Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
Monday, May 5, 2014
Digging for Writing Advice Gold
Advice, for writing and for everything else, is situational. In some cases it applies, in some it doesn�t.
When a concisely phrased suggestion fits perfectly with what you�ve been trying to work out it can be mind-blowing. Everything suddenly slots into place. You know exactly what you need to do. Not only does it seem to give you the answer to the problem at hand, it can change the way you look at the world in general.
But advice, no matter how apropos, never applies to everything. The camera never lies, love conquers all, honesty is the best policy, they all have their exceptions and so does every other piece of wisdom.
When it comes to writing, most advice comes with an example that seemingly proves the point. A famous novelist, a best-selling book, a well-know quote will solidify the recommendation. This is how you do it, look how well it worked for others.
But you don�t have to write every day. Putting in 10,000 hours won�t automatically make you an expert. Doing what you love doesn�t always make you happy. These things can and do help, but they are never the sole reason for success. And in some cases they can actually make things worse.
Writing every day can easily lead to burn out.
The 10,000 hours rule is just another way of saying practice makes perfect, and not a guarantee of stardom.
Turning your passion into your job can rob you of your love for it.
That�s not to say these things won�t help you become a better writer�at certain stages on the path to becoming a published author a change in focus and approach can help push you onto the next level�but there are no secret methods for turning lead into gold.
You have to dig up your own gold ore and then you can figure out how to refine it for yourself or you can look around to see how others approach the refining process. But that initial lump of rock with bits of gold in it, that has to come from you.
If what you�ve dreamed up is interesting to enough people it doesn�t have to follow any particular template in order to become successful. There are plenty of examples of blockbusting books that are widely mocked and derided for being not very good. Doesn�t stop them from selling.
Equally, a dull or uninspired tale will fail to spark much interest even if you follow all the advice out there and make it grammatically beyond reproach.
So how do you know if you should be applying the concepts that every writing blog (including this one) puts in front of you?
Consider that even those who have mastered the form, who have had great financial success and won awards, still manage to put out huge clunkers. Novelists, filmmakers, artists of all types rarely manage to maintain a string of endless winners. Most have hits and misses.
These are people who have all the mechanics in place and a proven track record. They don�t have any issues with the technical side of creating and they even have an audience eagerly awaiting their work. And yet they can produce a flop that makes no money, and often do.
Because there is always an unknown quantity in this equation. The reader, the viewer, the audience, will always have their own judgement on the subject.
You may think a joke is funny, but if you say it out loud and no one laughs then you have to take that into consideration. Doesn�t mean you can�t find it hilarious, but that isn�t going to be enough if you planned on being a comedian.
No advice is going to magically fill your pockets with gold coins. You have to produce your own raw materials to work with, but what you can do is find ways to make the process smoother and less stressful.
Ultimately it isn�t the end product that advice will help you with, it�s the process of how you get there. And while the audience will decide if what you come up with is any good, you get to decide if your route could have been better.
This means that when you consider advice on writing, instead of looking at the finished book and wondering if people are going to like it (something you can�t really know), you should rather focus on how satisfied you are with the process of writing it.
Was it a struggle to get finished? Did revisions take longer than you had hoped? Did you lose momentum halfway through?
This is where other writers� experiences and suggestions can come in very useful. What worked for them won�t necessarily work for you, but it�s worth trying because you can very quickly tell if your process improves. And the only judgement that matters is yours.
Bear in mind that doesn�t mean you won�t have to persevere with a new approach to appreciate its full effect�you should at least give it time to feel comfortable to use�but if it isn�t improving your process in the way you want to improve it, then that�s reason enough to not use it.
The actual story�the premise, the characters, the plot�will depend on your imagination and inspiration (and possibly indigestion). You can fiddle with the technical aspects but by and large you will have to depend on your innate storytelling abilities. But making the process as enjoyable and rewarding as possible is something you can definitely learn from others, and worth trying if you�re finding the work heavy going.
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Thursday, June 6, 2013
Starting With Subplot
There are stories where you start in the middle of things and keep going. In the case of thrillers and books that are part of a series the reader doesn�t really need an explanation of what�s going on, they�ll work it out on the fly.
In most cases, though, readers prefer to get an idea of characters and setting before things really take off. The inciting incident that propels the main character into adventure may not occur for several chapters.
When you�re trying to establish the world so the reader has an idea of who they�re going to be following for the next few hundred pages the approach is often to show ordinary life, important relationships, interests and activities. And this can be quite dull.
It achieves the goal of showing us life before things get crazy and helps us get to know the characters, but that doesn�t necessarily make it very interesting.
There are ways to make getting out of bed and going to work interesting for the reader�you can use humour, minor conflicts, everyday issues�but one approach worth considering is to start with the subplot.
You can start with a short revelatory scene that shows us who the character is, but if it does that and is never referred to again it will feel a bit tacked on, and more importantly it�s a missed opportunity. It�s not that it�s bad, it�s just that you could do so much more with it.
If what happens in the first scene, even though it isn�t directly connected to the main storyline, has a continuing impact on the character in the story, then not only will it have helped ease the reader into the story, but it will add complexity and depth to the story as a whole.
Let�s say the story is about a Karen who discovers her husband is having an affair, and she goes off to travel around the wine regions of Italy to rediscover herself and in doing so falls in love etc. You don�t really want to start the story with her walking in on her husband in flagrante delicto. It would be a bit of a jarring way to start the story.
So let�s say we start with our heroine visiting her sister and they�re talking about men. The sister is jealous of the solid reliable husband Karen has, and in turn Karen is a bit jealous of her sister�s freedom to do what she wants. Assuming this is an entertaining scene that lets us get to know our main character and shows her to be fun and interesting, when she goes home and finds hubby in bed with the neighbour, readers will feel for her and then follow her into the rest of the story.
That first scene with the sister will have done its job and need never be mentioned again. And in many stories I read that�s the sort of thing that happens.
However, if you know what your story is going to be about, what the themes and issues will be, you can use that first scene to your advantage.
For example, if the first scene was Karen visiting her sister who�s just given birth and is having a hard time coping, and Karen feels relieved that both her and her husband are career-minded and glad she never had kids, you can still provide readers with a way to get to know the main character.
But after she discovers the infidelity and goes off to Italy, maybe the man she meets has kids. Later on maybe she meets up with her sister now in full mummy-mode and it makes her reassess her own feelings about kids.
The point is, because the first scene is thematically linked to the main story it�s possible to develop it into more than a one-off scene, and in doing so add to the main story.
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Monday, June 3, 2013
Complications Of Storytelling
All stories get more complicated the further you get into them.
This isn�t a bad thing, it�s just inevitable. The reader starts off knowing nothing, and over the course of the story they get fed more and more information.
If it�s a properly written story anything the reader is told will be relevant to further developments. That means they have to remember everything that�s happened so far and how it relates to everything else that�s also happened and everything that�s going to happen.
This network of events, consequences and reactions will get ever more intricate. To the point where it can become so overwhelming that when a character says, �Hey, Mary�s back!� all the reader thinks is, Who the hell is Mary?
In some cases confusion is down to too much information at. Sometimes it�s due to convoluted writing that�s difficult to follow.
These are technical problems that can be easily fixed (once you become aware of them).
But stories are always going to get complicated as you refer back to things or reveal the implications of actions or create conflict. This isn�t something to be avoided, but it is something you have to be aware of and communicate in a way the reader is able to process.
You can�t rely on the reader just being super focused on the story and having a great memory (although that would be very helpful). You have to help them navigate the parts where things get messy.
Firstly, key players should be memorable. Putting in a reminder is okay, but can feel clunky.
�Hey, Mary�s back from Jamaica. I hope she remembered to go see Old Bessie like you asked her to.�
Better to have the name automatically trigger meaning for the reader. One way to do this is to make the name itself memorable. Change Mary to Maxuma and it becomes much harder to forget. However, a story where everyone has �interesting� names not only undermines this, it has the reverse effect of making it much harder to remember who anyone is.
Unusual or surprising details help to make information stick. If Mary is the girl with the tail and cloven feet it won�t take much to jog the reader�s memory. Although, again, this only works if your story isn�t set in a world full of people with weird appendages. And it can become quite laborious to give every single character some remarkable characteristic.
While these sorts of things will help, there is a much stronger way to keep the reader aware of all the stuff going on in the story, and that�s to interlink it.
If I tell you Mary is tall, went to school in Scotland and hates jellyfish, this may give you an idea of who she is, but it won�t necessarily keep her in mind when she�s absent.
However, if I tell you Mary�s taller than most men, which means she has difficulty getting a boyfriend and that�s why she�s available to be sent on a dangerous mission since she�s the only one in the group who�s single, then the linking of who she is and what she does helps the reader to place her that much quicker.
The same works for other elements of the story. When you reveal information, the level of detail and accuracy isn�t going to be the things that stick in the mind, it�s how those things relate to the development of the story.
If the character robs a bank in Chapter 2, and it�s mentioned when he�s arrested and interviewed in Chapter 32, the reader might not be able to recall many of the details. But if the bank robbery in Chapter 2 was to raise the money to finance an even bigger crime that led to the character being arrested and interviewed, then the reader will be able to remember that much easier.
If you keep events separate (it wouldn�t be surprising for a criminal to commit unrelated bank robberies, it�s his job after all) then you make it harder for the brain to retain the information. If you link them it creates a cascade that�s continuously flowing.
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