Wordplay

First-time novelists often make the mistake of believing their first novels will be the most difficult writing of their lives. Once they’ve stamped finis on Novel #1, their writing worries will be over. They’ll have a handle on this writing gig, and everything from here on out will get progressively easier. As of this week, I’ve written eight novels (I typed “the end” on The Deepest Breath’s first draft a few days ago), and I’m here to tell you that it’s simply not true that writing gets easier with time and experience. In some ways, it actually becomes more difficult.


When I wrote my first (eyes-only) novel, the words flowed, the characters spoke, and the whole thing was on paper in a few victorious months. That first story was nothing but fun. Of course, it also stunk, because I had zero idea what I was doing. What little I learned from that novel, I applied to the second (also eyes-only), and what I learned from the second I applied to the third (you guessed it: eyes-only). With each novel, my awareness of the craft increased a little bit, and with each little bit that my awareness increased, so did the difficulty of getting the story right. By the time, I reached Novel #4—which I can now look back at as a personal writing plateau, a place where I finally got it as a writer—writing was downright hard.


It was about then that I came to the epiphany that writing was probably never going to get any easier. In “On Finding Your Mentor” (Writer’s Digest, January 2011), Dinty W. Moore quotes his professor Vance Bourjaily’s wisdom on the subject:

It doesn’t ever get any easier…. Each book presents a new narrative puzzle, and you start off with no idea how that puzzle can be solved. I begin each book as uncertain of myself as I was when I first began.

Every single book I’ve written has been its own adventure. After those first four novels—and the bout of trials and travails that accompanied mastering the foundation of the craft—I learned that every new book presents its own complicated set of difficulties. Perhaps I was able to master the lessons taught by one novel—but the next novel will offer a completely different set of demands.


At first glance, this might all seem dreadfully depressing. “You mean to tell me I’m going to go through this kind of mental distress and labor on every cotton-picking book?” Yep. “The struggles are never going to end?” Nope. “Twenty years from now, I’m still going to grubbing along, agonizing over word choice and story structure?” Yep. And ain’t it grand?


In his wonderfully encouraging Booklife, fantasy author Jeff VanderMeer explains that the glory is in the struggle:

Because you are uncertain, despite having mastery, you know that your writing is still alive, that you are not simply doomed to repeat the same path you chose so many times before. Because you feel once again as if you are writing your first book, you know that writing is still meaningful to you.

A writing life without any challenges would hardly be worth the effort, now would it? Recognizing, and even appreciating, the fact that writing will always be difficult, frees us from the doubt, and even guilt, of feeling we’ll never be good enough—because the truth is we won’t. We’ll never be perfect, but we can always be better. So, here’s to Novel #9 and a brand new round of lessons to be learned, mountains to be climbed, and story tactics to be mastered!

Tell me your opinion: Has your writing become easier or more difficult with time?

Related Posts: Why No Writer Knows What He's Doing


What Kind of Writer Are You?


Are You a Writer?
_________________


Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version.

This week’s video draws examples from the 1992 film The Last Mohicans to show how thinking outside the box can bring new levels of depth and excitement to your writing.




Video Transcription: The majority of stories tend to fit within certain standard archetypes. Boy meets girl, the hero rides off into the sunset, the bad guy always dies. These story tropes have become archetypes because they resonate with audiences. But authors shouldn’t feel as if they have to force their stories to fit a mold. Sometimes giving our stories their heads and letting them take the bit in their teeth can lead us to surprising places and, often, enduringly potent stories.


The 1992 film version of The Last of the Mohicans offers just such a story. The entire movie is a study in the effectiveness of subtlety and sparsity. The film flows along with an effortless intensity, in which neither the story nor the characters ever feel forced. This is nowhere more evident than in the climactic battle scene, which flies in the face of several established archetypal expectations, most notably the idea that the antagonist always has to die at the hands of the main character. In Last of the Mohicans, the protagonist Nathaniel Poe (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) becomes a surprisingly effective supporting character in the final showdown between the villain Magua (played by Wes Studi) and Nathaniel’s adopted Mohican family.


As writers, our first reaction to such a plot twist might be incredulity. How will readers find satisfaction in a finale that doesn’t allow the hero to carry the burden of the plot? And, indeed, in most stories, this might easily be a recipe for failure. However, because director Michael Mann stayed in tune with the needs of his story and trusted his characters enough to allow them to act in character, he was able to stray from the beaten path and offer viewers a climax resonant in its honesty and raw emotion.

Tell me your opinion: Have you ever tried to force a story to fit an archetypal framework? What was the result?

Related Posts: The Myth of Originality


Why Character Stereotypes Are a Good Thing


Turn Cliches on Their Heads


Story Knows Best by Marc Vun Kannon

Today, I’m honored to be interviewed by Teresa Morrow on her blog Key Business Partners, LLC. Below is a sneak peek:

Some writers have a preferred writing schedule. Do you?

Definitely. I’m a bit of a schedule nut, actually. I set aside two hours every day for my writing, usually between four and six in the afternoon. I start out with thirty minutes of “warm-ups,” which allow me to ease my mind away from the busyness of the day and into a creative place. I start out with a quick prayer, asking God to bless and direct my work, then scribble an entry in my writing journal, noting my thoughts about my current scene and planning what needs to be written that day. I read a short article about the craft, go over research and character notes, and read over what I wrote the day before. Then I choose a soundtrack to listen to and start writing.

Read the rest!

Today, I’m honored to be hosted on Write to Done (host of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers Award). Be sure to stop by their site to read my guest post "The 3 Traits of a Writer—and Why You Can’t Succeed Without Them." Below is a sneak peek:

Writers come in all shapes and sizes, from all personal backgrounds, all walks of life, and all cultures and countries. We’re a varied bunch, but we all have something in common: in order for any of us to make it past first base in this business, we have to possess three traits. These traits are non-negotiable. If we don’t possess all three of them, we’ll never be writers, and we’ll certainly never find marketable success. What are these traits, and how do we solidify them in our lives?

Aside from writing itself, reading is the single most important element in a healthy writing life. As Natalie Goldberg and Stephen King, respectively, point out:

“If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.”

“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

Specifically, we should be reading the type of stories we want to write. Why?


Because they make you jealous. Yep, you read that right. If you’re not reading stories that make you drool with envy over the author’s ability to craft fascinating characters and string together beautiful word pearls, you’re not setting the motivational bar high enough for yourself. Read enough authors who make you think, Oh, I could never write like this, and you may one day surprise yourself by writing like them.


Because they show you how it’s done. You’ll find no better place to learn than at the feet of the masters. When you read a story you wish you’d written, take note of the techniques that worked and the elements you particularly loved. Then put those components to work in your own writing.


Because they convince you of the worth of writing. Sometimes it can be easy to doubt the worth of writing, particularly after we’ve just logged a long writing session in which nothing went right. When you find yourself asking “What’s the point?”, dig out a good book. After closing that back cover, you’ll more than likely have remembered why crafting stories is worth the struggle.


Because they remind you how your dream started in the first place. As Susan Sontag points out, “Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.” Don’t let that dream die through neglect.


Because they teach you how to avoid clichés. By familiarizing yourself with the salient and common points of your genre, you can learn which elements have been overdone. It’s a mistake to believe that reading widely in your genre will sap your originality by causing you to subconsciously copy other authors. The truth is just the opposite. Read widely, so you know what’s original and what isn’t.


Don’t allow yourself to feel guilty for reading. A writer who doesn’t read is like a racecar that avoids pit stops. You can’t keep racing forever without stopping to refuel. Just as you set aside a daily time to write, make sure you’re also setting aside time to read. Studying stories of the type you want to write is legitimately important research, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Tell me your opinion: What's the last book you read that inspired you as a writer?

Related Posts: Read, Read, Read


Why You Should Steal From Other Authors


13 Places to Find Inspiration
_________________


Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version.

This week’s video shows how to evoke emotion from your text using the same minimalistic approach utilized by David Guterson in East of the Mountains.






Video Transcription: This is just a wild guess, but I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that your story forces your character to experience some deep emotions. He might fall in love, he might undergo the agony of a family member’s death, or he might be wracked by guilt. Whatever the case, how do you go about portraying those emotions in the most powerful way? Easy—by showing them through the character’s actions.


We find a beautiful example of this in East of the Mountains by David Guterson. While spending the night hunting with his two Brittany Spaniels, the protagonist runs afoul of a pack of Irish wolfhounds pursuing a coyote. The wolfhounds and the Brittanies tangle, leaving one of the protagonist’s beloved dogs terribly wounded and the other missing. Guterson could easily have slipped into maudlin sentimentality in explaining the protagonist’s outrage and grief. But doing so would probably have served to distance readers rather than draw them in. So, instead, Guterson never so much as mentions the protagonist’s anguish. In sparse, delicate language, he shows the protagonist searching for his missing dog and eventually discovering it with a broken neck. We see him carry the dog across the sageland, dig its grave, and gently lay it into its final resting place. Not for one instant do we doubt this man’s love for his dog or his sorrow at its wanton and cruel death.


This is an exemplary model of how to show a scene so powerfully that readers understand the emotional impact without any extra explanation. Because the author already spent half the book establishing the protagonist’s character and his fondness for his dogs, we know without being told that the character will grieve the animal’s passing, and the unadorned portrait of his grief’s manifestation only drives the point home that much deeper.


Tell me your opinion: Do you find a subtle use of actions to convey emotions more powerful than stating the emotions outright?


Related Posts: 3 Elements of the Story: Humor, Action, and Relationships


Never Name an Emotion


Whap! Pow! Zing! - How Can You Tell if Your Story Has Emotional Resonance

You’ve spent months laboring over your manuscript. Long nights, early mornings, blood, sweat, tears—the whole ball of wax. This story is your darling. The words are more than just words; they’re the outbreathings of your soul. Sounds like a fairy tale—every writer’s dream come true—until one morning when you boot up your computer, glance through the manuscript file, and realize This stinks!


Now what do you do?


Step #1: Don’t panic. Realize that every author goes through this on every story, so you’re in good company. Take a deep breath, look around, and maybe wave at Hemingway, Austen, and Shakespeare.


Step #2: Cry on a sympathetic shoulder. Give your #1 fan a call, poor out your woes, and let yourself believe every word when he tells you you’re the best writer in the world and it’s simply not possible that you could have written anything that stinky.


Step #3: Give it some space. It’s easy to lose perspective on a story that has been with you every single day for months, or even years. Sometimes that loss of perspective means you think a story is better than it is; sometimes you think it’s much worse. Either way, letting a story breathe allows you to come back to it with more perceptive eyesight.


Step #4: Get some objective feedback. Send the manuscript to your most trusted beta reader (who, one hopes, is not the same person you went to in Tip #2). Bite your fingernails for a few days until you can get his honest opinion.


Step #5: Get a grip. No story is perfect; no author is perfect. This is a sad fact that every writer has to face sooner or later. Face it, accept it, deal with it. Then hitch up your knickers and start prepping that grindstone to receive the tip of your nose.


Step #6: Identify the weaknesses. What can you strengthen? Where are the plot holes? Which characters are behaving unrealistically? Once you have a battle plan, you can accurately attack the weak spots.


Step #7: Remind yourself why you love this story. You might be tempted to chuck the whole darn story in the dump. But take a moment to remind yourself why you started writing it in the first place. See if you can recapture that original spark of inspiration.


Step #8: Revisit the good parts. Find the bits that sparkle, and allow yourself to swell with pride, just a little bit, if only to remind yourself that you can do this.


Step #9: Take a break. Give yourself a little time off to recover from the blues. Eat at your favorite restaurant, watch a good movie, take a long walk, go skydiving—whatever stokes your motor and leaves your soul at peace.


Step #10: Get back to work. And now it’s time to get cracking. Your story isn’t going to get any less stinky the longer you let it sit. The only way to write better is to write more. So roll up your sleeves and dive back into the fray with the assurance that you will make this the best story you’ve every written.


Tell me your opinion: Have you encountered the "this stinks" blues on your work-in-progress?


Related Posts: Embrace Your Inner Editor


The Value of Stories That Fail


Why You Should Stick With a Story


_________________


Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version.

This is the second post in the Most Common Mistakes Series, inspired by the more prevalent slip-ups I run across in editing other people’s work. Don’t worry: I don’t use any names or specific examples from my clients’ stories. I hope the series will prove helpful to you in nabbing these mistakes in your own work—before an agent or editor nabs them for you.
When used as a pronoun, the utilitarian word “there” becomes an insidiously easy way for writers to get their point across. “There” gets the job done, no doubt about it. But using “there” at the beginning of sentences and phrases is the lazy way out. Whenever you see the word “there” used as a pronoun, you can be sure it’s being used as a crutch to hold up a weak and passive sentence. Let’s look at a few examples:

• There was a large wart on the scary old lady’s chin.

• When Jackson looked across the room, he was shocked to see there were several policeman talking with his boss.

• When in doubt, remember there is always more than one way to write a sentence.

Every single of one of these sentences is sagging with passive verbs and flabby imagery. How much better would they sound if we sent “there” packing and reworked them into more active constructions?

• A large wart sprouted hair on the scary old lady’s chin.

• When Jackson looked across the room, he froze. Several policeman stood talking with his boss.

• When in doubt, remember you can always find more than one way to write a sentence.

When we get rid of the “there” constructions, we’re able to use snappier verbs, which in turn create more easily visualized images and a stronger voice. Granted, “there” is often a much easier—and even more natural—way to write. But if we stop and spend a little bit more time considering our word choices, we can often create much stronger sentences.


“There” needn’t be expunged every time it crops up in your writing. Sometimes the word flow or the voice of your narrating character may work better with a few “theres” scattered in your prose. But be aware of the downfalls. Every time you find yourself typing “there” as a pronoun, reconsider your sentence. Would your scene offer more vibrancy, if you reworked the sentence with more active verbs?


Tell me your opinion: Had you previously considered that "there" contributes to a weak writing style?


Related Posts: Most Common Mistakes Series: Are Your Verbs Showing or Telling?


Active vs. Passive Tense


10 Ways to Write Skinny Sentences
_________________


Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version.

This week’s video offers some examples, via David Guterson’s East of the Mountains, of how important it is to know our subject matter.

Video Transcription: Many of us rebel against the oft-quoted command to “write what you know.” My own response to this stricture is the rhetorical question, “Why on earth would I want to write what I know? I live what I know. When I write, I want to explore people I’ve never met, places I’ve never seen, and situations I’ve never experienced.” The day I stop believing that is probably the day I stop writing fiction. But does this really mean I’m not writing what I know? Not at all. In fact, I would be a fool to try to write about a subject without understanding it—if not through personal experience, then at least through intensive research.


David Guterson’s East of the Mountains offers an imitation-worthy example of how to write what we know—or what we learn—to brilliant effect. (And, yes, this is my second video on East of the Mountains. Get ready, because the lessons I discovered in this book will probably spill over to several more episodes.) Guterson’s story follows an elderly man, who has just discovered he is dying of colon cancer, as he treks across Washington state, reminiscing about his life and hunting chukars with his dogs one last time.


Every page of this book rings with authenticity. Guterson accurately and precisely portrays the nuances of bird hunting, apple picking, veterinary surgery, and trucking, among other things. Guterson may well have personal experience with all these subjects, but I doubt it. Instead, I think he buckled down and researched every detail of his story so that he would be able to share them correctly with his readers. He allows us to see everything from the intricacies of a shotgun to the posters on the vet clinic’s walls, and the result of all his hard work is an undeniably vivid setting and a resultantly unforgettable story.


Tell me your opinion: Are you writing what you know or what you learn?


Related Posts: Write What You Know - And What You Don't


Research: When in Doubt, Make It Up!


Why Authors Must Be Honest

New Year’s goals can be notoriously whimsical, erratic, and just plain unrealistic. When we focus on the goals that are slightly more achievable, we’re not only more likely to pull them off, but we’ll also feel much better about ourselves come next year. Following are ten writing resolutions that you can fulfill this year:


1. You can write every day. Or at least on a regular basis. Plan a reasonable writing schedule and stick with it. Perhaps you’ll write for two hours every day, as I do, or perhaps you’ll only be able to save twenty minutes from the general frenzy of life. Whatever the amount of time, make up your mind to stick with it relentlessly.


2. You can finish that first draft. Let this be the year you type “The End” on that story (or stories) you’ve been tinkering with. Unfinished stories are unread stories, and unread stories are unpublished stories. Start building the habit of finishing every story you start.


3. You can study the craft / read more. Invest in some worthy books on the craft, subscribe to writing magazines, or sign up for writing workshops either online or at a conference. And don’t forget to read like crazy. The best way to study the craft is to learn at the feet of the master wordsmiths.


4. You can enjoy every minute of it. Okay, maybe not every minute. You’re entitled to the occasional headbang against the keyboard when your main character is blowing raspberries instead of cooperating. But don’t let yourself forget that, as a writer, you’re one of the most blessed people on the planet. Embrace the ups and downs of the craft, and don’t let the rough moments get to you.


5. You can find a critique partner. Every writer needs at least one pair of objective eyes to catch the glaring mistakes in his manuscript and cheer him on when the going gets tough. If you’re not already lucky enough to have such a person, start frequenting writing groups, forums, and blogs. Strike up friendships and offer to trade manuscript critiques.


6. You can banish writer’s block. Learn to cultivate a lifestyle that will encourage inspiration, and master the skills that will send writer’s block packing whenever it threatens. (For more on the subject, you can listen to my CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.)


7. You can stretch your comfort zone. Safe is boring. Try something new this year—whether it’s a new genre, a new format, or a wildly unpredictable new character.


8. You can set realistic goals. Focus on what you can achieve on your own. You can’t ensure you’ll find a publisher for your novel this year, or any year—but you can send out five queries every month.


9. You can help others. The writing community is all about sharing. We learn from and are assisted by others, and, in turn, we should make it a point to share our own knowledge and encouragement. Join writing forums and groups, offer to read a less experienced author’s manuscript, or maybe just leave a good review on one of your favorite author’s books.


10. You can call yourself a writer. If you write, you’re a writer. Don’t ever let yourself believe differently. Make it your goal to better your writing skills and habits with every new year, but don’t feel you have to wait to claim your title as a “writer.” Claim it and wear it with pride.


Tell me your opinion: What are your writing goals for 2011?


Related Posts: 10 Habits of Successful Authors


Are You a Writer?


The Best Writing Advice


_________________


Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version.