Reasons to Write: Because There's Magic

Here's a little insight into how writing a novel works.

Especially in the beginning, there's a special kind of magic about getting caught up in the story. It's like being swept into a new romance. It's intoxicating; it's all you want.

That's how it is for every writer. It's not that your stories are better than any other movie or book out there. It's more like--oh, I don't know. Imagine that your favorite writers in the world got together and wrote the one story you've been dying to read all your life. And it's brilliant. Imagine that it has everything you love about that kind of story, and more--you get caught up in it the way you may have gotten caught up in Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Twilight. Those all ended--but imagine that this never ends. Every time you finish the book, you get to start a new one. And again, it was written just for you. And again and again, forever.

Can you imagine that?

Wouldn't it be amazing?

Via source

This is why we writers are the luckiest people in the world. We get to tell our own favorite stories. They can be as amazing as we want. We get caught up in it not for hours, but for months. And as soon as it's over and done, we get to discover our next favorite story.

Of course, sometimes the writing goes badly. We can't make this story amazing the way it ought to be. We can't redeem it. Our best efforts come to naught. We often waste whole months trying to salvage this lost, broken thing--usually because somewhere in there is a story we always wanted to read. An idea that hooked us. A concept we long to explore.

This is why ideas linger with us across novels, across years.

This is why, if you have ever wanted to become a writer, you should try it. Not for publication, because publication isn't enough. You have to enjoy it first. You have to love it. You may be the worst, most inexperienced writer in the world, but you are the only person in that world who can set out to write what you envision as The Best Novel Ever.

Do it. Go ahead.

I can promise you now, it's magic.


And if you’ve written novels before, if maybe you’re somewhere else in the process beside drafting, let me remind you of the magic. You wouldn’t think it easily forgotten, but it is. Every time I draft a new novel, I remember all these things that happen during drafting, these amazingly wonderful things. And it’s like, how could I have forgotten I loved this? 

But it's easy to do. When you're stuck in that seventh complete rewrite, or you just received that feedback that says, "this isn't working," or even if you're just plugging away, and you've been plugging away, and darnit, you're tired of always plugging away.

I've been there. It's the make if or break it moment for many people. But those of us crazy enough to try this and having found magic along the way know how very much the whole thing is worth it.

So although it's a bit cheesy, let me just encourage you guys who may be at the place of, "Why am I doing this again?" It's about magic. And maybe that's what you're missing. Or if you're considering taking writing up, realize that it's not about making money or getting famous or having a really brilliant idea or anything else.

It's about you. And the magic.

Even if that is a little cheesy.


Truly and always,
-Creative A

If It Isn't Working, Try Playing

People start out writing for different reasons, but in my experience, many people are just experimenting at first. They want to see if they can do it; they've always liked books; they have an idea. So they write. They’re just playing.

But every writer starts to grow up at some point. This is a business. We’re professionals. We can't afford to play. Does it have a hook? Is it marketable? Is it mainstream? Will it sell? The professional writer needs to consider such things.

I wonder though, if in our effort to transform into professional, publishable authors, we get a few things backwards. If playing is perhaps just as essential as being marketable.

Let me back up for a moment, here, and try to define "playing." Because anyone can say, "Oh yes, I play. Look! I'll put an adverb in. I REALLY like to play. See? Gosh, that was fun. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go edit it out."

That's not what I mean by playing. I don't mean indulging oneself every so often. I'm talking that absolutely ridiculous plot you’ve had floating around in your head for ages—you know, the one with the octopus apocalypse? The one nobody but you would enjoy? Writing it would be a complete waste, and of course you’ll never bother. But it’s just fun to think about.

Have you ever had one of those ideas? I did. It surfaced about three years ago, when I revolutionized my writing process to reduce self-induced pressure. I decided to simplify. Take a break. In the past, I always pressured myself to start the next project, but this time, I vowed to wait and let things play out naturally.

A month passed.

A second month passed.

I got a little antsy. Still, no serious ideas came to me. I toyed but none stuck. True to my vow, I let them go and continued waiting.

A third month passed.

I couldn’t bear not writing anymore. I was bored, and I was hungry, and I wanted story. I opened a word doc. In sheer desperation I wrote the beginning to one of my favorite daydreams--a mysterious flying girl who falls to earth.

It wasn’t high premise. It wasn’t serious at all. But it was fun. I was happy as a kid mucking around in a mud puddle. Like the Dread Pirate Roberts to Westley in Princess Bride, I finished each writing session thinking, “Made good progress today. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Might kill it in the morning.”

I never did kill it, though. The more I wrote, the better it got, and I finally had to admit MIRRORPASS was a real novel. And now it turns out MIRRORPASS is one of the most serious novels I’ve ever written. Of course I managed to conveniently forget I could ever be that unprofessional. Until now.

With this new year, I find myself faced with the dilemma once again: choose a serious project, or a fun project?

Was MIRRORPASS a one-time fluke, I wonder, or did I stumble upon something crucial, something true?

Here’s how I see it.

Playing frees you from all expectations.

When you’re “just playing,” you don’t expect the idea to go anywhere. Nobody ever needs to see it but you. It sets you free to explore. And though we often forget this, exploring is the whole point of a first draft.

It’s just for fun—which is why it IS fun.

Be honest. Sometimes, writing a novel because you want to get published sucks the actual fun out of writing. Writing is fun again when you write with the purpose of enjoying yourself. This is the story you'd tell yourself late at night, the story you want to read curled up by a fireplace when it snows outside. It doesn't matter if it's a Harry Potter ripoff or not, as long as you enjoy it.

Playing is full of possibility.

Some things, like evil scientists, are so clichéd that you just don’t write about them. But I happen to love evil scientists. MIRROPASS was like my fantasy novel, and I could do whatever I wanted with it, so I included evil scientists. And government chases. And crazy escapes. And special abilities. I felt free to do that because I knew this was my novel to have fun with.

A powerful end result.

The combination of these elements--the privacy, the freedom, the indulgence in possibility, the purity of writing what you enjoy and enjoying what you write--combine to create something explosive. Suddenly, this idea is serious. It is high concept. It is marketable.

How did that happen? If you look closely, “playing” is recommended by more than one rule of writing.

• Write what you know
• Write what you’re passionate about
• Write crappy first drafts
• If you don’t enjoy the story, readers won’t, either
• Turn off the internal editor
• BIC. (Don’t over-think it.)

I hear these rules all the time, and I’m sure you do, too. But I think we lose sight of what’s really being said here; that we need to stop worrying about being serious writers, and we need to just play. Enjoy ourselves. Just play.

Because when you play, you don't care about crappy first drafts; you write what you think about most often, and what you enjoy, what you're passionate it about; you don't care about the internal editor, and you're not overthinking.

You're having fun.

Just playing.

Who's to say, where it will take you?


All right gang, pitch in. Do you ever write that unmarketable idea just for fun? WAS it fun? Did you end up trunking it, or taking it seriously by the end? And even if you did trunk it, do you think it was worth it?

What do you all think about playing?


Truly and always,
Creative A

There’s More Than One Way to Test a Character

I was taking a break the other day from my computer, when I started rifling through “Writing The Breakout Novel” by Donald Maass, and found this quote:

“We admire principled people…To put a principled person at risk is to raise the stakes in your story to a higher degree.

Better still is to test that individual’s principles to the utmost.”

This probably isn’t the shiniest gem that can be pulled from Maass’ book. (It's awesome. Read it. He'll rock your world.) But anyway, the quote leapt out to me, because Maass eloquently answered a question I have unconsciously wondered: what does it mean to challenge a character?

This became a prominent issue for me while writing MIRRORPASS. My main character, Aria, goes through an awful lot. She is challenged nonstop by physical threats, emotional struggles, by her own internal drive. Her stakes are intensely high.

But I started to get this odd feeling about her, this niggling sensation that something was off. I felt too secure. From the very beginning, I planned for Aria to succeed. When I tried to challenge her, I felt a bit like an evil puppet-master behind the scenes cackling, “there, that should be horrible enough! No one will guess how I’ll get her out of this one. No one. It’s brilliant!”

The higher I raised Aria’s stakes, the more I challenged her, the more like this I felt. As if it wasn’t a challenge at all.

According to the Maass quote above, I was doing part A: Testing a principled person. I’d put Aria at risk, threatened everything she fought for, forced her to struggle after every dream. I had that part down in aces.

But Maass goes on. He says there’s a part B. After testing a principled person, you next have to test that person’s principles. You can test who they are, not just what they have to face.

I took me a while to have this epiphany. Poor Aria, I accidentally trapped her at the far end of an hanger while the automatic door was five seconds from grinding shut. I had planned to give her just enough time for an escape. I had also planned on going to bed two hours earlier. So for whatever reason, lack of sleep or plain carelessness, Aria was stuck in this situation--(and note that the following excerpt has bits redacted for brevity)--

With an agonizing gasp, Aria pulled herself onto the roof of the control tower. There she lay for a moment. Gasping. Weeping. All around her, the world had gone mad. The amber lights zapped in endless waves across her eyes. When she rolled onto her stomach, she could see that her plan really had worked—the entire establishment was converged on this end of the hanger...

[But] her plan had worked too well. There was only a man’s height of space left beneath the hanger door, and even as she watched, it slowly crept closed.

“It’s too late.”

Her mind leaked in exhaustion.

“I really thought I could make it, but it’s too late.”

Her mouth burned with blood. She’d made it. But she could never make it back out.

Don’t give up.

She wanted to.

In that moment, I had my epiphany. This wasn’t just a high-stakes situation. This was a test of who Aria was; what she believed in, and how strongly she believed it. Never before had I considered that Aria might come to a place where she was so worn and broken down, she might not care anymore. A place where continuing on hurt more than loosing everything that mattered to her.

And I think this is what Donald Maass was talking about. Nothing I could do to Aria physically would ever match this threat of character. I had raised her stakes "to the utmost." Whatever Aria chose next, good or bad, it would change her permanently.

This works well from a reader's standpoint, too. Security is important in a story. Readers should have a deep faith in the MC and her struggle; they should trust there are lines the MC will never let herself cross—which is another way of saying there are lines the author will never let the MC cross.

It can be a hard balance, sometimes, to keep the reader's trust while threatening what they believe about a character. But it seems like Donald Maass discovered the technique that makes this work.

So you guys tell me what you think about challenging a character's principles. Yes, no? Do you have a different interpretation of the quote? Opinions are welcomed.

-Creative A

My Quiet Little Novel

Recently, agent Rachelle Gardner blogged about the break-in novel. Jody Hedlund then picked up the ball and started talking about break-in novels versus the traditional break-out novel. Rachelle very aptly pointed out that for many authors, a break-out novel can be preemptive – in this tough market, what the savvy author needs is a break-in. And what’s a break-in? Pretty much the same thing as a break-out, except a break-in novel is one that takes into consideration the current writing market. A break-in goes with current tastes, but also establishes itself as original and fresh. As quoted from her blog:

Some writers have several completed books, and wonder which one to start submitting first. It's easy: the one that has the best chance of breaking you in. The one that presents the fewest obstacles to publication. The one in which your writing shines the brightest. The one in which the genre and subject matter are closest to what seems to be selling right now.

It’s a very informative post. Jody Hedlund’s continued discussion of the topic was great to read as well.

But I’d like to add a little word of caution. When I read those posts, I got all excited. They make me think, “Yeah, she’s right. I need to break in. I need to pump this little WIP of mine up!”

I got so excited that I barely caught myself making a big, big mistake.

Yes. I said it. Listen close, I’ll say it again – MISTAKE.

For a lot of people, in the first couple drafts, your novel is still learning who it is. It’s a little child trying to swing a baseball bat, sing it’s first songs, ride a bike without training wheels. It’s not ready to bike a 10k race. It’s not ready to start up opera. It needs time to breathe and grow and fumble around on it’s own. If you don’t give it that time, and put too much weight on it’s baby literary shoulders, it’s going to loose the innocence that makes it so unique.

That’s what began happening to me. In March, I started a new novel entitled Mirrorpass. She has a great little personality. A bit quiet, very different, and maybe just the right amount of special. We’re teetering at the 30K mark. For me, that’s no great accomplishment—Mirrorpass is coming slow, and I have to admit I get impatient sometimes. Hitting the 30K mark was like reaching her first birthday. Suddenly I’d gotten somewhere. Mirrorpass wasn’t an idea anymore, she was a novel. It was the first time I’d thought of her like that.

And of course, this is when the break in/out posts appeared.

I sat reading the posts, and getting all excited, and of course I started planning – well, maybe Mirrorpass is special, but she’s too slow. I need more action. And that issue with the ending HAS to get resolved. Boy, what will I do with the middle? I wasn’t even thinking about the middle yet. What will I write? Why haven’t I plotted this out yet? Okay, that’s it, time to get out the drawing board and –

And I caught myself.  I stopped right in the act of yanking the training wheels out from under my poor little first-draft novel, who hadn’t even decided what she wanted to be yet. I took a step back, and looked around. What was I doing? Who cared if I didn’t know what would happen in the middle, yet? Once I got there, I’d know, because that’s the way this story worked. Mirrorpass is not loud or shocking or impatient. She’s a quiet, daydreamy little story unfolding as natural as could be.

In an instant, I’d tried to force her. I was already acting like she was in the fifth draft, and I was trying to impress an agent with her mad skillz. The scary part was, I could feel the process crumbling. As I started picking at her faults and preparing to overhaul her, little Mirrorpass lost all her charm and sweetness, turning stale inside my head.

It was like, whoah. I never knew I did that. I never realized what happened. Freaky. 

Does Mirrorpass have faults? Yes. Will I probably add more action someday and make her a little less quirky, a little more streamlined? Almost certainly. Someday, but not right now. She’s not ready. She’s not even written yet.

I tend to take the industry too seriously. I hear people talking about break-out novels and break-in novels and the importance of writing for the market and the importance of doing it all, now! And I think they mean it. I jump up and do it right now. What I should do is say, “that’s good advice, I’ll remember it when I cross that particular bridge.”

I have to make myself take a step back. I have to remind myself that there’s a timing and a place for everything. A first draft is not meant to be perfected. It is meant to be explored.

I know the process is different for some people – my good friend Chandler Craig seems to do very well keeping the professional aspects in mind, and didn’t get an agent until she got serious about being a novelist. So I am definitely not the rule. But I know there’s a large group of writers out there who obsess over the rules, the shoulds and shouldn’ts, and well…maybe we shouldn’t.

My point is that it helps to keep your perspective. Since Shatterbox, I’ve been getting better at this, but I still have to remind myself of the whole first-draft thing. A first draft can suck as much as it needs. It can take as much time as it needs. It shouldn’t be overanalyzed, tested against the market, put against a deadline, or pressured in any way. A first draft is exempt.

It’s you and the story.

Me, and my quiet little novel. 

Truly and always,

-Creative A

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Book Review: Writing the Breakout Novel

Rewriting - an anecdote

Spicing up a Filler Scene

To begin with, there are two kinds of filler scenes. One kind is strictly transitive. Like the wake-up scene, or the travel scene, or even the scene that bridges two plot points. These kind get you from Point A to Point B, and that’s about it.  They don’t have any unique value. In later drafts, most of them will be cut.

The other kind of filler scene is necessary. It can’t be cut in later drafts, yet still feels like a boring ol’ transition scene to both the writer and reader. It holds some vital, plot-moving information, but lacks action or conflict. Maybe later you’ll find a way to weave this information into a different scene in the story. But as far as first drafts go, you’ve got to write this scene, whether it feels like fluff or not.

Problem. Filler scenes are intrinsically boring. And when we’re bored, we procrastinate, or overtax our creative system; and that transfers straight to the page. Whatever we experience is pretty much what the reader will experience, too.

So how can you make a filler scene interesting to you as well as the reader?

 

First: create a mood.  Mood is instantly engaging. If you lack it, the scene will fall flat. If you have a strong mood, it will draw people in, yourself included. Think of mysteries or thrillers, where by mood alone the author suggests what will happen next. Mood can create a sense of tension and suspense (see point four.) It makes you want to read on. So, focus on strong descriptions to get your creative juices flowing and to give the scene a bit of flair.

 

Second: find a new angle.

Once a while back I quoted Terry Brooks, saying, “what makes writing so wonderful … is what I discover along the way, that I wasn’t looking for.” This is one of my favorite techniques. Whenever I’m dreading a scene, I try coming at it differently. I think of it in new ways. For those of you familiar with journalism, I find a new slant, a new angle of looking at this scene.

Sometimes the problem is that I already know what to except. There’s nothing to discover. If you change a single factor, it can change the whole dynamic of writing that scene. Maybe you change the setting—from a quiet porch, to a museum. Maybe you make one character late, and see what everyone says when he’s not around. Whatever makes you want to begin exploring again.

 

Third: start with an internal monologue. Sometimes I can ease my way into a boring scene by starting inside a characters head. Many YA books do this to help establish voice, and it works anywhere. Let them monologue. Give them an opinion. Have them say, “Sometimes I wonder…”

This can naturally change the slant of your scene, and really helps me when I’m stuck in the blahs.

 

Fourth: use suspense, tension, or conflict to create a sense of urgency. This ties back to mood. A feeling of urgency hooks you as well as readers, and makes the scene engaging. It doesn’t have to be much— perhaps the wind is picking up and a storm begins. Perhaps a character is acting odd for no reason, glancing at doorways and windows, refusing to look another character in the eye. Why? You want to find out. Use little things to infuse your scene with tension, and you’ll find yourself being drawn into it.

 

A few things to keep in mind –

Think small time: You want these spicy tidbits to remain minor, or they can derail the scene. For example. You want to build tension. So you have one character find someone watching her, but wait; that’s a whole new plot tangent. It could, in turn, derail your story. Try making the trigger smaller. Your character senses a shift in the wind. Clouds darkening. As she stands there flagging a taxi, she notices everyone is hunched down inside their collars, hiding beneath their hats, and she wonders—are they avoiding her gaze on purpose? You still get the tension and paranoia, but the scene is safely on track. Think “subtle.”

Watch out for pointless thrills: Whatever you do to spice up the scene, make sure it means something in relation to the rest of your story. Why make a scene so intense, if it means nothing later on? It’s like getting all excited about nothing. This can strain a readers trust. If your character’s moods, sense of danger, and stakes are constantly oscillating without any kind of gratification, the reader looks on the story as fickle.

If you can, read an author you admire and see how they handle their filler scenes. Does the mood you’re creating flow naturally from the previous scene, and into the following one? Does it match your character’s personality?

 

These are some of my own tricks when struggling with filler scenes. How about you guys? Do you have any tips on spicing up your scenes?

 

-Creative A

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Drafts and Revision

“The only draft that really matters is the final one, but the three-draft rule of thumb does seem to correspond to some fundamental rhythm in the process. First comes conception. Second comes development. Third comes polishing…”

-Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop

I’ve been thinking about the revision process a lot lately. To some people, the first draft is just that – the first whole draft they ever write of something. I tend to think of it as the first whole draft of any particular re-imagining.

I may write multiple drafts on the same premise, but if enough core elements have changed, I call it a new first draft. I do this because there’s a vital difference between writing a novel and re-writing it. First drafts are allowed to be crap. Second drafts, not so much.

Authors from across genres agree; stories start from some fundamental idea. It can take the form of a creative nugget. Or a persisting question. As the writer thinks about these things, they form a type of vision for the story. You don’t need to know the ending or the inciting incident, the main character or the main conflict; you just need this idea, this sense of what you want to write about.

And that’s all the first draft is. Writing about your vision. You are trying to find your story.

Sometimes I imagine a big jar of beads dumped out on the floor, and a little child with a long piece of string, creating a mishmash of a necklace. You sort the beads even as you create a pattern. It’s going to change every second, because half of it will be choosing which stories you don’t want to write about.

This is the value of outlining; you get to experiment before you ever begin writing. Incidentally, this is why outlining is not for everyone. I need to write my story before I can know it: outliners need to know their story before they can write it.

Your second draft (or drafts) takes all your experimentation, all the raw data you’ve gathered, and tries to find a focus. It takes the string of beads and looks for the natural pattern.

Your first draft is probably a gaggle of plots, thematic elements, and even premises – ideas you tried to work into your novel. Now is the time to find your core story. So in the second drafts, you do a lot of identifying.

What are your main characters, your main story arc, your main plot? What is your core conflict, theme, and voice? What tense, point of view, and narrator? What style best fits these elements? Second drafts are about finding your focus, and then shaping the story around it.

By the time you reach the middle drafts, the story going to be complete, but jagged. You will have all the right pieces and they will all fit together. Your goal now is coherency in everything: flow, pacing, continuity. So you begin honing. Tightening. The excess is cut, the remains are improved. This is when most of the fleshing out happens. This is also where you start adding subtleties, foreshadowing, and thematic elements.

You are making the story deeper. All the parts must come together – the small things must work together, and they must work with the big things, and the big things must work with the small.

By the finishing drafts, your goal is much simpler. All the shuffling and focusing is done. All the roughness is smoothed and the honing is complete. Finishing drafts are for making each chapter, scene, and sentence as dynamic as possible. You’ll unleash the inner editor. You’ll make your dialogue snappy, your descriptions live, and your exposition profound.

Whatever you made better in the first drafts, you want to make best in the finishing drafts. And you keep doing this. Until changes are worse than what they replaced, until you have fixed your fixes so many times, that neither solution feels right.

Then you are done.

 

-Creative A 

Rewriting – an anecdote

First drafts. Generally, when I write a first draft, I don’t want or expect it to be perfect. I like to see some of the real story buried in there somewhere, a shape I can work with, some vague form of my original vision. But now I’m almost finished with the fourth rewrite of my novel Shatterbox, and it’s still not there.

I’ve stuck with it all this time because I know it’s a good story. Perhaps a great story. And in the process, I think I’ve come to look at rewrites differently.

I’ve heard people say that the first draft is for getting ideas down on paper, and later drafts are for molding the actual story. That’s what I did for this novel. My current rewrite is a swarm of ideas, possibilities, and continuity issues. I feel like someone went shopping for all the paint they could find, and went crazy with it. It’s a mess. It’s an exhausting mess. But at least I began painting.

Previous drafts have been all about choosing my brushes and gathering the colors. This time, I cracked open the cans and started smearing stuff around. I was hoping to find the shape, but dangit, it’s out there.

I’ve experimented as much as I can. I’ve dumped all the paint and I’ve mushed it around. I’ve gotten out all my ideas. Now it’s time to begin gathering the pieces, sorting through what works, and what doesn’t. When I’m done I may actually see the real shape of my novel. I don’t think it will be pretty, but it will be a good prototype.

This has been a tough time for me with this novel, and I’m anxious to hear what you guys think – have you ever gone through this before? Is it good to view this as a time of creative-unfettering, or am I just lying to myself, finding more excuses to keep rewriting?

 

-Creative A 

On a sidenote, I wanted to apologize for not posting last Wednesday. We had some bad weather and the internet was down for a couple of days. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Middles. Must I say More? – Secret Sin #7

Anyone who ever started a novel knows, beginning is the easy part. And anyone who ever tried to finish knows, the middle can be a nightmare. This is a universal truth among all writers of all creeds. For whatever reason – be it lack of confidence, lack of drive, lack of planning – the middle is one rather large bump in the road.

Many people never get over this bump. I mean, it’s a serious problem. Folks come up with all sorts of tricks and cures and ways of getting around it. I know some who outline, some who pack it with action sequences, and others who just try to plow through it headfirst.

Everyone reasons that the important thing is to write the middle. Doesn’t matter how. Doesn’t matter if it sucks. Just write it.

As much as that makes sense, and as much as I empathize, I’m always frustrated with the outcome. I read a novel because the premise is intriguing. So often, I’m disappointed by a middle that won’t even touch this premise. I’ve read middles that deflated once I reached them, complex middles that have nothing to do with the ending, and middles that jerked me around so many different ways, I didn’t even care about anymore.

How do the middles get like this? No condemnation, but this sort of thing happens when the author goes for a “fix.” It can be any combination of fixes, with a few in particular that I’d like to point out: 

Bridging – point A to point B.

When you bridge the middle, it’s with the purpose of getting from your beginning to your ending. You come up with “stuff” for the characters to go through. You weave in subplots that will resolve themselves once they aren’t needed. This is the middle that is quaint, perhaps enjoyable, but inconsequential. It’s a detour. Red herring. Wild goose chase. No one is fooled.

The worst part is, a bridged middle coasts over plot events that might have held credence to the ending – as is, whatever happened in the middle simply isn’t important anymore.

Stuffing – throwing rocks.

Some writer advised that whenever things lag, drive your character up a tree, and pelt him with rocks. Monica Wood calls these “situations.” You have a guy in a tree, and someone’s throwing rocks at him: then what? He either comes down, climbs higher, or stays where he is. You either keep throwing rocks or you stop.

As much as you play with the situation, it’s always going to come back to a guy in a tree.

Many writers stuff their novels with situations to add action where it’s lacking. It’s a trip, all right, but an astute reader will notice the lack of any real development. Others may have a vague sense of being unfulfilled. It’s crazy and fun, but like a bridges, stuffing doesn't do much for the ending.

Overcomplicating – act vs react.

This is the trickiest one of all, because it starts out as a good solution. You have a situation, and then you complicate it. Take our character-in-the-tree. Perhaps someone joins are rock-thrower and starts climbing after the character. The higher they get, the smaller the branches are. If they climb too high, they could fall. And also, someone lost control of a fire. It’s spreading to the tree. Does our character climb higher, wait it out, or come down? What if he notices a thin branch that stretches out over a river? Should he crawl out and jump? What if the other climber gets stuck? Does the character help him, or leave him to die?

You can go on and on. But at some point, the character needs to deal with the situation. If all he does is react, and continue to react, the plot starts to feel overwrought – or worse! – manipulated. The reader feels jerked around. The story isn’t reliable anymore. No one trusts it. Too many complications without resolution leave everyone dissatisfied.

 

Any and all of these “fixes” may feel right at the time. You may figure out how to prevent them in your first draft. Or you may not. At some point, the middle does need addressing. When that time comes, what do you do? How do you fix a “fix”?

Focus on your main story goal.

Your middle needs to accomplish two things: deal with your beginning premise, and prepare your characters for the climax. This doesn’t have to be a physical preparation. It can be emotional as well. Hopefully, your climax requires both a physical and an emotional task; perhaps conflicting tasks.

Look at your climax. What is the final challenge your characters face? How has your middle prepared them for this task? Go back and find places to prepare your characters. Try to make your middle a series of lessons that build, one upon another, for the final test.

Make the journey as important as the destination.

If an event isn’t vital to your main story goal, it must at least compliment it. Pretend that you want to cut your middle by ten thousand words. Look for as many shortcuts to your ending as possible. What if the killer confessed, instead of leaving clues to pique the police? What if character A overhead character B explaining the whole gag?

The shortcuts would probably destroy your story, but that’s okay; you aren’t keeping them. Instead, look at which shortcuts make your story worse – less tension, less conflict, less development, etc – and which only cut back on your wordcount. Was something there “just because?” Cut it. Die, darlings, die.

(*Scaredy-cats are allowed to weave the main story goal into otherwise unnecessary scenes.)

 

One final thought. If you have a uninvolving story goal, your middle is going to sag no matter what you do. The characters should change. They must face challenges, they must learn and grow, and at times they must fail. Your story is important to you, right? Otherwise you never would have started it. Make it important to the reader, as well.

 

- Creative A 

Nanowrimo 08

All right, people. You’ve heard the rumors. You’ve sensed the buzz. And now, finally it’s here – in exactly two weeks, Nanowrimo begins.

Nanowrimo is a screwy acronym for National Novel Writing Month, which is basically a writing marathon that starts on November first. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, in an effort to let go of your inhibitions, and just write. It sounds crazy until you break it down. 50,000 words is 1,667 words a day – that’s a pretty attainable goal. If you’ve ever wanted to write a novel, but never had the gumption, this is your chance.

Additional rules are pretty simple. You can use an old story, as long as you start it over. You cannot collaborate with another writer. You can research, plan, and outline as much as you like – just don’t begin until midnight on November 1rst.

Nanowrimo has been going on since 1999 when Chris Baty snagged a group of friends and convinced them to try it with him. The event grew. Now there’s an official website, Nanowrimo.org, where you can sign up, chat with other Wrimos, and track your progress with a wordcount bar. (BTW, this is why the rules count – cheaters don't get a winners' icon.) 

Chris Baty even wrote a Nanowrimo handbook entitled No Plot? No Problem! I’m reading it right now. It’s pretty good. I’d suggest you pick it up as a reference. One thing Baty said at the beginning of the book is that support and encouragement is a big factor for the Nano experience. Each week has it’s own challenges, and knowing what to expect can be an enormous help. So that brings me to my actual topic. Next month, I’m changing my blogging schedule around the Nano event:

Saturday – Tips for Week 1, Week 2, etc, as well as what to expect for the upcoming week. Tips may be summarized from No Plot? No Problem! or accrued from other various sources.

Wednesdays – Stories about the Nano experience by other participants. That means you guys. I need at least four stories, so send me your tale at headdeskforwriters@gmail.com .  No stipulations, just try to keep it under 1,000 words. I may or may not post all stories, depending on how many I get.

Understand that I’m going to be a Wrimo myself this year. Blogging time could be limited. Posts could be brief. If you don’t have anywhere to go to talk about Nano, by all means come chat in the comments, or on the AW Nano board, or on the Nano Forums themselves…but also on the Headdesk comments. Hopefully we’ll get some good conversations going. 

The countdown has almost begun.

- CA

A Thought on Cycles

I’ve noticed that during the course of writing novels, I go through a cycle. Many writers seem to have similar cycles: there’s the point of conception, the drama and inspiration as you start a new book. This gives way slowly to a realization that things aren’t as they should be.

Ideas aren’t working together anymore, story threads are fraying, characters haven’t been fully realized. The momentum lags. The novel staggers. You, the writer, plod. Then – oh joy! – a breakthrough. You do good for a while, then let yourself go. The novel sags; you push hard to fix it.

I’ve also noticed a bigger type of cycle, one that spans my entire writing career. I seem to be caught in this epic struggle between improving the quality of my writing, which leads to inner-editor madness and eventual long-terms of writer’s block; and between improving the quantity of my writing, which gets me plenty of books, but none that are worthy of publication. It’s frustrating because I feel like I’m covering the same ground over and over.

Despite all this I sense an upward trend. When I track my high points and my low points, I notice that the highs are always a little greater than last time, and the lows aren’t quite so low. I think this is due to two things: the sheer passage of time, and also, my real growth as a writer.

Being a novelist is discouraging. You struggle to get published. If you are published, you struggle to stay published. It seems that our failures outrank our successes. But hey. It’s a cycle. I understand that you’re blocked again, that it’s been on and off like this for the past three months, that this is where you were last year – it’s a big cycle. Big cycles just take more time.

Be honest, now. Are you giving yourself that time?

- Creative A 

Characterization and Backstory: Secret Sin #5

It’s vital that readers understand our characters. These are people to us, with faces we can see and voices we can hear. We know everything about them, down to the lint in Richard’s pockets and the cracks in Damian’s bathroom mirror. If we can see them, our reader should too, right? In truth, too much description can dumb our character’s down in the reader’s eyes.

This is a tricky sin. The issue too much/too little description is hard to define. There’s nothing wrong with fleshing out your protagonist. There’s nothing wrong with creating a clear image of how they look. And a bundle of quirks isn’t going to upset anybody. The sin is not how many traits Richard has, but how you reveal these traits to the reader.

There’s two ways of characterization. You can reveal things about your character, or you can introduce them. An introduction is just how it sounds: “Look, this is Richard. He wears leather jackets and likes flexing his biceps in not-so-subtle ways.” Revealing someone is subtler, more gradual. “Damian tugged the edge of her skirt farther down her calf, wishing her legs weren’t so long, and that this skirt wasn’t quite so short.”

It feels natrual to introduce – a new character walks on the scene, and we want to know what they look like. What kind of accent do they have? What clothes are they wearing? How about their hair, skin color, eyes?…

If you tell us everything you know right away, you’ve simplified the character. There’s nothing to discover. The character become a grocery-list of quirks, looks, and metaphors. Try too hard to one them round, and it actually becomes flat. (This isn’t a bad thing – as long as that’s all the character was meant to be.)

A similar dumbing down happens with backstory as well. I have noticed a lot of novels that dump the backstory on you like so many rocks. It’s a very blatant, “I’m screwed up, and here’s why” type of thing. Either that, or the writer throws you a rubber ducky. This is when a character’s actions are explained by one simple event from their past. People are shaped by series of events and reactions; a rubber-ducky backstory make us loose respect for the character.

Backstory is a powerful tool. If you dumb it down or simplify it, we loose respect for the character. It’s a subtle thing that needs to be revealed piece by piece.

I remember one of Robert Crais’ characters, Joe Pike. Pike has a less-than-astounding backstory: he had an abusive father, spent a few years in the Marines, became an LA cop, and then a private detective. Now he’s a sort of Zen, enclosed, quietly dangerous guy that wears sunglasses and never smiles. In every book Crais peels back another layer of Pike’s psyche. The revelations are simple, non-dramatized, and very honest. Flashbacks relate to previous scenes. When the epiphany comes, it’s an understanding of how Pike has been shaped by his collective past.  The backstory is effective because you learn about it in digestible increments, the same way you get to know Pike.

 

Effective characterization.

I know I’ve presented a problem here: you can’t go about avoiding all character descriptions, or put off developing the backstory. So how do you introduce a character? What if they need describing? What if the backstory is essential to know about right away, up front? How do you avoid these sins and still work in the important stuff?

First: avoid dumping. Yup – “dumping” as in “info-dumping.” Spread things out so they feel natural, revealed. Avoid the systematic head-to-toe method of describing, and don’t insert descriptions just because you can.

Use flashbacks that add depth as well as explanation. A good flashback presents as many questions as it answers. Avoid epiphanies and rubber duckies that dumb down the real effect of your backstory.

Second: You’ve heard me say this before, and I’m saying it again – use only what is pertinent to a scene. Make sure the backstory you uncover relates to your previous scenes, and upcoming ones, in surprising ways (if possible.)

Try to write how your character would actually think. For example, when you play with your hair, you don’t think how it’s blond and luxurious. But many characters do just that. It forces the description out into the open, making blatant and fake. Try rooting out as many of these as possible; re-write a scene in first person if you have to.

 

One final point about introducing vs. revealing: when you introduce something, that’s all it’s supposed to be. There’s nothing more to learn, nothing more to discover. But when you reveal something, the revelations keep coming. You continue to peel back layers and add dimensions. It’s like getting to know someone: at first, one or two things about them may strike you; a funny hat they wear, or the way they always shrug one shoulder. Then as you get to know them better, this first impression gives way to a deeper understanding of who they are. Effective characterization takes you on this same path of discovery.

Similar posts:

More on Duckies. (This isn’t from my blog, but it’s a great follow-up to the rubber ducky post I linked to before.)

  

- Creative A

Description and Emotion

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feel of being rained upon.” – E.L. Doctorow

I’ve learned some interesting things about description, lately. I know to show things using active verbs, selective adjectives, and strong, core nouns. I know to trust the reader – another way of saying “don’t over-describe something.” I know to write with all five senses. These are all common tricks of description. You probably know them yourself.

Today I want to try and take it a step deeper. I’ve noticed some interesting connections that I think we could all apply in our work. Most of it relates to the principles I’ve stated above, so it won’t be a huge revelation, but I think it may shade things differently for you.

Alright then, here it is.

 

Thing I learned, the first: Use sensory details – taste, touch, and smell.

We’ve all heard of writing with the five senses. This is a valuable method of getting a reader inside your character’s skin, like internal monologue gets them inside a character’s head. But some senses are more relevant than others. Taste, touch, and smell link directly to our memories. If you stimulate one of these senses in your fiction, it can personalize things for your reader.

Like pumpkin pie. Think long and hard for a moment about the smell of pumpkin pie. Imagine it bubbling away somewhere inside a stove. Imagine it thick on the air, tangy with cinnamon. Imagine taking a creamy bite.

What does it remind you of?

Thanksgiving, maybe. Cranberry sauce and stuffing. Sweet potatoes dribbled with brown sugar and real butter. This extends outward to Thanksgiving day itself: the hugs and back-clapping, family in woolen sweaters, a game of football out in the backyard, crisp falls days, winter, Christmas…

This is called association. I’m personally a bit too associative – I can tell you what yellow tastes like just by the way it makes me feel – so this example may be a little extreme. But the point is that some things bring up distinct images. Images have memories, and memories have a feel. Like I said above: if you can tap into these associations, you’ll involve a persons memories and emotions. This more than anything else lets them feel a scene.

 

Thing I learned, the second: Emotion is a key. Once someone emotionally feels a scene, they’re involved.

This may feel like stating the obvious, but you want a reader invested in your story. You do this by creating a sense of common humanity. Readers can empathize with a character without ever being in the same situation. As Lawrence Block said in Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, “If I was that kind of guy, that’s the kind of guy I’d be."

On a small scale, empathy is created when you bring a reader’s emotions into a scene. Take our pumpkin pie example. The average person could relate to that, and in the process, they would bring in their own emotions and memories to create a sense of family, tradition, and goodwill. So If I wrote:

“Someone was making pumpkin pie. Carla leaned back into the doorframe and soaked it up, all creamy and cinnamon. Her mind flit to Thanksgiving dinners around Aunt Jen’s big oak table, the way everyone laughed, dogs licking your legs and hands; how they were all so happy.”

The reader knows exactly how Carla feels. Not because I said “the memories made her happy,” but because the readers have experienced similar memories themselves. That is empathy right there. Metaphors are good at this because they target a reader’s memories. If I tell you “the house smelled like Thanksgiving,” I am allowing you to apply your own history to my story.

When you write, be aware of the emotional connotations your descriptions. What’s the difference between a sob, and a wail? Musk, and stench? Ice that splintered, and ice that sliced?

 

There’s a bit more I wanted to say, so check in next Wednesday for part 2: Description and Selection.

 

 – Creative A