NANOWRIMO: Vonnegut and Wonderbook #5: Start late and let it grow

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting Nov. 27, 2013

We're almost at the end of nanowrimo, and this advice may not seem particularly useful at this point. Go ahead and get those words finished, but you might think about this.

Vonnegut advises:

"5. Start as close to the end as possible."

Also known sometimes as "In late, out early." The point is that you don't want to have a long, rambling introduction. In media res is another way to look at it – start in the middle of the action! You don't want your readers to fall asleep before things start happening, right? Admittedly, in nanowrimo you may just want to go ahead and lay out all the stuff, but at least in revision, cut it back and get us into the good stuff as quickly as possible.

Now, on the other side, Wonderbook recommends:

5. Let it bloom. George R. R. Martin says there are pre-planning architects and gardeners among writers. Gardeners dig a hole and plant a seed, then water it with blood and sweat to see what grows. It's not really random, because the gardener knows what he's planted but inspiration definitely shapes things.

Especially if you're a gardener, otherwise known as a discovery writer or perhaps as a pantser (Because you're writing by the seat of your pants), you need to let things grow. Take the seed, work with it, and see what happens. Don't be afraid of trying things out.

This is really part of the nanowrimo creed – write it and see.

Write, write, write. And get ready for turkey tomorrow!

NANOWRIMO: Vonnegut and Wonderbook #6: Sadism and finishing

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting Nov. 28, 2013

Just a few more days of nanowrimo. Are you ready? Well, consider this advice from Vonnegut:

"6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them – in order that the reader may see what they are made of."

Part of the writer's job is being cruel to perfectly innocent characters! Here they are, going about their daily lives, when you land the aliens in their backyard, bring a hurricane through their town, and do all these other nasty things to them! The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – conquest, war, famine, and disease? – And all of their relatives, pets, and nightmares, too.

What's the worst thing that could happen? Now do it! How could it get worse? Now do that!

And then there's some advice from Wonderbook:

6. Finish the thing. George R. R. Martin says that early in his career, he produced reams of unfinished story fragments. Because of that, he learned to appreciate the second of Robert Heinlein's four rules for writing. The first is you must write. The second is you must finish what you write.

Finish it. Short story, novel, whatever it is, finish it. Yes, sometimes you need to set it aside because it just isn't working, but do your best to finish things. One of the great dangers of writing is how easy it is to do lots of bits and pieces without ever finishing any of them. Fairly often, writing groups have at least one member who has been working on the beginning of their story for a long, long time. And setting it aside, polishing it again, trying out another approach, doing it just a little different this time... But never ever finishing it.

Write. Finish it. And move on.

NANOWRIMO: Vonnegut and Wonderbook #7: One person and deforming

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting Nov. 29, 2013

The penultimate day of nanowrimo? Yes, the end is almost here. No matter how many words you have, there's some good advice from Kurt Vonnegut:

"7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

You can't really please everyone. So trying to please one person with your writing. Keep them in mind and make that writing targeted to that person. You don't have to tell that you are writing for them! But in your internal dialogue as you construct your writing, talk to them. One specific person.

Now let's see what Wonderbook has to say. Everyone says to write what you know, and to base your writing in your own experience. But...

7. Deform the familiar. Junot Diaz says that first-person narratives demand you push past personal autobiography. "I've never been able to write directly about things that happen to me," he said. "I need to deform them in ways that make them strange to me." The court stenographer, just recording what has happened, doesn't give you room to play. Play is what makes weird connections, subtle structures, and releases the best in books.

Twist your life, deform your experience, give yourself room to play with it, to recognize the strangeness. If all you're doing is recording your autobiography, it's likely not to be terribly interesting. But with a little strangeness worked into it, that can change!

So aim your writing at one person, someone specific that you know. And while you're at it, write what you know but deformed to make it fresh.

Both of these are a little bit of general advice, that probably won't magically push you into lots of words at the end of nanowrimo. However, you can certainly use them here and in the future. Just think of that person that you are writing for as they grin and read all of those words. And take another look at mining your own life experience for your writing. With a little bit of twisting, you might find James Bond staring back at you in the mirror.

Write, write, write.

NANOWRIMO: Vonnegut and Wonderbook #8: Information and Strangers

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting Nov. 30, 2013

The very last day of nanowrimo, and we've got advice from Vonnegut that you might want to use in your revision, along with advice from Wonderbook that could be good for getting ready or for doing a little fact checking as you're revising. So let's take a look at what they recommend. First, here's Vonnegut:

"8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages."

Give your readers information quickly? Don't keep them suspended in confusion? I suspect part of what Vonnegut is actually pointing out here is that your story really shouldn't depend on hiding information from the readers. If the characters are interesting, the situation and the action engaging, hiding information doesn't do anything except frustrate the readers. I'm not sure that the threat of cockroaches eating the last few pages is why we want to inform the readers, but I don't see any real advantage in playing the author has a secret, or even this character or that character has a secret.

We all know the idiot plot is one that would be resolved if anybody ever bothered to talk to each other – and remember, your reader is in a sense one of the characters in the story. So having your paper characters keep secrets from your reader is a kind of idiot plot.

So Vonnegut recommends giving your readers information quickly. And then we have Wonderbook suggesting that we talk to strangers! Here's their point...

8. Talk to strangers. Lauren Beukes praises research. "Culture and race and sexuality and even language are all lenses that shape our experiences of the world and who we are in it. The only way to climb into that experience is to research it, through books or blogs or documentaries or journalism or, most important and obvious, through talking to people."

To get the depth of experience, to see how others experience the world and use that in our writing, we've got to do our homework. We've got to do research. One of the simplest ways to do this is to talk to people. Do you want to know what the world looks like to a five-year-old? Go talk to one! Want to know what the world looks like to a 75-year-old? Talked to one! Books and blogs and documentaries, if you think about it, are really just ways for us to listen to someone who isn't physically present. It's a way to talk to people from the past, people on the other side of the world, people and places you didn't even know existed. So talk to strangers. Get the information... And then give it to your readers quickly!

The very last day of nanowrimo. And whether you have written 50,000 words or not, you probably learned something. That's the great thing about nanowrimo, it's a chance to challenge yourself and learn something.

So take a minute, or 10 minutes or 20 or 30, and think about what you have learned during the last 30 days. What was the process like? Where did you have trouble, what worked really well for you? If you do this again next year, what do you want to change? What do you want to do the same or more of?

Write, write, write. And having written, finish it.

TECH: Mastering Show, Don't Tell (another moldy oldie!)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting Dec. 6, 2013

In March, 1997, Writer's Digest pages 32 to 35 had an article by Jack M. Bickham with the title "Mastering Show, Don't Tell." You may have seen his book on Scene and Structure or perhaps one of his novels.

Underneath the title there's a running head that says, "It's the most basic of fiction-writing advice, and the least easily understood. A novelist and fiction-writing instructor clears up the confusion on how to let your readers live your stories."

Jack says the advice is sound, but there's a lot of confusion about how to do it. So he starts out by explaining that "Show, don't tell" is shorthand for:

"Don't lecture your reader; she won't believe you. Give her the story action, character thoughts, feelings and sense impressions as the character would experience them in real life. Let her live the story for herself as she lives real life, by experience."

Then he explains.

First of all, most of our formal education and experience teaches us to present information in a way that just doesn't work when writing fiction. Formal schooling emphasizes telling. You tell the teacher facts you learn from reading, you stick to logical objective viewpoints, you find and analyze facts and present them as factually and briefly as possible.

Fiction turns the process upside down. Instead of avoiding feelings and sticking to facts, you need to be aware of feelings -- the lead character's emotions and viewpoint -- and figure out how to make your readers experience the story world from that viewpoint and emotional stance. Basically, you present evidence and let readers draw their own conclusions. Fiction convinces us in a way that objective writing doesn't.

But to do that, you have to let the readers experience the story world, the stimulus. And let them draw their own conclusions. You need to make the experience of the story like real life. Present evidence: show, don't tell. That's what the showing is all about. So how do you do that?

1. Get into the viewpoint and stay there. Jack recommends four essential steps:

-- select and adhere to a single character's viewpoint
-- imagine the crucial sense or thought impressions that character is experiencing each moment
-- present those impressions as vividly and briefly as possible
-- give those impressions to readers in a logical order

"Getting into the viewpoint of your central story character -- and staying there -- helps enormously in showing instead of telling. If you're solidly in viewpoint, you won't be so tempted to lecture readers because you will be revealing that character's experiences rather than reviewing some abstract, objectively written data... Viewpoint characters, like real people, experience things rather than telling about them."

Adhering to the viewpoint also removes the temptation to tell readers extra stuff that the viewpoint character doesn't know. In fact, it helps you imagine details that matter to the character. We live minute-to-minute, and characters experience life the same way. This helps you focus on making things vivid and evocative. It also helps with that logical order, which most of the time is simple chronological presentation.

2. Divine the dominant impression. Jack recommends that we cultivate a habit of identifying dominant impressions as we go through life. He gives some examples -- what's the dominant impression when you turn your car around a curve and suddenly the setting sun is directly in your eyes? What about you walk into an old cathedral in Europe at a quiet time? Or what about walking in your local shopping mall? Walking near a major reconstruction project? How about walking into a bakery?

Frequently, the source and quality of light is our first and dominant impression. However, sometimes other senses catch us. Silence, smells, noises. Moment to moment, what is the dominant impression?

3. Revealing characters. Instead of lecturing readers, just present the evidence. Even for the viewpoint character, emotions are often shown.

4. When to tell? There are some times when telling is appropriate. Most of the time, we show to convince the reader. But when the data is simply objective, maybe you should tell it. Or perhaps there is some really fascinating factual information? Some minor points may not need full treatment. And of course, sometimes we need to move quickly.

Incidentally, don't be surprised if one character tells another character something -- they aren't all writers!

"As a fiction writer, your goal is to immerse readers in your story world. That world must seem as much like the readers' real world as you can possibly make it. Readers experience the real world, and must experience your story world in a similar way: through evidence -- sense impressions or whatever -- that allow them to draw their own conclusions."

There you go. Stay in viewpoint, use the dominant impression, show us the other characters, and sometimes cheat a little. But most of the time, focus on experience, sensory impressions of the world.

Take a look at a work in progress. Are there places where you could substitute a little bit more showing? When your character comes through the door, what catches their attention? Make us feel that world, and let us draw our own conclusions.

Incidentally, there is a sidebar talking about first-person showing. Here's the first paragraph:

"Showing strong feeling, rather than lecturing readers about it, is possibly more difficult in first-person narration than anywhere else. Because the author is deep inside the head and heart of the I character so much of the time, it seems natural to blurt out feelings. In fact, the stronger the emotion being portrayed, the harder it is for the author to show rather than tell."

Then he gives an example, showing that events and cool first-person narration can give readers more impact and satisfaction than just describing the feelings.

Write!

EXERCISE: Fill in the blanks

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting Dec. 17, 2013

I know December always seems to be kind of a quiet time. Holidays and all that stuff. Still...

I woke up this morning with bits and pieces of a scenario drifting through my mind. So I thought perhaps you would enjoy turning it into something.

Basically, there are three characters. There is a visitor, a secretary, and the president.

In my dream, the visitor came in, and the secretary called the president. "Your 3 o'clock appointment is here."

But there was no answer.

The secretary knocked on the door, and then went inside. The president was gone. There was evidence in the room that he or she left in a rush.

That's really all I know. So you can fill in the blanks. Who is the visitor? For that matter, who is the president, and what are they president of? Where did the president go? Why? What is going on here? And of course, what happens next?

Go ahead. It's a little mystery, but you might enjoy knocking the scene together, and then seeing where it takes you.

EXERCISE: Jingle bells, jingle bells...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting Dec. 18, 2013

Here's one for the holidays. Take one of those Christmas stories, climaxes, or whatever that are floating around, and take it apart. Why does the little drummer boy madly rattattatting catch our fancy? Or perhaps it's Timothy Cratchit, also known as Tiny Tim, saying, "And God bless us, everyone"? (Not tiptoeing through the tulips? No, no, that's another tiny tim). Or... well, pick one.

What makes that story? Now, instead of cutting off hair or selling chains, what else could the characters be doing? Retell that story, with new characters, perhaps in a setting near you, or maybe just one that you prefer. If Scrooge is a Detroit used car salesman, what happens? Or...

Go ahead. This is a good one for those times when you're sitting in the middle of a celebration that maybe isn't quite as interesting to you as it is to those around you, and you're trying to figure out how you can be polite...

Something to think about, anyway. What makes Rudolph so much fun?