Write

Articles about craft.

Make The Music You Make

by

This post by John Vorhaus originally appeared on Writer Unboxed on 3/27/14.

I’m addressing the kids today, and if you’re not one, but know someone who is, won’t you please pass this along? (If you find it worthy, I mean.) I’m hoping to help your young peers understand what to expect as they walk the writer’s road.

I was a pack rat of words long before computers came along. I filled journal after journal with tiny, tense, Bic-penned attempts to master the mere act of putting words on the page. What I wrote was so stupid! So self-absorbed and questiony. Why am I here? What is my purpose? What do I have to do to get laid? I hated almost everything I wrote almost as soon as I wrote it. I didn’t know the first thing about story, and that’s what galled me most of all. My writing went nowhere, and I knew it. But I didn’t stop for the same reason you don’t stop; for the same reason junkies don’t stop. We’ve chosen our art, or it’s chosen us, and now we have to deal.

So I kept filling the pages of the horrible journals (filling, primarily, unlined black hardbound books that, because I am a pack rat of words, rest in the eaves of my very garage even as we speak). I discovered my first rule of writing: Write what you can write, or, more broadly, make the art you can make. And don’t lament the art that lies presently beyond your grasp. Presently that will change.

I had to write the horrible journals to write myself out of the horrible journals.

I had to start somewhere.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer Unboxed.

 

How To Tell A Great Story, Visualized

by

This post by Kate Torgovnick May originally appeared on the TED blog on 11/8/13.

A good story can make a campfire that much eerier. A good story can flip a conversation at a party from completely awkward to wonderful. A good story can glue your nose to a book. And, on screen, a good story can rivet generation after generation.

So, uh, how do you tell one?

Andrew Stanton, the Pixar writer and director behind both Toy Story and WALL-E, has many ideas, and he shared his expertise in his TED Talk, The clues to a great story. Below, see his golden rules of storytelling visualized by Karin Hueck and Rafael Quick of the Brazilian culture and science magazine Superinteressante. Each month, the magazine’s editors take a TED Talk and give it to their graphic wizards to interpret in any way they see fit. Here, a reimagining of Stanton’s talk on stories. Via the Ugly Duckling. Just click the image to see a larger version.

 

Click here to see the accompanying infographic on the TED blog.

 

Why Teens Love Dystopias

by

This article by Dana Stevens originally appeared on Slate on 3/21/14.

It’s not a mystery why so many young-adult best-sellers (and the lucrative movie franchises based on them) would take place in post-apocalyptic societies governed by remote authoritarian entities and rigidly divided into warring factions. The word dystopia comes from a Greek root that roughly translates as “bad place,” and what place could be worse than high school? Adolescence is not for the faint of heart. The to-do list for the decade between ages 10 and 20 includes separating from your parents, finding your place among your peers at school, beginning to make decisions about your own future, and—oh yes—figuring out how to relate to the world, and yourself, as a suddenly and mystifyingly sexual being.

The strong link between YA and dystopia is no trendy post–Hunger Games phenomenon. Grim allegorical tales about dysfunctional futuristic societies have been staples in popular books for young people at least since Lois Lowry’s The Giver series in the early ’90s (a film adaptation of the first volume is set to come out this summer), if not as far back as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, published in 1954. But since the massive success of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy about a bleak futuristic society that pits teenagers against one another in a televised gladiatorial fight to the death, young readers—along with the many not-so-young readers who are now consuming YA lit in mass quantities—can’t seem to get enough of projecting themselves into the future. And that’s despite the fact that the future, as presented both in the real-life media and in the entertainment we consume, looks to be fairly awful: a bare-knuckles struggle for survival in the ruins of a civilization laid waste by war and/or environmental disaster.

 

Click here to read the full article on Slate.

Related, also from Slate: Everyone Knows Where They Belong – The Choosing Ceremony, the Sorting Hat, the Reaping: YA and the quest to know who you are

 

10 Keys to Plot Structure by Kay Keppler

by

This post by Kay Keppler originally appeared as a guest post on Beth Barany‘s Writer’s Fun Zone blog on 3/20/14.

Note from Beth Barany: Let’s welcome back Kay Keppler for another month with Writer’s Fun Zone! In today’s article, Kay discusses 10 keys to plot structure. Enjoy!

***

When writers talk about plot and character, they often reference movies or TV shows. That’s because film provides a visual — an extra dimension that helps viewers understand the story.

Screenwriters have a lot less space than novelists to tell their stories (120 pages!), so they have to get right to it. Michael Hauge is a film doctor who crystalizes plot structure into key 10 elements that will help any writer, screen or otherwise. These are:

 

1. The first and best rule above all rules

What’s happening now must be more interesting than what just happened. The whole point of structure — of your entire story — is to elicit emotion in your reader. If your story is increasingly compelling as you move forward, you succeeded.

 

2. The goal is everything

Your story’s structure depends on its events and turning points, which spring from your hero’s goal — a clear, visible objective that she’s desperate to achieve. Ask yourself, “What does my hero want to achieve by the end of the story? Will readers root for her to reach that finish line?” Then apply scene questions: “What does my hero want in this scene? How do her actions in this scene move her closer to that overall desire?” If your honest answer is “I don’t know” or “They don’t,” then your story, not just your structure, is comatose, if not dead.

 

3. More, bigger, faster, badder

Structure is built on desire, but the emotion you elicit grows out of conflict. The more obstacles your hero must overcome, and the more impossible it seems that he’ll succeed, the more captivated your reader will be. The conflict must build: each successive problem, opponent, hurdle, weakness, fear, and setback must be greater than the one that preceded it.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer’s Fun Zone.

 

Are You Publishable or Not? Reading the Tea Leaves.

by

This post by Dave King originally appeared on Writer Unboxed on 3/18/14. Since it’s addressed primarily to those seeking mainstream, traditional publication it may not seem like a fit for Publetariat, but now that many are making the wise decision to adopt a hybrid publication model, it will likely be of interest to many Publetariat readers.

Writing never feels more lonely than after you’ve sent your manuscript out to every agent and publisher you can think of and gotten nowhere. Of course, you can always take comfort in the long list of massively successful books that were initially rejected by nearly everyone who saw them. But for every brilliant book that gets rejected out of blindness or stupidity, there are thousands that get rejected because they’re just not very good. How can you tell which camp you fall into?

The quality of your rejections are a good sign. Granted, form rejections don’t tell you much, but if all of your rejections are form letters, it’s probably time to either start a major rewrite or put this manuscript in a drawer and start the next one. (If your manuscript is getting repeatedly turned down on the query alone, you might want to take a second look at your query letter.) If you’re getting glowing rejections (“I love the book, but it’s not right for our list.”) then you’re probably doing something right and should keep sending the manuscript out — though you might want to refine your agent search to make it more likely it will hit the right desk. And it’s still a good sign even if you’re getting, “I love the book, but . . . “ If a publishing professional has taken time to give you free advice, then your manuscript is probably worth the effort.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer Unboxed.

 

'True Detective' Creator Nic Pizzolatto Looks Back On Season 1

by

This interview by Alan Sepinwall originally appeared on HitFix on 3/10/14. It’s being shared here because True Detective has deep literary roots that extend all the way back to The King in Yellow (public domain work, free in Kindle format on Amazon), a dark and somewhat mysterious story written by Robert W. Chambers and first published in 1895. That story has gone on to become a major influence on such celebrated authors as Lovecraft and Gaiman, and of course, on True Detective series creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto.

 

Earlier tonight, “True Detective” concluded its first season — and, with it, the stories of Rust Cohle and Marty Hart. I reviewed the finale here, and as a bookend to a conversation we had before the season started, I spoke with the show’s creator, Nic Pizzolatto, about the finale and the season as a whole (along with a vague but intriguing hint about season 2, which hasn’t been officially ordered yet, but only because I suspect HBO is waiting until they’ve signed the actors they want before announcing). That’s coming up just as soon as I strike you as more of a talker than a doer…

The structure of the series means you could have done anything with the ending, up to and including killing the two leads, because you get a clean slate with the next season. Why did you choose this particular way to end the story?

Nic Pizzolatto:
This is a story that began with its ending in mind, that Cohle would be articulating, without sentimentality or illusion, an actual kind of optimism. That line, you ask me, the light’s winning, that was one of the key pieces of dialogue that existed at the very beginning of the series’ conception. For me as a storyteller, I want to follow the characters and the story through what they organically demand. And it would have been the easiest thing in the world to kill one or both of these guys. I even had an idea where something more mysterious happened to them, where they vanished into the unknown and Gilbough and Papania had to clean up the mess and nobody knows what happens to them. Or it could have gone full blown supernatural. But I think both of those things would have been easy, and they would have denied the sort of realist questions the show had been asking all along. To retreat to the supernatural, or to take the easy dramatic route of killing a character in order to achieve an emotional response from the audience, I thought would have been a disservice to the story. What was more interesting to me is that both these men are left in a place of deliverance, a place where even Cohle might be able to acknowledge the possibility of grace in the world. Because one way both men were alike in their failures was that neither man could admit the possibility of grace. I don’t mean that in a religious sense. Where we leave Cohle, this man hasn’t made a 180 change or anything like that. He’s moved maybe 5 degrees on the meter, but the optimistic metaphor he makes at the end, it’s not sentimental; it’s purely based on physics. Considering what these characters had been through, it seemed hard to me to work out a way where they both live and they both exit the show to live better lives beyond the boundaries of these eight episodes. Now they are going to go on and live forever beyond the margins of the show, and our sense, at least, is they haven’t changed in any black to white way, but there is a sense that they have been delivered from the heart of darkness. They did not avert their eyes, whatever their failings as men. And that when they exit, they are in a different place.

 

Click here to read the full interview on HitFix.

 

Parsing Is Such Sweet Sorrow

by

This article by Emma Pierson originally appeared on Five Thirty Eight on 3/17/14.

More than 400 years after Shakespeare wrote it, we can now say that “Romeo and Juliet” has the wrong name. Perhaps the play should be called “Juliet and Her Nurse,” which isn’t nearly as sexy, or “Romeo and Benvolio,” which has a whole different connotation.

I discovered this by writing a computer program to count how many lines each pair of characters in “Romeo and Juliet” spoke to each other,1 with the expectation that the lovers in the greatest love story of all time would speak more than any other pair. I wanted Romeo and Juliet to end up together — if they couldn’t in the play, at least they could in my analysis — but the math paid no heed to my desires. Juliet speaks more to her nurse than she does to Romeo; Romeo speaks more to Benvolio than he does to Juliet. Romeo gets a larger share of attention from his friends (Benvolio and Mercutio) and even his enemies (Tybalt) than he does from Juliet; Juliet gets a larger share of attention from her nurse and her mother than she does from Romeo. The two appear together in only five scenes out of 25. We all knew that this wasn’t a play predicated on deep interactions between the two protagonists, but still.

 

Click here to read the full article on Five Thirty Eight.

 

Lush Rot

by

This article by Lincoln Michel originally appeared on Guernica on 3/17/14.

Flannery O’Connor, True Detective, Southern hip-hop, and the gnarled roots of Southern Gothic.

I don’t remember drinking sweet tea as a child, and no one in my family wore seersucker. But I do remember the kudzu. There wasn’t as much of “the vine that ate the South” in Virginia as there was in the Deep South, but there was a growth of it hidden in the woods that stretched between two branches of our neighborhood. My friends and I would play back there, launching smoke bombs from beneath the cover of giant leaves. It had already overtaken a football field length of land, descending down from a green tumor of a hill. Each year, it grew a little more, eating into the neighbors’ backyards.

The South is in a perpetual state of crumbling, at least in its own mythology. The paint is peeling off the walls. The yard is littered with trash. General Sherman burned the countryside to the ground. The plantation houses have been chewed apart by termites. Everything is collapsing and being overtaken by vines. In Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner describes the Deep South as “dead since 1865 and peopled with garrulous outraged baffled ghosts.” Of course, most of us can only play the most microscopic of violins for the collapse of an economy dependent on slavery, brutality, and dehumanization.

It’s comforting for Americans to see bigotry in art and entertainment confined to one ever-shrinking area. It allows us to admit our sins while simultaneously distancing ourselves from them.

This sense of rot and ruin is somehow fertile, like compost. The same region has given us everything from deep soul and bluegrass to southern hip-hop and sludge metal. Southern literature is also vast, yet perhaps best associated with Southern Gothic—a style of American literature that presents the South as land of freaks, violence, and the grotesque. This is the tradition that gave us such titans as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, and Cormac McCarthy.

 

Click here to read the full article on Guernica.

 

The Author Monthly Planner: A Freebie to Organize Your Writing and Marketing Life

by

This post by Toni Tesori originally appeared on Duolit on 3/11/14.

We’re stuck in this cycle where, for at least one week every month, one member of our family is sick (I blame Olivia for bringing home the germies from daycare, BTW).

While being sick doesn’t rate highly on the ol’ fun-o-meter, it did give me an awfully convenient excuse to skip out on my regular cleaning routine.

After catching Olivia practically wading through a pile of books in her bedroom, however, I decided that enough was enough. It was time to get back on my game.

So, I made a to-do list. A looong to-do list. Pretty reasonable, right?

The result? My house is still a mess.

Wanna know why?

To-do lists suck.

Listen, if you’re one of those folks who make perfectly reasonable to-do lists and attack them daily with gusto, I envy you. I wish the doggone things worked that well for me!

Personally, I’ve always found to-do lists a bit mocking. Appealing to the procrastination side of my personality, those lengthy lists just beg me to move some of the items to tomorrow’s list. As long as the tasks get done eventually, right?

Hint: those moved items never get done. Because more and more tasks are added and fewer are crossed off. Before long, I simply despise the sight of that stupid list! I become completely overwhelmed with the number of tasks, and my brain decides that surfing Tumblr is a far more appealing use of my time.

Does any of this sound familiar? If you’ve ever used such a list to keep track of your author-ly life to-do’s, I bet you’ve experienced the something similar.

 

It’s Not the List’s Fault

I’m being awfully hard on the humble to-do list, when it’s not the fault of the list itself. The fault instead lies in the to-do list process. Since the list is, by design, a running list of tasks to work on right now, it offers no perspective; it doesn’t tell me why I’m checking off the items. There’s no birds-eye view of where I’ve been, where I’m going or any kind of final destination.

This is especially important for authors: most of us don’t work on this authoring gig full-time, and jumping in and out of an ever-mounting task list is difficult/scary without an overall plan. We need a status update reminding us why we’re doing what we’re doing, where we’re trying to go and what we need to work on right now to achieve those future goals.

Basically: instead of tasks, we need focus.

 

Focus in a PDF: The Author Monthly Planner

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes a link to a free, downloadable author’s monthly planner in PDF format, on Duolit.

 

Ricky Gervais Tells A Story About How He Learned To Write

by

Did you know Fast Company now has a special “Create” site, dedicated to the arts and creativity? And that there’s a special subsection there called Creation Stories, where writers and other creatives share their stories? From the site:

“Stories are an elemental form of human communications–they are how we understand each other and the world. With that in mind, we wanted to bring you…great stories!”

“Creation Stories are stories from the minds and mouths of some of the most creative people around–stories that entertain while shedding some light on the creative process.”

The series launched with Ricky Gervais talking about the most important lesson he ever learned about writing. From the site:

“Here, in the inaugural episode, Ricky Gervais (whose new Netflix series, Derek, debuts September 12) shares a story about an early creative turning point that forever informed the way he writes and works. It has to do with a teacher, a cheeky kid who maybe watched too much TV, an elderly neighbor and an unexpected creative lesson. Of course, it being Ricky Gervais, he delivers the story with some inimitable extras.”

 

Click here to watch the video on Fast Company’s Create site.

 

How to Know When You are Boring Your Reader to Tears

by

This post by Jean Oram originally appeared on her The Helpful Writer site on 3/11/14.

Ever wondered why your books maybe aren’t getting purchased? Finding an agent to rep them? Or just plain and simply catching on?

There are a ton of reasons why books don’t connect. Timing, luck, voice, content, etc. Some of these aren’t controllable. But one thing is.

Boring your reader to tears, death, or worse…having them put your book down in disinterest.

It happens. We can’t connect with every reader. And if we try, well, chances are we’ll end up with a book that connects with even fewer people. (Not everyone liked Harry Potter, believe it or not. They just stay in hiding.) But there ARE things we can do to increase our chances of connecting with our readers and one of the big things is not boring them.

I know, right?

 

How to Know if You are Boring Your Readers and What to Do About It

The easiest way to figure out if you are boring your readers is to see if you are boring yourself.

Seems too basic, doesn’t it?

Right now there could be some of you thinking, “But there isn’t a stitch of boringness in my whole story!” Could be true. Maybe you wrote The Hunger Games. If so, you’re excused. However, the other several billion of us did not. So, dig deep and fall out of love with yourself for a moment (shouldn’t be too hard–we are artists, after all where self-doubt and loathing is as common as cheap bar soap).

Here are a few inklings that things aren’t as tight and as exciting as you might wish them to be in your story and you might be boring your reader.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Helpful Writer.

 

How Do Hitmen Operate?

by

This article by Ryan Jacobs originally appeared on The Pacific Standard on 1/28/14, and will be of particular interest to authors of crime, military and espionage thrillers.

British criminologists claim that hitmen are more boring than we make them out to be, but their analysis can’t account for the behavior of “Master” killers.

If a hitman excels at his craft, he’ll operate quietly and without incident. In theory, the whispered meetings will be held in secret, the job will be executed with precision and grace, and no one will witness the escape.

For those reasons, the few criminologists who do attempt to study these misdeeds acknowledge the thorny methodological problems associated with examining “a secret world” to which they have no access. Of course, that hasn’t exactly stifled their ambitions.

A group of researchers at the Center for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University in the U.K. has recently analyzed newspaper articles, court records, and a series of “off-the-record” interviews with informants “who have, or who had, direct knowledge of contract killings” in order to construct what they term a “typology” of British hitmen. For the record, these social scientists “define a hitman as a person who accepts an order to kill another human being from someone who is not publicly acknowledged as a legitimate authority regarding ‘just killing’.” The results of their detailed search of British cases that matched this description in the period between 1974 and 2013 only turned up 27 contracted hits or attempted hits “committed by a total of 36 hitmen” (there was only a single “hitwoman”), but the researchers used the sample to tease out the details and profiles of typical killers-for-hire.

The main thrust of the paper, which will be published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, is that hitmen do not operate with the drama, professionalism, or glamour that mob films and spy novels afford them. In actuality, the majority of killers select jejune settings for their crimes, have occasionally bumbling performances, and are often hired by contractors with lame motivations.

Here’s the profile of an average British hitman, who seems more confined by the boxy restraints of reality than the undulating arcs of fiction:

 

Click here to read the full article on The Pacific Standard.

 

What Writers Can Learn From Reality Shows

by

This post by Greta van der Rol originally appeared on her site on 3/4/14 (Australia local time/date). Note that it contains strong language

Reality TV shows seem to be endlessly popular with the TV viewing audience. They pop up constantly, perhaps with a different name, different skills, but always they’re contests. Big Brother, Survivor, Master Chef, the Block, the Biggest Loser – and my all-time favourite, My Kitchen Rules.

Let me make it perfectly clear that I no longer watch these shows. I watched a couple of seasons of Master Chef because I love cooking shows and Master Chef actually had a few episodes a week where they went into the details of cooking. The rest of it, however, is a cooking contest. Which brings me to My Kitchen Rules. I imagine a similar show exists all over the world. In Australia, one pair of contestants, both amateur cooks, is chosen from each state in Australia. The couples can be married, gay, sisters or brothers, friends or whatever turns you on. The season starts with each couple hosting all the other contestants and the judges, for a dinner party in their own home. The contestants and the judges all score the meal. After all the ‘at home’ meals have been done, there’s an elimination process where some people drop out. Sorry if I’m hazy. You see, I loathe this show. Sure, I was sadly disillusioned to discover it wasn’t a cooking show. I hankered for Nigella, or the Cook and the Chef, Two Fat Ladies, the Naked Chef. What I got was a contrived game show.

In one of my biennial visits to the doctor I came across an article in a women’s magazine (I hate them, too – a doctors’ visit is the only time I ever look at them), a My Kitchen Rules tell-all. Well, gosh, Mouseketeers. Oh you thought the people cooked in their own homes? No. An awful lot of houses in Australia don’t have a separate dining room. We tend to prefer open living. But the home used for the set had to have a separate dining room so the couple cooking could be sequestered in the kitchen while the others talked about them. That, of course, but more pressure on the cooking couple. Unfamiliar kitchen, unfamiliar stove. And you know all that bitchiness and trash talk? The contestants are told what to say! Yes, it’s true. And, I have no doubt the fuck-ups are orchestrated, too.

 

So what does all this have to do with writing?

Everything, my friends.

I’ve already alluded to the importance of setting. Make sure your setting supports what will happen. Think about how the setting can aid some characters or put others on the back foot.

 

Click here to read the full post on Greta van der Rol’s site.

 

From Pathetic to Professional: 8 Ways to Beat the First Draft Blues

by

This post by Ruth Harris originally appeared on Anne R. Allen’s blog on 2/23/14.

You’re happy, even delirious. You’ve finished your first draft!

Then you read it.

OMG, you think, did I write that?

Yes, you did. 🙂

It stinks. It sucks. It’s so rancid it threatens to warp the time-space continuum.

Think you’re alone? Here’s Hugh Howey in a blog post: “I suck at writing. Watching a rough draft emerge from my fingertips in realtime would induce nausea.”

So remember, it’s not just you.

The first draft is just that—–a first step.

As a long-time editor and author, I’ve found 8 strategies that can help you shape, refine and improve your draft. (Actually it’s called editing and, yes, you can do quite a bit of it yourself.)

1. Embrace the power of the delete button.

Elmore Leonard advised taking out all the unnecessary words. Cutting almost always makes a book better, more readable, more exciting.

Specifically, that means delete all the spongy, weasely, namby-pamby words—the ones that aren’t crisp and precise, the ones that drag out a scene or a description without adding anything except length.

Get rid of the windy digressions, the pointless descriptions, the info dumps, the meandering philosophical musings.

Duplicate your document before you begin in case you get too enthusiastic but, with a safe back-up on hand, go ahead and hack away. Take out everything that doesn’t advance your story or define your characters. See if the resulting clarity doesn’t vastly improve the pace of your book.

Don’t just kill your darlings. Kill everything that doesn’t move the story forward. Save your gems in a “future” file and use them in another book where they pull their weight.

2. Sharpen dialogue.

 

Click here to read the full post on Anne R. Allen’s blog.

 

Impatient Readers Lead to Rapid-fire Series Release

by

This post by Sadie Mason-Smith originally appeared on the Melville House blog on 2/12/14.

On-demand services have not only changed the way we watch television shows, they’ve affected our expectations of all media. Instant gratification and binge-watching have affected the consumer model, and the publishing world is taking notice. Julie Bosman reports in The New York Times on a new trend in the industry: publishing release dates for series are getting shorter. Editors like Farrar, Strauss & Giroux’s Sean McDonald are catering to the ravening hordes of but-I-want-it-now readers by shrinking the release dates between installments from a year to a few short months.

According to McDonald, these readers are more than just Veruca Salt imitators—they’re scared. “You can end up with angry and perplexed fans,” he said. “I think people are more aware of series storytelling, and there is this sense of impatience, or maybe a fear of frustration. We wanted to make sure people knew that there were answers to these questions.”

That sound you hear in the distance is George R. R. Martin laughing diabolically. Probably while killing a beloved character. Fans of serials have long been subject to the perfectionist whims of their favorite authors. Who can forget J. K. Rowling’s extra months of work as each successive Harry Potter book took an incrementally longer time before release? Who, even now, is on the edge of their at-this-point-worn-down seat for the last installment in Robert Caro’s Lyndon B. Johnson biographies, a five-book project that has been in-progress since 1982?

 

Click here to read the full post on the Melville House blog.