Wordplay

Writers are, in a sense, athletes. We hurtle the high walls of writer’s block, we tackle mountains of research, we sprint through rapid-fire action scenes, and sometimes we even manage to hit a home run or two. So what makes us think that, unlike physical athletes, we can force our brains into action without taking the time to warm up our creative muscles?

For years, it was my practice to rush to my computer the moment I finished work every evening. I would slam the door, throw myself into my chair, ram a soundtrack into my CD drive, and frantically click my way into my story file. Every minute of writing time was precious, and I had no intention of wasting even a millisecond. So, without hardly a pause to uncap my creative juices, I hurtled into story land. What I didn’t realize at the time, however, was that, in my haste, I was actually wasting both time and effort.

Then, in 2004, when I sold my two horses, I suddenly found myself luxuriating in an extra hour of free time every evening. Now that the need for speed had been mitigated, I allowed myself the luxury of a little less pressure and a little more preparation time. Instead of diving directly into my writing the moment I parked myself in my chair, I instead took the time to ease myself into my writing and to get my creativity flowing. Looking back, I can see how much both my writing experience and my writing itself has improved as a result.

Nowadays, I deliberately set aside the first half-hour of my writing time for the sole purpose of warming up. My own little ritual has evolved over the years, and although it is certainly a personalized ritual, I’ve outlined it below in hopes that you might glean some ideas of your own.

• Prayer: The first thing I do every time I sit down to write is to ask a blessing on my work. If I’m to find any gold in my dross by the end of the day, it’s only because the Lord chooses to bless my efforts. I’ve claimed Psalm 19:14 as my special plea for my writing: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, O Yahweh, my Rock and my Redeemer.” I pray that the words might flow freely, that my music may inspire instead of distract, and that I might enjoy every minute of it.

• Journaling: As I noted in the post “Journaling and Conquering Monsters,” I’ve found keeping a writing journal to be one of the most beneficial tricks in my bag of writing magic. Not only do I get to vent about problems, but I also have the opportunity to gather my thoughts about my characters, my pacing, and the scene I’m about to write. Instead of diving unprepared into my story and staring at the monitor, trying in vain to figure out where I want to go with a particular scene, I’m instead able to briefly sketch a basic scene plan in my notebook. I can’t even begin to tell how many false starts I’ve avoided with this method. Journaling allows me to gather my thoughts, to methodically put aside the outside world, and to ease my focus out of the intellectual and into the creative.

• Article: I’m a faithful subscriber to writing magazines, such as The Writer and Writer’s Digest. For years, I’ve been clipping articles and filing them away. But because articles that just sit in the filing cabinet aren’t worth the staples that hold them together, I’ve made it a practice to cycle through my files by reading one article every day before I begin writing. Sometimes the information I read has a direct bearing on the scene I’m about to write; sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, I’m continually adding to and bolstering my knowledge of the craft in a directly applicable way.

• Character Notes: During my outlining process, I write detailed “sketches” of my characters (see “Interviewing Your Characters” below). To remind myself of interesting quirks or angles, I read a few of these notes, usually focusing on a major character in my current scene.

• Research Notes: For most of my stories, I collect pages upon pages of research material, most of which my sometimes sporadic memory couldn’t hope to remember. Even though I’m able to look up important details as they become necessary in the story, so many interesting facts still get lost in the giant crack between the research phase and the actual writing phase. To help combat that inevitability, I divide my notes into categories, and each day, before writing, I try to read one of these categories. Not only does this keep the important facts fresh in my mind, but it has also spurred some very interesting and unexpected plot twists.

• Proofreading: Probably the most important element of my warm-up is reading over what I wrote in my previous writing session. Beyond just allowing me to correct typos and beautify ugly phrases, this immerses me in the world of my story. Usually, before I’m even done reading, I’m ready to start typing the next words.

• Music Video: Finally, as a sort of cherry on the top of my warm-up session, I google a video. YouTube is crawling with fan-made music videos of nearly every movie ever produced. I choose a movie that will have images and themes that resound in my own work, and I spend an extra five minutes, letting the dramatic visuals and music put me in the mood to craft some drama of my own.

And after all that, my brain having been stimulated and encouraged, I simply dive in. Other authors, of course, have their own methods of warming up. Some people recommend reading a passage from a classic author; still others suggest actually writing out that same passage, in hopes that you’ll be able to learn from that author’s style. (Personally, I’ve never felt I benefited from this. More often than not, it got me thinking about the classic author’s story instead of my own). Others swear by journal prompts or a brief stream-of-consciousness writing session.

So hunt around, experiment, and discover which exercises put you in the best frame of mind for writing your story. Just keep in mind that sometimes the quickest way of writing your story is to take some extra time to warm up those brains cells.

I spent most of 2006 preparing to write The Rain Still Falls, a story about an apparently amnesiac young woman who is rescued by three very disparate friends during the Battle of Britain in 1940. Almost from the very beginning, this tale of mistaken identity, murder, and disappearing royalty had me bursting with excitement. I couldn’t wait to begin writing. In January 2007, having logged my customary months of research, outlining, and character sketching, I opened a new computer file and dove into what I was sure would be a wonderful story.

Peopled with intriguing, three-dimensional characters; set during the fascinating and suspenseful period of London’s bombardment at the beginning of World War II; and featuring a tense plot and exciting twists, this story had all the elements to make it one of my best works. And yet, not even two months later, the project came to crashing halt, due, in large part, to one mistake on my part.

I opened my big fat mouth.

It has long been my policy never to share my work with anyone before I’ve completed the first draft. But for this story, I decided to make an exception. I was struggling with the beginning, and I wanted a second opinion on the first several chapters. I showed them to someone who was not a writer—someone, in fact, who wasn’t even a reader of fiction—hoping merely that he would boost my confidence by telling me the passages were good enough to pass muster. Never mind the fact that, in my heart, I knew they were good enough; I still wanted confirmation.

Unfortunately, the only thing I got from him was the first three chapters of my story covered in red ink. Most of this person’s suggestions were laughably off-base, and I knew it. But I still couldn’t get his words from running circles in my head. As quick as that, I lost steam on the project. My confidence in the piece and my ability to write it fell apart like an undermined mountainside. I suffered months of utter burnout (something that had never happened to me before), and even after I found the energy to begin a new project, almost another year would pass before my confidence in my writing returned.

Had I refrained from showing off my uncompleted manuscript, had I forced myself to muscle through my problems on my own instead of seeking outside support, and had I protected my infant story from the criticism which I knew all too well it wasn’t yet good enough to face, The Rain Still Falls would most likely be a completed manuscript by this point in time. It would have gone through several rewrites, weathered the storm of my own demanding criticisms, and emerged to face the world in its fifth or sixth draft, having been pruned and polished to the best of my ability. In such a form, it (and more importantly, its writer) would have been much better prepared to face the criticisms—constructive or otherwise—that the world had to offer.

Writing, at its heart, is a solitary venture. Anybody who tries to tell you different obviously isn’t a novelist. Save for the relatively few books which are either co-written or ghost written, the first draft of a tale is the brain child of a single person. When a writer offers up his unfinished manuscript for criticism, he is risking that fatal discouragement which can prevent a story from ever reaching completion.

Sometimes just talking to others about a project can be fatal. Imagine your story is a bottle of precious perfume, and every time you talk about it or show it to someone else, you are taking off the lid and letting out some of the scent. If you let out too much scent, soon you won’t have any left at all.

Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Anne Tyler put it this way:

“It makes me uncomfortable for them [writers who talk about their story ideas]. If they’re talking about a plot idea, I feel the idea is probably going to evaporate. I want to almost physically reach over and cover their mouths and say, ‘You’ll lose it if you’re not careful.’”

In his book The Writer’s Idea Book, Jack Heffron adds:

“Writing is a private act. It is a way of communicating with our imaginations, our subconscious minds, our secret lives. Bringing in a third party is almost always a bad idea. The sense of intimacy and revelation are lost....”

I can’t make a blanket statement on the subject, of course. Just because sharing ideas and unfinished manuscripts is the kiss of death for myself doesn’t mean that it will be so for all writers. But I have noticed that most experienced authors tend to share my view on the matter. Usually, authors who are eager to share their work before they’ve brought it to completion (and, granted, the sense of “completion” varies from author to author; for some, completion may be the end of the first draft, while for others, such as myself, a work isn’t considered complete until several drafts further along) are young, inexperienced writers, who have yet to grow a sense of confidence in their own judgment of their work.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, some people need the encouragement of others in order to gain enough confidence to finish a project. But you should be aware that this is a slippery path. If you feel you must gain the opinion of someone else before you’ve finished a story, try to confine your readership to one or two people at most, and aim for readers who you know will be positive even in their criticism. There’s nothing worse than watching your beloved project come to a screeching halt because you offered it up for criticism that neither it nor you were ready yet to handle. Better to have to rewrite a completed project than to never finish it because someone bashed it early on.

The writing life is full of cold water in the face. Fiction is too subjective a subject matter for us to hope that we can please everyone who reads our work. Criticism in all its forms comes with the territory, and seeking and accepting constructive criticism is a vital facet of learning and growing as a writer. But, as I was reminded all too clearly during my early months of writing The Rain Still Falls, we must wait for the perfect moment to open the lid on that perfume bottle. If we leave the lid on as long as possible, waiting until the intoxicating aroma of our story is as pungent and powerful as we can make it, we not only avoid the risk of losing the scent altogether, we will also ensure that the scent is strong enough to linger through the strong wind of criticism.

For my own part, having gathered the shreds of my confidence, I have every intention of returning to The Rain Still Falls. It’s too good a story to leave on the shelf just because of some ill-timed criticism. But you had better believe that this time around I won’t be sharing it with anyone until it’s good and ready.

Let me begin this post by sharing a few posts from my writing journals:

“I hate beginnings. I know I’m going to have to go back and rewrite this one just as I did with A Man Called Outlaw, so I’m just slogging through, waiting to hit that sweet spot from where the story can just take off.”

“I feel right now like a blind man trying to work his way along the edge of a cliff.”

“I’m going to completely rewrite chapter number one; it needs a little jostling around, especially there at the end. And the dialogue, especially Marek’s, needs a big-time boost. And I want to portray Annan as more vulnerable, inwardly if not outwardly. This has been tough for me so far—and scary.”

“I’m having trouble with my beginning. (Surprise, surprise!)”

“Just for the record—I hate beginnings. I faced the unpleasant fact yesterday that I’m approaching this project from the wrong POV.”

“I was going to start this entry by saying how completely scared this story currently has me, how I’m a terrible writer, and how anything good I wrote in the past was a lucky mistake. But then I went back to read my entry from exactly this point in Behold, and I had to laugh: I said almost exactly the same thing there! That’s really, really, really good to know.”
"I think, perhaps, I'm crippling myself by worrying too much about action vs. narrative."

If all of writing was as difficult as the first 50 pages, I probably would have wimped out years ago and found myself a new vocation. (Something easy and safe—like being a Wal-Mart greeter or maybe the collector of the quarters from Laundromat machines.) Despite the fact that I already know every plot turn that will arrive in the pages to come, and that I’ve sketched my characters down to the most obscure detail, and that I’ve probably even imagined the have dozen splendid panegyrics that will appear on the glossy back cover—writing those first 50 pages is always a foray into dangerous and unknown territory.

It’s no wonder, of course, that beginnings are difficult when you consider their weight in the overall story. Beginnings must accomplish all of the following:

• Give the readers a reason to care about what happens to the characters.
• Plant an irresistible hook.
• Introduce overall tone (satiric, dramatic, etc.).
• Introduce setting (time and place), conflict, and possibly theme.

In short, the beginning of every story is rather like a résumé. You flaunt your talents and skills and hope the reader finds what he’s looking for. Otherwise, you’re never going to make it off the bookstore shelf.

No problem, you say. I’ve got great characters and a killer plot. All I have to do is start writing. Unfortunately, I’ve never met anyone who actually could just do that, although I suppose it’s reasonable to suppose that the planet does possess a few such blessed writers. All I know is I’m not one of them. For me, as for the majority of novelists no matter their skill levels, beginnings are a tight-rope act. And it’s a long fall to the bottom if you miss your step.

So how, pray tell, does one go about avoiding that fatal misstep? Well, you write and you rewrite. And then you repeat. Not what you were hoping to hear? Me neither. So in the interest of keeping us both happy, allow me to throw out a few helpful suggestions regarding what makes a beginning a success.

Character. Beginnings are all about character. If the reader doesn’t find your character interesting, why should he stick around to follow this same boring character through the next 300 pages, no matter how brilliant your final plot twist may be? Ultimately, all people read fiction because of character. They aren’t going to waste their time on characters that aren’t brimming with life—and neither should we as writers. From the very first page, we have to give the readers a character they won’t be able to get out of their heads. But more important than just imbuing our cast with scintillating personalities and rapid-fire wit (although never underestimate either of these), is giving the reader a reason to care about the characters.

Young authors are often encouraged to begin with action. Apparently, the theory is that if you throw an obvious protagonist into a harrowing situation, the reader will love him just because he’s in trouble. Not so. Someone in trouble may elicit a sympathetic response from me on a surface level. But to make me really be concerned about what happens to this person I first have to care about him.

Let’s say we pick up a story that begins in the middle of a fistfight. Probably we will be at least marginally interested in what the fight is about. But we aren’t going to particularly care about who wins the fight unless we care about one of contestants. Beginning the story with a fistfight is definitely a good idea (as opposed to, say, opening with the protagonist warming up before the fight), but unless you throw in a reason to make the reader care, you’re probably sunk.
For years, I struggled with the idea of adding narrative to my openings. The “call to action,” as it were, became a major stumbling block for me. My gut kept telling me that I needed to introduce a character, not an event. I fought the idea, thinking that I’d lose the reader’s attention if I slowed down long enough to sketch a few important details about the protagonist. But it dawned on me, as I pondered this question, that I had never been turned off by a few artfully placed paragraphs of narrative in a beginning’s opening. In fact, it was the straight action openings that completely turned me off.

Don’t get me wrong: action (aka conflict) and suspense is the heart of any story and definitely an essential factor in a successful beginning. But, without a strong character introduction, they aren’t going to be worth very much by themselves.

I am adamant that this one facet of the beginning is the single most important factor, not just in opening a story, but in setting the tone for the entirety of the tale to follow. So what’s the best way to introduce this dazzling character of yours without overloading the reader with unnecessary facts? Following is a very non-exclusive list of suggestions that can be used, in any order and any combination,

• Name the character. Give the reader a name to build on. It’s easier to sucker someone into caring for a character when we know his name. Obviously, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, since numerous first-person narratives don’t name their characters outright (such as Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca, in which the main character is never named at all).
• Show the character in a “classic moment.” If possible, use the opening scene to exemplify a part of the character’s personality which will play a vital role later on. For instance, in Dreamers Come, my work-in-progress, I introduce my character right after he has thrown himself rashly into a dangerous situation in order to rescue a little girl.
• Exemplify attitude. Show the reader, through your character’s words, actions, and internal narrative, how he views the world. Is he a cynic? An idealist? How does he view the conflict on which the story has opened?

Granted, character is only half of the delicate balancing act presented in a story’s beginning. A good character in a boring story is still going to be about as flat as yesterday’s soda. But if you can master the art of character introduction, you’ve already licked three-quarters of the battle.