Andie Ryan Author Blog
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Humble Beginnings
I don't know any writer -- of anything -- who doesn't struggle with beginnings. We're overrun with ideas, we wake up with plot points in our heads, maybe we even whisper dialogue to ourselves on crowded trains or in the backs of classrooms. And yet the blank page or screen can seem like our worst antagonist, taunting and mean, parasailing yet another novitiate into that hearty congregation of non-starters.
"The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first."
Pascal, Pensees, (1670), 19, Tr. W.F. Trotter
Don't sweat about not knowing exactly where to begin. It will change, many times, as you progress through your story. The point is to begin somewhere, anywhere, that feels like a possibility -- a beginning that "could be," a scene that is necessary to advance understanding of a character or to describe a key action.
If this feels disconcerting, try it anyway. When your beginnings change, it means that your story is maturing and that you are coming to know your characters better. Your perspective about who your characters are is deepening. As a result, you know with greater certainty what your characters will do, how they will react, and what they are likely to observe. Another way to look at this is that as you work and revise, you understand what matters most to your characters. This brings you closer to their sources of sanctuary and, perhaps more importantly, their sources of conflict. It's a natural part of the writing process, and in an odd sort of way, something you can count on.
One strategy I find useful when I'm stuck on a chapter or stuck on where to begin is to write down those facts and scenes, including descriptions or lines of dialogue, that I'm pretty sure of. This can cover a lot of ground once you get going -- characters, key actions, key revelations, the story's climax, details of setting. As you do this, other ideas and details will come to you. Write those down too. Pretty soon, you're finishing drafts of chapters.
With the second novel, I spent some time in the early stages with details of setting. I knew it would be a small, isolated town, a place easily cut off in ways that a larger city or metropolis couldn't be. Because it takes place a few decades in the future, I wanted there to be signs of infrastructure failure -- infrequent mail and food deliveries, frequent power outages, other ways in which a failing economy would manifest itself in how people spent their time and how they tried to maintain some base standard of living.
I sketched how the town was laid out, where key places were, where the town gathering spots were, and details about weather. These details continue to evolve and expand but, so far, little of that early work has been abandoned. While changes are inevitable down the road, one of the benefits to starting with the details you feel sure about is that the story is built on a stronger foundation than if you try to force a particular first paragraph or scene (which is exactly what I did in the early drafts of Shakedown). Such details act as anchors of familiarity, and build on themselves. I feel sure that the coming changes will deepen, not replace, what's already there. (I also promise to confess if this turns out to be wishful thinking.)
Some of this early work might naturally feed into an outline, if you like to work with outlines. Early details spark conversations and actions and scenes, which become chapters, which become outline "entries."
For me, doing a character study off the bat is not the right starting point. There are some superficial details of character -- age, appearance, profession or vocation -- and the high-level motivations (catch a killer, identify a conspiracy) that are apparent, but the deeper motivations and conflicts are tougher for me because I find I don't usually have a handle on character relationships when I start something new.
I do know that characters should be close, their lives intertwined, to spark more powerful conflicts and motivations -- friends become brothers, former lovers become lovers again, a villain is someone's daughter -- but for some reason these evolve later for me. It's best if I write a few chapters to get a feel for who the characters are and also see which minor characters emerge as keepers. Anyone else experience this?
As an example, an unexpected character blossomed in the draft of the second novel. Originally "cast" in a bit part, she was destined for a very early fatality - now, I'm not so sure. I liked who she turned out to be in the preliminary chapters I wrote in her voice -- smart-assed as only the young can be, sure of herself, yet making mistakes and knowing it. If she lives, things could get more interesting for the protagonist. It would also set up a more natural conflict with another character. From this, all kinds of plotting possibilities present themselves.
I will say that writing a first novel is easier in a way than the second. With the second, you know how much work is ahead, and it can feel really daunting. You find yourself at the base of the mountain again. If you're fortunate enough to be sticking with the same characters for two or three books, you'll be amazed at how quickly you can write chapters for characters you already know well, and how rich your detail will be in the early stages. I wrote a killer opening chapter for Hollister for the Shakedown prequel I decided to abandon, so no one will ever see it. One of those one-sitting chapters. Oh well.
For better or worse, I have a whole new set of characters to know and understand this time around, so the early work can be a little rocky. But I remember how that opening chapter to the prequel wrote so effortlessly, and tell myself to hold the thought. By the time I finish the second, maybe I'll have figured out the beginning. Maybe I'll even be able to scribble it down in one sitting.
"The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first."
Pascal, Pensees, (1670), 19, Tr. W.F. Trotter
Don't sweat about not knowing exactly where to begin. It will change, many times, as you progress through your story. The point is to begin somewhere, anywhere, that feels like a possibility -- a beginning that "could be," a scene that is necessary to advance understanding of a character or to describe a key action.
If this feels disconcerting, try it anyway. When your beginnings change, it means that your story is maturing and that you are coming to know your characters better. Your perspective about who your characters are is deepening. As a result, you know with greater certainty what your characters will do, how they will react, and what they are likely to observe. Another way to look at this is that as you work and revise, you understand what matters most to your characters. This brings you closer to their sources of sanctuary and, perhaps more importantly, their sources of conflict. It's a natural part of the writing process, and in an odd sort of way, something you can count on.
One strategy I find useful when I'm stuck on a chapter or stuck on where to begin is to write down those facts and scenes, including descriptions or lines of dialogue, that I'm pretty sure of. This can cover a lot of ground once you get going -- characters, key actions, key revelations, the story's climax, details of setting. As you do this, other ideas and details will come to you. Write those down too. Pretty soon, you're finishing drafts of chapters.
With the second novel, I spent some time in the early stages with details of setting. I knew it would be a small, isolated town, a place easily cut off in ways that a larger city or metropolis couldn't be. Because it takes place a few decades in the future, I wanted there to be signs of infrastructure failure -- infrequent mail and food deliveries, frequent power outages, other ways in which a failing economy would manifest itself in how people spent their time and how they tried to maintain some base standard of living.
I sketched how the town was laid out, where key places were, where the town gathering spots were, and details about weather. These details continue to evolve and expand but, so far, little of that early work has been abandoned. While changes are inevitable down the road, one of the benefits to starting with the details you feel sure about is that the story is built on a stronger foundation than if you try to force a particular first paragraph or scene (which is exactly what I did in the early drafts of Shakedown). Such details act as anchors of familiarity, and build on themselves. I feel sure that the coming changes will deepen, not replace, what's already there. (I also promise to confess if this turns out to be wishful thinking.)
Some of this early work might naturally feed into an outline, if you like to work with outlines. Early details spark conversations and actions and scenes, which become chapters, which become outline "entries."
For me, doing a character study off the bat is not the right starting point. There are some superficial details of character -- age, appearance, profession or vocation -- and the high-level motivations (catch a killer, identify a conspiracy) that are apparent, but the deeper motivations and conflicts are tougher for me because I find I don't usually have a handle on character relationships when I start something new.
I do know that characters should be close, their lives intertwined, to spark more powerful conflicts and motivations -- friends become brothers, former lovers become lovers again, a villain is someone's daughter -- but for some reason these evolve later for me. It's best if I write a few chapters to get a feel for who the characters are and also see which minor characters emerge as keepers. Anyone else experience this?
As an example, an unexpected character blossomed in the draft of the second novel. Originally "cast" in a bit part, she was destined for a very early fatality - now, I'm not so sure. I liked who she turned out to be in the preliminary chapters I wrote in her voice -- smart-assed as only the young can be, sure of herself, yet making mistakes and knowing it. If she lives, things could get more interesting for the protagonist. It would also set up a more natural conflict with another character. From this, all kinds of plotting possibilities present themselves.
I will say that writing a first novel is easier in a way than the second. With the second, you know how much work is ahead, and it can feel really daunting. You find yourself at the base of the mountain again. If you're fortunate enough to be sticking with the same characters for two or three books, you'll be amazed at how quickly you can write chapters for characters you already know well, and how rich your detail will be in the early stages. I wrote a killer opening chapter for Hollister for the Shakedown prequel I decided to abandon, so no one will ever see it. One of those one-sitting chapters. Oh well.
For better or worse, I have a whole new set of characters to know and understand this time around, so the early work can be a little rocky. But I remember how that opening chapter to the prequel wrote so effortlessly, and tell myself to hold the thought. By the time I finish the second, maybe I'll have figured out the beginning. Maybe I'll even be able to scribble it down in one sitting.
Does It Matter, Where We Write?
I was holed up in an intermittently blizzard-bound, blacked out, freezing cold bed and breakfast on Martha's Vineyard with no cell phone or internet reception, wrapped in two blankets in front of a fire that was my only light, an unwanted sneeze-inducing cat curled up on my pillow. My car was frozen to the ground, the runway was unplowed, and if there was ever a time I wanted to light out, that was it. Yet in those two weeks, I produced about 200 manuscript pages.
I should have been able to write at least that much while staying away from home in comfortable weather with real light and no distractions other than a great dog who was content to lie at my feet while I worked. Zero pages.
Snow, lots of it, is the mother of my invention. Chalk up one for the blizzard.
How many times have we heard our writer friends say, "I can't write there..." ?
Writers use many tricks and habits to call forth the Muse. Bowls of apples in a drawer, stark rooms with a simple wooden desk and chair, a favorite armchair with a board across the lap, Credence playing in the background. Hemingway wrote on top of a refrigerator. Then there's your emotional connection to place, what the light and sound make you think of or feel.
Can you have such a connection to a place you've never been before? By all reason, I shouldn't have been able to scribble a word in that snowstorm for the worry and the just plain strangeness of the experience, not to mention the cold -- but the words flowed anyway. In a warm, quiet well-lit place with the best dog on earth, it was next to impossible.
Maybe the environment, whatever it is, is just the gateway. Maybe it simply prepares your mind, or eases it, like a batter's practice swing. Once you're really into the writing, little will distract you, and you may not even be fully aware of your surroundings. Do we derive some comfort at the careful placement of apples or tin soldiers or paperweights before the work forces us to leave them behind? Does the absence of what's familiar sometimes free us more than we realize?
Places matter and don't matter. When you're ready to write, ready to connect with your story, where you are is not so critical because that connection to your work -- physical or emotional -- is the "place" that matters most. An unfamiliar place brings a lack of usual distractions and excuses. Familiar places bring a sense of routine and order -- your table, your chair. Either, sometimes unexpectedly, can evoke a sense of possibility and allow you to see yourself becoming what you want to be. Perhaps it is this belief, or faith, that you must have as a writer, no matter what the geography -- the belief that the words will come.
When I was a kid, I imagined that a writer was always alone on a darkened landscape, in a house with one light burning, pen to paper. I never imagined furniture or garden trees, who the neighbors were, or even a particular type of pen. I never imagined that house being in any particular place. My "place" was a quiet solitude, somewhere I could focus my attention.
When I think of that brief stay in Martha's Vineyard, there was a house on a darkened landscape, a raging wind, a single window illuminated by firelight, and me at a small, wobbly wooden table, pen to paper.
A thunderstorm has just started here in the city. I love writing during a good storm, and always have. Like ocean waves, the sound of a storm silences everything else.
Pen to paper.
I should have been able to write at least that much while staying away from home in comfortable weather with real light and no distractions other than a great dog who was content to lie at my feet while I worked. Zero pages.
Snow, lots of it, is the mother of my invention. Chalk up one for the blizzard.
How many times have we heard our writer friends say, "I can't write there..." ?
Writers use many tricks and habits to call forth the Muse. Bowls of apples in a drawer, stark rooms with a simple wooden desk and chair, a favorite armchair with a board across the lap, Credence playing in the background. Hemingway wrote on top of a refrigerator. Then there's your emotional connection to place, what the light and sound make you think of or feel.
Can you have such a connection to a place you've never been before? By all reason, I shouldn't have been able to scribble a word in that snowstorm for the worry and the just plain strangeness of the experience, not to mention the cold -- but the words flowed anyway. In a warm, quiet well-lit place with the best dog on earth, it was next to impossible.
Maybe the environment, whatever it is, is just the gateway. Maybe it simply prepares your mind, or eases it, like a batter's practice swing. Once you're really into the writing, little will distract you, and you may not even be fully aware of your surroundings. Do we derive some comfort at the careful placement of apples or tin soldiers or paperweights before the work forces us to leave them behind? Does the absence of what's familiar sometimes free us more than we realize?
Places matter and don't matter. When you're ready to write, ready to connect with your story, where you are is not so critical because that connection to your work -- physical or emotional -- is the "place" that matters most. An unfamiliar place brings a lack of usual distractions and excuses. Familiar places bring a sense of routine and order -- your table, your chair. Either, sometimes unexpectedly, can evoke a sense of possibility and allow you to see yourself becoming what you want to be. Perhaps it is this belief, or faith, that you must have as a writer, no matter what the geography -- the belief that the words will come.
When I was a kid, I imagined that a writer was always alone on a darkened landscape, in a house with one light burning, pen to paper. I never imagined furniture or garden trees, who the neighbors were, or even a particular type of pen. I never imagined that house being in any particular place. My "place" was a quiet solitude, somewhere I could focus my attention.
When I think of that brief stay in Martha's Vineyard, there was a house on a darkened landscape, a raging wind, a single window illuminated by firelight, and me at a small, wobbly wooden table, pen to paper.
A thunderstorm has just started here in the city. I love writing during a good storm, and always have. Like ocean waves, the sound of a storm silences everything else.
Pen to paper.
Writer's Block - The Conflict Within Ourselves
Some people believe that when writer's block strikes, you should abandon what you're working on and move on to something else. I read a comment in a recent online thread that suggested the abandonment is permanent -- that a writer should never return to a blocked piece, and just start working on something new. I envisioned a long string of just-begun stories strewn throughout the house like boulders. Just when the going gets tough, just when the writer starts to face difficult questions about what the story's about and who his characters are, his eyes start roving.
I should say up front I don't believe in writer's block. There is "writing," and there is "not writing." There is "wanting to write," and there is "not wanting to write." There is "discipline" and there is "laziness." And even though it still sounds cool to say you want to be a writer, there is fear.
It takes time to know your characters. You have to spend time thinking about actions and reactions, about where to place specific scenes or conversations. If you keep starting new projects, you will become proficient at starting new projects. But you will not become proficient at writing. You won't steer into your story's development, which is where many of your writing epiphanies occur and where your characters really come alive. This is where a writer finds his wind for the marathons to come.
When you haven't navigated an entire process by finishing something, you don't find your wind. You don't learn that many days are very productive. You don't learn how to get through a few unproductive days by turning to different aspects of your story or research. You don't develop as good an instinct for what works in a story and what doesn't, or recognize what areas require more attention, or where your real strengths and weaknesses are. You don't come to know your characters well, so your story's depth remains limited, superficial.
Worst of all, if you 've gotten into the habit of not finishing stories, you may come to believe that you can't finish one. That kills the writing by making you afraid to begin.
If you compare yourself to others around you who are publishing or otherwise appear to be successful writers, recognize that there are two key differences: discipline and persistence. Also recognize that writing isn't easy for anyone, even those conference rats who claim to finish writing a readable novel in 56 days. This is simply one big boatload of happy horse shit.
"But I don't like what I'm writing," you say. "I don't know where to begin."
Then revise it, change it. Begin anywhere, begin in the middle. Don't talk yourself out of it. You've got the pen. Stick with it, mold it, define your own terrain. Be confident that you can make your story into something you're excited about. If you don't allow yourself to see that this is possible through revision, I don't think you will achieve it. Writing is its own process that you have to both respect and believe in. Otherwise, you'll just keep starting, stopping, and restarting in the same places with a different cast of characters each time. Your ability won't grow.
Don't worry if you end up with a story that gets ripped up in workshop or at your dinner table. By finishing, you will have learned something very important to your craft and to your future writing. You'll see that many good and substantive changes can occur in later drafts. You'll begin your next project with a few more tools in your toolkit.
In a speech accepting the 1950 Nobel Prize, William Faulkner said, "He [the writer] must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."
So have a gun go off. Create a conflict or crisis. Make two people want the same thing. Allow your story to take its own direction sometimes, and go with it for a while, see what you think. But in any case, begin. Begin and revise.
The nature of the beast is that we all have to face, and conquer, the blank page through doing. You may not always be able to see it through the storms, but there are a whole lot of people on that opposite shore, waving you in.
I should say up front I don't believe in writer's block. There is "writing," and there is "not writing." There is "wanting to write," and there is "not wanting to write." There is "discipline" and there is "laziness." And even though it still sounds cool to say you want to be a writer, there is fear.
It takes time to know your characters. You have to spend time thinking about actions and reactions, about where to place specific scenes or conversations. If you keep starting new projects, you will become proficient at starting new projects. But you will not become proficient at writing. You won't steer into your story's development, which is where many of your writing epiphanies occur and where your characters really come alive. This is where a writer finds his wind for the marathons to come.
When you haven't navigated an entire process by finishing something, you don't find your wind. You don't learn that many days are very productive. You don't learn how to get through a few unproductive days by turning to different aspects of your story or research. You don't develop as good an instinct for what works in a story and what doesn't, or recognize what areas require more attention, or where your real strengths and weaknesses are. You don't come to know your characters well, so your story's depth remains limited, superficial.
Worst of all, if you 've gotten into the habit of not finishing stories, you may come to believe that you can't finish one. That kills the writing by making you afraid to begin.
If you compare yourself to others around you who are publishing or otherwise appear to be successful writers, recognize that there are two key differences: discipline and persistence. Also recognize that writing isn't easy for anyone, even those conference rats who claim to finish writing a readable novel in 56 days. This is simply one big boatload of happy horse shit.
"But I don't like what I'm writing," you say. "I don't know where to begin."
Then revise it, change it. Begin anywhere, begin in the middle. Don't talk yourself out of it. You've got the pen. Stick with it, mold it, define your own terrain. Be confident that you can make your story into something you're excited about. If you don't allow yourself to see that this is possible through revision, I don't think you will achieve it. Writing is its own process that you have to both respect and believe in. Otherwise, you'll just keep starting, stopping, and restarting in the same places with a different cast of characters each time. Your ability won't grow.
Don't worry if you end up with a story that gets ripped up in workshop or at your dinner table. By finishing, you will have learned something very important to your craft and to your future writing. You'll see that many good and substantive changes can occur in later drafts. You'll begin your next project with a few more tools in your toolkit.
In a speech accepting the 1950 Nobel Prize, William Faulkner said, "He [the writer] must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."
So have a gun go off. Create a conflict or crisis. Make two people want the same thing. Allow your story to take its own direction sometimes, and go with it for a while, see what you think. But in any case, begin. Begin and revise.
The nature of the beast is that we all have to face, and conquer, the blank page through doing. You may not always be able to see it through the storms, but there are a whole lot of people on that opposite shore, waving you in.
Fiction Writing Junkies
Aging hippies like me are a tough crowd when it comes to online marketing. Natural suspicion.
But my Facebook plans have started to take shape, and at the urging of a friend, I started a page this week called "Fiction Writing Junkies," geared toward writing resources and revision / editing advice that you think might benefit fiction writing students, workshoppers, or other writers initiating their own projects.
I posted a few discussion topics so far -- in addition to my own "Author News", which I'll keep updated with appearances and other book-related stuff, we've got:
But my Facebook plans have started to take shape, and at the urging of a friend, I started a page this week called "Fiction Writing Junkies," geared toward writing resources and revision / editing advice that you think might benefit fiction writing students, workshoppers, or other writers initiating their own projects.
I posted a few discussion topics so far -- in addition to my own "Author News", which I'll keep updated with appearances and other book-related stuff, we've got:
- Marketing and Promoting Fiction - experiences that you think others might find useful
- Success Stories -- another place to promote your own successes, whether it's publication, agent acceptance, or a breakthrough with your own work
- Memoir Fear - how to tackle stories and characters that are a little close to home
- Workshop Stories -- bound to be funny (I hope -- some of mine are), these are your workshop experiences that you've found valuable or frustrating or quirky
- Tales from Reject Mountain - your rejection stories and frustrations, but without real names so you keep me out of trouble
- Writing Websites and Blogs -- resources for fiction writers that you've found helpful or that you'd like to recommend; I'll post to this as well.
The Second Novel
So I'm having an early supper with a buddy the other night -- we hadn't see each other in a couple of months -- and he asks me, "How's the second book coming?"
I start to tell him about limited but illegal human drug trials and their devastating consequences, and how I hoped it would be a worthy sophomore effort in my "Companies Gone Wild" series.
"Excuse me?" he says.
"What?"
"I thought you were talking to Ben about bearer bonds?"
"Oh, the financial thing. The prequel."
"Isn't that what you're working on?"
"No."
"No?"
"Well it wasn't my idea to do that."
"Well whose idea was it?"
"An agent I spoke with. You know, do another financial plot to be consistent with the last one. I started it, but stopped."
"How come?"
"I knew it would never have the heart of the first one."
He leans forward in his chair. "I am so relieved to hear you say that."
Okay. Let's set aside for a second that I am surrounded by people who, should I ever run out on my own wedding, would tell me afterward, "Well, you know, we never really liked him."
Did anyone ever see The Heiress with Olivia deHaviland -- movie version of Washington Square by Henry James? Remember at the beginning of the movie that she's picked out her own dress for a party, which she won't let anyone see beforehand? When she comes down the stairs, it's the butt-ugliest dress you ever saw, I mean draperies, a total canvas tent of a dress that befits neither her femininity nor her fortune.
And no one tells her.
That's my prequel. Excuse me. That was my prequel.
Lancome on a pig.
I knew it in my bones from the beginning. I knew it sitting in the agent's office, and when I wrote the first couple of chapters. It would never live up. Couldn't. But there was that pressure -- and I was so advised a number of times -- to do the same thing again, to fall into that writing trap of trying to make lightning strike twice with the same rehashed plot. This is what builds a writing platform, this is what would establish me as a specific kind of writer so I could be marketed against the other guys who were specific kinds of writers, make it easy on everyone.
The financial research for SHAKEDOWN was necessary, and even though readers have told me it's technically bulletproof, it was never very interesting to me. Researching bearer bond fraud and other pre-server, pre-FinCEN financial crime? Snooz-o-rama. You know why? It was too easy. Everything from camels to cocaine went through the mailrooms in those days.
The thing that impressed my friend, after spending ten minutes telling me how relieved he was that I wasn't pursuing the prequel and why, was that I realized the idiocy on my own. And, as any true friend knows, this is the only real path to enlightenment, even though you still want to strangle them for their silence.
I was a psychology minor in college, and the research for this next one -- sociogenic illness, brain chemistry, town fanatics, and a string of deaths no one can explain -- this is real stuff to me. It's more human, visceral. It could happen to us, not our bank accounts -- there's your marketing. It's personal. And the research is really fun -- the actual science is fascinating.
Broad themes are similar to those in SHAKEDOWN -- a company thinks it has a good reason for what it's doing. Their reasons are compelling; the economic and social infrastructures are failing, and what they do is not just about making more money. I knew when I wrote the first chapter that, if I do my job right, it will live up and possibly even be a better story.
And so here's tonight's lesson - if you're not interested in what you're writing, your readers won't be, either. The prose will be flat, the characters will be wooden, and the story will already be familiar, and therefore boring to you. If anything you're doing feels forced, let it go.
This must be what people mean when they say that writing has to spring forth "organically" -- from a natural place. You know when it feels right, especially when you have a novel or a few stories under your belt. That voice gets stronger with the doing. I don't know how to explain it -- it's like gears grinding when you force it. Maybe it's your characters screaming.
Stick to your guns, and this goes for writing workshop participants out there. When your gut, that little voice that eerily seems to know better than you do much of the time, tells you to follow a particular path with your story, rev up your dirt bike and follow it. It doesn't mean you can't change your mind later, or shift the plot lines around. But these dirt paths are the ones that lead to epiphanies in your stories -- a deeper understanding of your characters, more seamless plot devices, clearer conflicts, conflicts that are natural to your story and natural for your characters. These are the paths that have the ability to surprise the writer, if the writer bothers to look at the brambles. You should strive to allow your story to surprise you -- this is as organic as it gets. It may not be the most marketable product, but it will be true. Consider it resume-building.
It may partly upset the book marketing cart, but I'll have to strive to be like those film directors that never allowed themselves to get pigeonholeded by filming the same movie over and over. Robert Wise directed The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Sound of Music. Ang Lee directed The Hulk and Sense and Sensibility. Those movies aren't exactly in the same ballpark, right? These directors went for the stories, and in the hopes that my readers and marketers follow, I will too.
I start to tell him about limited but illegal human drug trials and their devastating consequences, and how I hoped it would be a worthy sophomore effort in my "Companies Gone Wild" series.
"Excuse me?" he says.
"What?"
"I thought you were talking to Ben about bearer bonds?"
"Oh, the financial thing. The prequel."
"Isn't that what you're working on?"
"No."
"No?"
"Well it wasn't my idea to do that."
"Well whose idea was it?"
"An agent I spoke with. You know, do another financial plot to be consistent with the last one. I started it, but stopped."
"How come?"
"I knew it would never have the heart of the first one."
He leans forward in his chair. "I am so relieved to hear you say that."
Okay. Let's set aside for a second that I am surrounded by people who, should I ever run out on my own wedding, would tell me afterward, "Well, you know, we never really liked him."
Did anyone ever see The Heiress with Olivia deHaviland -- movie version of Washington Square by Henry James? Remember at the beginning of the movie that she's picked out her own dress for a party, which she won't let anyone see beforehand? When she comes down the stairs, it's the butt-ugliest dress you ever saw, I mean draperies, a total canvas tent of a dress that befits neither her femininity nor her fortune.
And no one tells her.
That's my prequel. Excuse me. That was my prequel.
Lancome on a pig.
I knew it in my bones from the beginning. I knew it sitting in the agent's office, and when I wrote the first couple of chapters. It would never live up. Couldn't. But there was that pressure -- and I was so advised a number of times -- to do the same thing again, to fall into that writing trap of trying to make lightning strike twice with the same rehashed plot. This is what builds a writing platform, this is what would establish me as a specific kind of writer so I could be marketed against the other guys who were specific kinds of writers, make it easy on everyone.
The financial research for SHAKEDOWN was necessary, and even though readers have told me it's technically bulletproof, it was never very interesting to me. Researching bearer bond fraud and other pre-server, pre-FinCEN financial crime? Snooz-o-rama. You know why? It was too easy. Everything from camels to cocaine went through the mailrooms in those days.
The thing that impressed my friend, after spending ten minutes telling me how relieved he was that I wasn't pursuing the prequel and why, was that I realized the idiocy on my own. And, as any true friend knows, this is the only real path to enlightenment, even though you still want to strangle them for their silence.
I was a psychology minor in college, and the research for this next one -- sociogenic illness, brain chemistry, town fanatics, and a string of deaths no one can explain -- this is real stuff to me. It's more human, visceral. It could happen to us, not our bank accounts -- there's your marketing. It's personal. And the research is really fun -- the actual science is fascinating.
Broad themes are similar to those in SHAKEDOWN -- a company thinks it has a good reason for what it's doing. Their reasons are compelling; the economic and social infrastructures are failing, and what they do is not just about making more money. I knew when I wrote the first chapter that, if I do my job right, it will live up and possibly even be a better story.
And so here's tonight's lesson - if you're not interested in what you're writing, your readers won't be, either. The prose will be flat, the characters will be wooden, and the story will already be familiar, and therefore boring to you. If anything you're doing feels forced, let it go.
This must be what people mean when they say that writing has to spring forth "organically" -- from a natural place. You know when it feels right, especially when you have a novel or a few stories under your belt. That voice gets stronger with the doing. I don't know how to explain it -- it's like gears grinding when you force it. Maybe it's your characters screaming.
Stick to your guns, and this goes for writing workshop participants out there. When your gut, that little voice that eerily seems to know better than you do much of the time, tells you to follow a particular path with your story, rev up your dirt bike and follow it. It doesn't mean you can't change your mind later, or shift the plot lines around. But these dirt paths are the ones that lead to epiphanies in your stories -- a deeper understanding of your characters, more seamless plot devices, clearer conflicts, conflicts that are natural to your story and natural for your characters. These are the paths that have the ability to surprise the writer, if the writer bothers to look at the brambles. You should strive to allow your story to surprise you -- this is as organic as it gets. It may not be the most marketable product, but it will be true. Consider it resume-building.
It may partly upset the book marketing cart, but I'll have to strive to be like those film directors that never allowed themselves to get pigeonholeded by filming the same movie over and over. Robert Wise directed The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Sound of Music. Ang Lee directed The Hulk and Sense and Sensibility. Those movies aren't exactly in the same ballpark, right? These directors went for the stories, and in the hopes that my readers and marketers follow, I will too.
Italics are the Crutch of a Puny Mind
Mine, to be precise.
So here I am, formatting the SHAKEDOWN manuscript for the Kindle, trying to decipher the cover art specs, adding back some of the formatting that was lost in converting the design file back to Word.
Formalizing paragraph formatting? No big deal.
Redoing the fonts and spacing for chapter headings? Not a problem.
But re-italicizing the de-italicized words? Major pain in the butt.
Okay, some usage is legitimate -- italicizing the names of actual newspapers, for example, or foreign words and phrases.
But as I navigated through the remaining, oh, I don't know, 295 occurrences, I began to ask myself, "What on Earth were you thinking?"
Did I stop paying attention?
Did I stop noticing that they were even there?
Did I not consider that about 290 of these occurrences were completely unnecessary?
After correcting about 25 of them, they began to seem like words or phrases that were capitalized or underlined for emphasis. They might as well have been in 48 point font the way they screamed at me from the virtual page.
What did I think I was doing, directing an actor in a movie?
It's a good lesson, this eBook conversion business, if for no other reason than to remind me that, when a writer relies on italics or similar formatting to do the work that the words are supposed to do, that writer should hear whooping warning bells.
I started mentally editing the sentences I was correcting, making other word choices that would have more effectively conveyed emotion or sentiment without using italics. And guess what? Most choices were better, and the de-italicized dialogue more effectively conveyed the character who was speaking.
And when the words were fine the way they were originally written, losing the italics made no difference, and actually seemed to convey greater emphasis through their absence. Anyone out there still underlining for emphasis? Same issue. When you see them, it's a shout out that your word choices probably need to be different.
I resisted the temptation to make any editorial changes for the eBook edition, although I did remove an extra space between two words that shouldn't have been there. I left the italics as they were, my puniness preserved. If the final eBook conversion doesn't respect the fact that the italics are there and removes them, no harm done. I doubt that readers will miss them.
I am vowing, however, not to use this "technique" -- and I use the term loosely -- in the new novel.
So if you have a manuscript out there, go scan it for your own formatting crutches with a fresh eye. You, and your readers, will be very glad you did.
So here I am, formatting the SHAKEDOWN manuscript for the Kindle, trying to decipher the cover art specs, adding back some of the formatting that was lost in converting the design file back to Word.
Formalizing paragraph formatting? No big deal.
Redoing the fonts and spacing for chapter headings? Not a problem.
But re-italicizing the de-italicized words? Major pain in the butt.
Okay, some usage is legitimate -- italicizing the names of actual newspapers, for example, or foreign words and phrases.
But as I navigated through the remaining, oh, I don't know, 295 occurrences, I began to ask myself, "What on Earth were you thinking?"
Did I stop paying attention?
Did I stop noticing that they were even there?
Did I not consider that about 290 of these occurrences were completely unnecessary?
After correcting about 25 of them, they began to seem like words or phrases that were capitalized or underlined for emphasis. They might as well have been in 48 point font the way they screamed at me from the virtual page.
What did I think I was doing, directing an actor in a movie?
It's a good lesson, this eBook conversion business, if for no other reason than to remind me that, when a writer relies on italics or similar formatting to do the work that the words are supposed to do, that writer should hear whooping warning bells.
I started mentally editing the sentences I was correcting, making other word choices that would have more effectively conveyed emotion or sentiment without using italics. And guess what? Most choices were better, and the de-italicized dialogue more effectively conveyed the character who was speaking.
And when the words were fine the way they were originally written, losing the italics made no difference, and actually seemed to convey greater emphasis through their absence. Anyone out there still underlining for emphasis? Same issue. When you see them, it's a shout out that your word choices probably need to be different.
I resisted the temptation to make any editorial changes for the eBook edition, although I did remove an extra space between two words that shouldn't have been there. I left the italics as they were, my puniness preserved. If the final eBook conversion doesn't respect the fact that the italics are there and removes them, no harm done. I doubt that readers will miss them.
I am vowing, however, not to use this "technique" -- and I use the term loosely -- in the new novel.
So if you have a manuscript out there, go scan it for your own formatting crutches with a fresh eye. You, and your readers, will be very glad you did.
Free Critiques!
For all of you looking for ways to get your work critiqued between workshops or in an anonymous forum, here's a terrific opportunity for you. One of my former award-winning writing teachers, Peter Selgin, offers on his blog a "first page" critique service. Here's the link:
http://yourfirstpage.blogspot.com/
And here's how it works:
1) You send Peter the first page if your story or memoir - the instructions are accessible from the above link.
2) Peter critiques it on his blog, and gives a little information about your genre and other work that you might find relevant.
So easy, there's no excuse not to do it.
Peter preserves the author anonymity of each page, though he does have a list of contributors that includes links to their own websites. Free critique AND free marketing!
Not only do you get Peter's feedback, but the feedback of others subscribing to Peter's blog who may comment on the comments, and on your responses as well. Do yourself a favor and take advantage of this. Peter is an insightful teacher who is not one for false praise or coddling. You'll get the straight skinny about how your work can improve, and your writing will be better for it. He is well-published in both fiction and non-fiction (check out his books from Writers Digest), and knows of what he writes.
You'll be thinking of the feedback you're given long after you get past the first page. The other terrific benefit here is that you can read other writers' first pages and their related critiques as well, which can frequently be an eye-opener even if the genre is different from yours.
We've talked about this in the revision posts here, but many comments you receive in Peter's virtual workshop, as in others, have relevance to your style, your way of presenting information, your way of introducing characters, and (the death blow) the tendency we all have to communicate -- to tell -- too much too soon -- to "pad" our first pages as we draft our stories and novels.
So go have fun with this, and let me know how you do!
http://yourfirstpage.blogspot.com/
And here's how it works:
1) You send Peter the first page if your story or memoir - the instructions are accessible from the above link.
2) Peter critiques it on his blog, and gives a little information about your genre and other work that you might find relevant.
So easy, there's no excuse not to do it.
Peter preserves the author anonymity of each page, though he does have a list of contributors that includes links to their own websites. Free critique AND free marketing!
Not only do you get Peter's feedback, but the feedback of others subscribing to Peter's blog who may comment on the comments, and on your responses as well. Do yourself a favor and take advantage of this. Peter is an insightful teacher who is not one for false praise or coddling. You'll get the straight skinny about how your work can improve, and your writing will be better for it. He is well-published in both fiction and non-fiction (check out his books from Writers Digest), and knows of what he writes.
You'll be thinking of the feedback you're given long after you get past the first page. The other terrific benefit here is that you can read other writers' first pages and their related critiques as well, which can frequently be an eye-opener even if the genre is different from yours.
We've talked about this in the revision posts here, but many comments you receive in Peter's virtual workshop, as in others, have relevance to your style, your way of presenting information, your way of introducing characters, and (the death blow) the tendency we all have to communicate -- to tell -- too much too soon -- to "pad" our first pages as we draft our stories and novels.
So go have fun with this, and let me know how you do!
Chapter Endings and Foreshadowing Your Plot Crisis
I have a bad habit where movies are concerned. I watch them over and over to see if I can find any flaws. I'm not talking about grips dashing behind the scenery (The Day After Tomorrow) or hairstyles that mysteriously change in the middle of a scene (Moonstruck), but inconsistencies in editing or in the script that create puzzling mood swings -- and resulting gaps in the story.
My latest victim is the wonderful Crazy Heart, the 2009 film starring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It's the story of Bad Blake, an aging outlawin' country singer who rediscovers love and purpose in his grown-bitter life. (If you haven't seen it, don't read any further, because there are some serious spoilers.)
First, I'm going to tell you about a good scene transition...
...in which Bad is on the phone with new-found love Jean (played by Gyllenhaal). They are discussing whether she will come to visit him in Houston. They've just spent a romantic weekend in Taos, yet she is a little undecided -- Bad is an alcoholic and she does not want this behavior around her four-year-old son. The scene ends with Bad asking, "So, you gonna come?" The next scene opens with her and her son getting out of a cab in front of his house, everyone very pleased about the visit.
The scene right before the reunion where Bad Blake asks, "So, you gonna come?" is like one of those great chapter endings that resonates because it leaves a question unanswered for a few seconds, leaves you wondering what will happen next. There is no lengthy character interaction about the pros and cons of the trip, no heavy-handed foreshadowing of what Jean might be setting herself up for. The reasoning, the second thoughts, the sweet hopeful waiting, the obligatory lunch with friends who try to talk one or both of them out of it, and (thankfully) the packing all happen off-camera -- right where they belong. All we needed to know in response to Bad Blake's question was the woman he loved getting out of that cab.
"Never state what's implied." Think of this when you write. What information is really necessary for your reader to know? What is more powerful for having been left unspoken? What actions or behaviors can show your readers what a character is thinking better than if the message hits them like a sledgehammer? This will accomplish a few things for you: reduced sentimentality in your plot, fewer words that are better spent revealing things elsewhere, and stronger characters -- better because they spend little or no time whining on the page about things we all whine about in real life. We all know those scenes already.
Remember this when you write.
All writing should either advance the plot or deepen your understanding of the character. I believe more and more that some of the most powerful sentiments in a story are left unsaid, and that some of the most powerful reasons are left unexplained -- because if we've lived any kind of life at all or experienced any of the really great movies or books, we already know what the reasons are. And I think good writers -- and filmmakers -- know this, even if they might spend a little while putting it into practice.
Now, a faulty scene occurred a little before this good one...
...After a romantic evening following by their weekend getaway in Taos, Bad and Jean are back at Jean's house in Santa Fe. Bad has spent a full day babysitting her son. Bad is leaving to go back to Houston, and is trying to talk Jean into coming with him. She avoids his touch and chooses this time to tell him that she doesn't want her son around alcoholic behavior. He is, not surprisingly, a reluctant listener.
Never state what's implied - again.
The confrontation was ill-timed. The deleted scene (the weekend in Taos) did little to explain what Jean noticed between the long weekend and the morning of Bad's departure to make her verbalize this sentiment at this particular time -- just the opposite, given the growing bond between Bad and her son. These two people are completely head over heels, and their lives are clearly becoming very sweetly entwined, not just in the deleted scene, but in two other scenes that reinforced their growing affection.
Even more critical -- we the audience already know he has a serious problem and that there's a crisis looming. We just don't know how bad a crisis. We don't need another character to foreshadow it for us.
When you see what happens later in the movie -- when Jean makes it clear that she had no illusions about the potential threat Bad posed to her and her son -- you're left wondering whether she should have said anything at all before the film's crisis point. Jean's doubts could have been conveyed more simply -- finding a heap of empty whiskey bottles in the trash, for example. In fact, the early confrontation is even more puzzling given her subsequent decision to go visit him.
If she had remained silent, we would have known she was trying to rationalize things to herself -- and who doesn't understand that? Having Jean express her doubts this soon -- after a series of scenes that imply that the doubts are in check -- made it appear that she was knowingly willing to put her son in harm's way -- not good. This may even be another example of something better left unsaid -- at this particular time. It was also a very clumsy use of foreshadowing.
Sometimes writers try to pack a lot of information into the early pages in an attempt to make their story more interesting right up front. Sometimes writers pack "hints" about things to come into early pages too. But this can cause the same kind of disjointedness as I just described about the movie, fed by often-misapplied advice that a writer has to hook the reader quickly. It can also lead to stories "dropping off," becoming deflated because all the good stuff happens early and the story is basically over before you want it to be. This results in facts coming to light, or sentiments being expressed, at times that are not optimal relative to your plotting or your character development. It also results in many more interesting things not even being incorporated into the story. It's much better if these things spring organically from within the story itself -- in their own time.
Had the clumsy Crazy Heart scene been deleted instead of the scene in Taos, the crisis would have resonated much more deeply because everything beforehand pointed to Bad Blake finally getting his act together. We wanted him to.
Think about this when you write too. Don't give your crisis its legs too soon. it can be implied -- an image of empty bottles -- but it usually doesn't have to be articulated before it actually happens.
Allow your reader to want what the characters want before you take it away.
My latest victim is the wonderful Crazy Heart, the 2009 film starring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It's the story of Bad Blake, an aging outlawin' country singer who rediscovers love and purpose in his grown-bitter life. (If you haven't seen it, don't read any further, because there are some serious spoilers.)
First, I'm going to tell you about a good scene transition...
...in which Bad is on the phone with new-found love Jean (played by Gyllenhaal). They are discussing whether she will come to visit him in Houston. They've just spent a romantic weekend in Taos, yet she is a little undecided -- Bad is an alcoholic and she does not want this behavior around her four-year-old son. The scene ends with Bad asking, "So, you gonna come?" The next scene opens with her and her son getting out of a cab in front of his house, everyone very pleased about the visit.
The scene right before the reunion where Bad Blake asks, "So, you gonna come?" is like one of those great chapter endings that resonates because it leaves a question unanswered for a few seconds, leaves you wondering what will happen next. There is no lengthy character interaction about the pros and cons of the trip, no heavy-handed foreshadowing of what Jean might be setting herself up for. The reasoning, the second thoughts, the sweet hopeful waiting, the obligatory lunch with friends who try to talk one or both of them out of it, and (thankfully) the packing all happen off-camera -- right where they belong. All we needed to know in response to Bad Blake's question was the woman he loved getting out of that cab.
"Never state what's implied." Think of this when you write. What information is really necessary for your reader to know? What is more powerful for having been left unspoken? What actions or behaviors can show your readers what a character is thinking better than if the message hits them like a sledgehammer? This will accomplish a few things for you: reduced sentimentality in your plot, fewer words that are better spent revealing things elsewhere, and stronger characters -- better because they spend little or no time whining on the page about things we all whine about in real life. We all know those scenes already.
Remember this when you write.
All writing should either advance the plot or deepen your understanding of the character. I believe more and more that some of the most powerful sentiments in a story are left unsaid, and that some of the most powerful reasons are left unexplained -- because if we've lived any kind of life at all or experienced any of the really great movies or books, we already know what the reasons are. And I think good writers -- and filmmakers -- know this, even if they might spend a little while putting it into practice.
Now, a faulty scene occurred a little before this good one...
...After a romantic evening following by their weekend getaway in Taos, Bad and Jean are back at Jean's house in Santa Fe. Bad has spent a full day babysitting her son. Bad is leaving to go back to Houston, and is trying to talk Jean into coming with him. She avoids his touch and chooses this time to tell him that she doesn't want her son around alcoholic behavior. He is, not surprisingly, a reluctant listener.
Never state what's implied - again.
The confrontation was ill-timed. The deleted scene (the weekend in Taos) did little to explain what Jean noticed between the long weekend and the morning of Bad's departure to make her verbalize this sentiment at this particular time -- just the opposite, given the growing bond between Bad and her son. These two people are completely head over heels, and their lives are clearly becoming very sweetly entwined, not just in the deleted scene, but in two other scenes that reinforced their growing affection.
Even more critical -- we the audience already know he has a serious problem and that there's a crisis looming. We just don't know how bad a crisis. We don't need another character to foreshadow it for us.
When you see what happens later in the movie -- when Jean makes it clear that she had no illusions about the potential threat Bad posed to her and her son -- you're left wondering whether she should have said anything at all before the film's crisis point. Jean's doubts could have been conveyed more simply -- finding a heap of empty whiskey bottles in the trash, for example. In fact, the early confrontation is even more puzzling given her subsequent decision to go visit him.
If she had remained silent, we would have known she was trying to rationalize things to herself -- and who doesn't understand that? Having Jean express her doubts this soon -- after a series of scenes that imply that the doubts are in check -- made it appear that she was knowingly willing to put her son in harm's way -- not good. This may even be another example of something better left unsaid -- at this particular time. It was also a very clumsy use of foreshadowing.
Sometimes writers try to pack a lot of information into the early pages in an attempt to make their story more interesting right up front. Sometimes writers pack "hints" about things to come into early pages too. But this can cause the same kind of disjointedness as I just described about the movie, fed by often-misapplied advice that a writer has to hook the reader quickly. It can also lead to stories "dropping off," becoming deflated because all the good stuff happens early and the story is basically over before you want it to be. This results in facts coming to light, or sentiments being expressed, at times that are not optimal relative to your plotting or your character development. It also results in many more interesting things not even being incorporated into the story. It's much better if these things spring organically from within the story itself -- in their own time.
Had the clumsy Crazy Heart scene been deleted instead of the scene in Taos, the crisis would have resonated much more deeply because everything beforehand pointed to Bad Blake finally getting his act together. We wanted him to.
Think about this when you write too. Don't give your crisis its legs too soon. it can be implied -- an image of empty bottles -- but it usually doesn't have to be articulated before it actually happens.
Allow your reader to want what the characters want before you take it away.
Writing Workshops - Pointers for Success II
Lots of people lamenting how much Bad Writing is out there, and how the odds are so against Good Writing. Well, there's a lot of good writing out there too, but as long as we're all learning, here are a couple more workshop stories.
By the way, has anyone read the debut novel Tinkers by Paul Harding? It just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and the writing has been lauded in critical reviews. Small press too (Bellevue Literary). Check it out.
Teacher's Pet
"Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again."
-- William Saroyan, "Fame and Fortune and Fun at the Hampshire House," Sons Come & Go, Mothers Hang In Forever (1979)
I was in a fiction workshop once with one other person I knew, and we both also knew the instructor because we had taken workshops with her before. We got through the first round of critiques, but one student was extremely upset by the fact that my friend and I were getting what they perceived to be "good commentary" when they were getting less complimentary feedback from the instructor about their work. This person quit the workshop after that first round, convinced that the writing submitted by my friend and I was getting unfairly preferential and more positive treatment -- just because we knew the instructor! The student sent a scathing email to everyone that complained about the perceived favoritism, and they never came back.
Unfortunate, right? Because the work that my friend and I submitted had already been revised repeatedly (good thing we didn't know then how much MORE work was ahead of us, or we'd have just gone sailing). Our work had simply been worked on more than the work submitted by the other student, which by all impressions was a very promising story, but also clearly a much earlier draft.
It was a bummer when this person left, too, because not only did they need some insight that they could have gotten had they stayed, but it was one less reader that would be able to provide feedback to the rest of us. There were only six students to begin with.
If this happens to you, if you're the beginner in the room, try not to take it personally if you get the feeling you're being forced to drink alone from the Revision Fire Hose. If you stick with workshops long enough, and especially if you find an instructor that helps you achieve another level with your writing, you will eventually find yourself in a situation where you'll be submitting progressively sharper drafts of your work. This earns you a kind of shorthand with the instructor, and usually a degree of respect, because they know after several submissions that you're serious about sticking with it, and because you've been down the road before with the same piece. (Same thing happens with a professional editor, by the way.)
This must be very frustrating to someone just starting out, because they naturally feel they're missing something, missing a broader message, or even a secret that will make revision less painful. There is no secret, trust me. It doesn't exist. There will always be bad writing that gets published before yours, writing so bad it'll make you believe you can crap better dialogue. The truth is, it's just familiarity, and you'll learn all the same things through experience and apprenticeship, same as we all did.
And when it comes time for me to workshop the next one, I'll be back in the beginner's seat! The big circle.
Should I say the apprenticeship never really ends? No, probably not.
Conflicting Comments
"Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping."
-- Augustus William Hare, Guesses at Truth (1827)
One likes it, another doesn't; one gets your ending, another doesn't. One finds your favorite scene overstuffed and full of itself; another thinks it's poetry; one loves your setting, another has bad dreams from it.
What to do?
Don't let them throw you. Identify any patterns in the commentary. If the positive and negative comments are evenly split, you get to make the choice -- that's what one of my instructors used to say, anyway -- but this won't usually be the case unless you've written something really controversial. If you go through two or three rounds with the same piece, assess what comments are repeated with each draft. This is a really great indicator, because it can point out to you flaws that you may not be aware of -- flaws that translate into messages or projections in your writing that you may not intend. Take a separate piece of paper and summarize each point -- positive on one side, improvement-related on the other. These are good, early indicators of writing strengths and weaknesses.
I was cleaning out my own workshop files the other day -- about ten short stories that were revised several times. One story was Shakedown, as an infant. I read through the student commentary. What I found was that many of the comments were repeated -- by a professional editor four years later after the story had become a novel! How many bricks had to sail into my temple to get me to realize it? A lot. This continued into the master classes, when I was workshopping several chapters at a time. People thought my protagonist was a pig, and so did my editor. I had to make some real choices about that, and they weren't easy. But the payoff was that I had to dig a lot deeper to understand the character, and in so doing, I think I was able to create a more empathetic one.
But when push comes to shove, make a decision and take it for a test drive. As the writer, you can always go back and change your mind -- rewrite. Don't let the indecision or the contradictions paralyze you, and listen to your instincts if you really feel something is wrong or right in your own story. Just try to be really objective. If you find yourself changing things back and forth and back again, get closer to the material to try to understand what the best choices are for your story, get out the shovel, and start digging. Sometimes you'll decide to take some comments to heart after a longer while, or it may take time to gain enough insight to really understand them.
Apprenticeship again. The farther you go, the more you learn, and the more intuitive you become about your work and your characters.
"If you have one strong idea, you can't help repeating it and embroidering it. Sometimes I think that authors should write one novel and then be put in a gas chamber."
-- John P. Marquand, New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 5, 1958
Not that I'm suggesting anything by quoting Marquand, but why is so much bad writing allowed?
6) The authors know something about the editor, last year's holiday shrimp cocktail, and a lamp.
5) The authors have famous friends in high journalistic places.
4) They have high friends in famous journalistic places.
3) Their story is so weird or disgusting or perverted that we just can't help ourselves.
2) The authors already have a national media platform so the publishers don't have to do any work.
...and the number one reason why authors get to publish bad writing...
1) They're just better lookin'.
All quotes from The International Thesaurus of Quotations, compiled by Eugene Ehrlich and Marshall DeBruhl (1996, HarperCollins). Still my favorite.
By the way, has anyone read the debut novel Tinkers by Paul Harding? It just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and the writing has been lauded in critical reviews. Small press too (Bellevue Literary). Check it out.
Teacher's Pet
"Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again."
-- William Saroyan, "Fame and Fortune and Fun at the Hampshire House," Sons Come & Go, Mothers Hang In Forever (1979)
I was in a fiction workshop once with one other person I knew, and we both also knew the instructor because we had taken workshops with her before. We got through the first round of critiques, but one student was extremely upset by the fact that my friend and I were getting what they perceived to be "good commentary" when they were getting less complimentary feedback from the instructor about their work. This person quit the workshop after that first round, convinced that the writing submitted by my friend and I was getting unfairly preferential and more positive treatment -- just because we knew the instructor! The student sent a scathing email to everyone that complained about the perceived favoritism, and they never came back.
Unfortunate, right? Because the work that my friend and I submitted had already been revised repeatedly (good thing we didn't know then how much MORE work was ahead of us, or we'd have just gone sailing). Our work had simply been worked on more than the work submitted by the other student, which by all impressions was a very promising story, but also clearly a much earlier draft.
It was a bummer when this person left, too, because not only did they need some insight that they could have gotten had they stayed, but it was one less reader that would be able to provide feedback to the rest of us. There were only six students to begin with.
If this happens to you, if you're the beginner in the room, try not to take it personally if you get the feeling you're being forced to drink alone from the Revision Fire Hose. If you stick with workshops long enough, and especially if you find an instructor that helps you achieve another level with your writing, you will eventually find yourself in a situation where you'll be submitting progressively sharper drafts of your work. This earns you a kind of shorthand with the instructor, and usually a degree of respect, because they know after several submissions that you're serious about sticking with it, and because you've been down the road before with the same piece. (Same thing happens with a professional editor, by the way.)
This must be very frustrating to someone just starting out, because they naturally feel they're missing something, missing a broader message, or even a secret that will make revision less painful. There is no secret, trust me. It doesn't exist. There will always be bad writing that gets published before yours, writing so bad it'll make you believe you can crap better dialogue. The truth is, it's just familiarity, and you'll learn all the same things through experience and apprenticeship, same as we all did.
And when it comes time for me to workshop the next one, I'll be back in the beginner's seat! The big circle.
Should I say the apprenticeship never really ends? No, probably not.
Conflicting Comments
"Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping."
-- Augustus William Hare, Guesses at Truth (1827)
One likes it, another doesn't; one gets your ending, another doesn't. One finds your favorite scene overstuffed and full of itself; another thinks it's poetry; one loves your setting, another has bad dreams from it.
What to do?
Don't let them throw you. Identify any patterns in the commentary. If the positive and negative comments are evenly split, you get to make the choice -- that's what one of my instructors used to say, anyway -- but this won't usually be the case unless you've written something really controversial. If you go through two or three rounds with the same piece, assess what comments are repeated with each draft. This is a really great indicator, because it can point out to you flaws that you may not be aware of -- flaws that translate into messages or projections in your writing that you may not intend. Take a separate piece of paper and summarize each point -- positive on one side, improvement-related on the other. These are good, early indicators of writing strengths and weaknesses.
I was cleaning out my own workshop files the other day -- about ten short stories that were revised several times. One story was Shakedown, as an infant. I read through the student commentary. What I found was that many of the comments were repeated -- by a professional editor four years later after the story had become a novel! How many bricks had to sail into my temple to get me to realize it? A lot. This continued into the master classes, when I was workshopping several chapters at a time. People thought my protagonist was a pig, and so did my editor. I had to make some real choices about that, and they weren't easy. But the payoff was that I had to dig a lot deeper to understand the character, and in so doing, I think I was able to create a more empathetic one.
But when push comes to shove, make a decision and take it for a test drive. As the writer, you can always go back and change your mind -- rewrite. Don't let the indecision or the contradictions paralyze you, and listen to your instincts if you really feel something is wrong or right in your own story. Just try to be really objective. If you find yourself changing things back and forth and back again, get closer to the material to try to understand what the best choices are for your story, get out the shovel, and start digging. Sometimes you'll decide to take some comments to heart after a longer while, or it may take time to gain enough insight to really understand them.
Apprenticeship again. The farther you go, the more you learn, and the more intuitive you become about your work and your characters.
"If you have one strong idea, you can't help repeating it and embroidering it. Sometimes I think that authors should write one novel and then be put in a gas chamber."
-- John P. Marquand, New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 5, 1958
Not that I'm suggesting anything by quoting Marquand, but why is so much bad writing allowed?
6) The authors know something about the editor, last year's holiday shrimp cocktail, and a lamp.
5) The authors have famous friends in high journalistic places.
4) They have high friends in famous journalistic places.
3) Their story is so weird or disgusting or perverted that we just can't help ourselves.
2) The authors already have a national media platform so the publishers don't have to do any work.
...and the number one reason why authors get to publish bad writing...
1) They're just better lookin'.
All quotes from The International Thesaurus of Quotations, compiled by Eugene Ehrlich and Marshall DeBruhl (1996, HarperCollins). Still my favorite.
Knowing the Rules Before You Break Them -- Still a Rule?
I spoke recently with a college student whose writing instructor told him that his work wasn't structured enough, presumably because it didn't follow some expected formula.
Think about the many structures of a novel or short story. When an instructor tells a student to stay between the lines just for the sake of staying between the lines, I think this is more a failing of the instructor than the student. All one has to do is turn to literary magazines for numerous examples of fiction that breaks the rules. Remember our Pulp Fiction example -- one of the first movies to show action out of sequence. No one really considered that before in the same way. Remember the Woody Allen movies, and all the asides to the camera -- point of view shifts, certainly. But a new technique, and comically effective.
Yet, knowing the rules of setting, plot, dialogue, action, and pacing, and practicing established fiction-writing techniques, is what enables you to break those same rules effectively as your writing matures and you learn your craft.
I remember a recent writers' gathering at which a well-known bestselling author said he could write a book in less than two months. I have no doubt believing that his draft would be polished and that the main serial character would ring true to fans. But when students or other aspiring writers hear this, I think they view it as a benchmark they should be able to achieve, or strive to achieve. Worse, they may be all too willing to believe that their two-month effort is comparable to that of a bestselling author who's unicycled around the professional editing block a few times. More times than not, it won't be, not because of a lack of writing talent, but because of inexperience.
(By all means, try to produce a first draft in two months -- that's a good exercise too. Just don't let it see daylight.)
The aspiring writer may not realize that producing a really terrific first draft, while possible for a bestselling author who has an editorial team standing at the ready to finish it off, is unlikely to happen for them -- at least, not right away. So when they submit that first draft and get turned down -- repeatedly -- it can cause bitter disappointment and discouragement.
How many of these rejections are associated with inexperienced rule breaking? Probably a lot.
My first draft of SHAKEDOWN was awful, and my second was even worse. That's more than six hundred pages of stinking tar. Each. I tried to break a few rules, but didn't fully understand what I was doing.
Scientists will tell you that a failed experiment is a success because it gets them closer to an answer, closer to the truth. Same with fiction. If not for those early drafts, I wouldn't have been as receptive to change, to really understanding what I was trying to accomplish, and applying (learning) technique to what was already there to build a stronger story and stronger characters.
Encouraging experimentation in writing is a good thing -- but you have to be willing, as with any experiment, to take the time to understand what works and what doesn't. What is it about the writing that stands on its own and what needs help? Apply that kind of thinking, and you're in business.
This may be why a lot of writing instructors stay in the middle of the road -- it's hard to argue with precedent. And there are many argumentative students out there who simply don't want to hear that writing takes a lot of work, which can strain even the best teacher's sanity.
1) Read work that is similar to what you're writing. If you're a student, ask your teachers for examples and do your own research, but also insist that there be some practical learning from the experience. Don't settle for just "reading the same genre" because it happens to be similar relative to your subject matter or basic plotting. Dig deeper. Look for how characters struggle with emotions in situations that may be similar, and then aim higher, aim to avoid the predictable (you almost always can.) Know what you want to change, and know how your story will strive to be different. What do you admire? What do you lose patience with as a reader -- very important. If you're writing about heroes, read the recognized classics, read Joseph Campbell, and don't forget your folklore. Compare Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker with the legend of King Arthur. How many similarities do you see? What's different? How is your story different?
2) Practice 15-20 minute sessions in which you write a scene or a description -- anything. The view from your window, a character in your neighborhood, what your child looks like sleeping. Let it sit for a few hours or a day, read it through, then write it again (without referring to the first version). If you do a few of these, you will see patterns in what kind of writing you fall back on -- cliche, bodily reactions, writerly metaphor, extraneous dialogue, interrupting your own action. The "scene" technique will improve your writing over time -- get you closer to what's really going on with your characters. The "careless" and "predictable" writing will fall away and be replaced with something more meaningful that your readers, and characters, will relate to more closely.
3) Rewrite a specific scene or stretch of dialogue from another point of view, or introducing another action or event. If you want a real challenge, write it from the point of view of a character from a different part of the country, local slang and all. Use one of your own scenes, or pick any novel off the shelf.
4) Think about the rules you want to break. Why do you want to break them? (This is important.) In what different ways might you break them? If you're leaning toward telling and not showing, the telling has to be spectacular, more than chronology or fact-spitting. Spectacular.
Now you're in the laboratory with your experiments.
Just remember - no experiment is a failure.
Think about the many structures of a novel or short story. When an instructor tells a student to stay between the lines just for the sake of staying between the lines, I think this is more a failing of the instructor than the student. All one has to do is turn to literary magazines for numerous examples of fiction that breaks the rules. Remember our Pulp Fiction example -- one of the first movies to show action out of sequence. No one really considered that before in the same way. Remember the Woody Allen movies, and all the asides to the camera -- point of view shifts, certainly. But a new technique, and comically effective.
Yet, knowing the rules of setting, plot, dialogue, action, and pacing, and practicing established fiction-writing techniques, is what enables you to break those same rules effectively as your writing matures and you learn your craft.
I remember a recent writers' gathering at which a well-known bestselling author said he could write a book in less than two months. I have no doubt believing that his draft would be polished and that the main serial character would ring true to fans. But when students or other aspiring writers hear this, I think they view it as a benchmark they should be able to achieve, or strive to achieve. Worse, they may be all too willing to believe that their two-month effort is comparable to that of a bestselling author who's unicycled around the professional editing block a few times. More times than not, it won't be, not because of a lack of writing talent, but because of inexperience.
(By all means, try to produce a first draft in two months -- that's a good exercise too. Just don't let it see daylight.)
The aspiring writer may not realize that producing a really terrific first draft, while possible for a bestselling author who has an editorial team standing at the ready to finish it off, is unlikely to happen for them -- at least, not right away. So when they submit that first draft and get turned down -- repeatedly -- it can cause bitter disappointment and discouragement.
How many of these rejections are associated with inexperienced rule breaking? Probably a lot.
My first draft of SHAKEDOWN was awful, and my second was even worse. That's more than six hundred pages of stinking tar. Each. I tried to break a few rules, but didn't fully understand what I was doing.
Scientists will tell you that a failed experiment is a success because it gets them closer to an answer, closer to the truth. Same with fiction. If not for those early drafts, I wouldn't have been as receptive to change, to really understanding what I was trying to accomplish, and applying (learning) technique to what was already there to build a stronger story and stronger characters.
Encouraging experimentation in writing is a good thing -- but you have to be willing, as with any experiment, to take the time to understand what works and what doesn't. What is it about the writing that stands on its own and what needs help? Apply that kind of thinking, and you're in business.
This may be why a lot of writing instructors stay in the middle of the road -- it's hard to argue with precedent. And there are many argumentative students out there who simply don't want to hear that writing takes a lot of work, which can strain even the best teacher's sanity.
1) Read work that is similar to what you're writing. If you're a student, ask your teachers for examples and do your own research, but also insist that there be some practical learning from the experience. Don't settle for just "reading the same genre" because it happens to be similar relative to your subject matter or basic plotting. Dig deeper. Look for how characters struggle with emotions in situations that may be similar, and then aim higher, aim to avoid the predictable (you almost always can.) Know what you want to change, and know how your story will strive to be different. What do you admire? What do you lose patience with as a reader -- very important. If you're writing about heroes, read the recognized classics, read Joseph Campbell, and don't forget your folklore. Compare Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker with the legend of King Arthur. How many similarities do you see? What's different? How is your story different?
2) Practice 15-20 minute sessions in which you write a scene or a description -- anything. The view from your window, a character in your neighborhood, what your child looks like sleeping. Let it sit for a few hours or a day, read it through, then write it again (without referring to the first version). If you do a few of these, you will see patterns in what kind of writing you fall back on -- cliche, bodily reactions, writerly metaphor, extraneous dialogue, interrupting your own action. The "scene" technique will improve your writing over time -- get you closer to what's really going on with your characters. The "careless" and "predictable" writing will fall away and be replaced with something more meaningful that your readers, and characters, will relate to more closely.
3) Rewrite a specific scene or stretch of dialogue from another point of view, or introducing another action or event. If you want a real challenge, write it from the point of view of a character from a different part of the country, local slang and all. Use one of your own scenes, or pick any novel off the shelf.
4) Think about the rules you want to break. Why do you want to break them? (This is important.) In what different ways might you break them? If you're leaning toward telling and not showing, the telling has to be spectacular, more than chronology or fact-spitting. Spectacular.
Now you're in the laboratory with your experiments.
Just remember - no experiment is a failure.