days).
Marketing plans have a number of different formats and contain different components. But no matter what its format, the marketing plan's purpose is the same: to show how you intend to market and help sell your work to people who are likely to be interested in it. Marketing plans are typically sent to wholesalers and distributors, and other major retail channels (e.g., chain bookstores or retail store such as Walmart).
Marketing plans are common, even required, for non-fiction -- and more intuitive to put together for non-fiction. If you're writing a book about job searches, it's easy to identify target groups and markets that would likely be interested (e.g., graduating students, the unemployed). But marketing plans have grown more important for fiction as well, and for the same reasons: to show that you know how to get your work sold and how to identify likely readers.
First, it's important to understand the distinction between publicity, marketing, and advertising.
Publicity is free (i.e., not something you pay for), except for the publicist you may engage to generate it. Publicity is also objective, which means that in most cases, as with reviews, you don't control the message -- the reviewer, editor, or producer does. Publicity is targeted to media outlets rather than your readers (i.e., your end consumers). Examples of publicity include radio interviews, TV interviews, book reviews, mentions in columns or newsletters, articles you write on related subjects that mention your work in an author bio.
Coverage is "earned" on the merits of your reputation, the quality of your work, and/or the level of interest that media and review sources expect their audiences to have toward your work. You may write press releases (or someone may write them on your behalf) to announce certain milestones to media contacts, review sources, and bloggers. Milestones would include initial publication, favorable pre-publication reviews in major review sources, awards or distinctions, and eBook availability.
Marketing is generally something you pay for and actively pursue. It is frequently a direct channel to your reader or book buyer, and you control the message. You may hear the term "marketing platform" to describe the sales channel. If you host a national talk show, for example, that's a platform you can use to announce your book's upcoming publication and related news. Other examples may be popular blogs or Facebook pages you administer.
Marketing includes things like a book tour, speaking engagements, blogs and websites, promotional items (bookmarks, flyers, calendars), and "targeted" marketing to specific groups or clubs especially likely to be interested in your work for which you pay for a listing or distribution of a flyer / promotional items. An example of a target market would be libraries -- several book marketing groups target public libraries every month, and you would pay a fee to have promotional information about your work included in these monthly packages. Another would be book clubs that read books written in your same genre.
Advertising is just what it sounds like, usually paid for, and a subset of your overall marketing effort. You advertise your work in publications (print or otherwise) that are used or accessed by people likely to have an interest in your work. Examples include Facebook ads, newspaper or magazine ads, placement on the cover of Publishers Weekly, ads appearing in book review sections of your local paper, or ads appearing in newspaper sections that have a subject relationship with your book.
The marketing plan components I used were targeted to SHAKEDOWN; the format (simple boldface headings in an outline format) is one of many possible formats you can use. I'll describe the key components I used, and then refer you to an additional resource that is much more comprehensive.
A few important points when you start doing your research:
1) Do use the components you're comfortable with, and those that you feel you can execute. Remember to include bibliographic data, such as the ISBN and a brief description, and wholesaler / distributor sales channels.
2) Do be objective about what you can and will do.
3) Do quantify whenever possible. If you're having reviews printed in a number of regional papers, mention the aggregate circulation.
4) Do keep it simple and to the point.
5) Don't be overwhelmed by everything the sample marketing plans include. Everyone's will be different, and not all sections apply universally to every book, or every type of book. Marketing plans for non-fiction tend to be much more detailed.
6) Don't include things that "sound good" if you're not actively pursuing them in good faith.
Key Marketing Plan Components
ARCs - If you're having Advance Reading Copies printed, mention the print run and who you'll be sending them to. ARCs are generally produced using digital or POD technology.
Promotional Items - Since SHAKEDOWN had a business theme and I was targeting business people as readers, I had Post-it notes printed with the book's title and my website. Depending on your book's subject matter or theme, think of promotional items that would appeal to a potential reader and actually be used -- not put in a drawer. (I was once advised that pens are usually a bad idea because no one really sees the writing on them -- even if the pens are brightly colored and look really cool.)
Publicity - This includes your media coverage, bookings, and media appearances. You would also mention if you have engaged a publicist or PR firm, and the nature of that campaign (who they're targeting). Mention any national or regional print coverage under a separate sub-heading -- this would include your press releases and articles or other bylined pieces you've written / have been asked to write to promote your book or related subject matter, in addition to mentions in newspaper calendars or by columnists. Include publication / release dates.
Co-op - You know the books you see on the tables at chain booksellers? Those placements are largely paid for by publishers. If you are considering cooperative payments for paid placements in bookstores or other major retailers, offering discounts for direct sales, or promoting "freebies" (e.g., autographed book giveaways or gift cards), mention them here.
Targeted Marketing - This was my largest section, divided into the following subsections.
1) The Book Tour / Speaking Engagements section included information about the book tour (which citIes and dates), and other author appearances and speaking engagements, including a writers' conference and Book Expo 2009.
2) The Online section included internet coverage, information about the author website and blog, articles I was writing for business / finance sites, personal outreach / platforms through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Classmates.com, and the online retailers from whom the book was available. Mention the number of online followers / subscribers if it's significant.
3) The Academic and Professional section included a longer range plan to link the novel to a business ethics case study I co-wrote that had been previously published through Northwestern. The intent was for SHAKEDOWN to be picked up as a secondary text for management or leadership courses, since it contains so many issues related to business ethics. This section also outlined plans to target business and financial groups whose members would likely enjoy a novel set in a corporate environment, and e-zines targeting these same groups.
4) The Library section outlined the plan to market the hardcover edition of SHAKEDOWN to libraries, including direct outreach efforts. You may have other groups you're targeting, and probably more of them.
If you have a regional or national platform -- you host a radio or TV show, you're a local celebrity, or you give frequent talks about a specific subject -- mention it under Target Marketing, and how you plan to use it to promote your book.
Advertising - This section outlined ads that had already run pre-publication (Publishers Weekly); monthly ABA (American Booksellers Association) and IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) marketing packages to libraries, booksellers, and reviewers; off-book-page advertising in larger newspapers and university / business school newspapers; holiday advertising; and advertising through selected regional independent bookseller groups.
* * *
I got some nice compliments on the final document, but I think I would do this a little differently now, with the initial experience behind me. The media section was brief because I hadn't yet hired a publicist -- something I really should have done sooner. But it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback (or fly half), isn't it? The good news is you get to benefit from my stupidity, and so do I when my next book comes off the press.
There were times I felt I was spending more time on marketing than I did on the book, and that the marketing work was harder -- because it was less familiar to me than writing. It felt very awkward at times, Most fiction writers are not into the self-promotion thing, and may even be embarrassed by it.
It's important not to get discouraged, or bogged down in "what else" you might do, especially if your time is limited (and whose isn't?). It's also important not to feel self-conscious or embarrassed, especially if you have a good book. This is a routine and necessary effort that you must engage in and embrace in today's writing and publishing climate.
Pay attention to what efforts get you the most visibility and sales results, and what efforts introduce you most effectively to specific markets. Promptly suspend efforts that don't. Seek out interns to help with volume tasks (e.g., phonecalls or mailings) or administrative tasks -- you can sometimes hire them for unpaid positions through local colleges or for amounts lower than you would pay a professional consultant.
A word of warning -- watch out for "reporting" booksellers who offer to buy a bulk shipment of your books and return them to you later for a certain percentage of the list price. The "reporting" refers to a sales report made to the NY Times or some other professional (usually non-Internet) source that tracks industry book sales and/or puts together recognized bestseller lists. It looks like a real sale to the NY Times, but it's not. (The return, not surprisingly, is not reported, grossly inflating the sales figures.) I was assured this still happens all the time, but I didn't get involved and would encourage you not to get involved in this kind of scamming, either. It's an invitation to reputational disaster. If your work is good, it'll stand on its own.
Okay, this is a long post, and I promised you an additional resource. I commend you for reading this far!
Dana Lynn Smith has the following website, which offers a free eBook and newsletter, and a sample marketing plan for non-fiction. Don't be put off because it's non-fiction -- a lot of it can be adapted to fiction. (Non-fiction examples are often used because they're more readily intuitive -- fiction takes a little more imagination, but you can do it.) I don't know Ms. Smith or her work, but the sample plan available from this link will surely get your wheels turning. There seems to be a lot of helpful marketing information on this site, so have at it.
http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/book_marketing_maven/book-marketing-plans.html
Next post: Marketing and Media Part II: The Media Summary, which is developed after you start getting reviews and media bookings, and a few words about a formal Press Kit.
Marketing plans have a number of different formats and contain different components. But no matter what its format, the marketing plan's purpose is the same: to show how you intend to market and help sell your work to people who are likely to be interested in it. Marketing plans are typically sent to wholesalers and distributors, and other major retail channels (e.g., chain bookstores or retail store such as Walmart).
Marketing plans are common, even required, for non-fiction -- and more intuitive to put together for non-fiction. If you're writing a book about job searches, it's easy to identify target groups and markets that would likely be interested (e.g., graduating students, the unemployed). But marketing plans have grown more important for fiction as well, and for the same reasons: to show that you know how to get your work sold and how to identify likely readers.
First, it's important to understand the distinction between publicity, marketing, and advertising.
Publicity is free (i.e., not something you pay for), except for the publicist you may engage to generate it. Publicity is also objective, which means that in most cases, as with reviews, you don't control the message -- the reviewer, editor, or producer does. Publicity is targeted to media outlets rather than your readers (i.e., your end consumers). Examples of publicity include radio interviews, TV interviews, book reviews, mentions in columns or newsletters, articles you write on related subjects that mention your work in an author bio.
Coverage is "earned" on the merits of your reputation, the quality of your work, and/or the level of interest that media and review sources expect their audiences to have toward your work. You may write press releases (or someone may write them on your behalf) to announce certain milestones to media contacts, review sources, and bloggers. Milestones would include initial publication, favorable pre-publication reviews in major review sources, awards or distinctions, and eBook availability.
Marketing is generally something you pay for and actively pursue. It is frequently a direct channel to your reader or book buyer, and you control the message. You may hear the term "marketing platform" to describe the sales channel. If you host a national talk show, for example, that's a platform you can use to announce your book's upcoming publication and related news. Other examples may be popular blogs or Facebook pages you administer.
Marketing includes things like a book tour, speaking engagements, blogs and websites, promotional items (bookmarks, flyers, calendars), and "targeted" marketing to specific groups or clubs especially likely to be interested in your work for which you pay for a listing or distribution of a flyer / promotional items. An example of a target market would be libraries -- several book marketing groups target public libraries every month, and you would pay a fee to have promotional information about your work included in these monthly packages. Another would be book clubs that read books written in your same genre.
Advertising is just what it sounds like, usually paid for, and a subset of your overall marketing effort. You advertise your work in publications (print or otherwise) that are used or accessed by people likely to have an interest in your work. Examples include Facebook ads, newspaper or magazine ads, placement on the cover of Publishers Weekly, ads appearing in book review sections of your local paper, or ads appearing in newspaper sections that have a subject relationship with your book.
The marketing plan components I used were targeted to SHAKEDOWN; the format (simple boldface headings in an outline format) is one of many possible formats you can use. I'll describe the key components I used, and then refer you to an additional resource that is much more comprehensive.
A few important points when you start doing your research:
1) Do use the components you're comfortable with, and those that you feel you can execute. Remember to include bibliographic data, such as the ISBN and a brief description, and wholesaler / distributor sales channels.
2) Do be objective about what you can and will do.
3) Do quantify whenever possible. If you're having reviews printed in a number of regional papers, mention the aggregate circulation.
4) Do keep it simple and to the point.
5) Don't be overwhelmed by everything the sample marketing plans include. Everyone's will be different, and not all sections apply universally to every book, or every type of book. Marketing plans for non-fiction tend to be much more detailed.
6) Don't include things that "sound good" if you're not actively pursuing them in good faith.
Key Marketing Plan Components
ARCs - If you're having Advance Reading Copies printed, mention the print run and who you'll be sending them to. ARCs are generally produced using digital or POD technology.
Promotional Items - Since SHAKEDOWN had a business theme and I was targeting business people as readers, I had Post-it notes printed with the book's title and my website. Depending on your book's subject matter or theme, think of promotional items that would appeal to a potential reader and actually be used -- not put in a drawer. (I was once advised that pens are usually a bad idea because no one really sees the writing on them -- even if the pens are brightly colored and look really cool.)
- Bookmarks
- Scratch Pads
- Posters
- T-shirts
- Coffee Mugs
Publicity - This includes your media coverage, bookings, and media appearances. You would also mention if you have engaged a publicist or PR firm, and the nature of that campaign (who they're targeting). Mention any national or regional print coverage under a separate sub-heading -- this would include your press releases and articles or other bylined pieces you've written / have been asked to write to promote your book or related subject matter, in addition to mentions in newspaper calendars or by columnists. Include publication / release dates.
Co-op - You know the books you see on the tables at chain booksellers? Those placements are largely paid for by publishers. If you are considering cooperative payments for paid placements in bookstores or other major retailers, offering discounts for direct sales, or promoting "freebies" (e.g., autographed book giveaways or gift cards), mention them here.
Targeted Marketing - This was my largest section, divided into the following subsections.
1) The Book Tour / Speaking Engagements section included information about the book tour (which citIes and dates), and other author appearances and speaking engagements, including a writers' conference and Book Expo 2009.
2) The Online section included internet coverage, information about the author website and blog, articles I was writing for business / finance sites, personal outreach / platforms through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Classmates.com, and the online retailers from whom the book was available. Mention the number of online followers / subscribers if it's significant.
3) The Academic and Professional section included a longer range plan to link the novel to a business ethics case study I co-wrote that had been previously published through Northwestern. The intent was for SHAKEDOWN to be picked up as a secondary text for management or leadership courses, since it contains so many issues related to business ethics. This section also outlined plans to target business and financial groups whose members would likely enjoy a novel set in a corporate environment, and e-zines targeting these same groups.
4) The Library section outlined the plan to market the hardcover edition of SHAKEDOWN to libraries, including direct outreach efforts. You may have other groups you're targeting, and probably more of them.
If you have a regional or national platform -- you host a radio or TV show, you're a local celebrity, or you give frequent talks about a specific subject -- mention it under Target Marketing, and how you plan to use it to promote your book.
Advertising - This section outlined ads that had already run pre-publication (Publishers Weekly); monthly ABA (American Booksellers Association) and IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) marketing packages to libraries, booksellers, and reviewers; off-book-page advertising in larger newspapers and university / business school newspapers; holiday advertising; and advertising through selected regional independent bookseller groups.
* * *
I got some nice compliments on the final document, but I think I would do this a little differently now, with the initial experience behind me. The media section was brief because I hadn't yet hired a publicist -- something I really should have done sooner. But it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback (or fly half), isn't it? The good news is you get to benefit from my stupidity, and so do I when my next book comes off the press.
There were times I felt I was spending more time on marketing than I did on the book, and that the marketing work was harder -- because it was less familiar to me than writing. It felt very awkward at times, Most fiction writers are not into the self-promotion thing, and may even be embarrassed by it.
It's important not to get discouraged, or bogged down in "what else" you might do, especially if your time is limited (and whose isn't?). It's also important not to feel self-conscious or embarrassed, especially if you have a good book. This is a routine and necessary effort that you must engage in and embrace in today's writing and publishing climate.
Pay attention to what efforts get you the most visibility and sales results, and what efforts introduce you most effectively to specific markets. Promptly suspend efforts that don't. Seek out interns to help with volume tasks (e.g., phonecalls or mailings) or administrative tasks -- you can sometimes hire them for unpaid positions through local colleges or for amounts lower than you would pay a professional consultant.
A word of warning -- watch out for "reporting" booksellers who offer to buy a bulk shipment of your books and return them to you later for a certain percentage of the list price. The "reporting" refers to a sales report made to the NY Times or some other professional (usually non-Internet) source that tracks industry book sales and/or puts together recognized bestseller lists. It looks like a real sale to the NY Times, but it's not. (The return, not surprisingly, is not reported, grossly inflating the sales figures.) I was assured this still happens all the time, but I didn't get involved and would encourage you not to get involved in this kind of scamming, either. It's an invitation to reputational disaster. If your work is good, it'll stand on its own.
Okay, this is a long post, and I promised you an additional resource. I commend you for reading this far!
Dana Lynn Smith has the following website, which offers a free eBook and newsletter, and a sample marketing plan for non-fiction. Don't be put off because it's non-fiction -- a lot of it can be adapted to fiction. (Non-fiction examples are often used because they're more readily intuitive -- fiction takes a little more imagination, but you can do it.) I don't know Ms. Smith or her work, but the sample plan available from this link will surely get your wheels turning. There seems to be a lot of helpful marketing information on this site, so have at it.
http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/book_marketing_maven/book-marketing-plans.html
Next post: Marketing and Media Part II: The Media Summary, which is developed after you start getting reviews and media bookings, and a few words about a formal Press Kit.
The Egg or the Chicken
Does plot or character come first in developing a story? Does it matter?
The fear about stories that are plot-driven, or even very strongly plotted, is that their characters will be flat cliches or stereotypes. This fear is especially prevalent with regard to genre fiction, such as westerns, romances, or cozy mysteries. Plot-driven stories also run the risk of being overly formulaic, as genre fiction can be, although this may be more related to reader or publisher expectations rather than an author's desire to manufacture the same story repeatedly by changing little else other than names, places, and the source of a conflict.
Many writers I know start with character, perhaps someone based on someone they know or "someone like" someone they know. Around that character, they build a story, a situation organically grown for the particular person they've created.
I always start with plot, an answer to the question of what happens in a story. It may be the barest structure of an idea, but from that, I start to think about the types of characters I need -- and the types of conflicts that are likely to arise among them and within them. If I stick with a series of "companies gone wild" novels, I expect that I would always have a company involved in serious wrongdoing, a character who discovers the mess, a character who is conflicted about the mess, and a character that not only invented the mess, but is intent on keeping the mess going-- at pretty much any cost. And unless I start to get sweet in my old age, someone's gonna get killed.
That's the shell.
But who are the people involved in my mess? What drives their motivations? And why are they in the situations they're in? Why don't they just quit and become street jugglers, or at least go to work for a non-profit?
When you start deriving answers to these questions, that's when your story really begins.
Because it becomes their story. Your characters' story.
You start to see how they fit into the plot, what actions they can take as their own, and how integral they might be in resolving the central conflict. They may have internal conflicts of their own (it's best when they do). They dress in a specific style, listen to a particular type of music, and react in a particular way when faced with injustice. There's a reason they eat in a clockwise direction around their plate, a reason they don't speak with their family, and a reason why they drink one martini at exactly 5:45 PM each day.
Getting to this point in your story's development -- defining who your characters are -- is more important than how you begin a story. Some people may dissent, but it is through character that a reader connects to a story -- or doesn't. Characters are the keepers of a story's emotions, and of the writer's emotions, channeled through actions (external) and reactions (internal or external) that do or don't happen. Characters are what give your story its connection to life. Get there in the first hour or the second week -- doesn't matter.
When readers say they can't wait to see "what happens next," I think this sentiment stems from wanting to see what happens next to the characters, or how a character addresses a particular conflict. Whether he's hanging by a rope from an 80-story rooftop is less important than whether or not he makes it and how he makes it. What strengths and weaknesses conspire to make him succeed or fail? If the genre alone dictates success or failure, it's less interesting because it's predictable. If it's predictable, there's less urgency to bring out your characters' unique traits or idiosyncrasies. And that's how stereotypes are born -- the danger of exclusively plot-driven stories.
This is not to say that characterizations can't be manipulated through various devices. A good example of a character "device" is taking something we have always feared (e.g., vampires) and making it sympathetic, more human (i.e., they don't want to be the way they are, they may not even like it, but they can't help it). The conflict is immediate, and we want to know more about how the vampire survives in a world comprised of people very much unlike him -- how the vampire fits in. Fitting in is a basic human need for most people at some point, so we "relate" to the vampire's journey, because if a vampire can navigate it, well, maybe we can too -- even if we pretend that we don't care about it and even if we know exactly how many standard deviations from "fitting in" we actually are.
Someone carried a column recently about the prevalence of character devices in young adult fiction, with an excess inventory of stories featuring single moms, drinking moms, jailed moms, obesity, learning disabilities, alcoholism, drug addictions, etc. These situations can easily become a cheap way of getting a reader's attention through something that most readers hope will unfold either like an episode of Oprah or an episode of Jerry Springer. While fictional stories about such situations have to be admired for what they might be trying to accomplish, for allowing those who may feel outcast to see themselves in a world that mirrors their own, and for bringing attention to social challenges and epidemics, you can readily see the dangers for the fiction writer: overstocked predictability, sentimentality, and sensationalism.
Not that you can't use character devices, but if you do, something else must be going on with your characters beyond the labels you assign. Otherwise, the character is unlikely to master his own conflict (except through a desire or expectation that he should), which forces the plot into the driver's seat. You end up on a very familiar fictional road, or you end up writing a memoir.
Same is true of plot devices -- a bomb in an airport or on a plane, for example. What was it that made Arthur Hailey's Airport such a terrific story? It had nothing to do with the bomb, and very little even to do with the bomber. It had everything to do with the innocent lives affected by one man's foolishly naive belief that his wife would have a better life if she could get a payout from a life insurance policy bought in desperation. Conflicts everywhere, all set in motion by one misplaced (and tragically unattainable) desire. Every fictional "plane crisis" movie since has fallen flat -- either the plot is too improbable, or the characters are left behind on the tarmac.
Whether you begin with plot or with character is kind of like the "chicken or the egg" argument. The point is, one depends on the other and you end up with both. Whether the plot -- the "what happens" -- is internal or external, whether its climax is a nuclear explosion or a complete withdrawal into one's self, a good story needs both. If you're going to emphasize one over the other, emphasize character. Build your ability to convey who your characters are to the reader, not just in terms of the five senses, but what they observe, what they think, and how they feel. Remember that characters should drive the action, not the other way around, and let them shine through.
The fear about stories that are plot-driven, or even very strongly plotted, is that their characters will be flat cliches or stereotypes. This fear is especially prevalent with regard to genre fiction, such as westerns, romances, or cozy mysteries. Plot-driven stories also run the risk of being overly formulaic, as genre fiction can be, although this may be more related to reader or publisher expectations rather than an author's desire to manufacture the same story repeatedly by changing little else other than names, places, and the source of a conflict.
Many writers I know start with character, perhaps someone based on someone they know or "someone like" someone they know. Around that character, they build a story, a situation organically grown for the particular person they've created.
I always start with plot, an answer to the question of what happens in a story. It may be the barest structure of an idea, but from that, I start to think about the types of characters I need -- and the types of conflicts that are likely to arise among them and within them. If I stick with a series of "companies gone wild" novels, I expect that I would always have a company involved in serious wrongdoing, a character who discovers the mess, a character who is conflicted about the mess, and a character that not only invented the mess, but is intent on keeping the mess going-- at pretty much any cost. And unless I start to get sweet in my old age, someone's gonna get killed.
That's the shell.
But who are the people involved in my mess? What drives their motivations? And why are they in the situations they're in? Why don't they just quit and become street jugglers, or at least go to work for a non-profit?
When you start deriving answers to these questions, that's when your story really begins.
Because it becomes their story. Your characters' story.
You start to see how they fit into the plot, what actions they can take as their own, and how integral they might be in resolving the central conflict. They may have internal conflicts of their own (it's best when they do). They dress in a specific style, listen to a particular type of music, and react in a particular way when faced with injustice. There's a reason they eat in a clockwise direction around their plate, a reason they don't speak with their family, and a reason why they drink one martini at exactly 5:45 PM each day.
Getting to this point in your story's development -- defining who your characters are -- is more important than how you begin a story. Some people may dissent, but it is through character that a reader connects to a story -- or doesn't. Characters are the keepers of a story's emotions, and of the writer's emotions, channeled through actions (external) and reactions (internal or external) that do or don't happen. Characters are what give your story its connection to life. Get there in the first hour or the second week -- doesn't matter.
When readers say they can't wait to see "what happens next," I think this sentiment stems from wanting to see what happens next to the characters, or how a character addresses a particular conflict. Whether he's hanging by a rope from an 80-story rooftop is less important than whether or not he makes it and how he makes it. What strengths and weaknesses conspire to make him succeed or fail? If the genre alone dictates success or failure, it's less interesting because it's predictable. If it's predictable, there's less urgency to bring out your characters' unique traits or idiosyncrasies. And that's how stereotypes are born -- the danger of exclusively plot-driven stories.
This is not to say that characterizations can't be manipulated through various devices. A good example of a character "device" is taking something we have always feared (e.g., vampires) and making it sympathetic, more human (i.e., they don't want to be the way they are, they may not even like it, but they can't help it). The conflict is immediate, and we want to know more about how the vampire survives in a world comprised of people very much unlike him -- how the vampire fits in. Fitting in is a basic human need for most people at some point, so we "relate" to the vampire's journey, because if a vampire can navigate it, well, maybe we can too -- even if we pretend that we don't care about it and even if we know exactly how many standard deviations from "fitting in" we actually are.
Someone carried a column recently about the prevalence of character devices in young adult fiction, with an excess inventory of stories featuring single moms, drinking moms, jailed moms, obesity, learning disabilities, alcoholism, drug addictions, etc. These situations can easily become a cheap way of getting a reader's attention through something that most readers hope will unfold either like an episode of Oprah or an episode of Jerry Springer. While fictional stories about such situations have to be admired for what they might be trying to accomplish, for allowing those who may feel outcast to see themselves in a world that mirrors their own, and for bringing attention to social challenges and epidemics, you can readily see the dangers for the fiction writer: overstocked predictability, sentimentality, and sensationalism.
Not that you can't use character devices, but if you do, something else must be going on with your characters beyond the labels you assign. Otherwise, the character is unlikely to master his own conflict (except through a desire or expectation that he should), which forces the plot into the driver's seat. You end up on a very familiar fictional road, or you end up writing a memoir.
Same is true of plot devices -- a bomb in an airport or on a plane, for example. What was it that made Arthur Hailey's Airport such a terrific story? It had nothing to do with the bomb, and very little even to do with the bomber. It had everything to do with the innocent lives affected by one man's foolishly naive belief that his wife would have a better life if she could get a payout from a life insurance policy bought in desperation. Conflicts everywhere, all set in motion by one misplaced (and tragically unattainable) desire. Every fictional "plane crisis" movie since has fallen flat -- either the plot is too improbable, or the characters are left behind on the tarmac.
Whether you begin with plot or with character is kind of like the "chicken or the egg" argument. The point is, one depends on the other and you end up with both. Whether the plot -- the "what happens" -- is internal or external, whether its climax is a nuclear explosion or a complete withdrawal into one's self, a good story needs both. If you're going to emphasize one over the other, emphasize character. Build your ability to convey who your characters are to the reader, not just in terms of the five senses, but what they observe, what they think, and how they feel. Remember that characters should drive the action, not the other way around, and let them shine through.
Giving Your Characters a Hard Time
Helen Keller once said, "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering, can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
While this certainly applies to our own development as human beings and our ability to understand one another, it also applies to character development in fiction.
Character and conflict are deeply intertwined. We build stories by inventing challenges for our characters to face, and then exploring how well, or how poorly, our characters respond to these challenges. How they choose either to face or ignore these challenges is the stuff of human interaction and the heart of a story. How does a character deal with his own resulting suffering? How does he respond to the suffering of others? The answers help to define who your characters are.
Conflict needn't be characterized by weeping and wailing and other overt displays of emotionalism. It's best if it isn't. Conflict can be internal (an emotional struggle within a character that must be resolved, or not, by the character himself) or external (blowing up the Death Star despite a vast enemy army). The best stories usually include both.
For those of who don't like these labels, which can sometimes seem too confining or conventional, take a close look at your manuscripts. You will usually be able to find evidence of some kind of conflict by whatever name you choose to give it -- tension, counterpoint, adversity. A rose by any other name. But still a necessity. Even jazz improvisation observes some kind of structure.
Maintaining running responses to the following five questions can help you to build your story and establish its conflicts with greater precision. Consider recording both internal and external forces and influences. Expect to refine your responses as you progress through a draft, and expect some of the answers to change or expand as you get to know your characters better:
1) What does your character want? (desire)
2) Why does he want it? (motivation)
3) What obstacles must your character overcome to get what he wants? (conflict)
4) Does he succeed? (resolution; plot denouement)
5) What changes for your character as a result of the conflict? (aftermath; character denouement)
The last is sometimes the most troublesome. In workshops, students frequently ask why things necessarily have to change for a character. Can't things remain the same? Can't the character end up back where he started?
Not really. By itself, it's not as profound as it sounds. Even if things end up back where they started in your story, it's with some kind of realization or knowledge that your characters didn't have at the beginning. Any narrative profundity or meaning stems from there.
Conflict and challenge are all around us in life, and they naturally give rise to some kind of change, however small. In order for your stories to remain true, conflict is a necessary structural element.
While you may have some characters that refuse to change because of their role in your story (a villain or adversary may remain so), your main characters will usually experience a shift in thinking or feeling between the beginning and the end of your story -- even if they lose the conflict or find themselves in the same physical place or situation.
Not that we want to discount our villains. Your readers may have a better understanding of why your villains are the way they are, and why they want what they want. In this sense, one purpose of your story is to reveal. You've heard about the difference between one-dimensional and three-dimensional characters. It's the difference between a man walking, and a man walking in switchback-like movements to avoid cracks in the sidewalk. These added dimensions are important even for peripheral characters because they establish additional conflicts.
But the characters that most readers will connect with (perhaps even your villain) are those engaged in the main struggle -- whatever it is -- and everything you include in your story should feed into that struggle and your characters' journey toward that struggle's resolution.
This doesn't mean that characters always get what they want. A character's acceptance of a once undesired outcome can also represent a significant emotional realization or change. Remember the Twilight Zone episode where a feeble, elderly couple goes to purchase brand new, youthful, healthy bodies? They can only afford one. The husband gets it, but then both realize that they will lose the life they have together -- and their love -- if he keeps it. So he gives it up. At the end, they walk out together in the same feeble condition. But they have a very different understanding. And what they want is revealed to be different from what they thought they wanted.
Hemingway's short story, Hills Like White Elephants, is often used to study conflict because the story -- about a couple deciding whether to have an abortion -- is so rich in serene symbolism that the conflict itself is muted, and all the more unsettling for it. It's frequently observed that there is no resolution in this story, but there is. No matter which of two paths the couple chooses, their lives will be changed forever and one of them will be giving up some measure of happiness to appease the other. The inevitability of change is certain regardless of their decision. We don't know the plot's actual denouement, but Hemingway provides enough information to let us glimpse how each of the two outcomes would unfold for each character. Each character would experience their own alterations no matter what the final decision.
Your story may be crafted with this kind of subtlety, or your characters may blow up the Death Star. Either way, give your characters a hard time. Put up barriers. Throw obstacles in their path and make them fight their way through. And just when they think it's safe, give them something else to deal with. Let your characters take their own journey and be inspired, strengthened, disappointed, or resigned as a consequence of that journey.
As in life.
While this certainly applies to our own development as human beings and our ability to understand one another, it also applies to character development in fiction.
Character and conflict are deeply intertwined. We build stories by inventing challenges for our characters to face, and then exploring how well, or how poorly, our characters respond to these challenges. How they choose either to face or ignore these challenges is the stuff of human interaction and the heart of a story. How does a character deal with his own resulting suffering? How does he respond to the suffering of others? The answers help to define who your characters are.
Conflict needn't be characterized by weeping and wailing and other overt displays of emotionalism. It's best if it isn't. Conflict can be internal (an emotional struggle within a character that must be resolved, or not, by the character himself) or external (blowing up the Death Star despite a vast enemy army). The best stories usually include both.
For those of who don't like these labels, which can sometimes seem too confining or conventional, take a close look at your manuscripts. You will usually be able to find evidence of some kind of conflict by whatever name you choose to give it -- tension, counterpoint, adversity. A rose by any other name. But still a necessity. Even jazz improvisation observes some kind of structure.
Maintaining running responses to the following five questions can help you to build your story and establish its conflicts with greater precision. Consider recording both internal and external forces and influences. Expect to refine your responses as you progress through a draft, and expect some of the answers to change or expand as you get to know your characters better:
1) What does your character want? (desire)
2) Why does he want it? (motivation)
3) What obstacles must your character overcome to get what he wants? (conflict)
4) Does he succeed? (resolution; plot denouement)
5) What changes for your character as a result of the conflict? (aftermath; character denouement)
The last is sometimes the most troublesome. In workshops, students frequently ask why things necessarily have to change for a character. Can't things remain the same? Can't the character end up back where he started?
Not really. By itself, it's not as profound as it sounds. Even if things end up back where they started in your story, it's with some kind of realization or knowledge that your characters didn't have at the beginning. Any narrative profundity or meaning stems from there.
Conflict and challenge are all around us in life, and they naturally give rise to some kind of change, however small. In order for your stories to remain true, conflict is a necessary structural element.
While you may have some characters that refuse to change because of their role in your story (a villain or adversary may remain so), your main characters will usually experience a shift in thinking or feeling between the beginning and the end of your story -- even if they lose the conflict or find themselves in the same physical place or situation.
Not that we want to discount our villains. Your readers may have a better understanding of why your villains are the way they are, and why they want what they want. In this sense, one purpose of your story is to reveal. You've heard about the difference between one-dimensional and three-dimensional characters. It's the difference between a man walking, and a man walking in switchback-like movements to avoid cracks in the sidewalk. These added dimensions are important even for peripheral characters because they establish additional conflicts.
But the characters that most readers will connect with (perhaps even your villain) are those engaged in the main struggle -- whatever it is -- and everything you include in your story should feed into that struggle and your characters' journey toward that struggle's resolution.
This doesn't mean that characters always get what they want. A character's acceptance of a once undesired outcome can also represent a significant emotional realization or change. Remember the Twilight Zone episode where a feeble, elderly couple goes to purchase brand new, youthful, healthy bodies? They can only afford one. The husband gets it, but then both realize that they will lose the life they have together -- and their love -- if he keeps it. So he gives it up. At the end, they walk out together in the same feeble condition. But they have a very different understanding. And what they want is revealed to be different from what they thought they wanted.
Hemingway's short story, Hills Like White Elephants, is often used to study conflict because the story -- about a couple deciding whether to have an abortion -- is so rich in serene symbolism that the conflict itself is muted, and all the more unsettling for it. It's frequently observed that there is no resolution in this story, but there is. No matter which of two paths the couple chooses, their lives will be changed forever and one of them will be giving up some measure of happiness to appease the other. The inevitability of change is certain regardless of their decision. We don't know the plot's actual denouement, but Hemingway provides enough information to let us glimpse how each of the two outcomes would unfold for each character. Each character would experience their own alterations no matter what the final decision.
Your story may be crafted with this kind of subtlety, or your characters may blow up the Death Star. Either way, give your characters a hard time. Put up barriers. Throw obstacles in their path and make them fight their way through. And just when they think it's safe, give them something else to deal with. Let your characters take their own journey and be inspired, strengthened, disappointed, or resigned as a consequence of that journey.
As in life.
Obstacles: The "Ins" of Writing that Can Paralyze You, and One That Can't
I've read a lot of articles about writer's block, and the ones that deal with fear basically say to get over it and just get to the doing. Tips from established writers say "just write." I've written it myself and probably will again.
But how do you get over it exactly? How do you stop all the voices in your head (or those actually coming from another part of the house) that give you a hundred reasons a day not to put a single word on paper?
Intimidation: I haven't done it before; I'm not good enough. Think back to your first job, your first couple of college classes, or the first time you took your first-born toddler to the park and sat with other toddler parents. In those early days, your confidence was probably pretty ragged as you learned the ropes of a new position or a new role in life, learned how to be away from home for the first time, or learned how to take notes in a survey course. Anyone who ever started anything felt this way at one time or another. Writers and other artists are probably at or near the top of this very large heap.
When a scientist conducts an experiment that doesn't produce the results he wanted or expected, does he consider it a failure? Probably not. The reason is that it gets him one step closer to the truth -- the result he wants. Same with writing. It's a condition of apprenticeship. Repeated tries followed by small successes followed by bigger ones. When you write frequently, you come to realize that, after a number of days, you can see this progression. Doubting it produces more doubt and procrastination.
Don't have formal writing workshops where you live? Can't afford them? Concerned about "critiques?" Go to your local library and organize a writing group. Your librarians or a local teacher may even be able to help you structure it. This will get you writing. It will also help you establish light deadlines for delivering work for discussion to other people who may not be professional writers, but who do like to read and can offer their impressions on how well they connect to your story -- which is where the rubber meets the road for a writer anyway. Exposing yourself to others who are trying to do what you're doing -- and others who are better at it than you are, especially -- will motivate you to improve.
Interference: I have too many other demands on my time. The fact of it is, if you keep talking yourself out of writing and moving away from that process instead of toward it, then either 1) you don't want to write badly enough, or 2) you're at a point in your life where writing can't be accommodated, either because of other demands you place on yourself or demands placed on you by others. Usually, it's a combination of the two.
One of my favorite lines from The Big Chill is, "Ever gone a week without a rationalization?" You can talk yourself out of anything, and that can go on for a long time, conspiring to prevent you from accomplishing something you say or think you want. How important to you is it that you write? If it comes in second to confronting a significant other about the use of time, or working overtime so you can put food on the table, it's probably going to lose. Don't beat yourself up over it -- try to think of other ways to juggle your demands. Break writing tasks into smaller pieces. If you can't, you can't. Maybe it's not meant to be. But if you believe it is, try to hold on to your dream -- for when someday comes.
Invalidation: It's not a "real" job. Anyone who says this to you hasn't done it and/or probably doesn't know what it takes to create something out of nothing. You may hear this a lot, and you may even hear it from people who are close to you, which can hurt. Whether you believe it or allow it to deflate you is pretty much up to you.
Rest assured that writing is real work and takes real effort just like any other job. But there are two things that differentiate it from other jobs: you may not be held accountable for measurable productivity, and you may not be able to demonstrate measurable productivity every working day. If you're writing on your own without classes or workshops or editorial deadlines, you're the only one around to hold yourself accountable. There's nobody else. So if you fold socks and watch movies all day instead of churning out a few paragraphs or pages, who's responsible for the lack of productivity?
Thinking of writing as a real job, for me, doesn't wreck the creative process. Enveloping the creative process in tactics related to time management or minimum deliverables, for me, doesn't interfere with what my characters say or do on the page. These things help me to steer toward completion. But that's me. I've been down the road once and know where the road leads. You have to find your own tactics that are not only going to make you produce results -- any result, no matter how small -- but make you confident that your efforts will produce good results.
Insignificance: I don't have anything to say that's new. Few of us do. There is a finite number of unique masterplots, depending on the source -- somewhere between seven and 250 -- but no matter what the number, eventually they start to overlap. Man versus man, man versus nature, girl meets Martian. You're safer to think in terms of structure, and how compelling you can make your characters so your readers can engage with, and like reading, your story -- no matter what the plot is.
You may have the same plot as hundreds of other stories or novels. What makes it yours is how you tell it -- the way you see the world, your perspective, the way you set the words down, your style, your voice, how your characters interact, or don't. These are all unique to you, and while they may echo the work of other writers, they are your own. That uniqueness is what you bring to the table, and that alone should compel you.
* * *
As with any profession, any struggle really, it's important to know that you're not alone in the fight. Everyone experiences doubt and self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy relative to their work because that's the nature of learning. It is especially the nature of apprenticeship. It's okay to start slowly. What's important is starting with something.
If you ever played a musical instrument, you know about scales. If you played piano, you know about Hanon, the big yellow-gold book from the Schirmer Library that is the dripping dread of every piano student. It is a collection of exercises that run your hands up and down the keyboard in several complex variations of the basic do-re-mi scale. They're not songs. They're exercises. Every lesson, every practice session, opened with "The Hanon." We hate them. But over time, fingers become nimble and very quick. By the time you sit down to play Beethoven, the knowledge your fingers and brain have gained by doing the exercises makes the Beethoven technically easier to play. Less intimidating.
Fear is a funny nut. Everyone is guilted by it or scared by it in different ways. Everyone is also motivated in different ways, and to different degrees, to conquer it.
The "in" word that breaks the paralysis is Inception.
Don't expect to go from zero to sixty the first day with your writing, or in every writing session. Don't overlook the small steps that can advance your capabilities.
You may begin by reviewing what you want to happen in your story. Jot notes down. If time is short on some days, hone your technical skills. Learn a few new words, do some speed-writing exercises that are directly related to your plot or characters, or add to a character study by answering questions about who your characters are. Think about your story's conflict. Strategize about how one thing affects other things, how a change could influence other actions and characters. When you're able to sit down for a session with your pen, you will feel more prepared, less "stuck," because some of this groundwork will have already been done.
Writing is a process you have to learn for yourself, and it's different for everyone. With everything you practice, and there are many things to practice, you make small gains, whether you realize it immediately or not -- like piano scales. Your confidence will build steadily, and give you assurance that your efforts are not wasted.
There will be times when you indulge the voices. We all allow this at certain times. But at the end of the day, they are just voices. They're not Beethoven. They can't move objects, surf channels, or fold socks. Eventually you realize that it is only with the act of sitting down to write that your writing, on more days than not, actually gets done.
But how do you get over it exactly? How do you stop all the voices in your head (or those actually coming from another part of the house) that give you a hundred reasons a day not to put a single word on paper?
Intimidation: I haven't done it before; I'm not good enough. Think back to your first job, your first couple of college classes, or the first time you took your first-born toddler to the park and sat with other toddler parents. In those early days, your confidence was probably pretty ragged as you learned the ropes of a new position or a new role in life, learned how to be away from home for the first time, or learned how to take notes in a survey course. Anyone who ever started anything felt this way at one time or another. Writers and other artists are probably at or near the top of this very large heap.
When a scientist conducts an experiment that doesn't produce the results he wanted or expected, does he consider it a failure? Probably not. The reason is that it gets him one step closer to the truth -- the result he wants. Same with writing. It's a condition of apprenticeship. Repeated tries followed by small successes followed by bigger ones. When you write frequently, you come to realize that, after a number of days, you can see this progression. Doubting it produces more doubt and procrastination.
Don't have formal writing workshops where you live? Can't afford them? Concerned about "critiques?" Go to your local library and organize a writing group. Your librarians or a local teacher may even be able to help you structure it. This will get you writing. It will also help you establish light deadlines for delivering work for discussion to other people who may not be professional writers, but who do like to read and can offer their impressions on how well they connect to your story -- which is where the rubber meets the road for a writer anyway. Exposing yourself to others who are trying to do what you're doing -- and others who are better at it than you are, especially -- will motivate you to improve.
Interference: I have too many other demands on my time. The fact of it is, if you keep talking yourself out of writing and moving away from that process instead of toward it, then either 1) you don't want to write badly enough, or 2) you're at a point in your life where writing can't be accommodated, either because of other demands you place on yourself or demands placed on you by others. Usually, it's a combination of the two.
One of my favorite lines from The Big Chill is, "Ever gone a week without a rationalization?" You can talk yourself out of anything, and that can go on for a long time, conspiring to prevent you from accomplishing something you say or think you want. How important to you is it that you write? If it comes in second to confronting a significant other about the use of time, or working overtime so you can put food on the table, it's probably going to lose. Don't beat yourself up over it -- try to think of other ways to juggle your demands. Break writing tasks into smaller pieces. If you can't, you can't. Maybe it's not meant to be. But if you believe it is, try to hold on to your dream -- for when someday comes.
Invalidation: It's not a "real" job. Anyone who says this to you hasn't done it and/or probably doesn't know what it takes to create something out of nothing. You may hear this a lot, and you may even hear it from people who are close to you, which can hurt. Whether you believe it or allow it to deflate you is pretty much up to you.
Rest assured that writing is real work and takes real effort just like any other job. But there are two things that differentiate it from other jobs: you may not be held accountable for measurable productivity, and you may not be able to demonstrate measurable productivity every working day. If you're writing on your own without classes or workshops or editorial deadlines, you're the only one around to hold yourself accountable. There's nobody else. So if you fold socks and watch movies all day instead of churning out a few paragraphs or pages, who's responsible for the lack of productivity?
Thinking of writing as a real job, for me, doesn't wreck the creative process. Enveloping the creative process in tactics related to time management or minimum deliverables, for me, doesn't interfere with what my characters say or do on the page. These things help me to steer toward completion. But that's me. I've been down the road once and know where the road leads. You have to find your own tactics that are not only going to make you produce results -- any result, no matter how small -- but make you confident that your efforts will produce good results.
Insignificance: I don't have anything to say that's new. Few of us do. There is a finite number of unique masterplots, depending on the source -- somewhere between seven and 250 -- but no matter what the number, eventually they start to overlap. Man versus man, man versus nature, girl meets Martian. You're safer to think in terms of structure, and how compelling you can make your characters so your readers can engage with, and like reading, your story -- no matter what the plot is.
You may have the same plot as hundreds of other stories or novels. What makes it yours is how you tell it -- the way you see the world, your perspective, the way you set the words down, your style, your voice, how your characters interact, or don't. These are all unique to you, and while they may echo the work of other writers, they are your own. That uniqueness is what you bring to the table, and that alone should compel you.
* * *
As with any profession, any struggle really, it's important to know that you're not alone in the fight. Everyone experiences doubt and self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy relative to their work because that's the nature of learning. It is especially the nature of apprenticeship. It's okay to start slowly. What's important is starting with something.
If you ever played a musical instrument, you know about scales. If you played piano, you know about Hanon, the big yellow-gold book from the Schirmer Library that is the dripping dread of every piano student. It is a collection of exercises that run your hands up and down the keyboard in several complex variations of the basic do-re-mi scale. They're not songs. They're exercises. Every lesson, every practice session, opened with "The Hanon." We hate them. But over time, fingers become nimble and very quick. By the time you sit down to play Beethoven, the knowledge your fingers and brain have gained by doing the exercises makes the Beethoven technically easier to play. Less intimidating.
Fear is a funny nut. Everyone is guilted by it or scared by it in different ways. Everyone is also motivated in different ways, and to different degrees, to conquer it.
The "in" word that breaks the paralysis is Inception.
Don't expect to go from zero to sixty the first day with your writing, or in every writing session. Don't overlook the small steps that can advance your capabilities.
You may begin by reviewing what you want to happen in your story. Jot notes down. If time is short on some days, hone your technical skills. Learn a few new words, do some speed-writing exercises that are directly related to your plot or characters, or add to a character study by answering questions about who your characters are. Think about your story's conflict. Strategize about how one thing affects other things, how a change could influence other actions and characters. When you're able to sit down for a session with your pen, you will feel more prepared, less "stuck," because some of this groundwork will have already been done.
Writing is a process you have to learn for yourself, and it's different for everyone. With everything you practice, and there are many things to practice, you make small gains, whether you realize it immediately or not -- like piano scales. Your confidence will build steadily, and give you assurance that your efforts are not wasted.
There will be times when you indulge the voices. We all allow this at certain times. But at the end of the day, they are just voices. They're not Beethoven. They can't move objects, surf channels, or fold socks. Eventually you realize that it is only with the act of sitting down to write that your writing, on more days than not, actually gets done.
Obstacles: Too Much Advice
Lillian Hellman once said, "They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."
Someone's else's advice and experience can affect you in different ways. It can inspire you to write every word down and take it all to heart as you try to apply it. It can also paralyze you, like an information overload. You may think in response, "I know that, I know," and become frustrated in your quest for something you haven't heard before. You may not trust or respect or even know the person from whom you hear writing advice. It is suspect, perhaps because you don't have a point of reference of your own.
The best teachers know that writing can't be taught -- if it could, we'd all be in another place. Teachers can steer you toward finding your own voice. They're uncanny at picking out what one of my instructors used to call "writerly" passages -- writing that tries too hard, writing that shows off. They can give you tools to probe the depths of your characters, and show you structural flaws in how a story is plotted. Editors often function this way too.
But the rest?
I had a teacher in high school, Margaret Long (Mu, to those who knew her best). She once said to me of talent, "Use it always to create truth." I've never forgotten it. She taught dramatic arts with a passion that I hope high school teachers still possess. Whether students were playing a Chopin concerto, rehearsing a monologue, or writing poetry, truth had to prevail.
She was talking about emotional truth.
Like a proverb that has a variation in many different languages, writers know Mu's guiding advice in another form: "Write about what you know."
As a fifteen-year-old, I thought this meant that I shouldn't write a story set in Japan unless I'd been to Japan.
What I now believe it means, and what I think Mu meant for me to understand, is that a writer should write about the emotions he knows best -- the anger, love, frustration, unfairness, fear, risk-taking, courage, disappointment, happiness, euphoria, or loss -- that Milky Way of human experience that is his own. Weave these emotions into your stories and into the hearts and guts of your characters, and pull the strands tight. Give your characters honest reasons to feel these things, to sustain or overcome them.
Your own instincts will guide you more than you know. Set your story in Shanghai, Paris, Nebraska, or your own back yard. Set it anywhere in time. Geography is easy. But distance yourself from forced "messaging" that can make your story's emotional pillars crumble. Strive for honest, emotional truth, and keep rewriting your paragraphs and dialogue until you feel your pen ring it.
Reading blogs and articles and various trade columns helps many people, and if you find that strategy helpful too, great. I think most of these pieces are intended to help guide a writer's efforts -- no matter what your age -- and there is some good counsel out there, good advice from people who've been down the road ahead of you.
If, however, you find such resources congealing into one big institutional fog manufactured by a bunch of old windbags, that's fine too, if you remember one thing.
The best teacher when it comes to writing is the act of writing.
Our grandmothers knew this, but they called it the value of experience.
The act of writing. It's the lowest common denominator, the thing that joins us all together, the one shared experience from which all writers learn. We may learn at different speeds, we may have different proficiencies, varying successes and frustration, a wide range of strengths and weaknesses. But every effort we make is better than the last because of the doing.
Get in the chair.
Someone's else's advice and experience can affect you in different ways. It can inspire you to write every word down and take it all to heart as you try to apply it. It can also paralyze you, like an information overload. You may think in response, "I know that, I know," and become frustrated in your quest for something you haven't heard before. You may not trust or respect or even know the person from whom you hear writing advice. It is suspect, perhaps because you don't have a point of reference of your own.
The best teachers know that writing can't be taught -- if it could, we'd all be in another place. Teachers can steer you toward finding your own voice. They're uncanny at picking out what one of my instructors used to call "writerly" passages -- writing that tries too hard, writing that shows off. They can give you tools to probe the depths of your characters, and show you structural flaws in how a story is plotted. Editors often function this way too.
But the rest?
I had a teacher in high school, Margaret Long (Mu, to those who knew her best). She once said to me of talent, "Use it always to create truth." I've never forgotten it. She taught dramatic arts with a passion that I hope high school teachers still possess. Whether students were playing a Chopin concerto, rehearsing a monologue, or writing poetry, truth had to prevail.
She was talking about emotional truth.
Like a proverb that has a variation in many different languages, writers know Mu's guiding advice in another form: "Write about what you know."
As a fifteen-year-old, I thought this meant that I shouldn't write a story set in Japan unless I'd been to Japan.
What I now believe it means, and what I think Mu meant for me to understand, is that a writer should write about the emotions he knows best -- the anger, love, frustration, unfairness, fear, risk-taking, courage, disappointment, happiness, euphoria, or loss -- that Milky Way of human experience that is his own. Weave these emotions into your stories and into the hearts and guts of your characters, and pull the strands tight. Give your characters honest reasons to feel these things, to sustain or overcome them.
Your own instincts will guide you more than you know. Set your story in Shanghai, Paris, Nebraska, or your own back yard. Set it anywhere in time. Geography is easy. But distance yourself from forced "messaging" that can make your story's emotional pillars crumble. Strive for honest, emotional truth, and keep rewriting your paragraphs and dialogue until you feel your pen ring it.
Reading blogs and articles and various trade columns helps many people, and if you find that strategy helpful too, great. I think most of these pieces are intended to help guide a writer's efforts -- no matter what your age -- and there is some good counsel out there, good advice from people who've been down the road ahead of you.
If, however, you find such resources congealing into one big institutional fog manufactured by a bunch of old windbags, that's fine too, if you remember one thing.
The best teacher when it comes to writing is the act of writing.
Our grandmothers knew this, but they called it the value of experience.
The act of writing. It's the lowest common denominator, the thing that joins us all together, the one shared experience from which all writers learn. We may learn at different speeds, we may have different proficiencies, varying successes and frustration, a wide range of strengths and weaknesses. But every effort we make is better than the last because of the doing.
Get in the chair.
Obstacles: The Myth of Finishing Before You Begin
It's a common misconception some writers have that an entire story or novel must be fully mapped out before the writing starts.
While it's good to organize yourself and have an idea of what you want your story to accomplish, the belief that you will get the plot, characters, and/or dialogue perfectly aligned in your head before you set words to paper is just wishful thinking. If you believe you can do this, chances are pretty good that you will rarely actually sit down to write.
Not saying it's impossible -- somewhere there's a literary genius or two doing exactly that -- it's just highly unlikely for mere mortals. No matter what parents or teachers tell you, most of us find out that we're not geniuses who can consistently produce literary pearls within ten minutes of waking every afternoon.
Here's why:
Change and improvement come with the doing. It's likes a curse. The minute you start writing, your story starts to rearrange itself and make mincemeat of all the plans you had for it. Characters don't seem as wonderfully giddy or deliciously evil as you imagined. In fact, they often resist what you want them to do. They needle you with other ideas about where the story might go or what might happen. Your protagonist might as well be cardboard for how boring she is on the page. Actions don't seem natural. The plot has inconsistencies. Dialogue sounds as if it came from a seventh grade playbook.
Ego may be a culprit here. You have preconceived notions and exclusively want to control your story's action. Strangely, when you start to write, the words don't feel right. The story wants to go one way, and you stubbornly want to keep it constrained. When the ideas seem to change of their own accord without your direction, you might feel you're in unacceptable and unsafe territory. You're better than that. The idea must be flawed. It's not ready for paper, so you decide you need to think about it a little more.
As long as you keep your story in your head, it will never be full formed. It will never be subject to objective criticism. It never changes, never deepens, never gets any better. It will always be perfect, just the way it is.
It will never be read.
I think a writer has to maintain a little humility about the writing process. Revision -- changing things you thought you could rely on -- is a very large part of that process. There are no shortcuts. New ideas and changes occur to you as you write because somewhere deep in your brain, your instinct is telling you to consider other possibilities. These instincts are worth your attention.
Expect to be disappointed in your writing sometimes. Expect to feel that on some days, your writing is just crappy. On some days, it will be. The exaggerated anticipation of these fears can cause the so-called "block" that prevents some of us from sitting in the chair. That's exactly when you do need to sit.
Expect to feel that everyone around you is moving faster than you are. If you're in workshops, expect to be envious of some of the other stories you see, the stories whose authors make "it" look easy. Trust me -- it's not easy for anyone. Cocky geniuses aside, most writers feel doubts as they write. It's part of the game. You're in really good company.
You should also recognize that these reactions are necessary, and healthy, rites of passage for every story you begin. There's another blog entry here that talks about the concept of apprenticeship in writing, and it's a concept worth embracing. How you advance your apprenticeship is by getting your ideas on paper and revising your work.
An early draft is just the gravel-strewn beginning of the road. By definition, many parts of it won't be very good. If you stop there, you're bound to feel frustrated and full of self doubt. If you stop there, you'll never have to face the blank page again. If you read your draft story or chapter or scene the next day with disappointment, it is exactly that disappointment that can propel you forward and make the story better. But you have to push past your own negativity.
Revision is where most real writing gets done, where the real work is accomplished. If you don't work at it, your apprenticeship will falter -- not what you want if you're serious about becoming the best writer you can be.
The good news? The more words you put to paper, the better and more efficient you get at it. So sit down and start counting.
A few suggestions / exercises:
1) Make notes of the things about your draft work that bother you (or that seemed to bother others in workshop). Get them out of your head so they can be assessed and resolved objectively, and with a proper focus.
2) Take 15 minutes and rewrite a short scene, a conversation, or a detailed description from your story. Short intervals -- speed-writing -- can focus you in ways that you may not expect. Stop, take another 15 minutes, and rewrite what you just wrote. See if you can identify the improvements you made between the original and the last.
3) Take a scene or chapter and switch the point of view to that of another character. This gives you additional insight into the characters and their motivations. Details are different in different perspectives.
4) Assess your opening 2-3 paragraphs. Ask yourself what key pieces of information are most important to convey to your reader in this space. Spending ten minutes on each, write three different openings to your story using different points of view, different settings, different opening facts or impressions. Of the three, which feels the most true to your story?
5) Talk about your story's sticking points with a trusted buddy who will just listen. Articulating your difficulty with a particular passage, action, or character kicks in a different set of analytical abilities and can provide the juice that compels you to get back to your chair.
Here's a link to a wonderful 1992 interview with playwright Edward Albee. When you get to the part where he says he does a lot of revision before writing things down, just remember that, in the end, he wrote things down -- and still referred to the product as a "first draft."
http://bombsite.com/issues/38/articles/1522
While it's good to organize yourself and have an idea of what you want your story to accomplish, the belief that you will get the plot, characters, and/or dialogue perfectly aligned in your head before you set words to paper is just wishful thinking. If you believe you can do this, chances are pretty good that you will rarely actually sit down to write.
Not saying it's impossible -- somewhere there's a literary genius or two doing exactly that -- it's just highly unlikely for mere mortals. No matter what parents or teachers tell you, most of us find out that we're not geniuses who can consistently produce literary pearls within ten minutes of waking every afternoon.
Here's why:
Change and improvement come with the doing. It's likes a curse. The minute you start writing, your story starts to rearrange itself and make mincemeat of all the plans you had for it. Characters don't seem as wonderfully giddy or deliciously evil as you imagined. In fact, they often resist what you want them to do. They needle you with other ideas about where the story might go or what might happen. Your protagonist might as well be cardboard for how boring she is on the page. Actions don't seem natural. The plot has inconsistencies. Dialogue sounds as if it came from a seventh grade playbook.
Ego may be a culprit here. You have preconceived notions and exclusively want to control your story's action. Strangely, when you start to write, the words don't feel right. The story wants to go one way, and you stubbornly want to keep it constrained. When the ideas seem to change of their own accord without your direction, you might feel you're in unacceptable and unsafe territory. You're better than that. The idea must be flawed. It's not ready for paper, so you decide you need to think about it a little more.
As long as you keep your story in your head, it will never be full formed. It will never be subject to objective criticism. It never changes, never deepens, never gets any better. It will always be perfect, just the way it is.
It will never be read.
I think a writer has to maintain a little humility about the writing process. Revision -- changing things you thought you could rely on -- is a very large part of that process. There are no shortcuts. New ideas and changes occur to you as you write because somewhere deep in your brain, your instinct is telling you to consider other possibilities. These instincts are worth your attention.
Expect to be disappointed in your writing sometimes. Expect to feel that on some days, your writing is just crappy. On some days, it will be. The exaggerated anticipation of these fears can cause the so-called "block" that prevents some of us from sitting in the chair. That's exactly when you do need to sit.
Expect to feel that everyone around you is moving faster than you are. If you're in workshops, expect to be envious of some of the other stories you see, the stories whose authors make "it" look easy. Trust me -- it's not easy for anyone. Cocky geniuses aside, most writers feel doubts as they write. It's part of the game. You're in really good company.
You should also recognize that these reactions are necessary, and healthy, rites of passage for every story you begin. There's another blog entry here that talks about the concept of apprenticeship in writing, and it's a concept worth embracing. How you advance your apprenticeship is by getting your ideas on paper and revising your work.
An early draft is just the gravel-strewn beginning of the road. By definition, many parts of it won't be very good. If you stop there, you're bound to feel frustrated and full of self doubt. If you stop there, you'll never have to face the blank page again. If you read your draft story or chapter or scene the next day with disappointment, it is exactly that disappointment that can propel you forward and make the story better. But you have to push past your own negativity.
Revision is where most real writing gets done, where the real work is accomplished. If you don't work at it, your apprenticeship will falter -- not what you want if you're serious about becoming the best writer you can be.
The good news? The more words you put to paper, the better and more efficient you get at it. So sit down and start counting.
A few suggestions / exercises:
1) Make notes of the things about your draft work that bother you (or that seemed to bother others in workshop). Get them out of your head so they can be assessed and resolved objectively, and with a proper focus.
2) Take 15 minutes and rewrite a short scene, a conversation, or a detailed description from your story. Short intervals -- speed-writing -- can focus you in ways that you may not expect. Stop, take another 15 minutes, and rewrite what you just wrote. See if you can identify the improvements you made between the original and the last.
3) Take a scene or chapter and switch the point of view to that of another character. This gives you additional insight into the characters and their motivations. Details are different in different perspectives.
4) Assess your opening 2-3 paragraphs. Ask yourself what key pieces of information are most important to convey to your reader in this space. Spending ten minutes on each, write three different openings to your story using different points of view, different settings, different opening facts or impressions. Of the three, which feels the most true to your story?
5) Talk about your story's sticking points with a trusted buddy who will just listen. Articulating your difficulty with a particular passage, action, or character kicks in a different set of analytical abilities and can provide the juice that compels you to get back to your chair.
Here's a link to a wonderful 1992 interview with playwright Edward Albee. When you get to the part where he says he does a lot of revision before writing things down, just remember that, in the end, he wrote things down -- and still referred to the product as a "first draft."
http://bombsite.com/issues/38/articles/1522