EXERCISE: How did she do that?

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Original Posting August 13, 2014

Over here

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2014/08/03/dear-hiring-manager-i-feel-your-pain/

There's a short article about job hunting. But when I read it, I got intrigued with the form. Here's the hook:

  A woman walked into our job-search workshop and raised her hand when I asked “Any impossible cases here?”

Short, but... You know you want to read the rest of it. Hooked, even if you aren't a job searcher or even terribly interested in HR.

Go ahead, take a look at the story. I didn't check, but there are several other articles by the same author there -- want to bet they have similar good starts?

So -- if you were running the job search workshop, and  someone raised their hand when you asked about impossible cases, what would their story be? And how would you help?

TECH: Writers FAQ, Posting Mechanics

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Original Posting August 29, 2014 Writers is currently at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/writers

Since occasionally I find out that the reason people aren't posting is that they aren't sure of the mechanics, let's go over them.

First of all, to send something to Writers, just send it as email to writers@mit.edu and the gears will grind, as mailman, the software behind the curtain, makes copies and sends them to each and every person on the list. Along the way, your subject line will have [Writers] added to it.

There's a couple of extra touches about this that are sometimes confusing. First of all, if you put multiple addresses -- I'm going to send it to all of them at once -- or if you put writers@mit.edu in the bcc field instead of a regular to address for some reason, mailman is likely to grab it and send me a message saying something like "implicit address used." It waits for me to log in and say "that's okay" before sending it to everyone, and depending on what I'm doing, it may take a while to get there.

Second, I have mailman set up to make the reply-to Address the originator, NOT the list. What does that mean? Well, let's say you read a posting, and decide to reply. You click reply in your email reader, write your answer, and send it. It only goes to the originator, not everyone! If you want to reply to the list, you have to edit the To field in your reply and make it writers@mit.edu.

Why do we do this? Well, mostly because occasionally people make a mistake and broadcast private exchanges if it set the other way. This way, yes, occasionally a public response gets sent as private, but we are less likely to have a private response turn public.

Please don't use the reply-to-all feature that some email readers offer. That usually ends up stuffing both the originator's email and the list email in, and all too often, means the originator gets two copies of your reply. Irritating!

What else? Well, most of us use these tags to identify what kind of mail we're sending

SUB for submissions
CRIT for critiques -- reviews, comments, not really critical.
TECH for technique, stuff about the craft
EXER for exercises to keep the words flowing
WOW for World Of Writing, bits and pieces from the larger world of writers
FILL for odds and ends that don't quite fit
INT for interactives, otherwise known as round robbins or group writing or some such

This is just a convention, intended to make it a little easier for people to figure out what a posting is about. Sometimes it can be hard to tell if someone is looking for comments (SUB), just playing with words (FILL), ranting (FILL), or maybe doing something else. These seem to cover most of the things we are likely to do -- although FAQs are actually an oddity.

So, the message gets sent to writers@mit.edu, gets broadcast to everyone, and replies go to their various destinations. It's basically a simple mailing list, which is kind of a free mimeograph or copying service, spraying copies across the Internet. (Does anyone remember the old mimeographs?)

Oh. One question that comes up from time to time. Do we have archives of the messages? The answer is no. The reason is simple. Early on, someone asked a lawyer about the intellectual property rights of material posted here -- could posting here somehow damage copyright or publication rights? One of the recommendations was that we not keep archives, because that might be ruled publication, if someone was pushing things. So, we quit keeping archives. Now, some of us do have personal email archives that are pretty deep, but that's not the same thing.

Ah -- if you are sending a document or something, please do copy-and-paste it right in the body of the message. No attachments. Too many of us have been burned by attachments that contained less-than-friendly stuff, so... Put it in the body if you want us to read it.

I think that's about it. If you have a question about posting, let me know and I'll try to answer.

TECH: Techniques of the Selling Writer (part 1)

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Original Posting August 31, 2014

I know, I know, I should have read it before. But... I'm going to do it now, okay. And while I'm meandering through it, I'll try to leave some signposts in case you want to follow along.

So, the book is Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain. I got my copy through Kindle, but you might be able to pick up a paper copy, too. It has nine chapters, and I'll probably cover a chapter in each part, so expect about nine or maybe ten pieces, because I may add a closing summary or something.

Ready to dig in?

Chapter 1, Fiction and You, starts right out with a little oracular wisdom. "A story is experience translated into literary process."

Interesting that he's talking about  literary process, not just literature. But you can think abut that bald statement about what a story is while we go on.

Next, Swain just gives away the store! He announces,

"You need to know only four things in order to write a solid story:
  how to group words into motivation-reaction units
  how to group motivation-reaction units into scenes and sequels
  how to group scenes and sequels into story pattern
  how to create the kind of characters that give a story life."

Kaboom! Just four things to learn? And then he promises us that the rest of the book is going to show us how to do it, step-by-step, in detail. Pretty impressive. But wait... That's chapters 2 through 9. So what is chapter one about?

See, if that's all you need to learn, how come so many people have trouble learning to write? Swain points out eight traps that many beginning writers fall into, and talks about why each one is a trap and how to avoid it. You will want to read the book to get all the juicy details, but these are the eight traps, in kind of abbreviated form.

1. We've got an unrealistic view of writing. As Swain points out, almost anyone can learn to play tennis, and with a little work, get good enough to be a local master. But only a few people are going to play Wimbledon! Similarly, almost anyone can learn to write, and get good enough -- but only a few are going to have the combination of mastery of technique, imagination, luck, and other bits to become great writers.
2. Looking for those magic secrets. Whether it's the magic formula for plotting, the mechanical kit for creating great characters, or whatever, the feeling that there's a secret that will let us write... Let's face it, the X-ray glasses in the back of the comic book didn't give you X-ray vision, and there just aren't magic secrets that will turn you into an overnight great writer.
3. You gotta do it the hard way. This is the flip side of the search for the magic secrets, the feeling that all you can do is read the great writers and spend years bashing your head against the wall, alone, in your lonely garret, with a candle for company. There are some matters of craft and technique that you can learn, through books, writing groups, and similar boosts to get you headed the right way faster.
4. Avoiding feelings. Readers don't come to fiction for facts and figures, they are looking for emotions, for thrills, chills, and other affairs of the heart. Writers have feelings, and like actors, part of the art is arranging to take the reader with you on a trip into the heart of feeling, of emotion. So don't imagine that you are going to be an ice-cold writer, because it won't work.
5. Objective! Just the facts. This is the other part of avoiding feelings, is the desire to cling to facts, to make the world and the writing as objective as possible. Sorry, Charlie, readers are looking for books that feel good, not objectivity.
6. What are the rules? Games, highway driving, in many parts of our lives, we expect that following the rules will get us through. But here is where fiction joins the world of art -- the rules are at best guidelines, recommendations that even the best writers sometimes break.
7. I don't want to be wrong. This is part of the search for rules. After all, if you know what the rules are, then you can make sure that everything you do is correct, right? Let me ask you, when you listen to a baby learning to talk, do they always say the right thing? When you are talking, do you remember all the rules and use them to decide what to say? Nope -- the baby, and you and I, just sling those words out there, and sometimes we get it wrong. That is okay! That's how we learn.
8. The last trap is the trap of the artist, who declares, "I don't need to learn technique, I am an artist!" Well, actually the great artists all spent years studying technique, until it became almost habitual. So... Learn the techniques.

It's a great chapter, both in warning us about the traps that we can fall into and giving pep talks about how to deal with each one. There's plenty of good material there, but I'm going to finish with a paragraph that I thought really stood out.

"So buckle down and forge yourself a kit of techniques out of the iron of your own copy. Each story will give you more experience to translate into literary process. Each trick mastered will free you just a little more from your feelings of inadequacy and frustration."

All right! So get out there and write, write, write.

An exercise? Well, it would have to be a bit of self-reflection, which you don't have to share with anyone. Take a look at the eight traps -- unrealistic expectations, searching for magic shortcuts, insisting on doing it the hard way, avoiding engaging your feelings, trying to be objective, looking for rules, trying to avoid making a mistake, and refusing to learn technique because it should be artistic. Do you feel yourself attracted to any of these? Have you fallen into one of these? Tell you what, write a short story about your friend who had trouble with one of these, and what it lead to, and how they learned to handle it.

And I'll be back after a while with part 2 -- the words!

Available over here:
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain-ebook/dp/B0099P9UI0/

EXERCISE: The stories of our lives?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting Sept. 4, 2014

Interesting. Over here

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2014/08/31/writing-excuses-9-36-writing-instruction/

David Farland mentions that when he teaches writing, he starts by pointing out that we all hear and tell stories all the time. Someone asks, "Where were you yesterday?" and we tell a little story, we set the scene, we describe the characters and the action, we do an impromptu storytelling session -- and we don't even notice it. In our daily lives, we trade stories, we learn from them, we make and tell stories.

In David Swain's book, Techniques of the Selling Writer, he makes the point that the reader has not seen your story world -- even if it is just the house next door, the farm in the middle of Ohio or maybe the farm in the middle of Colorado (which are very different farms, let me reassure you), or the cold water walk up flat in Queens, the luxury hotel in the Bahamas... or even the lunar mines where convicts are sent to do hard labor? Wherever it is, you need to show it to your reader, to make them smell it, hear it, see it come to life around them.

So, the exercise should be simple. Take a scene from your recent life. Going shopping, to the bank, the dentist (ouch!) or whatever. It doesn't need to be a great conflict, just something you remember quite well. And answer the question from your friend, "Where did you go? What happened?"

Tell us all about it! Make us smell the deep, earthy odor of the manure along the rose bushes, the rich odor of the roses glistening with dew in the morning sunshine, and show us the cat slinking around the bottom of the...

Go ahead. Write us into that scene.

TECH: Techniques of the Selling Writer (part 2)

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Original Posting Sept. 7, 2014

Having escaped the traps that keep us from writing, it must be time to start looking at techniques. And Dwight Swain dives right in at the beginning, with chapter 2 dedicated to "The Words You Write." This chapter, like chapter one, starts off with an oracular pronouncement, "A story is words strung on paper." I'll leave you to assimilate that at your leisure.

Now, Swain does warn us about falling into the grammar nazi influence. It ain't all about the rules, honest, it's about the way you do it. But there are some things you should know, or at least think about:

1. Choosing the right word.
2. Make it vivid!
3. Keep your meaning clear.

So how do you chose the right words? Think about selection, arrangement, and description.

Why selection? Well, you are showing your reader the lives of your characters. Just the tiny glimpses that we convey through words. So your words need to indicate who is there -- a doctor uses different words from a four-year-old. When and where is all this happening, and what are they doing? Why is this character paying attention? How is the reader seeing this? All of this influences your choice of words.

Arrangement? Well, you need to arrange the words, the events, to influence the reader. Don't worry, we'll come back to that. Next chapter, actually, we'll start to take a hard look at how to influence readers.

And description. Words bring description to life. So use the senses, make it vivid.

Making it vivid involves using all the sense, picking pictorial nouns that show us specific, concrete, definite objects and active verbs that show it all happening.

Finally, keep the meaning clear. A key to this is that the words people use reveal their feelings. Not the denotations, the dictionary meanings, but the connotations, all those wonderful layers of social overtones.

Swain wants to avoid burying us in the stables of grammar, but he does suggest that we should beware some problems. For example, watch for monotonous sentence structure. Don't separate your subject and your verb with a full field of qualifiers and funny phrases, it makes it hard for the reader to figure out who is doing what. Keep track of adverbs, they like to hang out on the strangest places. Really. Twice-told tales may be okay, but twice or thrice used words and phrases can be distracting, especially if you do it by accident. We've already mentioned the dangers of grammar uber alles, but watch for those sneaky rules. And, the biggest and bestest, don't bury your meaning! Make your meaning instantly clear.

Now, there's a lot of good fun with all the parts of speech and whatnot, so do read the book.

Before we pause or jump on ahead to chapter three, where we will look at using language to manipulate the reader's feelings, let me quote a bit from the end of chapter two:

"And so it goes with words and language. They're tools. All your writing life, you work with them . . . Using them to tie your reading to your story."

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Let's see, an exercise about words? How about a simple one? Take something you have written, and go over a section of it. Look hard at the words you are using. Do they show selection, arrangement, and description? Are these the words that your viewpoint character would use? Do they bring our sense to life? How vivid are they? How about clarity, using both the obvious meaning and social overtones? Okay? Take a chance and considering polishing that section, making sure that the words you use reflect the character, wake up our senses, as well as being vivid and clear.

TECH: Techniques of the Selling Writer (part 3)

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Original Posting Sept. 18, 2014

I think this may be one of the longer chapters. It's certainly one of the more exciting chapters in my opinion.

Chapter 3 has the title "Plain Facts about Feelings." It also has one of these great little sayings to lead us off, "A story is a succession of motivations and reactions."

Now right up front, Swain seems to be almost cheerleading:

How do we communicate?
And the crowd roars "With words!"
What do we communicate?
And the crowd roars again, "Feelings!"

So here we are talking about how to use words to communicate feelings. Swain advises us that you build feeling through motivation and reaction. All right. There's that motivation and reaction thing again. Watch out for it, it's going to be important.

Swain says it's actually fairly easy to communicate feelings. All we have to do is nine steps:

1. Decide what's good and bad.
2. Give your reader a compass – a character!
3. Create a story world.
4. Inject an element of change.
5. Use cause and effect for motive power.
6. Build development with motivation and reaction.
7. Make motivation-reaction units (MRUs) shape emotion.
8. Measure copy length with tension.
9. Learn to write in MRUs.

That's it. And Swain gives us these steps at the beginning of the chapter. The rest of the chapter actually explains each step and goes through it in close detail. As usual, there's a lot more in the book than I'm going to summarize here. You really should go read the book. But I'll at least try to hit the high points.

1. What do we mean by good and bad? Consider these – a rainstorm, bombing raid, strike, seduction, divorce, marriage, cigarette, chocolate bar, job. Are they good or bad? I think everyone agrees maybe. To decide if something is good or bad, we need a specific instance and a yardstick, what are we going to evaluate it against? Basically, we're looking for what it means, how significant it is to someone. How do they feel about it, what are their private reactions?

2. So how do you make readers care? It's very simple, you give them a stake, you get them emotionally involved, because of the focal character. The focal character gives the reader orientation. A story is not really about something, it is about someone's reactions, feelings, emotions, impulses, dreams, ambitions, inner drives and conflicts. "Every story is somebody's story." The focal character is that person who owns the story. The focal character provides continuity, meaning, and most importantly, feelings. The focal character is not necessarily a hero, and may not be the viewpoint character. However, the focal character is the central character who determines the reader's orientation towards the story.

3. So what about the story world? Well the critical three parts to remember are that your reader has not been there. Even if it's the house next door, they haven't seen it. Second, the story world is sensory. You need to fill our senses with it. And third, the story world is subjective. It's not an objective facts and figures world, it's the world where the focal character is full of feelings.

4. Story is about change. How does the focal character move from one state of affairs and mind to another? There is external physical movement and internal emotional movement. In a story, somebody does something. We need to have extra on developments that lead the focal character to feel and behave in constructive ways towards the story problem. You should make all the events important to the development of the story.

5. The story world is built on cause and effect. In the real world, we may recognize that things are pretty complicated, but in our stories, we want simpler relationships that fulfill our expectations. Because of A, B. A is the cause, B is the effect.

6. Now we get to motivation and reaction. Motivation and reaction are simply cause-and-effect mediated through people. The cause is a motivating stimulus, and the reaction is character reaction. And just like cause-and-effect, we want one motivating stimulus to produce one character reaction. A chain of motivation and reaction, motivation and reaction, motivation and reaction produces story.

7. Now, the pattern of emotion at least in the story world is very straightforward. A, a motivating stimulus or cause leads to B, character reaction, changes in the state of the mind of the focal character, which results in C, overt expressions of feelings, observable reactions. When we write a story, we follow this step-by-step. A motivating stimulus followed by character reaction, in the three parts of feelings, actions, and speech. Now who do you suppose is running through this pattern of emotion? That's right, the focal character.

Let's take a little closer look at some of this MRU, because it's the important part of this chapter. First, the motivating stimulus needs to be significant to the character. You need to choose the effect you want to have, pick the phenomenon, frame it, exclude anything extraneous, and describe it in terms that reflect the character. The motivating stimulus needs to be pertinent to the story. That means it needs to be relevant, it needs to show change, it needs to logically evoke the intended change, and it needs to push behavior. Finally, the motivating stimulus needs to motivate. It needs to demand a response, and keep the focal character active. Second, the character reaction really is whatever the focal character feels and does because of the motivating stimulus. This needs to be significant, pertinent, motivated, characteristic of the focal character, and reasonable.

8. So how do you decide how much attention, how much text, to write? Well, you need to provide proportion. You're going to write to fit, with feeling measured on an emotional clock. What does that mean? Well, basically we're trying to deal with tension. Relaxed time goes fast, while tense time takes forever. Tension is mostly fear. And the more tense the moment is, the more words you should write. The points that you need to bear down on are the ones that influence the story development. The time for the most detail is when the focal character's mind changes. Go ahead and summarize when there's really no change.

What we're doing is detailing why the change happens. Part of this is subjective, and depends on the character. However, part of it is objective. Does the focal character have to adjust? How much do they have to adjust? How fast do they have to adjust? How hard is it for them to decide? How hard is it for them to act?

At this point, Swain provides a summary of his chapter. Basically, you're going to summarize facts and mechanics. That's not what the story is really about. You're going to detail the emotional parts, where we create tension or the focal character's mind changes.

9. So how do you write an MRU? Actually, it's pretty simple. First, you write one sentence without the character. You follow that with a sentence about the focal character, showing how they react to whatever happened in the first sentence. Now you don't have to do single sentences. You can do units, two or three sentences about something happening, the motivational stimulus, followed by two or three sentences about how the focal character responds.

How do you practice writing MRUs? Swain suggests doing it the other way around. First, write something, however you want to tackle it. Then go back and revise, checking to make sure that when the focal character responds, there's a motivational stimulus just in front of it, and that every motivational stimulus has a character reaction after it.

Whoosh! Lots of juicy stuff there! But the key thing really is this idea of the MRU, the motivational stimulus-character reaction unit as the building block for communicating feelings as our focal character deals with change in the story world.

How about an exercise? Well, one possibility is to take something you like, a short story, a section of a novel, or something else in the fiction line, and see if they use MRUs. Is there a motivational stimulus followed by a character reaction, and then another one, and another one? Along the way, you might want to look for the focal character, although that's usually fairly easy. For bonus points, take one of your own short stories or other work and see if you can polish up the MRUs in it.

Write!