Passivity

Some more little bits of writing advice I’ve come across here and there, posted for my reference, as much as yours.

T. Gene Davis offers advice, as well as publishing family-friendly genre fiction from themselves and others, on their blog. In this post here, they detail ways to put your submissions above the competition, and 2 of the 3 are interesting and practical suggestions – avoid using narrative summaries, and avoid those evil, dastardly passive sentences (which they expand on here).

And speaking of passive sentences, if you already know they’re bad, but struggle with locating them in your work, this post here could help you out.

The Dread Month November

It’s that time of year again for writers. NaFuNoWriMo, or National Fucking Novel Writing Month.

After hitting over 52k last year, I’ve decided to cut myself some slack this time around, and instead of a 50k novel, I’m just planning to bust out a 30k novella (though if I hit 30k and the story isn’t told, I’m going to be annoyed. If I finish the novella before the end of the month though? Hey, bonus editing time!).

So, here are some hints for my fellow NaNoers.

  • Planning. I know it’s a bit late for this ’cause the month has already started, but for future reference outline. Outline as little or as loosely as you want, but have something there, some skeleton of a story for you to stitch wordmeat onto. Trust me. ‘Cause writing 50k words in a month isn’t really that hard, but writing 50k words in a month that form a good story that you’re mostly proud of? That either requires a fluke, or a lot of planning.
  • Goddamnit, stop! Unless you need to bank some words ’cause you know you need to take a day off in the near future, always stop soon after hitting your wordcount for the day. I know this seems counter-intuitive ’cause you’re aiming for LOTS of words, but if you keep writing until you hit the end of the chapter or some other natural break, you’re going to find it so much harder to pick up tomorrow. Stop a couple of sentences into a scene, so the next day you already know what scene you’re working on, and hopefully by the time you’ve finished that scene, your brain is in gear and ready for the next.
  • It’s not the end of the world. Seriously, if you don’t hit your word limit one day, or every damn day of November, it’s not the end of the world. If you hit your wordcount every day, but at the end of the month you’re pretty sure the story is an unpolishable turd, it’s not the end of the world. The great thing about NaNo is that a month really isn’t very much time. If you’ve got a project that you’re not sure about – dedicate a month of your life to it, and if it turns out to have not been worth it, so what? You only lost a month, it’s no big deal (unless you’ve got a terminal medical condition, in which case, fuck, I’m really sorry).
    Plenty of us writer types deal with depression and anxiety, and it’s really not worth damaging your mental health for the sake of this little festival of words. Look after yourself.
  • Have fun, experiment. David Foster Wallace certainly didn’t write Infinite Jest in a month, but Philip K. Dick probably churned out plenty of great novels in less than thirty days. So, maybe this isn’t the best time to start on the literary opus you’ve had in mind for the past three decades, but you could sure as hell write that book about a Werewolf… detective… tracking a missing… heirloom potato farmer… IN SPACE. Do something you normally wouldn’t do. Experiment with genres, experiment with styles. And yeah, have fun with it, otherwise, what’s the point?
  • Make your own rules. Finish something you already started. Re-write something that desperately needs it. Edit the everlasting stupid out of last year’s NaNo manuscript. Don’t feel like you need to write 1,667 words a day to take part. If you want to take advantage of this month-long wordfest, do it, get involved, and get involved in whatever way suits you.

And I think I’m done…

Chuck Palahniuk

There is an awful lot of writing advice out there on the internet if you go looking for it. But where most of it is about the act/process of writing, or big-picture information about plotting and shaping a story, this is one of the few pieces I’ve come across that’s actually about changing the way you think about presenting a story.

I can’t remember where I found it as it was quite a while ago, but it’s interesting piece of advice, and taking it on-board may be more difficult than you think. It’s worth trying if only to flex your writer muscles and see how it works for you and how you like it. For me, using this technique, I tend to end up with a certain sort of detached story, which I think is more to do with me than with the advice itself… but either way, this is something I try and keep in mind when writing about interactions between two people, to show some of the emotions beneath the surface as action, rather than just telling the reader what those emotions are…

In six seconds, you’ll hate me.
But in six months, you’ll be a better writer.
From this point forward—at least for the next half year—you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.
The list should also include: Loves and Hates.
And it should include: Is and Has, but we’ll get to those later.
Until some time around Christmas, you can’t write: Kenny wondered if Monica didn’t like him going out at night…”
Instead, you’ll have to Un-pack that to something like: “The mornings after Kenny had stayed out, beyond the last bus, until he’d had to bum a ride or pay for a cab and got home to find Monica faking sleep, faking because she never slept that quiet, those mornings, she’d only put her own cup of coffee in the microwave. Never his.”
Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them. Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.
Instead of saying: “Adam knew Gwen liked him.” You’ll have to say: “Between classes, Gwen had always leaned on his locker when he’d go to open it. She’s roll her eyes and shove off with one foot, leaving a black-heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left the smell of her perfume. The combination lock would still be warm from her butt. And the next break, Gwen would be leaned there, again.”
In short, no more short-cuts. Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.
Typically, writers use these “thought” verbs at the beginning of a paragraph (In this form, you can call them “Thesis Statements” and I’ll rail against those, later). In a way, they state the intention of the paragraph. And what follows, illustrates them.
For example:
“Brenda knew she’d never make the deadline. She was backed up from the bridge, past the first eight or nine exits. Her cell phone battery was dead. At home, the dogs would need to go out, or there would be a mess to clean up. Plus, she’d promised to water the plants for her neighbor…”
Do you see how the opening “thesis statement” steals the thunder of what follows? Don’t do it.
If nothing else, cut the opening sentence and place it after all the others. Better yet, transplant it and change it to: Brenda would never make the deadline.
Thinking is abstract. Knowing and believing are intangible. Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing. And loving and hating.
Don’t tell your reader: “Lisa hated Tom.”
Instead, make your case like a lawyer in court, detail by detail.
Present each piece of evidence. For example: “During roll call, in the breath after the teacher said Tom’s name, in that moment before he could answer, right then, Lisa would whisper-shout ‘Butt Wipe,’ just as Tom was saying, ‘Here’.”
One of the most-common mistakes that beginning writers make is leaving their characters alone. Writing, you may be alone. Reading, your audience may be alone. But your character should spend very, very little time alone. Because a solitary character starts thinking or worrying or wondering.
For example: Waiting for the bus, Mark started to worry about how long the trip would take…”
A better break-down might be: “The schedule said the bus would come by at noon, but Mark’s watch said it was already 11:57. You could see all the way down the road, as far as the Mall, and not see a bus. No doubt, the driver was parked at the turn-around, the far end of the line, taking a nap. The driver was kicked back, asleep, and Mark was going to be late. Or worse, the driver was drinking, and he’d pull up drunk and charge Mark seventy-five cents for death in a fiery traffic accident…”
A character alone must lapse into fantasy or memory, but even then you can’t use “thought” verbs or any of their abstract relatives.
Oh, and you can just forget about using the verbs forget and remember.
No more transitions such as: “Wanda remembered how Nelson used to brush her hair.”
Instead: “Back in their sophomore year, Nelson used to brush her hair with smooth, long strokes of his hand.”
Again, Un-pack. Don’t take short-cuts.
Better yet, get your character with another character, fast.
Get them together and get the action started. Let their actions and words show their thoughts. You—stay out of their heads.
And while you’re avoiding “thought” verbs, be very wary about using the bland verbs “is” and “have.”
For example:
“Ann’s eyes are blue.”
“Ann has blue eyes.”
Versus:
“Ann coughed and waved one hand past her face, clearing the cigarette smoke from her eyes, blue eyes, before she smiled…”
Instead of bland “is” and “has” statements, try burying your details of what a character has or is, in actions or gestures. At its most basic, this is showing your story instead of telling it.
And forever after, once you’ve learned to Un-pack your characters, you’ll hate the lazy writer who settles for: “Jim sat beside the telephone, wondering why Amanda didn’t call.”
Please. For now, hate me all you want, but don’t use thought verbs. After Christmas, go crazy, but I’d bet money you won’t.
(…)
For this month’s homework, pick through your writing and circle every “thought” verb. Then, find some way to eliminate it. Kill it by Un-packing it.
Then, pick through some published fiction and do the same thing. Be ruthless.
“Marty imagined fish, jumping in the moonlight…”
“Nancy recalled the way the wine tasted…”
“Larry knew he was a dead man…”
Find them. After that, find a way to re-write them. Make them stronger.

Berserker

About a month ago the artist Eliza Gauger posted a series of tweets about artistic/creative Berserkers, and I finally found a term to describe my writing practise.

[tweet https://twitter.com/3liza/status/630908863110230016]

[tweet https://twitter.com/3liza/status/630909051736494080]

[tweet https://twitter.com/3liza/status/630910654249984000]

You need that berserker nature – you know why? Because maybe you’re not good enough… yet. Are you going to get good enough sitting around and waiting for inspiration to strike? Are you going to get good enough if you can only work when your surroundings are just so? Are you going to get good enough talking about your writing?

No. You just have to do it.

Similarly, if you’re worried that story you’re working on is shit – finish it anyway*. Maybe it will be shit when you’ve finished, but you’ll have spent time developing skills that you don’t work on every time you start a story and then abandon it because something isn’t working.

 

*As with all writing advice, this comes with a caveat; always in moderation. If you’ve written 10k words on something and it’s not working, there could be a reason for it. But short stories? Anything you can finish in under 6k? Finish it. Just fucking finish it.