On Sunday night Mighty Reader and I (along with 800 or so other Seattle folks) went to Town Hall where Neil Gaiman read from and was interviewed about his latest release, the 10th Anniversary edition of American Gods. It's the "author's preferred text," which means that Mr Gaiman's publisher gave him the opportunity to add in all the stuff his original editor made him cut a decade ago, plus make whatever other changes he wanted to. The current edition, if I understand Mr Gaiman correctly, now clocks in at better than 200,000 words.
I'll come clean right up front and say that I am not a huge fan of Mr Gaiman's writing, though I enjoyed Neverwhere and I've read all the Sandman comics and I follow Mr Gaiman's blog. He's very charming and funny and he seems like a Really Nice Guy and I wanted to go last night because a) Mighty Reader is a NG fan and she bought the tickets, and b) Mr Gaiman has attained nearly legendary status as a fabulous reader and I wanted to see what that was all about. Plus, you know, he's funny.
It was well worth attending, and my advice to you is that if you ever get the chance to see Mr Gaiman in person, go see him. He reads aloud, frankly, beautifully. The biggest lesson to learn from Mr Gaiman's reading? Read Slowly And Distinctly. When he began I thought, "Gosh, he's moving at a snail's pace" but after a minute you fall into his rhythm and maybe it's his dreamy English accent or the dreamlike mood of the piece he read, but time really did stand still. The second bit he read was more dialogue-heavy and he did American accents for the characters and he also read slowly to great effect. I should note that these were pretty long excerpts he read, too. He could have skipped the interview and the questions from the audience and just read all night and that would've been fine with Mighty Reader and me.
Except, of course, Mr Gaiman's reading all night would've deprived us of his "advice to a novice fantasy writer." That was good stuff, and I'll paraphrase for you. First, his general advice to writers: "Write. Finish what you write." More specifically, his advice to genre writers: "Write. Stop reading your genre; read everything else and become influenced by the whole world of fiction. If you are interested in a specific mythology/religion/time period/alternate reality, then read primary sources, not other genre fiction about it. Read the Book of Kells or the Vedas or Homer or Dante or the stuff that Bram Stoker read when he was researching Dracula. Don't be one of those people who fall in love with Lord of the Rings and then decide to write Lord of the Rings, because Lord of the Rings has already been written, a lot better than you could ever write it. Tell the stories only you can tell." There was more, and it was all funnier than I relate it, but in sum Mr Gaiman gives good advice. Write a lot. Finish what you write. Read widely. Rinse and repeat.
Mr Gaiman, Amanda Palmer and singer/accordionist/pudding fan Jason Webley are apparently going to be together in Seattle, back at Town Hall, on 11/11/11 for a Big Event of some kind. Mr Gaiman and his wife, pop chanteuse Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls) are maybe going to do some kind of tag-team tour up the west coast between Halloween and November 11th, so for those of you who live along the Pacific Ocean, there'll likely be another chance to hear Neil Gaiman read aloud. You should go.
Showing posts with label Writing Rules. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing Rules. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Thinking in Nonlinear Terms
I don't know about you, but I don't read books backwards. I also don't write them backwards, or out of any sort of order. I write from Page One all the way to The Last Page, and that's that. I usually edit as I go. When I read, it's still from Page One all the way to The Last Page (imagine that). Sometimes, if I like a book enough, I'll finish it and go back to re-read specific scenes that seemed especially poignant to me. Sometimes I'll underline them and make notes in the margins.
The past few days I've been reading a book that has a linear plotline, but it's told in such a way that I see the story outside of itself, in a nonlinear way. I have to admit this fascinates me to no end. I don't even know if I can do it justice in any sort of description, or if I'd ever be able to pull off something like that. Still, I think it's fun to explore. Some things I've noticed are:
Plot Doesn't Matter So Much
I've noticed that the stories I fall in love with the most always exist outside of plot. Plot matters - in linear terms, at least. When you start to think about story outside of linear existence, things become clearer. For instance, in the novel I'm reading, the plot is so ridiculously simple that all I can say about it is that someone dies and people think about it (and a lot of other things). It's so unlike the novels you see being published by the thousands these days (including my own stuff!) that it's like a breath of fresh air. As it did in college, it's opening my eyes just a bit wider as to what storytelling really is, what it can be, and what I can do to improve my own storytelling skills.
The Storytelling is the Story
I tend to think about my novel, Monarch, in a sort of cycle that goes somewhat like this: This story is so commercial. It's about a spy. Whoopdedoo. It's nothing special. Typical thriller. But. Wait. No, it's different. I'm telling this story in a different way than you see most spy thrillers told. It's sitting on the edge of something else. It's unique. It's worth reading because the way I tell the three interweaving stories is part of the actual story. As crazy as that sounds.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but what I'm trying to get at is that form can be as much a story as plot, character, and all those other elements. It can be its own story, and that's so exciting to me that I almost salivate in anticipation just thinking about writing or reading anything with that application. I barely brush on it in Monarch, but it's there.
The Language Loses You
I'll admit that the book I'm reading now scares me. A lot. I'll get lost sometimes. Confused. What is this author doing? The fact that I keep reading and can't stop turning the pages says something. The way words string together, the images playing in my head, I could care less where the heck the story is going, what's happening, who the characters are. I'm lost in the words, and I love it. For awhile, when I finish a book like this, I feel kind of cheated in straight linear fiction, which is almost like wading in a shallow pool rather than the deepest part of the ocean. It's where my love of fiction truly took form when I was studying in college. That ocean. That place where words are words are words, and like a stripped bone, they gleam bright under the sun and make you squirm. They make you grow.
I've rambled on long enough. I think one of the points I'm getting at here is to not necessarily write or read in nonlinear terms, but think in nonlinear terms. When that happens, you start to step outside of a box you probably didn't even realize surrounded you. I'll be talking more about this book and telling you the title and author in one of the Literary Lab's first podcasts. So keep an eye out!
What about you? Do you try to think of storytelling outside the box? Does this scare you? Fascinate you? Does anything I've said make sense at all?
The past few days I've been reading a book that has a linear plotline, but it's told in such a way that I see the story outside of itself, in a nonlinear way. I have to admit this fascinates me to no end. I don't even know if I can do it justice in any sort of description, or if I'd ever be able to pull off something like that. Still, I think it's fun to explore. Some things I've noticed are:
Plot Doesn't Matter So Much
I've noticed that the stories I fall in love with the most always exist outside of plot. Plot matters - in linear terms, at least. When you start to think about story outside of linear existence, things become clearer. For instance, in the novel I'm reading, the plot is so ridiculously simple that all I can say about it is that someone dies and people think about it (and a lot of other things). It's so unlike the novels you see being published by the thousands these days (including my own stuff!) that it's like a breath of fresh air. As it did in college, it's opening my eyes just a bit wider as to what storytelling really is, what it can be, and what I can do to improve my own storytelling skills.
The Storytelling is the Story
I tend to think about my novel, Monarch, in a sort of cycle that goes somewhat like this: This story is so commercial. It's about a spy. Whoopdedoo. It's nothing special. Typical thriller. But. Wait. No, it's different. I'm telling this story in a different way than you see most spy thrillers told. It's sitting on the edge of something else. It's unique. It's worth reading because the way I tell the three interweaving stories is part of the actual story. As crazy as that sounds.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but what I'm trying to get at is that form can be as much a story as plot, character, and all those other elements. It can be its own story, and that's so exciting to me that I almost salivate in anticipation just thinking about writing or reading anything with that application. I barely brush on it in Monarch, but it's there.
The Language Loses You
I'll admit that the book I'm reading now scares me. A lot. I'll get lost sometimes. Confused. What is this author doing? The fact that I keep reading and can't stop turning the pages says something. The way words string together, the images playing in my head, I could care less where the heck the story is going, what's happening, who the characters are. I'm lost in the words, and I love it. For awhile, when I finish a book like this, I feel kind of cheated in straight linear fiction, which is almost like wading in a shallow pool rather than the deepest part of the ocean. It's where my love of fiction truly took form when I was studying in college. That ocean. That place where words are words are words, and like a stripped bone, they gleam bright under the sun and make you squirm. They make you grow.
I've rambled on long enough. I think one of the points I'm getting at here is to not necessarily write or read in nonlinear terms, but think in nonlinear terms. When that happens, you start to step outside of a box you probably didn't even realize surrounded you. I'll be talking more about this book and telling you the title and author in one of the Literary Lab's first podcasts. So keep an eye out!
What about you? Do you try to think of storytelling outside the box? Does this scare you? Fascinate you? Does anything I've said make sense at all?
Monday, May 23, 2011
"Mrs Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf
I am reading Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's 1925 stream-of-consciousness novel. Clarissa Dalloway (aged 52, London socialite, married to a high-ranking government official and mother of a daughter, Elizabeth) is planning a party. On the morning of the party her household whirs along like a well-oiled machine, servants polishing silver and arranging furniture and laying in supplies. Things are looking pretty good for Mrs Dalloway. On her return from a brief walk (during which traffic has stopped as a limousine carrying--perhaps--the Queen of England passes down the street) Mrs Dalloway receives two shocks: first, she learns that her husband has been asked to lunch--alone--by a witty and popular noblewoman and second, she is visited by Peter Walsh, who was her beau some 33 years ago and has come to tell Clarissa that he's in love. The story continues from there.
The narrative is almost entirely made up of internal dialogue; there is very little in the way of descriptive prose or dramatized scenes. Clarissa goes for a walk. A couple sits in the park. Clarissa is visited by Peter Walsh. Peter goes and naps in the park. That's the first half of the book and it sounds pretty dull if you just relate it in terms of events. And if you were to ask what the central conflict is, what the story question is ("Will X manage to do Y before Z happens?"), I'd have to say that there really isn't one.
And yet this book is constantly moving, sucking me in and carrying me along and I'm reading it really quickly to see what comes next. It's all, as I say, taking place in the minds of the characters, and that's precisely what gives life to the events. The reaction of a neighborhood to the possibility that the Queen is being driven past them, within arm's reach even, and what it means to be a Londoner in 1923 is far more interesting than the action of the Queen being driven past. More sly on Woolf's part is how the attention of the patriotic crowd is drawn from the Queen (if it's her in the limousine) to a plane sky-writing an advertisement for toffee. The marketing is more immediately interesting than the confused emotions surrounding patriotism and nationalism and nobody is even looking when the royal car finally drives through the gates of Buckingham Palace. Peter Walsh, when he's walking to the park after having visited Clarissa, gets distracted by a pretty girl and he follows her discretely for some blocks, building up an elaborate fantasy life between him and the girl and then she goes into her house and it's all over and Walsh mourns that he's had such an adventure but couldn't possibly share it with anyone because it's all made up and a bit sordid, you know. And on like that and all of it's absolutely true to the life of the mind and fascinating.
It's all telling, too, not showing. This novel, in fact, violates many of the Rules that are widely promulgated about writing. I might go so far as to say that it proves the rules wrong:
You do not need to have a clear central conflict.
You do not need to have a "story question."
You do not need to have a single point-of-view per scene.
You do not need to avoid flashbacks.
You do not need to delay supplying backstory until after a conflict is established.
I will say, of course, that in order to get away with all of the rule-breaking listed above, you need to have absolute control over your form, you need to have a sophisticated and honest understanding of the human heart, you must be a brave writer and you must write absolutely beautiful prose. Then again, you should have all of those qualities anyway as a writer.
The narrative is almost entirely made up of internal dialogue; there is very little in the way of descriptive prose or dramatized scenes. Clarissa goes for a walk. A couple sits in the park. Clarissa is visited by Peter Walsh. Peter goes and naps in the park. That's the first half of the book and it sounds pretty dull if you just relate it in terms of events. And if you were to ask what the central conflict is, what the story question is ("Will X manage to do Y before Z happens?"), I'd have to say that there really isn't one.
And yet this book is constantly moving, sucking me in and carrying me along and I'm reading it really quickly to see what comes next. It's all, as I say, taking place in the minds of the characters, and that's precisely what gives life to the events. The reaction of a neighborhood to the possibility that the Queen is being driven past them, within arm's reach even, and what it means to be a Londoner in 1923 is far more interesting than the action of the Queen being driven past. More sly on Woolf's part is how the attention of the patriotic crowd is drawn from the Queen (if it's her in the limousine) to a plane sky-writing an advertisement for toffee. The marketing is more immediately interesting than the confused emotions surrounding patriotism and nationalism and nobody is even looking when the royal car finally drives through the gates of Buckingham Palace. Peter Walsh, when he's walking to the park after having visited Clarissa, gets distracted by a pretty girl and he follows her discretely for some blocks, building up an elaborate fantasy life between him and the girl and then she goes into her house and it's all over and Walsh mourns that he's had such an adventure but couldn't possibly share it with anyone because it's all made up and a bit sordid, you know. And on like that and all of it's absolutely true to the life of the mind and fascinating.
It's all telling, too, not showing. This novel, in fact, violates many of the Rules that are widely promulgated about writing. I might go so far as to say that it proves the rules wrong:
You do not need to have a clear central conflict.
You do not need to have a "story question."
You do not need to have a single point-of-view per scene.
You do not need to avoid flashbacks.
You do not need to delay supplying backstory until after a conflict is established.
I will say, of course, that in order to get away with all of the rule-breaking listed above, you need to have absolute control over your form, you need to have a sophisticated and honest understanding of the human heart, you must be a brave writer and you must write absolutely beautiful prose. Then again, you should have all of those qualities anyway as a writer.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Ides of March Official Post
Today is the first day of the ancient Roman New Year, so happy new year, kids! That is all I have to say about that. Okay, don't turn your back on folks named Brutus, either. Which reminds me of this joke:
Brutus walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, "I'll have a martinum."
The bartender says, "Do you mean a martini?
Brutus says, "If I'd wanted a double, I'd have said so!"
Oh, that one just slays me every time. Latin jokes are hi-sterical. And now enough of this ides of March stuff.
Today, I think, I want to talk about voice. My last novel was written in a sort of mashup of the styles of Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melleville and the King James Bible. Which was a lot of fun and, I think, appropriate for the story I was telling, but it was exhausting to maintain and a few steps removed from my sort of normal prose voice, which is similar to but not as chatty as the way I'm writing this very minute.
The book I wrote before the last one had a sort of modernized Elizabethan English prose style, based as it was on Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Again, that voice was appropriate for the tale but it wasn't my voice. It was me doing a voice, doing an impression of Shakespeare, kind of.
The next book I write (and it could be any one of three novels at this point; I haven't truly decided) is going to be in a modern American prose voice, by which I really likely mean a mid-20th century prose voice similar to Hemingway or Chandler or O'Connor, or possibly what I really mean is the writing will be similar to mid-20th century translations of 19th-century Russian novels, because I think that's really where my sort of bedrock, basic writing style comes from. Or not. I'm not actually certain about that.
My point, however, is that the next time I seriously pick up a pen to write, I'm not going to be attempting to create any historical mood or sense of place with the prose style. I did that for two or three books and I'm tired of it. Now I just want to write in a clear, elegant manner. It's true that none of the three ideas for novels I'm considering is actually set in 2011 (one's in 1914, one's in 1923 and one's in 1790), but my current approach is to be a guy in 2011 writing about previous time periods, not to have the narrative seem to really "live in" those time periods. That may be a mistake, but we'll see. Since I don't consider myself to be a writer of historical fiction, I don't think that it matters. The tale and the telling are the things, not any sort of nod to ideas of history.
But right now I'm in that sort of fumbling about in the dark stage before I've actually committed to writing a specific novel. It's like being in heavy fog. Yesterday at lunch I sat and wrote out a rough outline of one possible book. It was not very good, frankly. I realized that I don't know enough about the ending in order to start writing. Though, truth to tell, I might not let that stop me this time. I might just throw all of my rules for rational writing to the wind and just grab a pen and see what happens. After all, I lean most strongly toward writing not a novel but a novella right now, and not even something that would be for publication. I'm possibly burned out from the last couple of years of writing Serious Literature and maybe, I think, I might want to just have some fun and write something frivolous and possibly not even very good. We'll see. Yesterday Domey mentioned that he's not really writing with an eye to publication right now and he's happier with his work than he's been in a long time. I am envious, so I might follow his example.
Brutus walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, "I'll have a martinum."
The bartender says, "Do you mean a martini?
Brutus says, "If I'd wanted a double, I'd have said so!"
Oh, that one just slays me every time. Latin jokes are hi-sterical. And now enough of this ides of March stuff.
Today, I think, I want to talk about voice. My last novel was written in a sort of mashup of the styles of Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melleville and the King James Bible. Which was a lot of fun and, I think, appropriate for the story I was telling, but it was exhausting to maintain and a few steps removed from my sort of normal prose voice, which is similar to but not as chatty as the way I'm writing this very minute.
The book I wrote before the last one had a sort of modernized Elizabethan English prose style, based as it was on Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Again, that voice was appropriate for the tale but it wasn't my voice. It was me doing a voice, doing an impression of Shakespeare, kind of.
The next book I write (and it could be any one of three novels at this point; I haven't truly decided) is going to be in a modern American prose voice, by which I really likely mean a mid-20th century prose voice similar to Hemingway or Chandler or O'Connor, or possibly what I really mean is the writing will be similar to mid-20th century translations of 19th-century Russian novels, because I think that's really where my sort of bedrock, basic writing style comes from. Or not. I'm not actually certain about that.
My point, however, is that the next time I seriously pick up a pen to write, I'm not going to be attempting to create any historical mood or sense of place with the prose style. I did that for two or three books and I'm tired of it. Now I just want to write in a clear, elegant manner. It's true that none of the three ideas for novels I'm considering is actually set in 2011 (one's in 1914, one's in 1923 and one's in 1790), but my current approach is to be a guy in 2011 writing about previous time periods, not to have the narrative seem to really "live in" those time periods. That may be a mistake, but we'll see. Since I don't consider myself to be a writer of historical fiction, I don't think that it matters. The tale and the telling are the things, not any sort of nod to ideas of history.
But right now I'm in that sort of fumbling about in the dark stage before I've actually committed to writing a specific novel. It's like being in heavy fog. Yesterday at lunch I sat and wrote out a rough outline of one possible book. It was not very good, frankly. I realized that I don't know enough about the ending in order to start writing. Though, truth to tell, I might not let that stop me this time. I might just throw all of my rules for rational writing to the wind and just grab a pen and see what happens. After all, I lean most strongly toward writing not a novel but a novella right now, and not even something that would be for publication. I'm possibly burned out from the last couple of years of writing Serious Literature and maybe, I think, I might want to just have some fun and write something frivolous and possibly not even very good. We'll see. Yesterday Domey mentioned that he's not really writing with an eye to publication right now and he's happier with his work than he's been in a long time. I am envious, so I might follow his example.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Do You Have to Sum Up Your Book in One Sentence?
Not long ago I believed that if you couldn't sum up your novel in one sentence, you were doomed. If you couldn't do that, you didn't know at all what your book was really about. In several ways, I still believe it, but as I write more and more I've discovered that part of that belief is complete nonsense.
Why a sentence is good
First of all, it's kind of nice to be able to talk about your book in one sentence. You know, when people find out you're a writer and they ask you what one of your novels is about, it's nice to feel confident in that one sentence. I used to hate it when I stumbled and fumbled with my words, trying to think of how I could sum up that huge story into a little tiny description. Now, if someone asks me what Monarch is about I tell them it's about a CIA spy who who has to track down a big-time terrorist, but also save his own heart in the process. The problem? There's so much more to the book than that. There's even more to the book than the back-of-the-book blurb. Lots more. The blurb on the back doesn't even mention the other two huge story lines and points-of-view.
Why a sentence is good
First of all, it's kind of nice to be able to talk about your book in one sentence. You know, when people find out you're a writer and they ask you what one of your novels is about, it's nice to feel confident in that one sentence. I used to hate it when I stumbled and fumbled with my words, trying to think of how I could sum up that huge story into a little tiny description. Now, if someone asks me what Monarch is about I tell them it's about a CIA spy who who has to track down a big-time terrorist, but also save his own heart in the process. The problem? There's so much more to the book than that. There's even more to the book than the back-of-the-book blurb. Lots more. The blurb on the back doesn't even mention the other two huge story lines and points-of-view.
Oh, well, though. That's marketing for you! It's also unrealistic to think everyone wants to sit down and talk about all the intricacies of your book with you. What they really want to know is the basic plot and idea, and honestly, if you don't know that about your own book, you might have some problems.
For instance, when I first wrote Monarch, I honestly had no clue what the book was really about. It's about a spy, I told myself. A spy who isn't like other spies. I wanted to take the James Bond character ideal and turn it on its head a little bit. I did, but even after two drafts the focus in my story wasn't clear. So, after realizing this, I finally took the time to figure out where I wanted to focus, and I rewrote the book with that focus in mind. Tada! The book worked. It wasn't quite as easy as I make it sound, but that was the core of it.
Why a sentence is bad
Just like you as a person can't be summed up in one sentence, neither can your novel. There are so many layers, so many characters and intricacies and ideas that boiling it down to one sentence is almost absurd. I've often thought the idea of my books sound absolutely boring when boiled down like that. For instance, Cinders is the story about what happens to Cinderella when she decides her prince isn't who she wants after they get married. Hmmm, interesting concept, but wow, that's missing a lot. My novella Thirds is about a girl who wants the same magic as her two evil stepsisters. That sounds overdone, if you ask me.
What I've concluded is that summing up your book into a sentence can help you in a lot of ways, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. I also don't think your book is totally lost if you can't sum it up. Some stories are much more complicated than others, and all writers function completely different from one another. I know I've asked my friend, J.S. Chancellor, what her books are about in one sentence, and she told me I was nuts if I wanted her to do that.
Will learning how to sum up your work in one sentence help you with a query? Probably, yes, but as I've discovered, a query isn't the embodiment of your novel. It doesn't even begin to explain your book to its full capacity. It's more like dangling a worm on the end of a hook, like the back-of-the-book blurb of my novel, Monarch. My publisher and I decided what to focus on, and we ran with it. That book could be marketed probably 80 different ways. The blurb that's there now is the worm we decided to dangle.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The Authority of Experience (Write What You Know)
Last Thursday, Michelle listed "Write what you know" as one of the Nine Big Lies about writing, and I chimed in with my own derision at the idea. "Write what you're interested in," I said. My old agent used to say, "Write what you care about." I like that one.
"Write what you know" goes wrong in a couple of ways:
1. When it encourages people to essentially just write memoir, assuming that their life or the life of their grandmother or whomever, is going to be fascinating to everyone else. That's rarely the case. "Write what you know" gets interpreted as "write about yourself." We are usually not as interesting as we think we are.
2. People tend to write less than spellbindingly about subjects with which they are intimately familiar, because they can't really capture the shiny newness of first contact with the coolness of their subject. If you've ever heard an expert talk about something, you may have noticed your eyes glazing over just before you fell asleep. "Write what you know" gets interpreted as "write an encylopedia article." Facts and history do not necessarily make compelling reading.
To sum up, "write what you know" tends to result in lackluster prose about not particularly interesting subject matter. Middle school may have been a real bitch, filled with daily trauma for you, but it was just like that for everyone else and no, we don't so much want to read about it. Unless your middle school years were when you began to think that you were the Messiah and you wrote a 1,000-page novel about it called The Instructions.
So, if you think that "write what you know" is an exhortation to write about yourself because you are a unique, beautiful snowflake with an important story to tell because Every Life Is A Biography, you might want to think it through again, Fagin.
But: There is a time when "write what you know" gets it exactly right. This is not when you are writing confessional memoirs, but when you are using your firsthand knowledge of a subject to flesh out the world of a novel. This is when you speak with authority about a topic and imbue your narrative with truth.
Lord of Misrule, the 2010 National Book Award-winning novel by Jaimy Gordon, is set in the world of cheap horse racing. Jaimy Gordon, back in her youth, worked at a down-at-heel race track and was able to use her memories of the time and place to paint a compelling and believable background for her story.
Antonia Byatt spent a good deal of her adult working life in the world of academia, teaching writing and literature, and this firsthand experience adds the weight of reality to several of her books (The Game, The Virgin in the Garden and a bunch of others).
Iain Pears' job as an art dealer came in handy when he was writing his series of Jonathan Argyle murder mysteries, which are set in the world of--that's right--art dealing and art theft.
I will spare you an exhaustive list. My point is that "write what you know" is often poor advice when you are looking for subject matter, but excellent advice when you are building a fictional world.
Also! Important announcement! The proofs for Notes From Underground have gone out to the authors! That means that we are close to publication date, which we've declared to be on or around March 1, 2011! That's soon! Be excited, because we are!
"Write what you know" goes wrong in a couple of ways:
1. When it encourages people to essentially just write memoir, assuming that their life or the life of their grandmother or whomever, is going to be fascinating to everyone else. That's rarely the case. "Write what you know" gets interpreted as "write about yourself." We are usually not as interesting as we think we are.
2. People tend to write less than spellbindingly about subjects with which they are intimately familiar, because they can't really capture the shiny newness of first contact with the coolness of their subject. If you've ever heard an expert talk about something, you may have noticed your eyes glazing over just before you fell asleep. "Write what you know" gets interpreted as "write an encylopedia article." Facts and history do not necessarily make compelling reading.
To sum up, "write what you know" tends to result in lackluster prose about not particularly interesting subject matter. Middle school may have been a real bitch, filled with daily trauma for you, but it was just like that for everyone else and no, we don't so much want to read about it. Unless your middle school years were when you began to think that you were the Messiah and you wrote a 1,000-page novel about it called The Instructions.
So, if you think that "write what you know" is an exhortation to write about yourself because you are a unique, beautiful snowflake with an important story to tell because Every Life Is A Biography, you might want to think it through again, Fagin.
But: There is a time when "write what you know" gets it exactly right. This is not when you are writing confessional memoirs, but when you are using your firsthand knowledge of a subject to flesh out the world of a novel. This is when you speak with authority about a topic and imbue your narrative with truth.
Lord of Misrule, the 2010 National Book Award-winning novel by Jaimy Gordon, is set in the world of cheap horse racing. Jaimy Gordon, back in her youth, worked at a down-at-heel race track and was able to use her memories of the time and place to paint a compelling and believable background for her story.
Antonia Byatt spent a good deal of her adult working life in the world of academia, teaching writing and literature, and this firsthand experience adds the weight of reality to several of her books (The Game, The Virgin in the Garden and a bunch of others).
Iain Pears' job as an art dealer came in handy when he was writing his series of Jonathan Argyle murder mysteries, which are set in the world of--that's right--art dealing and art theft.
I will spare you an exhaustive list. My point is that "write what you know" is often poor advice when you are looking for subject matter, but excellent advice when you are building a fictional world.
Also! Important announcement! The proofs for Notes From Underground have gone out to the authors! That means that we are close to publication date, which we've declared to be on or around March 1, 2011! That's soon! Be excited, because we are!
Friday, February 4, 2011
Friday Filler! This Week's Episode: Bad Advice
Happy Friday, mighty writers! As usual, I am relieved and somewhat amazed to have survived the week. I am also somewhat amazed to be awake just now, as Mighty Reader and I were up late on a school night at the Pacific Northwest Ballet's dress rehearsal of "Cinderella." I've never attended a dress rehearsal of a ballet before and was surprised when, at the end of each act, the dancers would wander back on stage with the director, choreographer, dance coaches and God knows who else to go over anything that seemed a little rough. The children dancers rehearsing their curtain calls and bows was priceless. My point, however, has nothing to do with the cuteness of tiny people dressed as pumpkins and falling onto their backsides in public. No, my point is that I'm a bit tired and drifty so this post is likely to be even more hazy than usual. Good luck.
A couple of weeks ago I got an email from a friend of mine wherein he offered some writing advice. My friend is not a writer, and though I love him like a brother he also doesn't read much in the way of literary fiction. I'd been telling him about my next book project and how the story features a sailing ship. I want to make the ship into an actual character so that when something tragic happens to it, the reader will be sad.
My friend wrote a lengthy bit about that, giving me his best advice. I appreciate the effort and thought that went into it, but gosh, he was really off the mark and I found myself not a little annoyed. Honestly, everything he said was all wrong and I already know how I'm going to present the ship to the reader as a character (anthropomorphism, mostly).
Anyway, it occurs to me that once in a while someone will give me very specific (and usually unsolicited) advice about something I'm writing, and that advice will be so far from useful that it makes me cranky. Because I'm exceedingly self-aware and sensitive (shut up, you), I realize that I've probably given annoying, unsolicited bad advice myself. Heck, I can almost guarantee it, though I have no idea what it is because all my advice sounds to me like the wisdom of Solomon when I hear it coming out of my mouth.
So to anyone to whom I've given bad advice, I offer you my apologies. The more I write, the less comfortable I am telling people how to write. Which, you know, makes it hard to co-author a writing blog. Irony, right?
Also: Happy belated lunar new year! It's the year of the golden rabbit! As a rabbit, I warn you to treat my year well or I shall be very put out.
Also: Go Steelers!
A couple of weeks ago I got an email from a friend of mine wherein he offered some writing advice. My friend is not a writer, and though I love him like a brother he also doesn't read much in the way of literary fiction. I'd been telling him about my next book project and how the story features a sailing ship. I want to make the ship into an actual character so that when something tragic happens to it, the reader will be sad.
My friend wrote a lengthy bit about that, giving me his best advice. I appreciate the effort and thought that went into it, but gosh, he was really off the mark and I found myself not a little annoyed. Honestly, everything he said was all wrong and I already know how I'm going to present the ship to the reader as a character (anthropomorphism, mostly).
Anyway, it occurs to me that once in a while someone will give me very specific (and usually unsolicited) advice about something I'm writing, and that advice will be so far from useful that it makes me cranky. Because I'm exceedingly self-aware and sensitive (shut up, you), I realize that I've probably given annoying, unsolicited bad advice myself. Heck, I can almost guarantee it, though I have no idea what it is because all my advice sounds to me like the wisdom of Solomon when I hear it coming out of my mouth.
So to anyone to whom I've given bad advice, I offer you my apologies. The more I write, the less comfortable I am telling people how to write. Which, you know, makes it hard to co-author a writing blog. Irony, right?
Also: Happy belated lunar new year! It's the year of the golden rabbit! As a rabbit, I warn you to treat my year well or I shall be very put out.
Also: Go Steelers!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Lies You Believe
I get a lot of emails from other writers asking for advice, and most of the time I have no idea what to tell them. Honestly, I'm making things up as I go along, fumbling around the same as everyone else. I suppose, however, that when we reach certain points we forget about things. For instance, I've forgotten how difficult it used to be to start a novel. These days it's nothing. I've written enough first chapters and experimented enough with what kind of outlining and research works for me that starting a novel may still be frightening, but it's not insurmountable by any means. I don't paralyze myself at the thought.
As writers, especially new writers, we believe a lot of things people tell us. Many new writers read blogs like a hungry bear, craving whatever direction they can find. Sadly, I've fed new writers some pretty juicy lies. Not that I knew I was doing such a thing, but I'd like to dispel a few things here today in order to share some advice, in a way.
Lie #1 - write what you know
I am not a spy. I am not Cinderella after she has been married. I do not have a sister with three eyes. I have never been kidnapped or abused.
I don't write what I know. All this deceiving phrase has ever boiled down to is to write confidently. Period.
Lie #2 - you must write like someone else to be successful
No, you must not. Writing like someone (or everyone) else is a Bad Idea. Buried in their actions, I've seen many writers believe that to catch the eye of an agent, they must write like the other popular voices out there. Imitation may be a good writing exercise, but if you continue to ignore your own path and voice you'll never truly stand out. Temporarily, you might make it, but in the long run you will get buried underneath a pile of identical, life-crushing boulders.
Lie #3 - always follow the rules
We've all heard the rules.
Don't use adverbs. Ever.
Flashbacks are bad.
Back story dumping is bad.
Don't use prologues.
Don't ever start a story with your character waking up.
Don't repeat the same word in the same sentence.
You should always outline your book first.
and on and on and on...
The thing to remember is that these are not rules. Rules are things like you must put a period at the end of a sentence or use lay instead of lie if you're talking about an object and not a person. Grammar stuff. Those are rules. Everything else is subject to change. Seriously. You can use adverbs, flashbacks, and a prologue if you want. If you read enough and write enough you'll learn the right balance that works for you. For some writers, flashbacks never work. For others they are a brilliant literary device. Everyone is different. Don't limit yourself to a box made of rules. Experiment. Learn. Write.
More of these "rules" are listed below.
Lie #4 - if you're bored by your own work during the writing process, your reader will be, too
Lie. Lie. Lie. I'm bored by my own work all the time. I work on my novels hours upon hours, days upon days, sometimes years upon years. Yeah, I'm going to get bored. I know things the reader will never know. As writers, we get so close to our work that it's often impossible to judge how a reader will react to certain aspects of the story. We shouldn't be worried about that, anyway. When you're finished, put your book aside for a few months and come back to it later. You'll probably still be bored by certain things, but that gut-feeling inside of you will speak otherwise. Listen to it.
Also, this is why I have a few beta readers. They can often help me spot problematic areas I would never have seen before. I'd like to write in a complete bubble and keep all the credit to myself, but in all honesty, I'll at least need one or two people to see my work before I can call it completely finished.
Lie #5 - your first sentence must hook the reader
Not true, and besides, it's impossible to hook every reader with one sentence.
Lie #6 - your book must fit into a genre
Not true. Genres are best blended, bended, and torn apart, in my opinion.
Lie #7 - you must know your story's theme before you write
Not true. I never discover my story's themes until I've pretty much finished the book. Honestly, I don't think it's any of my business what the themes are. It's my job to write the story, not preach it.
Lie #8 - there must be tension on every page
Not true. Leave your reader room to breathe, for crying out loud.
Lie #9 - here at the literary lab we know everything
We wish.
______________________
So, readers, what are some lies you'd like to dispel today? Go on. Write them out. You'll feel better. Anything here you don't agree with? We're always up for discussion!
As writers, especially new writers, we believe a lot of things people tell us. Many new writers read blogs like a hungry bear, craving whatever direction they can find. Sadly, I've fed new writers some pretty juicy lies. Not that I knew I was doing such a thing, but I'd like to dispel a few things here today in order to share some advice, in a way.
Lie #1 - write what you know
I am not a spy. I am not Cinderella after she has been married. I do not have a sister with three eyes. I have never been kidnapped or abused.
I don't write what I know. All this deceiving phrase has ever boiled down to is to write confidently. Period.
Lie #2 - you must write like someone else to be successful
No, you must not. Writing like someone (or everyone) else is a Bad Idea. Buried in their actions, I've seen many writers believe that to catch the eye of an agent, they must write like the other popular voices out there. Imitation may be a good writing exercise, but if you continue to ignore your own path and voice you'll never truly stand out. Temporarily, you might make it, but in the long run you will get buried underneath a pile of identical, life-crushing boulders.
Lie #3 - always follow the rules
We've all heard the rules.
Don't use adverbs. Ever.
Flashbacks are bad.
Back story dumping is bad.
Don't use prologues.
Don't ever start a story with your character waking up.
Don't repeat the same word in the same sentence.
You should always outline your book first.
and on and on and on...
The thing to remember is that these are not rules. Rules are things like you must put a period at the end of a sentence or use lay instead of lie if you're talking about an object and not a person. Grammar stuff. Those are rules. Everything else is subject to change. Seriously. You can use adverbs, flashbacks, and a prologue if you want. If you read enough and write enough you'll learn the right balance that works for you. For some writers, flashbacks never work. For others they are a brilliant literary device. Everyone is different. Don't limit yourself to a box made of rules. Experiment. Learn. Write.
More of these "rules" are listed below.
Lie #4 - if you're bored by your own work during the writing process, your reader will be, too
Lie. Lie. Lie. I'm bored by my own work all the time. I work on my novels hours upon hours, days upon days, sometimes years upon years. Yeah, I'm going to get bored. I know things the reader will never know. As writers, we get so close to our work that it's often impossible to judge how a reader will react to certain aspects of the story. We shouldn't be worried about that, anyway. When you're finished, put your book aside for a few months and come back to it later. You'll probably still be bored by certain things, but that gut-feeling inside of you will speak otherwise. Listen to it.
Also, this is why I have a few beta readers. They can often help me spot problematic areas I would never have seen before. I'd like to write in a complete bubble and keep all the credit to myself, but in all honesty, I'll at least need one or two people to see my work before I can call it completely finished.
Lie #5 - your first sentence must hook the reader
Not true, and besides, it's impossible to hook every reader with one sentence.
Lie #6 - your book must fit into a genre
Not true. Genres are best blended, bended, and torn apart, in my opinion.
Lie #7 - you must know your story's theme before you write
Not true. I never discover my story's themes until I've pretty much finished the book. Honestly, I don't think it's any of my business what the themes are. It's my job to write the story, not preach it.
Lie #8 - there must be tension on every page
Not true. Leave your reader room to breathe, for crying out loud.
Lie #9 - here at the literary lab we know everything
We wish.
______________________
So, readers, what are some lies you'd like to dispel today? Go on. Write them out. You'll feel better. Anything here you don't agree with? We're always up for discussion!
Thursday, November 4, 2010
I Don't Want to Cut You Off
Yesterday I got stuck in traffic. I started yelling at everyone in sight even though they couldn't hear me. Sometimes I think I have a sign on top of my car that says "CUT ME OFF AND MAKE ME SLAM ON MY BRAKES SO I CAN HONK MY HORN AT YOU AND CONSIDER FLIPPING YOU OFF BECAUSE YOU ALMOST GOT ME AND MY FOUR YEAR OLD IN A SERIOUS CRASH!!!!"
Okay, that's a bit dramatic, but still, every time I get in the car people cut me off or pass me on the shoulder or something ridiculous of the sort. Is it my driving? Is it that my car is silver and irritates people?
I honestly think it's because as soon as we get behind the wheel of a car we think we've got some sort of power that actually doesn't exist. Most of us don't feel as fragile as we do without a ton of steel surrounding us.
You know, a lot of times in writing I think we do the same thing. Some of us have written books and lots of other stuff. Some of us are published. Some of us are zooming around the road cutting people off because we think we aren't as fragile or we think we have more of a right to get somewhere faster. Not that there are RULES in writing, but there are rules of courtesy, I think. This applies more to myself than I ever thought it did. I've found myself getting quite the ego lately because I have a book deal with a publisher and because I've self-published a book and because I can edit things and write good stuff. This does not, however, give me any right to go around thinking I have the privilege to tell others how to write well or what to change in their writing or judge whether or not their writing is good according to my standards, etc.
Lately Mr. Bailey has helped me realize (probably without his knowledge) that writing is a 100% personal journey and no writing book or conference or class is ever going independently make us a better writer No beta reader or editor is going to improve us. Nobody but ourselves and our own pounding away every day is going to make us better, and even more importantly, knowing what's better is also completely personal. There is no measuring stick or touchstone to put our work against that will automatically determine its greatness.
It's an interesting task to get behind the wheel of my well-driven writing mind and zoom around determining what passes my little tests of greatness, but I hope I'm not cutting anyone off. I'd hate to get in the way of where others are trying to go. I do think it's important to share our writing knowledge, but it's also just as important for those of us reading the knowledge to remember it's another person's way of writing. We should glean from it anything we think is of value, but never take it as rules laid in stone unless it has to do with grammar (and even then some things are negotiable)...
I suppose this is all just another way to say there are no rules in writing. So as you write - especially those of you doing NaNo at the moment - remember you're on your own path. If you want to use the passive tense, use it. There is nothing wrong with the word "was" no matter what anyone has told you. Maybe it was wrong for their writing, but you can pull it off with gusto. There is nothing wrong with a flashback unless it's wrong for you and your work. Go forward. Experiment. Write. And if someone cuts you off don't let it end in a crash.
Okay, that's a bit dramatic, but still, every time I get in the car people cut me off or pass me on the shoulder or something ridiculous of the sort. Is it my driving? Is it that my car is silver and irritates people?
I honestly think it's because as soon as we get behind the wheel of a car we think we've got some sort of power that actually doesn't exist. Most of us don't feel as fragile as we do without a ton of steel surrounding us.
You know, a lot of times in writing I think we do the same thing. Some of us have written books and lots of other stuff. Some of us are published. Some of us are zooming around the road cutting people off because we think we aren't as fragile or we think we have more of a right to get somewhere faster. Not that there are RULES in writing, but there are rules of courtesy, I think. This applies more to myself than I ever thought it did. I've found myself getting quite the ego lately because I have a book deal with a publisher and because I've self-published a book and because I can edit things and write good stuff. This does not, however, give me any right to go around thinking I have the privilege to tell others how to write well or what to change in their writing or judge whether or not their writing is good according to my standards, etc.
Lately Mr. Bailey has helped me realize (probably without his knowledge) that writing is a 100% personal journey and no writing book or conference or class is ever going independently make us a better writer No beta reader or editor is going to improve us. Nobody but ourselves and our own pounding away every day is going to make us better, and even more importantly, knowing what's better is also completely personal. There is no measuring stick or touchstone to put our work against that will automatically determine its greatness.
It's an interesting task to get behind the wheel of my well-driven writing mind and zoom around determining what passes my little tests of greatness, but I hope I'm not cutting anyone off. I'd hate to get in the way of where others are trying to go. I do think it's important to share our writing knowledge, but it's also just as important for those of us reading the knowledge to remember it's another person's way of writing. We should glean from it anything we think is of value, but never take it as rules laid in stone unless it has to do with grammar (and even then some things are negotiable)...
I suppose this is all just another way to say there are no rules in writing. So as you write - especially those of you doing NaNo at the moment - remember you're on your own path. If you want to use the passive tense, use it. There is nothing wrong with the word "was" no matter what anyone has told you. Maybe it was wrong for their writing, but you can pull it off with gusto. There is nothing wrong with a flashback unless it's wrong for you and your work. Go forward. Experiment. Write. And if someone cuts you off don't let it end in a crash.
Monday, April 19, 2010
New Directions
Hey everyone,
Happy Monday!
This is sort of a difficult topic to post about. First, I want to acknowledge Anne Gallagher and her post "How Do I Say This?" and another post by Scott Mitchell called "Differently." Although their posts don't exactly say the same thing, I think they touch on a similar matter.
The more I learn, the better I get at writing, the less advice I feel the need to give to other writers. Sure, I have a bunch of writing techniques that I've learned over the nine or ten years of writing I've done. But, often, they are techniques that probably only I consider all that valuable. The techniques I've learned have come from my need to solve the unique problems that my own writing creates. Or, the techniques are probably only helpful to beginning writers, and for the most part I feel like the people who poke around this part of the woods--i.e. YOU--have already developed a level of competency equal to where I am on this writing journey. So, in a way, I feel more and more like it's pointless to talk about writing to other writers.
But, then we have a problem don't we? I could NOT talk about my writing, but then I end up with really boring subject matter about how I bought Empress dates at the farmer's market today. Exciting, huh? I know, this is my life!
And, so, I end up talking about writing again, knowing full well that most of you probably don't need to hear what I have to say. And, really, I'm starting to hope that most of you ignore what I have to say for fear that everyone will start sounding the same in their writing.
So, I guess all this is to say that I'm feeling a bit speechless these days. I don't want to waste your time, and so I don't exactly know what to write about. Scott brought it back to individuality. I think that's a great approach. I'll probably do that more, and I'd also like to add that I would LOVE it if the comments sections on these posts become much more freeform. F. P. Adriani has suggested this on her blog a few times (here's one) and I think it's a great idea. So, from here on out, at least for my posts, feel free to ramble, rant, and lose focus in your comments. Write about whatever you want--you don't even have to finish the entire post!
Something else I'd also love to start doing is to "turn the camera around" and start showcasing a bunch of the wonderful writers and wonderful people out in the writing world. And, to start that off, I'd like to bring up F. P. again. Some of you might not recognize that name, but F. P. used to go by Reason Reanimator, a writer who stirred the pot quite a bit around the blogosphere. I know she gets angry a lot, and honestly, sometimes she scares me. But, if any of you out there are willing, I'd love for you to check out more of her work, both in terms of her fiction and in terms of her blog. She may rant, but she's often siding with us writers and defending us in big ways. And her novels, from what I've read, are quite exquisite. In her book After Ann, F. P. really brings back the character-driven book for me. At a time when I think character-driven stories hardly ever exist anymore, F. P. has created a protagonist who seems to pop off the page. She's discouraged enough that her fiction might be hard to acquire these days, but I hope it's still around if anyone is interested.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Lawrence Wrote Confusedly and Hotly
Writers are constantly being told to avoid using adverbs in our prose, and to delete any adverbs we find while editing/revising. We're told that adverbs are "weak writing" and the mark of an amateur and I'm sure that a lot of us follow this advice and use as few adverbs as we can, but I'm not so sure that a lot of us understand why using adverbs is weak writing, and what adverbs actually do to our prose to weaken it.
Although I am officially on a sabbatical from the Literary Lab, I have been reading D. H. Lawrence's novel "Women In Love" and I saw within Lawrence's pages what the problem with adverbs is and I wanted to talk about it so here I am, posting.
I could say any number of things about Lawrence's book (both good and bad), but the thing that struck me most last night when I was reading is that he larded his sentences with adverbs. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that every line of dialogue has a tag containing an adverb. Gudrun replies angrily to Gerald who responds haughtily while Ursula speaks tenuously to Rupert who declines to say anything, walking determinedly by her but at some distance, carefully and thoughtfully. Et cetera. And it goes on like that, honestly, for hundreds of pages. (There are also moments of sheer brilliance and beauty, which mostly balance Lawrence's clunky sentences.)
Anyway, all of this use of the adverb does two things which I think weaken the prose. First, it burdens the reader not only to decide what is meant by "haughtily" or "tenuously" or "determinedly" but also to keep track of these shifting emotional states that fly by and change often. Like most writers who lean heavily on adverbs, Lawrence uses a lot of them and after a while they begin to blur and lose all of their meaning. What is anyone feeling in the example I used above? I have no idea. Which leads to the second way in which adverbs can weaken prose: they are claims, not events.
What I mean by that is the same old "show, don't tell" you've been hearing since you first put pen to paper and wrote your first story. "Gudrun replies angrily" has no emotional weight for either the character or the reader. It doesn't move us and you might as well have not written it for all the good it does you as a story-teller. "I spent the day unhappily" is vague, formless and neutral. It ups your wordcount and does little else.
What adverbs too often do is replace action in stories. Anything that reduces the amount of meaningful dramatized action in a story is bad. Anything that reduces the amount of meaningful dramatized action in a story is bad. Yes, that bore repeating. Do not, therefore, tell us that Gudrun replies angrily. Show us her anger, with her words or her actions. Gudrun can let us know she's angry the same way she lets Gerald know she's angry. She probably does not say "I am speaking to you angrily." So don't you say that either, unless you intend some comic effect.
Sometimes we want to summarize, and adverbs do that for action. "He walked quickly" is shorthand for a description of someone walking in a rapid manner and if you're just hurrying the story along, that's fine. But the quick walking will not have any impact on the reader, so if this is an important moment and you want it to have impact, don't use weak writing. Use your strongest writing, and your strongest writing will be clear and direct and have distinct form and meaning. Strong writing is concrete and tactile, visual and immediate. Even a writer like Proust, who is characterized (mostly by people who've never read him, I think) as having written a lot of dreamy and pointless stuff, used very memorable and concrete images whenever people were acting, and he showed character emotions in a direct way (a man doesn't just lecture his friend "angrily," for example, but instead beats a tophat to bits in a fit).
So anyway, that's why adverbs are weak writing and why you should avoid them most of the time. The fact that D.H. Lawrence wrote some classics of the English language and his prose was clunky and choked with adverbs is not an excuse for your prose to be equally clunky unless you also have Lawrence's particular gifts to balance that clunkiness. I am looking for a closing joke that uses an adverb, but I've got nothing, sadly.
And I am still on sabbatical (because life is very busy right now) and may not have time at all to read/respond to comments. Have a lovely day anyway.
Although I am officially on a sabbatical from the Literary Lab, I have been reading D. H. Lawrence's novel "Women In Love" and I saw within Lawrence's pages what the problem with adverbs is and I wanted to talk about it so here I am, posting.
I could say any number of things about Lawrence's book (both good and bad), but the thing that struck me most last night when I was reading is that he larded his sentences with adverbs. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that every line of dialogue has a tag containing an adverb. Gudrun replies angrily to Gerald who responds haughtily while Ursula speaks tenuously to Rupert who declines to say anything, walking determinedly by her but at some distance, carefully and thoughtfully. Et cetera. And it goes on like that, honestly, for hundreds of pages. (There are also moments of sheer brilliance and beauty, which mostly balance Lawrence's clunky sentences.)
Anyway, all of this use of the adverb does two things which I think weaken the prose. First, it burdens the reader not only to decide what is meant by "haughtily" or "tenuously" or "determinedly" but also to keep track of these shifting emotional states that fly by and change often. Like most writers who lean heavily on adverbs, Lawrence uses a lot of them and after a while they begin to blur and lose all of their meaning. What is anyone feeling in the example I used above? I have no idea. Which leads to the second way in which adverbs can weaken prose: they are claims, not events.
What I mean by that is the same old "show, don't tell" you've been hearing since you first put pen to paper and wrote your first story. "Gudrun replies angrily" has no emotional weight for either the character or the reader. It doesn't move us and you might as well have not written it for all the good it does you as a story-teller. "I spent the day unhappily" is vague, formless and neutral. It ups your wordcount and does little else.
What adverbs too often do is replace action in stories. Anything that reduces the amount of meaningful dramatized action in a story is bad. Anything that reduces the amount of meaningful dramatized action in a story is bad. Yes, that bore repeating. Do not, therefore, tell us that Gudrun replies angrily. Show us her anger, with her words or her actions. Gudrun can let us know she's angry the same way she lets Gerald know she's angry. She probably does not say "I am speaking to you angrily." So don't you say that either, unless you intend some comic effect.
Sometimes we want to summarize, and adverbs do that for action. "He walked quickly" is shorthand for a description of someone walking in a rapid manner and if you're just hurrying the story along, that's fine. But the quick walking will not have any impact on the reader, so if this is an important moment and you want it to have impact, don't use weak writing. Use your strongest writing, and your strongest writing will be clear and direct and have distinct form and meaning. Strong writing is concrete and tactile, visual and immediate. Even a writer like Proust, who is characterized (mostly by people who've never read him, I think) as having written a lot of dreamy and pointless stuff, used very memorable and concrete images whenever people were acting, and he showed character emotions in a direct way (a man doesn't just lecture his friend "angrily," for example, but instead beats a tophat to bits in a fit).
So anyway, that's why adverbs are weak writing and why you should avoid them most of the time. The fact that D.H. Lawrence wrote some classics of the English language and his prose was clunky and choked with adverbs is not an excuse for your prose to be equally clunky unless you also have Lawrence's particular gifts to balance that clunkiness. I am looking for a closing joke that uses an adverb, but I've got nothing, sadly.
And I am still on sabbatical (because life is very busy right now) and may not have time at all to read/respond to comments. Have a lovely day anyway.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
It's a Story From the Very First Word
I'm plowing ahead with the new version of my book, and as I head toward the midpoint of Act One I have to keep reminding myself that what I am doing is telling a story, and not setting up a story. What I mean by that is that the opening chapters of a book are supposed to be just as much of a story as the middle, or the end. The first act, or chapter, or page or even the very first word, is not introduction. It's all story. I have to be telling my story from the very first word.
I am not talking about "hooking your reader from the first word" or whatever bullshit advice non-writers are pawning off on writers this week. I mean simply that you have to have a real story you're telling and you have to start telling it at the start of the book and tell it all the way through.
A lot of the unpublished manuscripts I'm allowed to read spend a great deal of time at the start just setting the stage, moving pieces around the game board and explaining the rules of the game. None of that is story, usually.
The main way I use to determine if I'm drifting out of actual storytelling and into stage setting is to remain aware of my scenes. Am I writing a scene, or am I writing an essay? If there's no scene, if nothing is being dramatized, then I'm not telling a story and so I'd better stop writing and think about what I'm trying to do.
My book has some good-sized chunks of backstory to work in, and I have worked out a provisional system for giving it to the reader. There are a couple of rules I make myself obey for this:
1. Write in scenes. This is just my overall rule of writing novels.
2. There is no backstory. By which I mean that in general, I simply don't allow myself to talk about what happened; I only let myself talk about what is happening. If there was some incident in a character's past that had to do with his/her motivations or personality, I find a way to have that incident--or a similar incident--happen inside the main storyline, in the "story present." If I can't find a way to do that, then I am increasingly tempted to just not include it at all. We do not have to explain every single thing about our characters. In real life, we meet people where they are and figure them out as we go along.
3. Action before explanation. This is a sort of framework I am using in the current book, that goes sort of like this:
Not only is this how I structure scenes, it's also how I am structuring chapters. It's also how I am structuring each act. It's also how the overall structure of the book works. I'm a fan of nested structures; they make me happier than is reasonable.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that, especially in the beginning of a book if it's a book being written by me, it's very easy to drift off from the story and describe the world and the history of the world and I don't think that's necessary and I don't think it's a good idea and so I am trying now to write carefully and make sure I'm still telling a story with each page of prose and that's causing me to write more slowly than I'd like and so it feels, frankly, like I'm making no progress at all. I have a large cast and I have to introduce all the characters. I have to introduce them in dramatized scenes. Each scene has to be an important part of the actual storyline; I don't get to have scenes just to introduce characters. I don't get to have standalone chunks of backstory. I don't get to have flashbacks or a prologue. I just have a story that starts with the first word of the book and continues to the final word of the book. Writing: harder than it looks.
I am not talking about "hooking your reader from the first word" or whatever bullshit advice non-writers are pawning off on writers this week. I mean simply that you have to have a real story you're telling and you have to start telling it at the start of the book and tell it all the way through.
A lot of the unpublished manuscripts I'm allowed to read spend a great deal of time at the start just setting the stage, moving pieces around the game board and explaining the rules of the game. None of that is story, usually.
The main way I use to determine if I'm drifting out of actual storytelling and into stage setting is to remain aware of my scenes. Am I writing a scene, or am I writing an essay? If there's no scene, if nothing is being dramatized, then I'm not telling a story and so I'd better stop writing and think about what I'm trying to do.
My book has some good-sized chunks of backstory to work in, and I have worked out a provisional system for giving it to the reader. There are a couple of rules I make myself obey for this:
1. Write in scenes. This is just my overall rule of writing novels.
2. There is no backstory. By which I mean that in general, I simply don't allow myself to talk about what happened; I only let myself talk about what is happening. If there was some incident in a character's past that had to do with his/her motivations or personality, I find a way to have that incident--or a similar incident--happen inside the main storyline, in the "story present." If I can't find a way to do that, then I am increasingly tempted to just not include it at all. We do not have to explain every single thing about our characters. In real life, we meet people where they are and figure them out as we go along.
3. Action before explanation. This is a sort of framework I am using in the current book, that goes sort of like this:
- Dramatized scene begins. Show major conflict of scene.
- Insert necessary background information.
- Finish dramatized scene.
Not only is this how I structure scenes, it's also how I am structuring chapters. It's also how I am structuring each act. It's also how the overall structure of the book works. I'm a fan of nested structures; they make me happier than is reasonable.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that, especially in the beginning of a book if it's a book being written by me, it's very easy to drift off from the story and describe the world and the history of the world and I don't think that's necessary and I don't think it's a good idea and so I am trying now to write carefully and make sure I'm still telling a story with each page of prose and that's causing me to write more slowly than I'd like and so it feels, frankly, like I'm making no progress at all. I have a large cast and I have to introduce all the characters. I have to introduce them in dramatized scenes. Each scene has to be an important part of the actual storyline; I don't get to have scenes just to introduce characters. I don't get to have standalone chunks of backstory. I don't get to have flashbacks or a prologue. I just have a story that starts with the first word of the book and continues to the final word of the book. Writing: harder than it looks.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
If You Were Rothko...
Do you know Mark Rothko? He was an abstract expressionist painter who spent much of his time painting very large canvases with rectangles of color.
Here's an image of one of his paintings, taken from Wikipedia:
I've been a fan of Rothko's work for years, but it wasn't until 2009 at the Tate gallery in London that I saw his paintings the way they were supposed to be seen. When Rothko allowed his works to be viewed, he was very careful to specify the type of lighting he preferred (usually dim), the height at which they were to be displayed on the wall (sometimes close to the floor, sometimes several feet up), what other works were allowed to be displayed alongside his work...he even specified at what distance he preferred his viewers to look at his work (sometimes 18 inches, which is very close considering his paintings are larger than any large screen TV I've ever seen.)
These mandates by the artist might seem out of line, and maybe some would say Rothko wasn't even a very good artist, considering all he ever painted were rectangles. When I saw the exhibit at the Tate, the first thing I felt at trying to view his higher-placed paintings in dim lighting was frustration. I could barely see them. They were just blurry spaces, almost like ghosts of color. Frankly, I didn't like them at all.
But, I found myself thinking of these works weeks after I left the gallery. Not only did I like them more, but I found myself wanting to see them again...or, more accurately to experience them again. Rothko wanted his work to be displayed in a particular way because he wanted to envelop us with his color, to create something that surrounds us in an intimate way. And, without me knowing that, I suddenly longed for it. Only a year later--last weekend to be exact--did I learn about what his intentions were.
Rothko, in my opinion, was a brilliant artist. To compare his work to those of Rembrandt or Renoir or Dali or Munch would be pointless because he had created something new, something unique. And, when he was faced with wanting to do something that no one else had done before, he didn't change his work to conform. Instead, he changed the viewers, he trained people to see his work.
All the rules that I talk about, all the tools I present here will only get you so far. And, if you follow them perfectly, chances are you will end up sounding like everyone else who has learned to follow the rules. (Granted, a lot of people won't even get that far.) You can change your work if you think you are improving it. But, don't change your work because the world hasn't learned how to see it. Teach us. What would you demand of your readers if you were Mark Rothko? What rules would you give us so that you didn't have to conform to rules yourself?
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