Any advice on novel writing
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
I'm new here.
I'm currently working on my first novel. It's kind of post-apocalyptic,
near-future stuff and I really don't want to talk too much about the
plot (it's still evolving).
I'm trying to write it by writing at least 1000 words per day, come rain
or shine, and not worrying too much about plot, characterisation, style
or anything really except getting my first draft down. I got this
suggestion from John Braine's book on novel writing. I'm currently up to
over 15,000 words, some of which I consider almost good.
Since this seems an impossibly massive task for me, and I have serious
demons afflicting me about whether this project is even possible (on bad
days I think the plot stinks, the characters are cardboard, the writing
is pretentious and humourless and I really don't know why I think I can
do it; on good days I think I can fly), I wondered if any writers on
this group had any tipbits, ideas or suggestions as to what worked for
them?
At the moment, I keep myself going by reminding myself that it doesn't
have to be great art, it doesn't even have to be good, it just has to
get *finished*. It's taken me over a year to realise that I need to
simply write, without revising, editing, reconstructing the plot,
checking the spellings, working on each sentence for an hour each or
checking dialogue for character-inconsistencies. My hard-disk is
littered with the debris of previous attempts, written using this
pedantic, "two paces forwards, three paces back" method.
Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time? Does
anyone else know what it's like to write with the continuous thought in
the back of your mind that you're deluding yourself and you can't write
for toffee?
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is
there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?"
Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
TLambs1138
>Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time? Does
>anyone else know what it's like to write with the continuous thought in
>the back of your mind that you're deluding yourself and you can't write
>for toffee?
>--
>Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna/
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
you're trying a new method (new to you) of completing a splat draft instead of
correcting as you go. Also, I have found that a vague, general outline _does_
help me, because if I know my ending (in the best of all possible worlds, I
actually know my last line) things tend to go in that direction.
Hang in there. Some days I think my stuff is great, other days I think it
sucks. But I never can tell the difference after I've left the whole thing sit
for a bit and reread it all.
Keep on truckin'!
Jean Lamb, tlamb...@cs.com
"Fun will now commence!" - Seven of Nine
Sherwood Smith
Anna, working ahead and getting a first draft finished is a really
good method to get started.
As for does it get easier, well, yes and no. Writing is like anything
else; you don't take a year of ballet and know how to turn thirty-two
foettes on a dime; you don't take a year of a language and become
completely fluent. Working at it every day can creat a writing habit,
and it sounds like you're already trying to do that. The rest is
learning techniques, goal setting, and all the other good stuff that
gets discussed so sensibly and clearly in this newsgroup.
Good luck with the project!
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time? Does
>anyone else know what it's like to write with the continuous thought in
>the back of your mind that you're deluding yourself and you can't write
>for toffee?
One of the members of my first crit group got himself through his first novel
by repeating like a mantra: "This is just a hack fantasy novel, it doesn't
have to be good, and I can put a pseudonym on it when I'm done." It wasn't, it
was, and he didn't...but saying this got him through to the end. Other people
have gotten plenty of mileage out of "This is just for practice." and of
course, the one you came up with "This doesn't have to be good, it just has to
be *finished.*"
It's always hard work, but once you've actually finished one or two
manuscripts, you have the advantage of knowing you *can so* finish the thing.
Anne LaMott has an entire chapter in BIRD BY BIRD (a very good how-to-write
book) on "shitty first drafts"; if you like how-to-write books, this one might
be good at making you feel better about your process.
Lots of writers find it useful to turn off the Internal Editor while doing the
first draft. How you do this depends on how your particular brain works.
Simply ignoring the little critical voice that says "this is dreck" works for
some folks; other people find that reminding themselves that they can edit
*later*, that the critic will get his innings *later*, works well for them (if
you do this, though, you have to deliver on the implied promise...if "later"
never comes, the Internal Critic will come back, much louder and harder to get
rid of, because he's been tricked once).
It can also be very useful to keep a small pile of really, really, REALLY BAD
books around -- the sort that after about a chapter, you fling it at the wall
and announce, "I can do better than *that*!" They can be very useful as a
reminder, when you think you are writing drek, that even on a really bad day,
your drek isn't as bad as *that* drek. Most people find this a cheering
thought, though a few seem to find it depressing to contemplate the sort of
thing that can get published when their own golden words can't make it. If
you're the latter sort, don't do this.
As with everything in writing, mileage varies; different methods work for
different writers, and half the battle is figuring out what works best *for
you*.
Patricia C. Wrede
Brenda W. Clough
"Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" wrote:
>
> Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time?
This depends. In my experience, the first hundred pages or so are always a
little slow. It is like an airplane taking off. There is what seems to be hours
of taxiing round the tarmac, waiting for clearance, and the stewardesses insist
on boring everyone with the safety procedures and there is nothing to eat or
drink, and then there's an inordinate amount of trundling down the runway until
it feels like they're going to -drive- the thing to Chicago. But then gradually
the wheels leave the ground, and you're up! The thing comes to life under your
hand, and you can go anywhere at jet speed.
> Does
> anyone else know what it's like to write with the continuous thought in
> the back of your mind that you're deluding yourself and you can't write
> for toffee?
If it is any consolation, almost all artists suffer this. Go to an audition
sometime, and look at those poor actors.
Brenda
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
thanks for your suggestions.
>One of the members of my first crit group got himself through his first novel
>by repeating like a mantra: "This is just a hack fantasy novel, it doesn't
>have to be good, and I can put a pseudonym on it when I'm done." It wasn't, it
>was, and he didn't...but saying this got him through to the end. Other people
>have gotten plenty of mileage out of "This is just for practice." and of
>course, the one you came up with "This doesn't have to be good, it just has to
>be *finished.*"
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has to beat myself over the head with
a mantra in order to keep going.
>
>It's always hard work, but once you've actually finished one or two
>manuscripts, you have the advantage of knowing you *can so* finish the thing.
Amen to that. At least I'll never be able to say to myself that I cannot
write enough for a whole novel. I also console myself with the idea that
I'll improve as I write it... perhaps.
>Lots of writers find it useful to turn off the Internal Editor while doing the
>first draft. How you do this depends on how your particular brain works.
One half of my brain is self-critical, pedantic, pessimistic, unendingly
negative and has no sense of humour. It fancies that self-deprecation is
a form of humility.
The other half of my brain thinks I can do anything I put my mind to,
thinks I'm the greatest writer since Jane Austen, is impossibly self-
congratulatory and thinks life is one big hoot. It also believes that no
one ever achieved anything by being self-effacing.
I've tried giving myself a good talking to, but I just end up arguing
with myself and part of me leaves the room, slamming the door behind
her, while the other half sulks.
>Simply ignoring the little critical voice that says "this is dreck" works for
>some folks;
I turn round to this little voice and say "So? Who is it hurting?"
> other people find that reminding themselves that they can edit
>*later*,
I do that. It does work, but it's difficult to keep up.
> that the critic will get his innings *later*, works well for them (if
>you do this, though, you have to deliver on the implied promise...if "later"
>never comes, the Internal Critic will come back, much louder and harder to get
>rid of, because he's been tricked once).
I recommend swearing at it. Works for me.
>
>It can also be very useful to keep a small pile of really, really, REALLY BAD
>books around -- the sort that after about a chapter, you fling it at the wall
>and announce, "I can do better than *that*!" They can be very useful as a
>reminder, when you think you are writing drek, that even on a really bad day,
>your drek isn't as bad as *that* drek.
Another useful tip. I have a little photo-story romance book - I found
it and it was so bad, so utterly awful, that I kept it. Problem is, I
don't think I could physically write something that bad.
> Most people find this a cheering
>thought, though a few seem to find it depressing to contemplate the sort of
>thing that can get published when their own golden words can't make it.
I've been published (non-fiction) so I've largely recovered from my
excitement about getting into print. I know I can write stuff and sell
it; the problem is whether I can write the stuff I *want* to write, and
sell it. I figure if I keep going, and keep writing, sooner or later
somebody's going to be interested. Whether this is hopeless optimism or
not, only time can tell.
>As with everything in writing, mileage varies; different methods work for
>different writers, and half the battle is figuring out what works best *for
>you*.
I think I've realised the truth of this. You also need to find a method
that works specifically for the kind of writing you are working on.
Different forms require different techniques. This may be obvious, but
it's something that has only recently occurred to me. Maybe I'll make
some actual progress now.
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>Anna, working ahead and getting a first draft finished is a really
>good method to get started.
It's very counter-intuitive for me, but my article-writing method that
serves me so well (outline with bulletted points etc.) really doesn't
work for novels. It seems to kill my flow stone-dead and I end up with
narrative written in exactly the same way as a magazine article on the
treatment of diaper rash.
You do *not* want to read such a book. I know this, because I don't want
to read it, even though I've written it ;oP
>
>As for does it get easier, well, yes and no. Writing is like anything
>else; you don't take a year of ballet and know how to turn thirty-two
>foettes on a dime; you don't take a year of a language and become
>completely fluent.
Thanks for the encouragement. I'm definitely a better writer today than
I was a couple of years ago. Probably better than I was six months ago,
actually.
> Working at it every day can creat a writing habit,
>and it sounds like you're already trying to do that.
I've been writing *something* everyday for the last few years, but it's
only recently that I've tried introducing a little self-discipline into
this process. It's fine writing an eloquent letter to a friend, but
unless those letters are published, it's not actually going to help my
career. I suppose it does give me writing practice, but such writing is
never going to stretch me.
> The rest is
>learning techniques, goal setting, and all the other good stuff that
>gets discussed so sensibly and clearly in this newsgroup.
>
>Good luck with the project!
Thanks so much. I don't know if I mentioned it, but I'm also studying a
course in creative writing, so I'll probably be posting for tips with
assignments as well as my novel.
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
> Since this seems an impossibly massive task for me, and I have serious
> demons afflicting me about whether this project is even possible (on bad
> days I think the plot stinks, the characters are cardboard, the writing
> is pretentious and humourless and I really don't know why I think I can
> do it; on good days I think I can fly), I wondered if any writers on
> this group had any tipbits, ideas or suggestions as to what worked for
> them?
Don't worry. Don't panic. Keep the pen moving (or keyboard).
> At the moment, I keep myself going by reminding myself that it doesn't
> have to be great art, it doesn't even have to be good, it just has to
> get *finished*. It's taken me over a year to realise that I need to
> simply write, without revising, editing, reconstructing the plot,
> checking the spellings, working on each sentence for an hour each or
> checking dialogue for character-inconsistencies. My hard-disk is
> littered with the debris of previous attempts, written using this
> pedantic, "two paces forwards, three paces back" method.
Yes, well, welcome to the club. As you say, it has to get to something
like an end. You'll know a lot more about writing a novel when you've
done that.
> Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time? Does
> anyone else know what it's like to write with the continuous thought in
> the back of your mind that you're deluding yourself and you can't write
> for toffee?
As Sidney Sheldon said, "A blank page is God's way of reminding you how
hard it is to play God."
--
_Deirdre NEW Stash-o-Matic: http://fuzzyorange.com http://deirdre.net
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
- Douglas Adams
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>It's very counter-intuitive for me, but my article-writing method that
>serves me so well (outline with bulletted points etc.) really doesn't
>work for novels. It seems to kill my flow stone-dead and I end up with
>narrative written in exactly the same way as a magazine article on the
>treatment of diaper rash.
It's fairly common for people to have completely different working methods for
fiction and nonfiction, and often even for short stories vs. novels. The only
unusual thing is that you seem to have recognized this and compensated for it
before you ever showed up in the newsgroup! :)
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>I also console myself with the idea that
>I'll improve as I write it... perhaps.
Actually, this is almost inevitable, and if you don't recognize it, it can lead
squarely into the sort of problem you describe: you look at yesterday's work,
or last week's, and think "Ick, yuck, this is awful; I can't write!" when
actually it only looks bad by comparison to what you're doing now. The
learning curve is very steep at the beginning sections...
>One half of my brain is self-critical, pedantic, pessimistic, unendingly
>negative and has no sense of humour. It fancies that self-deprecation is
>a form of humility.
Give it a cookie and tell it that it can come back and play *after* the first
draft is finished.
>The other half of my brain thinks I can do anything I put my mind to,
>thinks I'm the greatest writer since Jane Austen, is impossibly self-
>congratulatory and thinks life is one big hoot. It also believes that no
>one ever achieved anything by being self-effacing.
Now, see, both parts are taking an approach that is a trifle
counter-productive. They're focusing on *you* and how well *you* do or don't
write. And it's getting in the way of telling the story. It might help if you
can focus on the *story*, and tell yourself things like "This will work well
here to describe the chocolate milk shake" instead of "This is the best/worst
way anyone ever came up with to describe a chocolate milk shake, ever in the
history of the world."
Sometimes it helps if you make writing fiction into one of those things that
you just *do*, like eating dinner or brushing your teeth. Then it becomes less
a matter of "Did I brush my teeth right? Oh, I did such a lousy job!" and more
like "Did I remember to brush them today? Good, that's done. Now, did I get
my writing done? Great, I can check off two of them..."
>I've tried giving myself a good talking to, but I just end up arguing
>with myself and part of me leaves the room, slamming the door behind
>her, while the other half sulks.
Fairly typical for a writer, actually.
>Another useful tip. I have a little photo-story romance book - I found
>it and it was so bad, so utterly awful, that I kept it. Problem is, I
>don't think I could physically write something that bad.
This is a *problem*?
Actually, if you get to the point where you are utterly convinced that what you
are turning out is completely horrible, that's one of the things that can help:
sitting down and *deliberately* writing something that is as horrible and
awful as you can make it. This is a *lot* harder than it looks, even if you
have a model to work from...and it is usually quite reassuring to find out just
how hard it is to do a thoroughly rotten job.
>Different forms require different techniques. This may be obvious, but
>it's something that has only recently occurred to me. Maybe I'll make
>some actual progress now.
It's one of the things that seems to trouble a lot of folks who have a goodly
amount of experience writing nonfiction. Many of them don't realize that,
while they are virtuosos with the techniques of nonfiction, they will need
additional, new, different techniques to do a good job with fiction...and some
of the things they do really well may not travel well. And it can be a big
shock to have to realize that in certain respects, they're beginners again.
(This is actually a problem for a *lot* of adults who decide to sit down and
write stuff after having gotten good at some other job; they're not used to
starting back with all the basics, and it's especially frustrating because
they've usually *read* great gobs of stuff, and they can see how their own
stuff falls short.)
Basically, it sounds to me as if you're doing everything about as right for you
as you can, bar the mild confidence problem. (I call it "mild" because it
doesn't seem to have paralyzed you for twenty years or anything, and I've known
people whom it has.)
Holly E. Ordway
>It's very counter-intuitive for me, but my article-writing method that
>serves me so well (outline with bulletted points etc.) really doesn't
>work for novels. It seems to kill my flow stone-dead and I end up with
>narrative written in exactly the same way as a magazine article on the
>treatment of diaper rash.
You're not the only one in that boat! :) I only recently came to exactly
the same conclusion about my nonfiction vs. fiction writing styles, and
have been soliciting advice here about how to deal with it! It was in
the thread that started out titled something like "When it's going too
well", if you want to try a search -- I got some good suggestions that
I plan on trying.
I certainly hope you'll post regularly and keep us updated on how things
are going!
Cheers,
Holly
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>>I also console myself with the idea that
>>I'll improve as I write it... perhaps.
>
>Actually, this is almost inevitable, and if you don't recognize it, it can lead
>squarely into the sort of problem you describe: you look at yesterday's work,
>or last week's, and think "Ick, yuck, this is awful; I can't write!" when
>actually it only looks bad by comparison to what you're doing now.
That's a consoling thought. Maybe I only *think* it's bad because I've
improved so much? One lives in hope.
Re: my two brains.
>Now, see, both parts are taking an approach that is a trifle
>counter-productive. They're focusing on *you*
I spend my life focussed on me. That is my blessing and my curse. At
least it's a unique perspective: I don't call myself "Alien Visitor" for
nothing!
>and how well *you* do or don't
>write. And it's getting in the way of telling the story. It might help if you
>can focus on the *story*, and tell yourself things like "This will work well
>here to describe the chocolate milk shake" instead of "This is the best/worst
>way anyone ever came up with to describe a chocolate milk shake, ever in the
>history of the world."
Good advice. I think I've been basically doing this, but it's good to
have it so clearly expressed. I tell myself to "just tell the story" and
try to stuff my ego in a cupboard until it's done - it gets in the way,
just as you say.
>
>Sometimes it helps if you make writing fiction into one of those things that
>you just *do*, like eating dinner or brushing your teeth. Then it becomes less
>a matter of "Did I brush my teeth right? Oh, I did such a lousy job!"
You mean people don't think like that? I suppose I do have difficulties
with excessive perfectionism, and with prioritising. For me, everything
has to be just so, or not done at all (I don't take this philosophy into
my housework, incidently. Housework is for people who don't have writing
to do or interesting books to read).
> and more
>like "Did I remember to brush them today? Good, that's done. Now, did I get
>my writing done? Great, I can check off two of them..."
That sounds horribly organised! I tend to live in chaos mostly, but at
least I'm more likely to forget to clean my teeth and write in my
dressing gown, than put the writing to a lower priority. I have a
tremendous ability to totally obsess. Have you ever read "The
Affirmation" by Christopher Priest. I'm like the hero, only I haven't
quite lost my mind totally... yet.
>>Another useful tip. I have a little photo-story romance book - I found
>>it and it was so bad, so utterly awful, that I kept it. Problem is, I
>>don't think I could physically write something that bad.
>
>This is a *problem*?
LOL! Yes, do you know what kind of money you could earn writing that
trash? I read a book on short-story writing recently that said that in
UK, basically the only well-paid short story writers are those who can
write romantic fiction, preferably comedy or "twist in the tale". I
wrote some a while back, but they were rejected. I suspect the editor
disliked the fact that they were written with my tongue stuck so firmly
in my cheek, I looked like a lop-sided hamster.
>
>>Different forms require different techniques.
{snip}
>It's one of the things that seems to trouble a lot of folks who have a goodly
>amount of experience writing nonfiction. Many of them don't realize that,
>while they are virtuosos with the techniques of nonfiction, they will need
>additional, new, different techniques to do a good job with fiction...and some
>of the things they do really well may not travel well.
You've got that right. No one told me this, however. Everyone keeps
going on about how I'm much better at non-fiction and how I should
concentrate on that. It occurred to me the other day that of course I'm
better at non-fiction - I've done more of it!
When I started out, I thought that fiction was just the same, except you
write about made-up stuff instead of reality. That seems so naive these
days!
> And it can be a big
>shock to have to realize that in certain respects, they're beginners again.
>(This is actually a problem for a *lot* of adults who decide to sit down and
>write stuff after having gotten good at some other job; they're not used to
>starting back with all the basics,
Ah, at least I don't have that problem. I've never been good at
anything, and I've been fired from more jobs than most people have had
hot dinners. But I've always written, and I've always been considered
good at it. I just never thought of it as being particularly special or
significant; more a character trait than a career.
> and it's especially frustrating because
>they've usually *read* great gobs of stuff, and they can see how their own
>stuff falls short.)
I do have this problem: Having read great gobs of stuff, including some
really excellent stuff. I won't be satisfied until my stuff is at least
as good as Ray Bradbury or Christopher Priest, which probably means I'll
always be dissatisfied.
>
>Basically, it sounds to me as if you're doing everything about as right for you
>as you can, bar the mild confidence problem. (I call it "mild" because it
>doesn't seem to have paralyzed you for twenty years or anything, and I've known
>people whom it has.)
Life is too short to let a lack of confidence hold me back, and what
have I to fear? That I'll be bad at it? I've been far worse at far more
things and that hasn't killed me. I think one of the most valuable
lessons in life is the if you never risk failure, you never achieve.
But I'd still like to get this novel finished ;o)
Zeborah
> I'm trying to write it by writing at least 1000 words per day, come rain
> or shine, and not worrying too much about plot, characterisation, style
> or anything really except getting my first draft down. I got this
> suggestion from John Braine's book on novel writing. I'm currently up to
> over 15,000 words, some of which I consider almost good.
From what you say about your previous attempts, it sounds like this
works for you. But I'll tell you the unofficial motto here anyway:
"There are nine-and-sixty ways / Of telling tribal lays / And every
single one of them is right!" Which is to say, never take what a book
on novel writing says as gospel, unless it's very specific about saying
that it might work for some authors and might not work for others.
(It wouldn't work for me. Firstly because I'm incapable of writing 1000
words in a day unless I'm either a) in the midst of a great flash of
inspiration (which unfortunately can't be relied on every day) or b)
have an essay to hand in at 5pm; and I left university a couple of years
ago. Secondly, it occurs to me just now that maybe the only way I can
keep my enthusiasm up about a project is to keep having minor epiphanies
which necessitate a quick revision session of all that's gone before.)
<snip>
> Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time?
Some things get easier, other things get harder. When I started the
Darn Book, it was marvellous. Seven years later, the latest rewrite is
a thousand times better than it was then -- and it sucks rocks. (OTOH,
when I was writing it then I was comparing it to Star Trek; today I'm
comparing it to Watership Down(1).)
>Does
> anyone else know what it's like to write with the continuous thought in
> the back of your mind that you're deluding yourself and you can't write
> for toffee?
Only, say, all the time. (Not quite. Sometimes it's glorious and all's
well with the world. But not right now it's not.)
<sigh> Okay, despite the fact that the Darn Book is obvious rubbish and
the world would be a better place if I dragged all my copies of it into
the trash and started something new (or, better yet, renounced writing
for good), I think this grouching session has inspired me to go and add
a word or two to the stupid thing. You never know....
Zeborah
(1) On other days I compare it to other things. But I finished
rereading Watership Down yesterday, and am currently under the
impression that it's the finest book in the multiverse. I will clearly
never write something so beautiful and readable and *right* -- but oh,
how I want to!
--
Semper ad eventum festinet. -- Horace
"Always party hard at social events." <eg>
http://www.crosswinds.net/~zeborahnz
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>You've got that right. No one told me this, however.
Non-writers don't know it. Nonfiction writers who have never written fiction
mostly don't realize it, ditto fiction writers who have never written
nonfiction. And a good many of the people who *have* done both, haven't ever
had to verbalize the difference.
> Everyone keeps
>going on about how I'm much better at non-fiction and how I should
>concentrate on that. It occurred to me the other day that of course I'm
>better at non-fiction - I've done more of it!
Exactly. Plus, if you only ever do the things that you are already really good
at, how do you ever get to stretch?
>When I started out, I thought that fiction was just the same, except you
>write about made-up stuff instead of reality. That seems so naive these
>days!
It's where a lot of people start, though. And you didn't need to be told about
it -- you figured it out on your own, which argues uncommon good sense. So
there!
>> and it's especially frustrating because
>>they've usually *read* great gobs of stuff, and they can see how their own
>>stuff falls short.)
>
>I do have this problem: Having read great gobs of stuff, including some
>really excellent stuff. I won't be satisfied until my stuff is at least
>as good as Ray Bradbury or Christopher Priest, which probably means I'll
>always be dissatisfied.
It's never the book in your head. But it gets closer, after a while.
>But I'd still like to get this novel finished ;o)
<*sigh*> Who wouldn't? :)
Patricia C. Wrede
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
[...]
> Secondly, it occurs to me just now that maybe the only way I can
>keep my enthusiasm up about a project is to keep having minor epiphanies
>which necessitate a quick revision session of all that's gone before.)
Sounds like the tide coming in.
[...]
Brian
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>> I'm trying to write it by writing at least 1000 words per day, come rain
>> or shine, and not worrying too much about plot, characterisation, style
>> or anything really except getting my first draft down.
>From what you say about your previous attempts, it sounds like this
>works for you. But I'll tell you the unofficial motto here anyway:
>"There are nine-and-sixty ways / Of telling tribal lays / And every
>single one of them is right!" Which is to say, never take what a book
>on novel writing says as gospel, unless it's very specific about saying
>that it might work for some authors and might not work for others.
I've never read a book on novel writing before, but from talking to
other writer friends, it does seem that this idea is a common one that
works for a lot of people. John Braine actually writes long-hand, so his
minimum is 350 words per day, but most writers I've spoken to have
suggested the 1000 word per day method.
>
>(It wouldn't work for me. Firstly because I'm incapable of writing 1000
>words in a day unless I'm either a) in the midst of a great flash of
>inspiration (which unfortunately can't be relied on every day)
He makes the excellent point that if you need to rely on inspiration,
your muse or whatever, in order to write, you will have problems.
Particularly if you want to make writing your career. He does state that
he doesn't know a single professional writer who doesn't set himself
hours, and most set themselves word numbers as well. I figure if it
works for them, it's definitely worth a good try for me too.
The point of the 1000 word minimum is that it reduces the need to keep
re-reading your stuff to remind yourself of where you're up to, which in
turn reduces the temptation to edit and revise everything you've written
to date (which will kill most novels stone dead, for most writers). This
is a very personal thing, however, and maybe it doesn't work like that
for you.
> or b)
>have an essay to hand in at 5pm; and I left university a couple of years
>ago. Secondly, it occurs to me just now that maybe the only way I can
>keep my enthusiasm up about a project is to keep having minor epiphanies
>which necessitate a quick revision session of all that's gone before.)
Which may be a major problem, as I've just said. I've set myself the
task (now that I've proved to myself I can actually *write*) of learning
to write when not "inspired", of writing to order (I'm studying a
course, so I have to produce work where the subject and method is given
to me) and writing to deadlines (self-imposed deadline, in the case of
my novel). I'm looking at this very much as training for a career.
>
><snip>
>
>> Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time?
>
>Some things get easier, other things get harder. When I started the
>Darn Book, it was marvellous. Seven years later, the latest rewrite is
>a thousand times better than it was then -- and it sucks rocks.
Is that good or bad? Sorry, I am not familiar with the expression.
Still, seven years at one project is quite some stamina. I know with me
I have to get my book written quickly because I won't keep it up if it's
not. I seem to be getting into my flow with it, thankfully, and sticking
largely to my writing targets. This will slow down when I really get
into my creative writing course, however.
> (OTOH,
>when I was writing it then I was comparing it to Star Trek; today I'm
>comparing it to Watership Down(1).)
Was that his first book? If not, maybe you should try to find out what
his earlier works were like. They might have been awful. Besides, as
someone said to me on another thread, an awful lot of really bad stuff
gets published, and if yours is better than that (which I'm sure it is),
you're doing OK.
><sigh> Okay, despite the fact that the Darn Book is obvious rubbish and
>the world would be a better place if I dragged all my copies of it into
>the trash and started something new (or, better yet, renounced writing
>for good), I think this grouching session has inspired me to go and add
>a word or two to the stupid thing. You never know....
Another piece of advice from John Braine, which you can take or leave,
is to write a 2000 word plot synopsis of your book. Then write it out
again, only with a tighter plot and keep going half a dozen times until
you have as near perfect a plot as you can get. Then research each major
character and write a pen picture of each (don't feel you have to put
all these details in your book, just be aware of them in your writing).
Research your "world" and describe that in detail.
Finally, return to your first draft and working steadily through it,
adapt your narrative to fit your plot outline, your character profiles,
background scenery etc.
Now, I can't honestly say I've tried this, but having written short-
stories and non-fiction articles, I can see that it would work in a
majority of cases. The idea of writing the plot *after* the first draft
particularly appeals to me, as you always find plot holes and strange
plot tangents etc. after you've written them. The plot, so John Braine
says, should appear after all this work, rather like a sculptor carving
a piece of stone.
He says never to let your first novel go over 150,000 words, by the way.
Apparently, they are more likely to be accepted by a publisher if they
are between 60,000 and 150,000 words and about 20 chapters long. I've
checked this out and it does seem to be accurate. One publisher told me
that books from an unknown author, out of this range would have to be
"really exceptional" to have a chance.
Brenda W. Clough
"Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" wrote:
>
> Still, seven years at one project is quite some stamina. I know with me
> I have to get my book written quickly because I won't keep it up if it's
> not. I seem to be getting into my flow with it, thankfully, and sticking
> largely to my writing targets. This will slow down when I really get
> into my creative writing course, however.
>
I checked my records the other day, and discovered I've been writing the current
novel for NINE years! I am horrified.
>
>
> Another piece of advice from John Braine, which you can take or leave,
> is to write a 2000 word plot synopsis of your book. Then write it out
> again, only with a tighter plot and keep going half a dozen times until
> you have as near perfect a plot as you can get. Then research each major
> character and write a pen picture of each (don't feel you have to put
> all these details in your book, just be aware of them in your writing).
> Research your "world" and describe that in detail.
>
> Finally, return to your first draft and working steadily through it,
> adapt your narrative to fit your plot outline, your character profiles,
> background scenery etc.
I could never do this. I always just begin, at what I hope is the beginning.
Any plot on hand is of the vaguest ('bad stuff happens'). Modeling it beforehand
would suck the juice right out of it.
Scarachy
>anyone else know what it's like to write with the continuous thought in
>the back of your mind that you're deluding yourself and you can't write
>for toffee?
>
your worst draft can be extremely liberating. It's all right to sound like a
jerk at this stage in the proceedings. Cut Loose. Nobody's looking." Amen.
Elf Sternberg
>I'm trying to write it by writing at least 1000 words per day, come rain
>or shine, and not worrying too much about plot, characterisation, style
>or anything really except getting my first draft down. I got this
>suggestion from John Braine's book on novel writing. I'm currently up to
>over 15,000 words, some of which I consider almost good.
>At the moment, I keep myself going by reminding myself that it doesn't
>have to be great art, it doesn't even have to be good, it just has to
>get *finished*.
Yep, that's just about the way it goes. In my second novel,
somewhere around 20,000 words I started saying to myself, "This isn't as
good as the first; you're not going to get nearly the readership; it's
not working." I finished it anyway.
*Shrug* I was right.
The third one was much better.
>Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time?
I love writing. I hate editing. Right now, I'm going back
through my entire set, making minor changes, fixing stuff, changing some
language over a decade old that makes me wince. I hat going back and
cutting stuff out that should be cut out, just because it took so long
to write it. I hate the fact that the time I spent editing is time that
won't be used to get down on paper all the ideas stuck in my head... all
134 of them, according to my Palm, as of yesterday (although 5 of them
are listed as "100% written," which means that they go into a drawer for
a month, then come out again to be edited).
>Does anyone else know what it's like to write with the continuous
>thought in the back of your mind that you're deluding yourself and you
>can't write for toffee?
I knew that feeling a decade ago. Fortunately, one writing
class cured me of the sensation. Being a writer means sitting your ass
down on your chair and typing at your keyboard until you have words. So
few people get *that* far; if you're someone who has (and 15,000 words
sounds like a great start), count yourself as one of the dedicated ones.
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.halcyon.com/elf/
Today is gone, today was fun. Tomorrow will be a better one.
From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.
Brooks Moses
> "Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" wrote:
> > Another piece of advice from John Braine, which you can take or leave,
> > is to write a 2000 word plot synopsis of your book. Then write it out
> > again, only with a tighter plot and keep going half a dozen times until
> > you have as near perfect a plot as you can get. Then research each major
> > character and write a pen picture of each (don't feel you have to put
> > all these details in your book, just be aware of them in your writing).
> > Research your "world" and describe that in detail.
> >
> > Finally, return to your first draft and working steadily through it,
> > adapt your narrative to fit your plot outline, your character profiles,
> > background scenery etc.
>
> I could never do this. I always just begin, at what I hope is the beginning.
> Any plot on hand is of the vaguest ('bad stuff happens'). Modeling it beforehand
> would suck the juice right out of it.
I think Anna's explanation (in the bits that you quoted -- it's pretty
clear from the paragraph after these) left out the important point that
you do this synopsis and such _after_ you've written the first draft, as
an editing tool. It's more a case of modeling it afterwards to make
sure it's coherent and to adjust it in a size that's manageable, rather
than modeling it beforehand.
- Brooks
Will Shetterly
"Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
> "Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" wrote:
> > Finally, return to your first draft and working steadily through it,
> > adapt your narrative to fit your plot outline, your character profiles,
> > background scenery etc.
>
> I could never do this. I always just begin, at what I hope is the beginning.
> Any plot on hand is of the vaguest ('bad stuff happens'). Modeling it
> beforehand
> would suck the juice right out of it.
I believed that firmly for the first ten years of my writing career. Now
I don't. I think I just didn't know how to plot or outline before, and
was afraid that if I tried to learn, my work would get worse.
Mind you, you should stick with whatever works for you. It's just that,
well, as writers, many of us are resistant to new possibilities.
Will
--
Emma Bull and Will Shetterly's site:
http://homepage.mac.com/emmawill/
Patricia C. Wrede
writes:
>I think Anna's explanation (in the bits that you quoted -- it's pretty
>clear from the paragraph after these) left out the important point that
>you do this synopsis and such _after_ you've written the first draft, as
>an editing tool. It's more a case of modeling it afterwards to make
>sure it's coherent and to adjust it in a size that's manageable, rather
>than modeling it beforehand.
Yeah, I picked that up on the second time through Anna's post...and it still
wouldn't work for me as a revising method any better than it would as a writing
method.
Revising for me isn't like rearranging the pieces in a patchwork quilt to get a
more pleasing design; it's more like tying off a piece of intricate weaving and
then going through the process of stretching and setting it. If you happen to
be making a patchwork quilt, doing a bunch of squares and then laying them out
and rearranging them works fine; if you happen to be weaving a bedcover, you'd
have to cut the weave and sew everything back together to change the pattern
this way, and the joins would show no matter what you did. (You could, I
suppose, unweave the entire piece, rewarp the loom, and start over, but that
seems excessive even in an analogy.)
Telling a weaver to work like a quilter isn't going to work; telling a quilter
to plan everything out in advance and get it all right the first time isn't
necessary. But they can both come out with perfectly gorgeous bedspreads.
Mileage varies.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>I've never read a book on novel writing before, but from talking to
>other writer friends, it does seem that this idea is a common one that
>works for a lot of people. John Braine actually writes long-hand, so his
>minimum is 350 words per day, but most writers I've spoken to have
>suggested the 1000 word per day method.
It *is* a common method, and it *does* work for a great many writers...but it
doesn't work for everyone. Admittedly, of the many, many common methods that
work, "write every day" to some arbitrary number of pages, time, or word count
does seem to work for more people than any competing method. Still, there are
people who simply cannot produce this way -- some because of time constraints,
others because their brains just don't operate this way. The catch is that
almost everyone would *like* to believe that they are one of the chosen few who
don't have to make themselves buckle down day in, day out, and actually *work*
at producing writing...but the majority of people are kidding themselves.
Which means that anyone producing this advice has a tough passage between the
Scylla of being firm enough to convince the people who are kidding themselves
and the Charybdis of being so firm that people who can't work this way think
they can't possibly ever be real writers because they can't write every day.
>He makes the excellent point that if you need to rely on inspiration,
>your muse or whatever, in order to write, you will have problems.
This is true for about 95% of writers. The other 5% can indeed rely on
inspiration, because they are inspired all the time...and the rest of us do not
like these people very much...
>Particularly if you want to make writing your career. He does state that
>he doesn't know a single professional writer who doesn't set himself
>hours, and most set themselves word numbers as well.
Well, I know several who don't. In fact...I'm not sure I can think of anybody
I know (whose work habits I also know, which isn't nearly so large a group) who
*does* set themselves hours. I have one friend who has a daily writing time
committment, but it's not "hours" (as in "I write between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
every day") -- it's a minimum-time-input (as in "I write for half an hour every
day, minimum. Sometimes I do it at 6 a.m. and sometimes I do it on my lunch
break and sometimes I do it at night and sometimes I do 15 minutes in the
morning and 15 minutes at 11:45 p.m., but I always write at least half an hour
a day."). And I can only think of one person who even does this.
I know a couple of people who set themselves daily word-count requirements
every so often -- usually when they're having trouble getting through a sticky
bit and find that without the required word-count, they sit and stare at the
computer for 5 hours and don't write anything at all. But I can't think of
anybody who does this on a perfect, regular basis, either. Except Fred Pohl,
who writes four pages a day, every day, no matter what, and has done so for
years...even on his honeymoon.
> I figure if it
>works for them, it's definitely worth a good try for me too.
It's a good thing to try; it's just not a good thing to accept as a basic,
universal given. It *does* work for most people, so any given newbie has good
odds that it will work for them. The thing that I (and others on this
newsgroup) have run into far too often is that some people not only take the
advice, they convince themselves that this is the *only* way any "real" writer
*ever* works...and that if this system happens not to work for them (or if
their life is such that they can't squeeze writing time into every single day),
then it is hopeless for them ever to contemplate being a writer.
Just because it works for someone else, doesn't *necessarily* mean it will work
for you. If it does, great; if it doesn't, you try something else. And just
because something works for you, doesn't mean it will work for someone else.
>to date (which will kill most novels stone dead, for most writers). This
>is a very personal thing, however, and maybe it doesn't work like that
>for you.
Yes -- like that.
>Another piece of advice from John Braine, which you can take or leave,
>is to write a 2000 word plot synopsis of your book. Then write it out
>again, only with a tighter plot and keep going half a dozen times until
>you have as near perfect a plot as you can get. Then research each major
>character and write a pen picture of each (don't feel you have to put
>all these details in your book, just be aware of them in your writing).
>Research your "world" and describe that in detail.
This bit of advice, unlilke the "write every day whether you feel like it or
not," is *not* something that works for a majority of writers. This is a
description of Braine's particular personal writing method, which clearly works
wonderfully well *for him.* It would work not at all for me, or for any of the
other professional writers I know. In my case, in fact, what I do is to write
and polish up a plot synopsis. I have tried writing a description or "pen
picture" of each character; for me, this kills them stone dead and they never
come back to life ever again. So I don't do that.
But I have this lovely plot synopsis and all these great worldbuilding details.
So then I start writing. At the end of the first chapter, I throw away the
plot outline, because it has *nothing* to do with what is actually happening,
except that some of the names are the same. I write a new, even more polished
outline. I write the second chapter. I throw away the new outline, because
it, too, has little or nothing to do with what is actually going on. I
continue this through about Chapter 10. Somewhere around Chapter 4, one of two
things happens: either one of the fundamental building blocks that I was
basing my "world" on turns out to be completely wrong and the whole thing has
to be re-thought yet again, or else despite having 36 pages of
encyclopedia-like description of the world, I find myself in need of a
significant detail that I have not thought up yet, coming from a completely new
direction that I could not have anticipated or researched in advance (because,
remember, I'm on my fourth plot outline by this time and what's going on is so
completely unanticipated and unexpected compared to what I though would happen
that there's no way even the most thorough research based on the original
outline would have covered it).
>Finally, return to your first draft and working steadily through it,
>adapt your narrative to fit your plot outline, your character profiles,
>background scenery etc.
This works for a tiny minority of writers only. As just noted, I don't adapt
the narrative to fit any pre-made conditions; I adapt the plot and background
to fit the narrative and characters. "Working steadily through" the first
draft is a bit ambiguous, but no matter how you interpret it, I know
professional writers who don't work that way. One of my good friends works in
fits and starts -- she'll mutter and whine for five or six days about how she's
not getting anything written, the book will be late, her cats will starve...and
then on the seventh and eighth days, she dumps an 8,000 word chapter onto the
page. And then goes back to whinging for five days. Another friend parties
hard for eight months, then vanishes for about two, during which he at times
spends 16 hours a day at the computer. Another skips around, writing scenes
out of order (hardly "working steadily through it") and then rearranges
everything and ties it all together so that the flow makes sense. Another
works on Project A for a week and then Project B for two days and then Project
C for a while, and then back to Project A for a few days, except that in the
middle of the Project A days she keeps having to open the B and C files and add
notes or paragraphs or even whole scenes that have surfaced while she was
working on A.
As a method of doing revisions, it also only describes a tiny minority of
writers. Some people find it works best for them to concentrate on revising
one thing at a time -- first, they fix all the characterization bobbles, then
they plug all the plot holes, etc. Some people start revising at the end of
the book and work backward, and find this to be not merely an aid to
consistency in foreshadowing, but an absolute necessity. Some people find it
most efficient to skip around. And so on.
>Now, I can't honestly say I've tried this, but having written short-
>stories and non-fiction articles, I can see that it would work in a
>majority of cases.
It looks like it ought to, but it doesn't. Really. Writing processes aren't
logical or consistent, not even if you are talking about just one writer. If
you are talking about many writers....
> The idea of writing the plot *after* the first draft
>particularly appeals to me, as you always find plot holes and strange
>plot tangents etc. after you've written them.
Well, no, I don't. I find them *as* I write. There is absolutely no point
whatever in me going back and writing and revising a plot outline after I've
finished the first draft, except for marketing purposes; I don't normally write
the sort of first draft that needs moving around and plugging holes. I have at
least one friend for whom this is even more true -- she does *very* tight first
drafts, and trying to pry the prose apart enough to insert even a paragraph is
excruciating for her. OTOH, I have another friend whose "first draft" is very
like an extended plot outline -- she leaves out a tremendous lot of stuff, and
her manuscripts usually double in size and have events rearranged and added and
altered out of all recognition in the second draft.
Mileage varies.
> The plot, so John Braine
>says, should appear after all this work, rather like a sculptor carving
>a piece of stone.
That's how it works for him. It's not how it works for me, or for a lot of
other writers. If it feels right to you, and you think it'll work for you,
then you lucked out -- you got hold of a set of recommendations that fit the
way you think and the way you work, right off the mark.
None of the advice you've quoted is, please note, *bad* advice...unless it is
assumed to apply universally.
>He says never to let your first novel go over 150,000 words, by the way.
>Apparently, they are more likely to be accepted by a publisher if they
>are between 60,000 and 150,000 words and about 20 chapters long. I've
>checked this out and it does seem to be accurate. One publisher told me
>that books from an unknown author, out of this range would have to be
>"really exceptional" to have a chance.
The only trouble with advice like this is that it can change so fast that it's
hardly worth giving. There are fashions in length, as well as subject matter,
in publishing. And length considerations vary notably depending on what genre
you are writing for. Selling a 60,000 word children's picture book is right
out, to pick a ridiculously obvious example. What is not so obvious is that
there are different "expected lengths" in different genres -- a few years back,
the conventional wisdom was that a first SF/F novel *could not* be accepted if
it was more than 100,000 words...but a horror novel had to be *at least*
100,000 as the bare minimum.
The 60,000-150,000 word range isn't a bad one to shoot for, but AFAIK it isn't
nearly as absolute at the upper end as this makes it sound. Which is fairly
impressive, when you stop and think about it, given how broad a range it is.
Plus, in SF/F publishers will frequently take a 200,000 or 250,000 word novel
if they think it can be broken apart into two 100,000-word books. This option
isn't really available in a lot of other genres (how could you split a 200K
murder mystery into two books and still have each of them work?) or in
mainstream.
Patricia C. Wrede
Deann Allen
>
> "Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" wrote:
>
> >
> > Still, seven years at one project is quite some stamina. I know
> > with me I have to get my book written quickly because I won't
> > keep it up if it's not. I seem to be getting into my flow with
> > it, thankfully, and sticking largely to my writing targets. This
> > will slow down when I really get into my creative writing course,
> > however.
>
> I checked my records the other day, and discovered I've been
> writing the current novel for NINE years! I am horrified.
[Sheepishly raises hand] Eleven. :\
D.
--
People are not simple, and one pigeonhole almost never suffices to
hold them. -- Lois Bujold
-----------------------------------------
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
this NG does seem to be populated by a lot of non-humans. Interesting.
>In my second novel,
>somewhere around 20,000 words I started saying to myself, "This isn't as
>good as the first; you're not going to get nearly the readership; it's
>not working." I finished it anyway.
>
> *Shrug* I was right.
Of course, I have absolutely no idea about readership, or even
publishers. I'm just trying to write a story that interests *me*. If I'm
lucky, what interests me might interest other people.
>
> The third one was much better.
I can't even imagine finished three novels, but I do have this theory
that if I keep going, I'm bound to get better somewhere along the line.
>
>>Is it always this hard work, or does it get easier with time?
>
> I love writing. I hate editing.
I like editing, but I probably haven't had to do it to the degree that
you've done. I'm sure I will get to hate it!
> Right now, I'm going back
>through my entire set, making minor changes, fixing stuff, changing some
>language over a decade old that makes me wince. I hat going back and
>cutting stuff out that should be cut out, just because it took so long
>to write it.
I know that feeling. Writing isn't just a construction, it's a piece of
your soul. It's very hard to sacrifice some of it for the sake of the
rest.
> I hate the fact that the time I spent editing is time that
>won't be used to get down on paper all the ideas stuck in my head...
My head is full of pictures and concepts, rather than concrete ideas. I
have things I want to *say* and it seems that fiction is the best
vehicle for saying them.
My biggest difficulty is in actually developing the stories - I have
difficulties with creative imagination. Yet when I think about it, some
of my favourite books don't have a huge amount of story in them, and
some of the most popular stories are not well-written books (take Agatha
Christie, for instance). Even some truly great writers basically had one
plot that they presented in a dozen guises. Besides, what is a story?
> I knew that feeling a decade ago. Fortunately, one writing
>class cured me of the sensation.
One of the things I'm hoping to gain from the course I'm studying is
more confidence in my abilities with fiction. I have written a short
story and I am waiting to see what my tutor thinks of it. As it's my
first assignment, it's a little worrying.
> Being a writer means sitting your ass
>down on your chair and typing at your keyboard until you have words. So
>few people get *that* far; if you're someone who has (and 15,000 words
>sounds like a great start), count yourself as one of the dedicated ones.
No, just obsessive. Problem is, I have spent more time typing emails
today than working on my novel. I reckon I should get another couple of
thousand words done tonight, if my never sleeping child decides to
actually *sleep*. I'm up to 17,000 words, btw (if I post the numbers,
maybe it'll keep me motivated).
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>In article <RSUsGXAJ...@ratbag.demon.co.uk>, "Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor"
><An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>Particularly if you want to make writing your career. He does state that
>>he doesn't know a single professional writer who doesn't set himself
>>hours, and most set themselves word numbers as well.
>Well, I know several who don't. In fact...I'm not sure I can think of anybody
>I know (whose work habits I also know, which isn't nearly so large a group) who
>*does* set themselves hours. I have one friend who has a daily writing time
>committment, but it's not "hours" (as in "I write between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
>every day") -- it's a minimum-time-input (as in "I write for half an hour every
>day, minimum. Sometimes I do it at 6 a.m. and sometimes I do it on my lunch
>break and sometimes I do it at night and sometimes I do 15 minutes in the
>morning and 15 minutes at 11:45 p.m., but I always write at least half an hour
>a day."). And I can only think of one person who even does this.
I used to say "Four hours or four pages, whichever comes first." I
often took weekends off, however.
I have just conceived a way to make myself write the present book,
which deals, among many other things, with plants and gardens. For
every five hundred words, I get to buy another plant. This is not
quite as expensive as it sounds, since, say, one crocus bulb counts as
a plant, so that to buy the usual little package of ten requires
considerably more writing.
I suspect that fairly soon I'll be making the spring list, however,
having overflowed the possibilities of what can be paid for and
planted this fall.
>I know a couple of people who set themselves daily word-count requirements
>every so often -- usually when they're having trouble getting through a sticky
>bit and find that without the required word-count, they sit and stare at the
>computer for 5 hours and don't write anything at all.
I have had to accept that sometimes, that is just what is going to
happen. In my case, if I do the sitting and staring, the days when I
don't write anything at all are fewer, but they are still there.
>>Another piece of advice from John Braine, which you can take or leave,
>>is to write a 2000 word plot synopsis of your book. Then write it out
>>again, only with a tighter plot and keep going half a dozen times until
>>you have as near perfect a plot as you can get. Then research each major
>>character and write a pen picture of each (don't feel you have to put
>>all these details in your book, just be aware of them in your writing).
>>Research your "world" and describe that in detail.
>This bit of advice, unlilke the "write every day whether you feel like it or
>not," is *not* something that works for a majority of writers. This is a
>description of Braine's particular personal writing method, which clearly works
>wonderfully well *for him.* It would work not at all for me, or for any of the
>other professional writers I know. In my case, in fact, what I do is to write
>and polish up a plot synopsis. I have tried writing a description or "pen
>picture" of each character; for me, this kills them stone dead and they never
>come back to life ever again. So I don't do that.
Yeah, me too. It's discovering the characters that makes the writing
worth the bother, and it's also discovering the characters that
generally provides me the details of the plot. But I can't "research"
them -- whatever that means to Mr. Braine -- rather, they have to be in their
element and then we see what happens.
>But I have this lovely plot synopsis and all these great worldbuilding details.
> So then I start writing. At the end of the first chapter, I throw away the
>plot outline, because it has *nothing* to do with what is actually happening,
>except that some of the names are the same. I write a new, even more polished
>outline. I write the second chapter. I throw away the new outline, because
>it, too, has little or nothing to do with what is actually going on. I
>continue this through about Chapter 10.
I continue to just love this description; it delights me
unmeasurably. I don't quite do this, though the final outcome is in
some ways similar. I produce an outline, swearing and grumbling, for
the publisher, and never look at it again unless I actually can't
recall what I meant to do. This is never as helpful as it might be
anyway, since in fact I forgot what I meant to do considerably in
advance of where I thought I had forgotten and had been happily
proceeding in the "wrong" direction for chapters already.
--
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
> (You could, I
>suppose, unweave the entire piece, rewarp the loom, and start over, but that
>seems excessive even in an analogy.)
Depends on your perfectionism. I've done that, although I do snip
here & there to cut the threads because it would take too long to
entirely unweave.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>>I've never read a book on novel writing before, but from talking to
>>other writer friends, it does seem that this idea is a common one that
>>works for a lot of people. John Braine actually writes long-hand, so his
>>minimum is 350 words per day, but most writers I've spoken to have
>>suggested the 1000 word per day method.
>
>It *is* a common method, and it *does* work for a great many writers...but it
>doesn't work for everyone.
No, I realise that. I also realise that many of you have actually
finished books, which I haven't done. He does say that half the battle
of writing is to find a method that works for you, and if his method
doesn't work for you, don't give up because it's probably the method at
fault, not you.
>Still, there are
>people who simply cannot produce this way -- some because of time constraints,
>others because their brains just don't operate this way.
I'm not that rigid - I know there are days I do more and days I do less.
My life is extremely busy and at the moment, I don't get much time on my
own to write. I should probably be writing now, actually, not responding
to this email...
...There, done another few pages. Where was I?
> The catch is that
>almost everyone would *like* to believe that they are one of the chosen few who
>don't have to make themselves buckle down day in, day out, and actually *work*
>at producing writing...but the majority of people are kidding themselves.
Yes, I think I was that type, the kidding myself type. It has been
incredibly liberating to realise that even great writers have to sweat
blood to write sometimes, and that it's 90% perspiration and 10%
inspiration.
>>He makes the excellent point that if you need to rely on inspiration,
>>your muse or whatever, in order to write, you will have problems.
>
>This is true for about 95% of writers. The other 5% can indeed rely on
>inspiration, because they are inspired all the time...and the rest of us do not
>like these people very much...
Yeah. Too true. Of course, they could be lying (?) Why do we always
assume people are telling the truth?
>
>>Particularly if you want to make writing your career. He does state that
>>he doesn't know a single professional writer who doesn't set himself
>>hours, and most set themselves word numbers as well.
>
>Well, I know several who don't.
Obviously, you and he move in different circles, which is fine. It
happens. Most of the writers I know (bar one) write largely non-fiction
anyway. As you have stated, it's quite different to fiction.
>I have one friend who has a daily writing time
>committment, but it's not "hours"
I don't think he means set hours, just that they have a regular schedule
for writing and don't sit around for years waiting to be possessed by
the Muse.
> (as in "I write between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
>every day") -- it's a minimum-time-input (as in "I write for half an hour every
>day, minimum. Sometimes I do it at 6 a.m. and sometimes I do it on my lunch
>break
Ah, I think by "professional writer" he meant "full-time writer" (I know
that's not the same thing, but that's the impression I get).
As I won't have another job, I'm going to have to set myself hours (to
work around the kids and their school-hours, apart from anything else).
If I have 6 hours per day to play with, it would be pretty disastrous if
I watched daytime TV all the time and then tried to start writing at
3pm, when the kids needed picking up from school.
I think even without the kids, if I stayed at home all the time to
write, I'd have to actually commit to spending a certain amount of time
actually *writing*. It is my job, after all.
>> I figure if it
>>works for them, it's definitely worth a good try for me too.
>
>It's a good thing to try; it's just not a good thing to accept as a basic,
>universal given.
Hey, don't dis it until I've tried it! ;o) I've just discovered the Holy
Grail here, and I've got to at least give it a good chance. I fear that
otherwise I will never finish anything. It's taken me years to realise
that the one thing I took for granted could be the answer to my career
problem (the problem of not having a career, that is. It's not about
money, it's about self-esteem and feeling that you are on this planet
for a reason, other than just being mum to your kids).
>The thing that I (and others on this
>newsgroup) have run into far too often is that some people not only take the
>advice, they convince themselves that this is the *only* way any "real" writer
>*ever* works...
No, I suspect there are many ways that work, but I like a nice, neat
method to go by. The problem in the past was that I'm not good at
developing procedures for things myself, but all those airy-fairy
suggestions about writing as the mood takes you etc. just didn't work. I
*need* a routine. I am, after all, a former computer programmer - give
me a flow-chart and I'm happy ;o)
>Just because it works for someone else, doesn't *necessarily* mean it will work
>for you.
Hey, I'm different from about 9999/10000 people in the world, if the
statistics are to be believed. In fact, a method that works for me
theoretically should not work for the vast majority of the population.
Then again, theoretically, I shouldn't be able to write fiction at all.
>This bit of advice, unlilke the "write every day whether you feel like it or
>not," is *not* something that works for a majority of writers. This is a
>description of Braine's particular personal writing method, which clearly works
>wonderfully well *for him.*
There is also the possibility that I haven't understood his method very
well, and that you are therefore responding to my mistaken impression.
But maybe I've adapted it to something that *will* work for me. Only
time will tell.
The last, large "short story" I wrote, I did write with this kind of
method - writing a terrible, pointless load of drivel as a first draft,
which was then improved out of all recognition on the subsequent re-
write. I used this technique of writing out a plot synopsis until it
made sense and it worked (before I read John Braine's book - I thought I
invented the idea). That was a 17,000 word "short" story, incidently. It
was too long for the magazine I was aiming at ;o(
>But I have this lovely plot synopsis and all these great worldbuilding details.
> So then I start writing.
I have tried this so many times. I have elaborate worlds, described in
great detail, but they are like static scenery and I cannot tell stories
about them. I have often been told of my short-stories (which have been
rejected) "This reads like a novel outline". Problem is, they never seem
to be able to grow into actual novels. I don't have enough of a story to
fill them.
> At the end of the first chapter, I throw away the
>plot outline, because it has *nothing* to do with what is actually happening,
>except that some of the names are the same.
Hmmm. I wonder how much use the synopsis was, in that case.
> I write a new, even more polished
>outline. I write the second chapter.
I don't actually know how one defines "Chapter", or what the rules are
about where they should be. It seems pretty arbitrary. Besides, I often
stick extra bits in between scenes and sometimes those extra bits make
the supposed chapter almost double in length. So I think I'll wait until
it's written before I worry too much about dividing up chapters.
> I throw away the new outline, because
>it, too, has little or nothing to do with what is actually going on. I
>continue this through about Chapter 10. Somewhere around Chapter 4, one of two
>things happens: either one of the fundamental building blocks that I was
>basing my "world" on turns out to be completely wrong and the whole thing has
>to be re-thought yet again, or else despite having 36 pages of
>encyclopedia-like description of the world, I find myself in need of a
>significant detail that I have not thought up yet, coming from a completely new
>direction that I could not have anticipated or researched in advance (because,
>remember, I'm on my fourth plot outline by this time and what's going on is so
>completely unanticipated and unexpected compared to what I though would happen
>that there's no way even the most thorough research based on the original
>outline would have covered it).
Thank you for telling me how you do it because that is always useful, to
know what someone else does, even if I'm thinking "That could not work
for me". I think the "problem" is that I actually think *as* I'm
writing. The plot appears, it is not designed. Possibly due to
differences in how my brain processes language, I seem incapable of
imagining something entirely in my head and then writing it. For me,
writing *is* thinking. I cannot devise so much as a shopping list
without writing it down and probably speaking it out-loud as well.
I invariably write while speaking the words as I write them. My
psychologist says I lack "internal language" (I think that was the term
used). Fortunately, I type very fast.
>Another skips around, writing scenes
>out of order (hardly "working steadily through it") and then rearranges
>everything and ties it all together so that the flow makes sense.
I don't think "working steadily" implies sequentially. I think it just
means that this is the slow part of the writing, once you have your
basic first draft and plot in place. I don't write sequentially either.
Sometimes I leave stuff in curly brackets e.g. {describe fight scene
here}, if I need to do more research, can't work out how to link two
scenes or am simply not in the mood to write such stuff.
Incidently, I write as if I am describing a movie. I don't know if this
is unusual, but my method is to imagine a set, place the characters on
the set and then let them run with the dialogue. I add description and
stuff later. It seems to work.
> Another
>works on Project A for a week and then Project B for two days and then Project
>C for a while, and then back to Project A for a few days, except that in the
>middle of the Project A days she keeps having to open the B and C files and add
>notes or paragraphs or even whole scenes that have surfaced while she was
>working on A.
I do that too. I'm currently working on a novel, an autobiographical
work and I'm always working on articles. I also have to finish a website
I've been distracted from for a while. Mostly, I'm writing my novel at
the moment, but I go through phases. I think it keeps me fresh.
>Some people start revising at the end of
>the book and work backward, and find this to be not merely an aid to
>consistency in foreshadowing, but an absolute necessity.
Useful tip. I was thinking today that I tell my reader far too much and
I need to do a bit more foreshadowing. I was thinking how I might
achieve this, but wasn't sure. My problem is, I'm a fan of Michael J.
Straczinsky (writer of Babylon 5) and if you know his work, you'll know
he's the master at this foreshadowing business. I can't do that at all,
and it grieves me. Maybe I'll try your method when I get to that point
(if I get to that point).
>I can see that it would work in a
>>majority of cases.
>
>It looks like it ought to, but it doesn't. Really. Writing processes aren't
>logical or consistent, not even if you are talking about just one writer. If
>you are talking about many writers....
The problem with the world in general is that it is not logical or
consistent, and it really *should* be. I have thought about writing
stories in which the world is as I feel it should be, but what usually
happens is that my heros/heroines are as confused in their world as I am
in mine.
>
>> The idea of writing the plot *after* the first draft
>>particularly appeals to me, as you always find plot holes and strange
>>plot tangents etc. after you've written them.
>
>Well, no, I don't. I find them *as* I write.
If I do that, I get stuck and go round and round in little circles,
correcting one error which impacts on another error, which impacts on
another error until the whole things comes crashing down like so many
dominoes.
But maybe we aren't describing the same thing. Of course I am aware of
the plot as I write - I don't write nonsensical rubbish that is
completely out of step with the rest of my story - but if, say, my hero
contradicts himself in chapter 6 and starts behaving in a way totally
different to chapters 1-5, I let him change and will go back and re-
write the relevant sections later. If I do it in the middle of chapter
6, I'll spend all my time polishing the first 6 chapters to perfection,
and never get on and tell the story. What is worse, I'll lose interest
in the story and then my novel is dead.
> There is absolutely no point
>whatever in me going back and writing and revising a plot outline after I've
>finished the first draft, except for marketing purposes;
I think John Braine's method is designed to find the plot by writing the
first draft. I *hope* it works for people who have difficulty
conceptualising the plot in isolation, who start off with characters and
a scene and need to find out what happens; rather than the sort of
person who can clearly see a plot before they write a word. I cannot
imagine being able to do this. I suspect you cannot imagine doing
otherwise. Personally, I blame neurology.
>None of the advice you've quoted is, please note, *bad* advice...unless it is
>assumed to apply universally.
I'm glad you don't think it bad advice. It's the best advice *for me*
that I've read, and it was like a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately,
it's totally 180 degrees from the method my course seems to prefer -
intricately planned plots, character descriptions, novel outlines etc.
Argh! Will I stand it? My only consolation is that I won't actually have
to *write* the novel I plan, except maybe for a chapter or two.
See, the real reason I want to follow Braine's advice is to cock-a-snook
at my Creative Writing course ;o^
>The 60,000-150,000 word range isn't a bad one to shoot for, but AFAIK it isn't
>nearly as absolute at the upper end as this makes it sound.
Upper end? I'm on 17,500 words and you're talking about shooting for the
*upper* end of this range? At present I feel it will be a miracle to get
to the bottom figure.
Will Shetterly
"Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" <An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > I love writing. I hate editing.
>
> I like editing, but I probably haven't had to do it to the degree that
> you've done. I'm sure I will get to hate it!
Editing's lovely. It's when you've finally got all of the pieces of the
game together, and now you can really play. Writing's like having a
lover; you've got to learn to love being with the lover all the time, or
the affair will suffer.
> My biggest difficulty is in actually developing the stories - I have
> difficulties with creative imagination.
I *highly* recommend Brenda Ueland's IF YOU WANT TO WRITE. Creativity is
only one of the many things she addresses well.
> Problem is, I have spent more time typing emails
> today than working on my novel.
This is why I only visit newsgroups on occasion. I am weak in the face
of temptation.
Will Shetterly
Deann Allen <dal...@pcisys.net> wrote:
> Brenda W. Clough wrote:
> >
> > "Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Still, seven years at one project is quite some stamina. I know
> > > with me I have to get my book written quickly because I won't
> > > keep it up if it's not. I seem to be getting into my flow with
> > > it, thankfully, and sticking largely to my writing targets. This
> > > will slow down when I really get into my creative writing course,
> > > however.
> >
> > I checked my records the other day, and discovered I've been
> > writing the current novel for NINE years! I am horrified.
> [snip]
>
> [Sheepishly raises hand] Eleven. :\
It's legit--and sometimes damn useful--to set aside that first, very
educational, and often interminable book and write another. You can
always go back to yr. first book later and apply what you've learned
from the second.
Will Shetterly
pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C. Wrede) wrote:
Yup. Emma and I recommend that people who want targets set themselves
two: a certain number of pages or a certain amount of time spent near
the writing tool of choice. You can quit whenever one goal is satisfied
and feel you've lived up to your side of the bargain.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Wrede) wrote:
>In article <3B6832C8...@stanford.edu>, Brooks Moses <bmo...@stanford.edu>
>writes:
>
>>I think Anna's explanation (in the bits that you quoted -- it's pretty
>>clear from the paragraph after these) left out the important point that
>>you do this synopsis and such _after_ you've written the first draft, as
>>an editing tool. It's more a case of modeling it afterwards to make
>>sure it's coherent and to adjust it in a size that's manageable, rather
>>than modeling it beforehand.
>
>Yeah, I picked that up on the second time through Anna's post...and it still
>wouldn't work for me as a revising method any better than it would as a writing
>method.
>
>Revising for me isn't like rearranging the pieces in a patchwork quilt to get a
>more pleasing design; it's more like tying off a piece of intricate weaving and
>then going through the process of stretching and setting it. If you happen to
>be making a patchwork quilt, doing a bunch of squares and then laying them out
>and rearranging them works fine; if you happen to be weaving a bedcover, you'd
>have to cut the weave and sew everything back together to change the pattern
>this way, and the joins would show no matter what you did. (You could, I
>suppose, unweave the entire piece, rewarp the loom, and start over, but that
>seems excessive even in an analogy.)
What you can do as a weaver, is you can pause after having done
all the warping, which is the hardest part of the job, and
re-assess how you're going to treadle it and what weft you're
going to use: and as you go along, you can decide that it will
change through space, too, so that it isn't a simple reptition, or
you can simply repeat, etc.
Which I think must have occurred to me, not as a smart-ass
stretching of the metaphor, but because it seems to be what I do,
in the early stages of writing, because here I am, doing it again.
The scene I thought was at the beginning of the novel keeps
getting pushed farther back: and this time, when I had thought I
was going to have a little prelusive vignette from twenty years
before the main story, I find that that is preluded by a little
vignette from twenty years after the main story too. I hope this
does not mean that I have become unstuck in time with respect to
the story, I like stricter chronologies better, most of the time.
Sorry. Anyway, so this kind of writing doesn't make major changes
at the end, but can make major changes after it begins.
>
>Telling a weaver to work like a quilter isn't going to work; telling a quilter
>to plan everything out in advance and get it all right the first time isn't
>necessary. But they can both come out with perfectly gorgeous bedspreads.
And what's important, there, is the different textures available,
and the rhythm of the work.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>It *is* a common method, and it *does* work for a great many writers...but
>>it doesn't work for everyone.
>
>No, I realise that. I also realise that many of you have actually
>finished books, which I haven't done. He does say that half the battle
>of writing is to find a method that works for you, and if his method
>doesn't work for you, don't give up because it's probably the method at
>fault, not you.
Then he has a *great* deal more good sense than most how-to-write book authors.
Was it a book you got this from? What was the title? I'm always looking for
sensible how-to-write books to recommend to my students and to other folks who
ask...
>>This is true for about 95% of writers. The other 5% can indeed rely on
>>inspiration, because they are inspired all the time...and the rest of us do
>>not like these people very much...
>
>Yeah. Too true. Of course, they could be lying (?) Why do we always
>assume people are telling the truth?
Actually, the only person I have ever actually heard *claim* to be this sort of
writer was, in fact, lying (which I know because I vas dere, Sharlie, and I
remember listening to the complaints about the direness of it all).
>>>Particularly if you want to make writing your career. He does state that
>>>he doesn't know a single professional writer who doesn't set himself
>>>hours, and most set themselves word numbers as well.
>>
>>Well, I know several who don't.
>
>Obviously, you and he move in different circles, which is fine. It
>happens. Most of the writers I know (bar one) write largely non-fiction
>anyway. As you have stated, it's quite different to fiction.
Was this person talking about fiction, or about nonfiction? Because it can
make a lot of difference, I think. The *impression* I have is that the
sit-down-and-slog method is much more widely applicable in nonfiction.
>> (as in "I write between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
>>every day") -- it's a minimum-time-input (as in "I write for half an hour
>every
>>day, minimum. Sometimes I do it at 6 a.m. and sometimes I do it on my lunch
>>break
>
>Ah, I think by "professional writer" he meant "full-time writer" (I know
>that's not the same thing, but that's the impression I get).
Well, then he should have said so. There aren't all that many full-time
fiction writers who really *are* full-time fiction writers, especially if
you're talking about mainstream fiction. As it happens, about half of the
professional fiction writers I was talking about, with the weird schedules, are
full-time...including the one who parties eight months and then writes 16 hours
a day, and the one who sometimes writes in the morning and sometimes at
midnight.
>As I won't have another job, I'm going to have to set myself hours (to
>work around the kids and their school-hours, apart from anything else).
>If I have 6 hours per day to play with, it would be pretty disastrous if
>I watched daytime TV all the time and then tried to start writing at
>3pm, when the kids needed picking up from school.
The hardest thing about going full-time for me was adjusting to the lack of a
schedule. For about the first three months it was great...and then I noticed I
wasn't getting so much writing done, because I'd used to write on my lunch
hour, and I didn't have that set time any more. So for a while I did the
rigid-hours thing, but it didn't really work very well. Currently, I do the
"X-many pages per day" thing when I'm at a sticky spot, but otherwise it's more
of a weekly goal -- my daily schedule shifts around too much to have a set time
or a set word-count every day. It works for me...
>I think even without the kids, if I stayed at home all the time to
>write, I'd have to actually commit to spending a certain amount of time
>actually *writing*. It is my job, after all.
I think it's actually the committment that's the important part; it's just that
most people express it by setting goals in terms of hours or pages.
>>The thing that I (and others on this
>>newsgroup) have run into far too often is that some people not only take the
>>advice, they convince themselves that this is the *only* way any "real"
>>writer *ever* works...
>
>No, I suspect there are many ways that work, but I like a nice, neat
>method to go by.
Well, just be warned: Whatever nice, neat method you come up with will more
than likely fall apart and not work at all for your second book. Or it will
work, and just when you think you've got it all figured out, four books down
the road, you'll run up against something that you have to write that
stubbornly *will not work* the way you've always done it. This seems to be a
normal part of the writing development process, insofar as anything about it
can be described as "normal."
>Hey, I'm different from about 9999/10000 people in the world, if the
>statistics are to be believed. In fact, a method that works for me
>theoretically should not work for the vast majority of the population.
>
>Then again, theoretically, I shouldn't be able to write fiction at all.
Well actually, 9999/10000 people can't write fiction that's any good, so you
should *so* be able to do it (if your statistics hold up...) :)
>>not," is *not* something that works for a majority of writers. This is a
>>description of Braine's particular personal writing method, which clearly
>>works wonderfully well *for him.*
>
>There is also the possibility that I haven't understood his method very
>well, and that you are therefore responding to my mistaken impression.
It looks extremely familiar to me, both in terms of content and in terms of
tone -- I've seen this sort of thing over and over, and it has always in the
past been somebody explaining what works for them, in terms that make it sound
as if it will work for everyone (or nearly everyone). If you misunderstood
what he was saying, you misunderstood it in a way that mimics this particular
advice-mode awfully closely.
>>But I have this lovely plot synopsis and all these great worldbuilding
>>details. So then I start writing.
>
>I have tried this so many times. I have elaborate worlds, described in
>great detail, but they are like static scenery and I cannot tell stories
>about them. I have often been told of my short-stories (which have been
>rejected) "This reads like a novel outline". Problem is, they never seem
>to be able to grow into actual novels. I don't have enough of a story to
>fill them.
It may just be that you haven't learned to look at them from the right angle
yet. When I was getting started, I did exactly the same thing: I wrote short
story after short story, because I thought that was what you were supposed to
*do*. And they came back with rejection after rejection, all of which said
things like "This sounds like a plot outline for a novel" and "This sounds like
chapter 3 of a novel." And I *couldn't* see it. They were short; they didn't
have any more story to them.
Then I wrote a novel, and it sold. And after I had a couple more under my belt,
I looked at all those short stories, and sonofagun if those editors weren't
right. They *were* all truncated novels. Most of them couldn't be blown up
properly into novels, because they didn't have the right structure...but they
had too much *stuff* to be short stories.
>> At the end of the first chapter, I throw away the
>>plot outline, because it has *nothing* to do with what is actually
>happening,
>>except that some of the names are the same.
>
>Hmmm. I wonder how much use the synopsis was, in that case.
For me, it works as a combination of a psychological crutch (it gives me a
great deal of illusory confidence that I know what I am doing) and a way of
getting rid of the worst ideas before I actually sit down and try to write
stuff. Having done...sixteen is it? I lose track...books now, I am resigned
to the fact that this is just how I work. It doesn't make any sense; I know
that; but if I try to sit down and write without doing an outline first, the
story just sits there. I can get two to three pages, and then it stalls dead
in the water. It is necessary, for me, to write up a plot outline. It is also
impossible, for me, to follow it. C'est l'ecriture.
>Thank you for telling me how you do it because that is always useful, to
>know what someone else does, even if I'm thinking "That could not work
>for me". I think the "problem" is that I actually think *as* I'm
>writing. The plot appears, it is not designed. Possibly due to
>differences in how my brain processes language, I seem incapable of
>imagining something entirely in my head and then writing it.
Well, I work more or less that way, too. I just have to have a design to
not-follow before I can sit down and write stuff.
>I don't think "working steadily" implies sequentially. I think it just
>means that this is the slow part of the writing, once you have your
>basic first draft and plot in place.
Slow for some people, fast for others.
>Useful tip. I was thinking today that I tell my reader far too much and
>I need to do a bit more foreshadowing. I was thinking how I might
>achieve this, but wasn't sure. My problem is, I'm a fan of Michael J.
>Straczinsky (writer of Babylon 5) and if you know his work, you'll know
>he's the master at this foreshadowing business. I can't do that at all,
>and it grieves me. Maybe I'll try your method when I get to that point
>(if I get to that point).
It's not my method. It's a technique that I know some people use. I don't
*have* a method for revising; I just do it kind of randomly until everything
seems done.
And foreshadowing isn't something you can do *YET*. It is a technique that you
haven't learned, that's all. Doesn't mean it's unlearnable.
>>> The idea of writing the plot *after* the first draft
>>>particularly appeals to me, as you always find plot holes and strange
>>>plot tangents etc. after you've written them.
>>
>>Well, no, I don't. I find them *as* I write.
>
>If I do that, I get stuck and go round and round in little circles,
>correcting one error which impacts on another error, which impacts on
>another error until the whole things comes crashing down like so many
>dominoes.
Wherease if I *don't* fix problems as I find them, they compound themselves,
multiplying like cockroaches until they consume the story.
>completely out of step with the rest of my story - but if, say, my hero
>contradicts himself in chapter 6 and starts behaving in a way totally
>different to chapters 1-5, I let him change and will go back and re-
>write the relevant sections later. If I do it in the middle of chapter
>6, I'll spend all my time polishing the first 6 chapters to perfection,
>and never get on and tell the story. What is worse, I'll lose interest
>in the story and then my novel is dead.
This is true for a great many writers; there are lots of people who cannot,
*must* not go back and rewrite until they've finished the draft, or they will
become mired in the Slough of Endless Rewriting and never get beyond Chapter 6.
I, however, am of the opposite school; if I hit something like this and *don't*
go back and fix it, the narrative starts coming apart in my hands like a
soaking-wet grocery bag full of canned goods. I can't make forward progress
until the foundation behind me is rock-solid. I can leave *minor* changes,
sometimes, for later...but not major inconsistencies, and not anything that
requires foreshadowing.
>I think John Braine's method is designed to find the plot by writing the
>first draft. I *hope* it works for people who have difficulty
>conceptualising the plot in isolation, who start off with characters and
>a scene and need to find out what happens; rather than the sort of
>person who can clearly see a plot before they write a word. I cannot
>imagine being able to do this. I suspect you cannot imagine doing
>otherwise. Personally, I blame neurology.
Oh, I can imagine working that way just fine; I've seen other people do it. I
just haven't ever been able to do it myself.
>I'm glad you don't think it bad advice. It's the best advice *for me*
>that I've read, and it was like a breath of fresh air.
That is the best possible indication that you've stumbled across the system
that's going to work for you. Practically everyone reacts this way, when they
finally find something that works. It's part of why people get all evangelical
about their particular process, sometimes -- if they've searched long and
hopelessly, and suddenly come out into the light, they want to shorten things
up for everyone else. Unfortunately, they don't always realize that not
everyone else is stumbling through the same woods toward the same destination
that they've gotten to.
>Unfortunately,
>it's totally 180 degrees from the method my course seems to prefer -
>intricately planned plots, character descriptions, novel outlines etc.
>Argh! Will I stand it? My only consolation is that I won't actually have
>to *write* the novel I plan, except maybe for a chapter or two.
This is one of my problems with most creative writing courses; it's very easy
for people who are intuitive writers, or character-centered writers (as
compared to plot-centered writers or analytical writers) to come away feeling
as if they're doing it all wrong, when in fact it's just that the course method
is very poorly suited to the way they work.
>>The 60,000-150,000 word range isn't a bad one to shoot for, but AFAIK it
>>isn't nearly as absolute at the upper end as this makes it sound.
>
>Upper end? I'm on 17,500 words and you're talking about shooting for the
>*upper* end of this range? At present I feel it will be a miracle to get
>to the bottom figure.
Well, the bottom end is, at the moment, a little short -- in the SF field,
anyway. (If you want to write a YA, it's too long; they don't like those more
than 50,000 words, for a first novel.) I'd put the low end at 75,000 to 80,000
words, currently; as I said, though, it's a moving target. By the time you're
finished, they may be back to wanting stuff that's 45,000 words, max. You just
never know.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
Kemnitzer) writes:
Yes; thank you, that's the part of what I was trying to get at that I couldn't
quite get at, if that makes any sense. I seem to be very incoherent lately;
possibly it's the weather (which hit 94 yesterday, with a heat index of 120).
I do hope it's temporary...
Patricia C. Wrede
Zeborah
> I've never read a book on novel writing before, but from talking to
> other writer friends, it does seem that this idea is a common one that
> works for a lot of people. John Braine actually writes long-hand, so his
> minimum is 350 words per day, but most writers I've spoken to have
> suggested the 1000 word per day method.
It's not a longhand vs typing thing for me, though my longhand, while
legible and fairly pretty, tends to make my hand hurt. It's just that I
can't get the words out of my mind that quickly.
> He makes the excellent point that if you need to rely on inspiration,
> your muse or whatever, in order to write, you will have problems.
> Particularly if you want to make writing your career. He does state that
> he doesn't know a single professional writer who doesn't set himself
> hours, and most set themselves word numbers as well. I figure if it
> works for them, it's definitely worth a good try for me too.
There's probably one or two who only rely on inspiration. (Jo, are you
around? I'm fairly sure you said something recently about the way your
output varies, but I can't remember what.) I don't. It's just that
inspiration of some degree is the only way to get me to write that much,
ie 1000 words every day. If I'm forcing myself to plod through, then
I'll do just that: plod through, a sentence at a time, with my Internal
Editor fighting all the way.
> The point of the 1000 word minimum is that it reduces the need to keep
> re-reading your stuff to remind yourself of where you're up to, which in
> turn reduces the temptation to edit and revise everything you've written
> to date (which will kill most novels stone dead, for most writers). This
> is a very personal thing, however, and maybe it doesn't work like that
> for you.
Yes, in a couple of ways. Firstly, I only need to re-read about
paragraph to remember where I'm up to. That's plenty enough to
kickstart me on a good day, or get me groaning into my keyboard about
how horrible it is on a bad day. And secondly, I've given up trying not
to revise. If I don't revise, then what do I do when I get a better
idea? I know, some authors can jot down a note and deal with it later,
but I can't. I need to see it through then and there. And that little
bit of revising usually gives me a bit of momentum to move forwards too.
> Which may be a major problem, as I've just said. I've set myself the
> task (now that I've proved to myself I can actually *write*) of learning
> to write when not "inspired", of writing to order (I'm studying a
> course, so I have to produce work where the subject and method is given
> to me) and writing to deadlines (self-imposed deadline, in the case of
> my novel). I'm looking at this very much as training for a career.
Yes, I'm trying to do this too. But I lack will power, and am too lazy
to gain it; if I can find a shortcut I will. I know in the end there's
no real shortcut for sitting down and doing it, so usually in the end I
do.
> >Some things get easier, other things get harder. When I started the
> >Darn Book, it was marvellous. Seven years later, the latest rewrite is
> >a thousand times better than it was then -- and it sucks rocks.
>
> Is that good or bad? Sorry, I am not familiar with the expression.
It's an emphatic version of 'it sucks'.
> Still, seven years at one project is quite some stamina.
Uh... <thinking> <sudden smile> Cool! Okay, that's how I'll think
about it.
(Honestly, there have been times when I've been tempted to throw it out
and move on. I decided to do this once, actually didn't write a word
for several months. I even wrote a farewell poem to it. And suddenly I
realised how to make it work...)
>> (OTOH,
> >when I was writing it then I was comparing it to Star Trek; today I'm
> >comparing it to Watership Down(1).)
>
> Was that his first book? If not, maybe you should try to find out what
> his earlier works were like. They might have been awful. Besides, as
> someone said to me on another thread, an awful lot of really bad stuff
> gets published, and if yours is better than that (which I'm sure it is),
> you're doing OK.
It was his first. (At least, his first completed-and-published.) I
once stared reading one of his later ones, and didn't like it so much;
didn't get much beyond a few chapters. I'd have to go back and read it
to be sure, but I don't think he was aiming at the same sort of thing;
_WD_ is full of mythology, and it has a basic survival-type plot which
at the same time explores the theme (survival of a community, I think)
which doesn't just permeate the plot, but also the very myths they tell.
And it's complex in a simple way which I admire terribly.
Whereas (sorry, I went off on a tangent) the one I started reading
later, I think it was _The Plague Dogs_, ISTR that it was more
issue-based. Perhaps this was why it didn't grab me so much. (And
perhaps I'm misremembering, or was misconstruing, but this is how it
strikes my memory now.)
> Another piece of advice from John Braine, which you can take or leave,
> is to write a 2000 word plot synopsis of your book. Then write it out
> again, only with a tighter plot and keep going half a dozen times until
> you have as near perfect a plot as you can get. Then research each major
> character and write a pen picture of each (don't feel you have to put
> all these details in your book, just be aware of them in your writing).
> Research your "world" and describe that in detail.
<snort> You have to understand, these seven years have involved several
revisions. I know these characters better than I know myself. I have
screeds of character-building and world-building that I'm fighting to
keep out of the book.
It's the plot I have problems with. The book is riddled with plot and
motivation holes, but that's the least of my worries.... Right now, I
think the reason I'm stuck is that I don't know what's happening next.
But it's a peculiar sort of way that I don't know it. You see, I have
actually written this novel before. It's just that it was very bad when
I first wrote it, so I chopped out two thirds of it and started again
with a tighter plot. After rewriting some chapters, I repeated the
process; and again a couple of times. But the rewritten chapters
weren't always at the start, they were also chapters near the middle or
at the end.
At the moment, I've just come over the hump of the major plot point
about a third of the way through the book. There's a resting period of
sorts where nothing specific happens but what does happen is important;
it's a place where the reader can slow down a bit and breathe, but for
the protag things are getting more tense in a process, not an event sort
of way. (Where I'd define 'process' as piling on the overtime over a
long period, etc, and 'event' as something suddenly going wrong.) And I
know that after a few chapters, things do start happening very evently
and very quickly; but I need this slow buildup first; but I've never
written any versions of any of the scenes in any of these chapters, so I
don't know what happens, exactly.
The advice you mention reminds me of something someone else has
suggested in the past, which is to write a plot summary and then to
flesh it out, and keep fleshing it out until it's a draft. It may work.
I'm not sure. I'm also having problems with my protag and her best
friend; they're arguing with each other on purpose; it's all very alien
to us and to my protag, but natural to her friend, and I don't quite
have a handle on it yet, and my protag certainly doesn't, and her friend
doesn't have a handle on why the protag doesn't have a handle on it, and
I really should be writing a simpler book than this, doggangit.
> He says never to let your first novel go over 150,000 words, by the way.
> Apparently, they are more likely to be accepted by a publisher if they
> are between 60,000 and 150,000 words and about 20 chapters long. I've
> checked this out and it does seem to be accurate. One publisher told me
> that books from an unknown author, out of this range would have to be
> "really exceptional" to have a chance.
A lot of authors, alas, have little control over how long the book is.
I have some control because I've practised the art of endless pruning.
But no matter how much I keep pruning, the Darn Book keeps growing. I
think that I'll be able to keep it under 150K. Probably. Whatever;
just so long as it's finished, and then I can kill the appropriate
scenes if I have to.
Zeborah
(ObMiraculousNewsgroup: so I went to bed and started pondering what I
want the plot to do, and suddenly realised that a random line I'd
written was wrong; my protag doesn't ask for something very important to
her, she tries to get on without it. Oh boy, this should be fun.
Doesn't entirely solve my problem, but it's only of those minor
epiphanies that tend to help me get moving.)
Brenda W. Clough
Will Shetterly wrote:
Well, the problem with this nine-year stint is that I didn't notice it.
Wrote like the wind, rewrote happily, and my god, look at the time!
Dan Goodman
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Hi Patricia,
>Useful tip. I was thinking today that I tell my reader far too much and
>I need to do a bit more foreshadowing. I was thinking how I might
>achieve this, but wasn't sure. My problem is, I'm a fan of Michael J.
>Straczinsky (writer of Babylon 5) and if you know his work, you'll know
>he's the master at this foreshadowing business. I can't do that at all,
>and it grieves me.
Maybe he can't do it either -- for the printed page.
He's working in a different medium, and it's very unlikely that
everything about his methods could be transferred.
----------
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>On Wed, 1 Aug 2001 23:55:49 +0100, "Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor"
><An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>Hi Patricia,
>>Useful tip. I was thinking today that I tell my reader far too much and
>>I need to do a bit more foreshadowing. I was thinking how I might
>>achieve this, but wasn't sure. My problem is, I'm a fan of Michael J.
>>Straczinsky (writer of Babylon 5) and if you know his work, you'll know
>>he's the master at this foreshadowing business. I can't do that at all,
>>and it grieves me.
>Maybe he can't do it either -- for the printed page.
>He's working in a different medium, and it's very unlikely that
>everything about his methods could be transferred.
That's an excellent point. It's also the case that Mr. Straczinsky is
hardly the only person who has ever mastered foreshadowing; it's a
venerable artistic technique. John M. Ford does it better than almost
anybody I can think of, but there are lots and lots of very good
examples.
Will Shetterly
pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet) wrote:
> dsg...@visi.com (Dan Goodman) writes:
>
> >On Wed, 1 Aug 2001 23:55:49 +0100, "Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor"
> ><An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >>Hi Patricia,
>
> >>Useful tip. I was thinking today that I tell my reader far too much and
> >>I need to do a bit more foreshadowing. I was thinking how I might
> >>achieve this, but wasn't sure. My problem is, I'm a fan of Michael J.
> >>Straczinsky (writer of Babylon 5) and if you know his work, you'll know
> >>he's the master at this foreshadowing business. I can't do that at all,
> >>and it grieves me.
>
> >Maybe he can't do it either -- for the printed page.
>
> >He's working in a different medium, and it's very unlikely that
> >everything about his methods could be transferred.
>
> That's an excellent point. It's also the case that Mr. Straczinsky is
> hardly the only person who has ever mastered foreshadowing; it's a
> venerable artistic technique. John M. Ford does it better than almost
> anybody I can think of, but there are lots and lots of very good
> examples.
It's also a technique that's remarkably easy to overuse. In general, if
we need hints that interesting things are going to happen in a story,
there's something wrong that foreshadowing won't save. But it's also
true that judicious foreshadowing can be delightful. It's icing on a
cake: don't trust it to save the cake, and remember that sometimes the
cake's better off without any.
Will Shetterly
"Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
> Will Shetterly wrote:
>
> >
> > It's legit--and sometimes damn useful--to set aside that first, very
> > educational, and often interminable book and write another. You can
> > always go back to yr. first book later and apply what you've learned
> > from the second.
> >
>
> Well, the problem with this nine-year stint is that I didn't notice it.
> Wrote like the wind, rewrote happily, and my god, look at the time!
Then more power to you! Tolkien did fine taking years and years for a
book. He's hardly alone.
Will Shetterly
pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C. Wrede) wrote:
> I'm always looking
> for
> sensible how-to-write books to recommend to my students and to other folks
> who
> ask...
The need is sufficiently great that Emma and I recently posted a list of
our favorites at:
http://www.player.org/pub/flash/writing/
Jay Random
Will Shetterly wrote:
>
> It's also a technique that's remarkably easy to overuse. In general, if
> we need hints that interesting things are going to happen in a story,
> there's something wrong that foreshadowing won't save. But it's also
> true that judicious foreshadowing can be delightful. It's icing on a
> cake: don't trust it to save the cake, and remember that sometimes the
> cake's better off without any.
<silly nitpick>
Frankly, I'm not sure it's even the icing on the cake. It's more like
the mint-flavoured green squiggles applied as decoration on top of the icing.
</nitpick>
Boyd & Michelle Bottorff
>
> Sometimes it helps if you make writing fiction into one of those things that
> you just *do*, like eating dinner or brushing your teeth.
Is now the time to admit that I've just bought myself a PDA and I use it
largely to remind myself to do things like brush my teeth and fix
dinner. <rueful grin>
However I am also using it to remind myself to write, and I have written
every day for the past week and a half, (excepting Sundays) and am
feeling rather cheerful about that.
I also do my writing ON the PDA with the help of one of those cool
keyboards that folds up and fits in your pocket. :)
Michelle Bottorff
--
Family webpage: http://home.sprintmail.com/~mbottorff/index.html
Lady Lavender's Filksongs: http://www.freemars.org/lavender/index.html
25r:2a:1p
Zeborah
> Yes; thank you, that's the part of what I was trying to get at that I couldn't
> quite get at, if that makes any sense. I seem to be very incoherent lately;
> possibly it's the weather (which hit 94 yesterday, with a heat index of 120).
> I do hope it's temporary...
Heat index? I've been suffering in 90+ temperatures too (plus
humidity), and people have started telling me it's going to get hotter.
I've got what I can only assume is a heat rash in the crease of my elbow
and on the backs of my ankles from wearing socks -- and as I'm using
this week (one of my very few holidays) to visit Seoul and walk around a
lot, I really need to wear socks. It's driving me crazy; I far prefer
my inch-radius mosquito bites to this.
Zeborah (must drink more water. And eat.)
Patricia C. Wrede
zeb...@altavista.com (Zeborah) writes:
>Heat index?
Heat index is a combination of temperature and humidity that the use to
calculate the effective temperature (as opposed to the real one). It's like
the opposite of wind chill -- for wind chill, the wind makes it harder for your
body to hold heat, so it *feel* colder than the actual air temperature (and
causes a lot of the same problems, like speed of getting frostbitten) as a
colder temperature would. For heat index, the humidity makes it harder for the
sweating mechanism to cool your body off, so it *feels* hotter than it is (and
causes a lot of the same problems, like heat exhaustion and heatstroke).
Patricia C. Wrede
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>He [John Braine] does say that half the battle
>>of writing is to find a method that works for you, and if his method
>>doesn't work for you, don't give up because it's probably the method at
>>fault, not you.
>
>Then he has a *great* deal more good sense than most how-to-write book authors.
> Was it a book you got this from? What was the title?
It's called "How to Write a Novel" by John Braine, published by Methuen
Non-fiction, ISBN 0 413 31540 1
>>Obviously, you and he move in different circles, which is fine. It
>>happens. Most of the writers I know (bar one) write largely non-fiction
>>anyway. As you have stated, it's quite different to fiction.
>
>Was this person talking about fiction, or about nonfiction?
Fiction.
>>Ah, I think by "professional writer" he meant "full-time writer" (I know
>>that's not the same thing, but that's the impression I get).
>
>Well, then he should have said so. There aren't all that many full-time
>fiction writers who really *are* full-time fiction writers, especially if
>you're talking about mainstream fiction.
I suspect you are right in the sense that most writers write non-fiction
as well as fiction, possibly because it's easier to pay the bills that
way.
>The hardest thing about going full-time for me was adjusting to the lack of a
>schedule.
The kids school schedules are helpful in my case - and unhelpful some of
the time. At least in the walking to school (2 miles, there and back,
three times a day), I get a lot of thinking time. If the kids are kind
enough to talk to each other and not to me!
>Currently, I do the
>"X-many pages per day" thing when I'm at a sticky spot, but otherwise it's more
>of a weekly goal -- my daily schedule shifts around too much to have a set time
>or a set word-count every day. It works for me...
I'll file it away in my memory banks, for future reference.
>>Hey, I'm different from about 9999/10000 people in the world, if the
>>statistics are to be believed. In fact, a method that works for me
>>theoretically should not work for the vast majority of the population.
>>
>>Then again, theoretically, I shouldn't be able to write fiction at all.
>
>Well actually, 9999/10000 people can't write fiction that's any good, so you
>should *so* be able to do it (if your statistics hold up...) :)
Now, I thought what I said was logical, and what you said seemed logical
but... Oh no, never mind. Anyway, I've been told there is no way someone
like me could write fiction. So, I suppose I'll just have to go out
there and prove them wrong.
>>I have tried this so many times. I have elaborate worlds, described in
>>great detail, but they are like static scenery and I cannot tell stories
>>about them. I have often been told of my short-stories (which have been
>>rejected) "This reads like a novel outline". Problem is, they never seem
>>to be able to grow into actual novels. I don't have enough of a story to
>>fill them.
>
>It may just be that you haven't learned to look at them from the right angle
>yet.
I tried a different angle, but they're so hard to read upside-down.
> When I was getting started, I did exactly the same thing: I wrote short
>story after short story, because I thought that was what you were supposed to
>*do*. And they came back with rejection after rejection, all of which said
>things like "This sounds like a plot outline for a novel" and "This sounds like
>chapter 3 of a novel." And I *couldn't* see it. They were short; they didn't
>have any more story to them.
I know exactly what you mean. At least it's encouraging to have had the
same rejection letters - unless (paranoia setting in here), they say
that to all the failed authors!
>
>Then I wrote a novel, and it sold. And after I had a couple more under my belt,
>I looked at all those short stories, and sonofagun if those editors weren't
>right. They *were* all truncated novels. Most of them couldn't be blown up
>properly into novels, because they didn't have the right structure...but they
>had too much *stuff* to be short stories.
I can see that. Vast sweeping scenery, complex, contradictory
characters... My last, "best" (in my opinion) short story was so long,
it was a third of a novel. I am seriously wondering if I shouldn't just
go the whole hog and turn it into a novel.
>Well, I work more or less that way, too. I just have to have a design to
>not-follow before I can sit down and write stuff.
???
>And foreshadowing isn't something you can do *YET*. It is a technique that you
>haven't learned, that's all. Doesn't mean it's unlearnable.
I'll try to put "yet" on the end of every sentence beginning "I can't
do..."
>This is true for a great many writers; there are lots of people who cannot,
>*must* not go back and rewrite until they've finished the draft, or they will
>become mired in the Slough of Endless Rewriting and never get beyond Chapter 6.
That's me.
>>I'm glad you don't think it bad advice. It's the best advice *for me*
>>that I've read, and it was like a breath of fresh air.
>
>That is the best possible indication that you've stumbled across the system
>that's going to work for you. Practically everyone reacts this way, when they
>finally find something that works. It's part of why people get all evangelical
>about their particular process, sometimes -- if they've searched long and
>hopelessly, and suddenly come out into the light, they want to shorten things
>up for everyone else.
{snip}
Yes, but maybe they don't really think it's the greatest thing since
sliced bread. Maybe there're deliberately trying to upset the
competition, eh?
(sorry, I'm practising for a very cynical character and have a habit of
taking on roles like this. It's kind of like Method Acting, only the
literary version.)
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>Well, then he should have said so. There aren't all that many full-time
>>fiction writers who really *are* full-time fiction writers, especially if
>>you're talking about mainstream fiction.
>
>I suspect you are right in the sense that most writers write non-fiction
>as well as fiction, possibly because it's easier to pay the bills that
>way.
Actually, what most mainstream fiction writers seem to do to make ends meet is
to teach. Working in multiple areas, like fiction and nonfiction and
screenwriting and gaming and comics, seems to be something that's far more
common among genre writers...though the number of genre writers who do this is,
based on my personal anecdotal experience, far less than the number of
mainstream writers who also teach. Most genre writers who aren't yet
supporting themselves full-time by writing have day jobs. And of course, in
both areas, there are people who do all that multi-tasking because they *like*
working in many areas, not just because they have to to make ends meet.
>but... Oh no, never mind. Anyway, I've been told there is no way someone
>like me could write fiction. So, I suppose I'll just have to go out
>there and prove them wrong.
Oh, yeah? Who said? And why? Just because you write nonfiction and used to
be a computer programmer type? I hate this kind of generalization. It's not
like there's a writer "type", and even if there were, most people don't know
enough writers to be able to identify it. According to all those career tests
I took in high school, I should have been a computer programmer. I was an
accountant for a number of years. People used to ask me how I could write
fantasy and still be an accountant; my standard response was, "Anybody who has
ever had to try to explain to the boss why the East Coast division is $3
million over budget this quarter knows perfectly well that there is no
difference between fantasy and accounting."
Sheesh. Some people.
>I know exactly what you mean. At least it's encouraging to have had the
>same rejection letters - unless (paranoia setting in here), they say
>that to all the failed authors!
Well, in my case it was because they were right. I have a *terrible* time
writing short fiction, then and now. I'm a natural novelist. Nobody ever told
me that, or gave me the slightest hint that maybe I should try writing novels
instead of short stories (well, all right, the letters that said "This sounds
like a novel outline" were a slight hint, I suppose), and the idea of putting
*so much* work into something and then having it rejected was terrifying. All
that waste! And it would take *so long.* And so forth, ad nauseum. What
never occurred to me was that writing twenty bad short stories was surely going
to take at least as much work, and was practically guaranteed to gather more
rejections than a novel.
In the event, I didn't learn to write novels by writing short stories. I
learned to write short stories by writing novels. And I still have a terrible
time with them.
>I can see that. Vast sweeping scenery, complex, contradictory
>characters... My last, "best" (in my opinion) short story was so long,
>it was a third of a novel. I am seriously wondering if I shouldn't just
>go the whole hog and turn it into a novel.
It sounds to me as if you are pretty much in the same boat I was -- you're a
natural novelist, trying to write short stories. If so, writing a novel will
get you something that's already at a better level than your short fiction, and
you'll probably find it easier, too (well, as easy as writing gets, anyway).
I didn't try turning any of my proto-novel "short stories" into novels until my
fifth book, so I have no idea how it might work to try it earlier in the
learning process. But if you were having a terrible time keeping the story
down to 20,000-30,000 words, you might want to try the revised-and-expanded
version.
>>Well, I work more or less that way, too. I just have to have a design to
>>not-follow before I can sit down and write stuff.
>
>???
I have to have a plan that's wrong. (I don't know what it would be like to
have one that was right; that's never happened, plan I never so carefully.) I
have to have something for my backbrain to rebel against. Plot outline: "The
heroine is on her way home from finishing school, when she gets news of her
father's death..." Actual opening: The heroine is sitting in a tower window
at home, when a messenger arrives with word from her father that the king has
died. But if the plot outline had had her sitting in the window, the book
would undoubtedly have opened with her on the road, and if I'd killed off the
king in the plot outline, it probably would have been her mother or her aunt
who'd died in the actual first chapter. Like that.
Patricia C. Wrede
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>>but... Oh no, never mind. Anyway, I've been told there is no way someone
>>like me could write fiction. So, I suppose I'll just have to go out
>>there and prove them wrong.
>
>Oh, yeah? Who said? And why?
I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and according
to all the specialists (including my own) and most text books, people
like me suffer from "limited imagination" and an inability to comprehend
so-called "Theory of Mind". That is, the instinctive ability to
understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself.
For example, I may come in a room and say "Do you want sugar?" without
asking first if you wanted a cup of coffee - I forgot that you didn't
know I had made coffee.
I also cannot read facial expressions or easily understand body
language. I communicate in a very literal, factual manner and have a
hard time with hints, sarcasm etc. Obviously, this can cause major
problems with writing, especially fiction.
Because I have tried many things that I was physiologically unsuited to
(such as training to be a nurse), people are scared that I'll be
disappointed if I try something else. They do not believe an autistic
person can write believable fiction so they try to dissuade me from
trying, or if I do insist on trying, they think they are being kind by
telling me it's a nice hobby and not to take it "too seriously".
Somebody tells me I can't write fiction about once a week at present.
For a long time, I let this opinion prevent me from even trying, despite
my love of story-telling and despite having always been the queen of
creative fiction at school. Whenever I started to write a story, the
words "You can't do that" sprang into my mind.
Then I read about a blind artist and I got to thinking. She uses colour,
even though she has never seen colour. She uses is very unusually
because she has never seen the world (red grass, purple sky, whatever),
but that very unusualness is the reason she is considered a great
artist. I wondered if perhaps my unique view of people and the world
could actually be turned into a feature, rather than a difficulty in my
writing? I'm still working on how that might be, but I recently wrote a
short story in which the characters are disconnected from the world in
exactly the same way as I am. It worked.
My favourite writer growing up was Isaac Asimov. I am naturally
suspicious of posthumous, amateur diagnosis, but it struck me that if
Asimov was autistic, it wouldn't change his work one iota. He was a
great story-teller, perhaps not a great writer and his characterisation
sucked. OTOH, people loved his stuff. Maybe the sort of people who were
a not terribly interested in people themselves loved his books, but
that's a market, just like any other.
Then I thought about Ian Flemming (his Bond has no personality IMHO),
Agatha Christie and others who are renowned as story-tellers, but
perhaps not as great writers. I got to thinking that maybe I could tell
a good story despite my disability.
So those are two possible routes out of my difficulty:
(1) Develop a completely unique writing style based on first-person
perspective only, and that person autistic. This may be great art, but
would probably never sell (I could fund my "habit" by writing lawn mower
manuals or articles on laundering your net curtains).
(2) Deliberately stop worrying about characterisation and just
concentrate on a gripping story (I know I can do it because I did it as
a kid - I was a kind of Shaharizard of the playground, avoiding a
beating by telling the other kids stories!). It might not be art, but
the public always likes a good story.
Any other suggestions considered, just don't tell me I can't write.
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The alt.support.autism FAQ is at
http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna/asa/
nicky browne
don't think getting hung up on process or what other people do is that
useful. ( Well it isn't to me anyway.) It's good to know that other people
have the same worries/ambitions/problems but in the end its just you and the
blank screen. I have only recently discovered this ng and the advice given
is fantastic. Its good to know that other people are also engaged in this
bizarre activity, but it doesn't change that basic equation.
Nicky
( Mildly disorientated and bad tempered having finished draft 1 of current
job now awaiting editorial feedback - aaagh!)
--
Posted from rhenium.btinternet.com [194.73.73.93]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Marilee J. Layman
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and according
>to all the specialists (including my own) and most text books, people
>like me suffer from "limited imagination" and an inability to comprehend
>so-called "Theory of Mind". That is, the instinctive ability to
>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself.
Pffft. There's some feeling that a lot of fans have something lightly
related to Asperger's and *they're* certainly creative. Here's a post
Cally made after Elise's sister talked on fans and Asperger's at
Minicon:
Someone will probably remember how to reduce that to a msgid.
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>>I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and according
>>to all the specialists (including my own) and most text books, people
>>like me suffer from "limited imagination" and an inability to comprehend
>>so-called "Theory of Mind". That is, the instinctive ability to
>>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself.
>
>Pffft. There's some feeling that a lot of fans have something lightly
>related to Asperger's and *they're* certainly creative.
Thanks for the encouragement. I really appreciate the sentiment.
OTOH, every time I show anyone my work, they say the same thing: poor
characterisation, no insight into your characters state of mind, poor
descriptions of non-verbal communication.
If enough people keep telling you something, maybe it's right.
You should probably ignore me for now - I've hit a downer.
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>(1) Develop a completely unique writing style based on first-person
>perspective only, and that person autistic. This may be great art, but
>would probably never sell (I could fund my "habit" by writing lawn mower
>manuals or articles on laundering your net curtains).
>
>(2) Deliberately stop worrying about characterisation and just
>concentrate on a gripping story (I know I can do it because I did it as
>a kid - I was a kind of Shaharizard of the playground, avoiding a
>beating by telling the other kids stories!). It might not be art, but
>the public always likes a good story.
>
>Any other suggestions considered, just don't tell me I can't write.
How about 3) figure out some way to do characterization *anyway*, the way the
blind artist figured out how to do color?
I may be able to think of some possibilities for this later -- right now I have
to run off and have dinner.
Patricia C. Wrede
Will Shetterly
"Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" <An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi Marilee,
> >>I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and according
> >>to all the specialists (including my own) and most text books, people
> >>like me suffer from "limited imagination" and an inability to comprehend
> >>so-called "Theory of Mind". That is, the instinctive ability to
> >>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself.
> >
> >Pffft. There's some feeling that a lot of fans have something lightly
> >related to Asperger's and *they're* certainly creative.
>
> Thanks for the encouragement. I really appreciate the sentiment.
>
> OTOH, every time I show anyone my work, they say the same thing: poor
> characterisation, no insight into your characters state of mind, poor
> descriptions of non-verbal communication.
>
> If enough people keep telling you something, maybe it's right.
>
> You should probably ignore me for now - I've hit a downer.
Ah, now you're definitely thinking like a writer!
Not to worry. It'll pass.
This writing thing takes a while for almost everyone. So long as you
like doing it, keep doing it. If you look for validation, you'll never
find it; enormously popular writers whine about not winning awards,
award-winners whine about not selling enough copies-- If you want
awards, work for world peace. If you want money, work on wall street.
But if you only want to write, write. No one can stop you but yourself.
I think the most evil thing an artist can do is tell another person they
can't be one, too. Since I began studying writing in college, I've
regularly seen the most promising people quit, and the least promising
people make sudden, unexpected advances. You have senses with which to
observe the world, and an imagination to manipulate what you've
observed, and a command of language to express what you imagine.
Ultimately, that's all you need to succeed. Keep writing!
Thomas Yan
>characterisation, no insight into your characters state of mind, poor
>descriptions of non-verbal communication.
>
>If enough people keep telling you something, maybe it's right.
>
>You should probably ignore me for now - I've hit a downer.
(I'm popping in midstream; apologies if I'm repeating stuff that was
already said.)
I think you might need to be careful to distinguish between what they
say is wrong and identifying what is actually wrong. That is, they
probably have identified problems in your writing, but their
articulation of the problems are not necessarily correct or helpful. [1,2]
[1] Surely you are familiar with examples of where you yourself liked or
disliked something, but could not satisfactorily explain why.
[2] If you half-expect those kinds of criticisms, maybe you mis-interpret
and hear them sometimes when they are not intended. (Now and then
I joke that I try not to be too introspective for fear of coming
up with a pet explanation that I latch onto and turn into a
self-fulfilling prophecy.)
For example, the literal complaint "no insight into your character's
state of mind" does not necessarily mean "you don't understand how
someone like him would think", which is what you seem to fear.
Instead, it could mean:
+ You stated what his emotions were without sufficient corroborating detail.
(Sometimes this is expressed as "show, don't tell", but some here
hate that phrase because essentially *all* writing is telling -- it
is just that some approaches are more convincing than others.)
or
+ Your description of his thought processes was insufficient, because it was
too short, too concerned with the wrong details, and/or too
idiosyncratic. (As an example, (thanks Madeleine L'Engle'), suppose
Bob says Mary has "gray eyes, not grey eyes, if you know what I
mean". While that conveys to me that Bob has a lovely sense of
nuance, it tells me nothing about what Mary's eyes actually look
like.)
--
Thomas Yan (ty...@cs.cornell.edu) I don't speak for Cornell University
Computer Science Department \\ Cornell University \\ Ithaca, NY 14853
(please pardon any lack of capitalization; my hands hurt from typing)
Brian M. Scott
<mjla...@erols.com> wrote:
[...]
>http://groups.google.com/groups?q=asperger%27s+group:rec.arts.sf.fandom+author:Cally+author:Soukup&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=3&selm=7f5o9g%24ft2%241%40wheel.two14.lan
>
>Someone will probably remember how to reduce that to a msgid.
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=7f5o9g%24ft2%241%40wheel.two14.lan
will get you there.
Brian
Morgan E. Smith
On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor wrote:
> Hi Marilee,
> >>I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and according
> >>to all the specialists (including my own) and most text books, people
> >>like me suffer from "limited imagination" and an inability to comprehend
> >>so-called "Theory of Mind". That is, the instinctive ability to
> >>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself.
> >
> >Pffft. There's some feeling that a lot of fans have something lightly
> >related to Asperger's and *they're* certainly creative.
>
> Thanks for the encouragement. I really appreciate the sentiment.
>
> OTOH, every time I show anyone my work, they say the same thing: poor
> characterisation, no insight into your characters state of mind, poor
> descriptions of non-verbal communication.
>
> If enough people keep telling you something, maybe it's right.
>
> You should probably ignore me for now - I've hit a downer.
Well, actually, Anna, I'd like to talk about it with you. I have a
central character who is like that - and it is *hard* for me to get into
her psyche. (Perhaps I feel too much? Perhaps we can swap stuff?)
I somehow doubt it is as bad as you think: I don't really have a lot of
empathy for a lot of people, and I don't think I'm much different from
most people. And if you want to write, maybe it isn't that you don't feel
and know these things, but that you have a learning curve in progress with
respect to writing about these things. (Maybe you don't mention certain
"touchie-feelie" bits because they seem too evident?)
Writing is about communication - the fact that you want to communicate
must mean that you care and have connection with others (else why
communicate with them?) - so I would worry less about whether you have a
real-life problem and more about how to fix what sounds more like a
writing problem. Not to downplay or minimalize what might be a real
question, but to experiment and ascertain if what is happening is about
you or just about writing. (Not that I am qualified - I just thought you
might like something more supportive than "Oh dear, how awful".)
Morgan Smith
Patricia C. Wrede
>OTOH, every time I show anyone my work, they say the same thing: poor
>characterisation, no insight into your characters state of mind, poor
>descriptions of non-verbal communication.
>
>If enough people keep telling you something, maybe it's right.
Well, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with *your perceptions*;
it has to do with the words on the page. You don't actually need to know what
your characters think and feel in order to give the reader the right illusions,
any more than a writer actually needs to know an entire
sixteen-volume-set-of-encyclopedia's worth of stuff about the background of
their world in order to give the reader the illusion that the world is
developed in a detail and depth approximating reality.
*Most* writers seem to do this part of characterization by "getting into their
character's heads" or playing a sort of "let's pretend" or by a kind of method
acting. That doesn't mean all writers work that way, and it certainly doesn't
mean *you* have to do it that way. You may very well be the sort of writer who
does the plot naturally and intuitively, but who has to logic her way to what
the characters are like.
I can think of three things off the top of my head that might work for you.
The first is to turn this from a bug into a feature, the way programmers do.
You're writing science fiction; use the viewpoint of an alien who has *no clue*
what human body language means or how to figure out what other people are
feeling. It's quite possible that you could do a *much* more convincing job of
making an alien "feel" alien to most of your readers, because since you have to
think hard about your characters to get their emotions in, you'd be much less
likely to slip and have your alien accidentally "get" stuff that by rights he
shouldn't understand.
The second is to go for camera-eye viewpoint, or what Algys Budrys calls
"cinematic prose." He did a series of articles in LOCUS years ago -- I think
in the 70's (my, how time flies...) -- on the subject of this kind of prose and
how to make it work, which to the best of my recollection, involved relying
heavily on striking visual imagery that the reader had to interpret for
him/herself. He used his Hugo-winning book, ROGUE MOON, as an example of how
to do this. Making this work is tricky for most authors -- at least, he made
it sound rather tricky -- but it might suit you right down to the ground.
Nine-and sixty ways...
The third is to make a conscious and deliberate pass through everything to
layer in the characters' thoughts and emotions. You don't have to get into
people's heads to do this, particularly -- you just have to figure out what
sort of things work *in fiction* to give readers the idea of what characters
are thinking, feeling, etc. and then do those things. It's learning techniques
and applying them, not figuring out actual people. Internal dialog isn't
actually all that different from external dialog, in terms of how you make it
up; what's interesting about it is that it isn't always *consistent* with the
external dialog, and therefore provides the reader with an "insight" into the
character's "real feelings." But really, you, the author, are just making it
all up, external and internal and everything. This might be difficult to get a
handle on at first, but there's always *some* aspect of writing that's really
tough for any given writer; you just have a rather unusual one, that's all.
The fourth (I just thought of a fourth one) is to swipe and combine characters
from other works of fiction. If you can take Shakespeare's smart-mouthed
Mercutio and made him female, or combined Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet with
the Guinevere of Arthurian legend, you might have characters you could "do"
without having to "feel" -- the idea isn't so much to understand as to imitate,
while also disguising the imitation.
And of course there's always the option of going for a plot-and-action heavy
book that relies heavily on cool ideas -- something that keeps your characters
so busy shooting at each other that there's no *time* for the reader to worry
about what they're "really" like.
If none of those sounds as if it'll work for you, I'll try and think of
something else.
Patricia C. Wrede
Marilee J. Layman
Ah, thanks! I've saved that for the next time I need it.
Rosemary Lake
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Hi Patricia,
>>>but... Oh no, never mind. Anyway, I've been told there is no way someone
>>>like me could write fiction. So, I suppose I'll just have to go out
>>>there and prove them wrong.
>>
>>Oh, yeah? Who said? And why?
>
>I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and according
>to all the specialists (including my own) and most text books, people
>like me suffer from "limited imagination" and an inability to comprehend
>so-called "Theory of Mind". That is, the instinctive ability to
>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself.
Anybody who thinks you lack imagination or "ability to
understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself" has
got to be nuts!!! Just your posts here are demonstrating all of the above!
>For example, I may come in a room and say "Do you want sugar?" without
>asking first if you wanted a cup of coffee - I forgot that you didn't
>know I had made coffee.
Sounds useful for a writer. :-) Like what Le Guin in /Steering the Craft/
calls 'crowding and leaping.' Most of us have to cut out the redundant
explanation and details, you'd probably just skip them in the first
place.:-)
>
>I also cannot read facial expressions or easily understand body
>language.
Fine. People who use a lot of body language themselves think they've
communicated when it's not really down on paper.
>I communicate in a very literal, factual manner and have a
>hard time with hints, sarcasm etc. Obviously, this can cause major
>problems with writing, especially fiction.
Depends on how much your characters use hints, sarcasm, etc.
/snip/
>For a long time, I let this opinion prevent me from even trying, despite
>my love of story-telling and despite having always been the queen of
>creative fiction at school.>Whenever I started to write a story, the
>words "You can't do that" sprang into my mind.
Sounds like you're doing fine now. But do you have copies of any of those
old stories from school? If you got discouraged, you might try retelling
one of those on paper now, expanding it....
>
>Then I read about a blind artist and I got to thinking. She uses colour,
>even though she has never seen colour. She uses is very unusually
>because she has never seen the world (red grass, purple sky, whatever),
>but that very unusualness is the reason she is considered a great
>artist. I wondered if perhaps my unique view of people and the world
>could actually be turned into a feature, rather than a difficulty in my
>writing? I'm still working on how that might be, but I recently wrote a
>short story in which the characters are disconnected from the world in
>exactly the same way as I am. It worked.
>
>My favourite writer growing up was Isaac Asimov. I am naturally
>suspicious of posthumous, amateur diagnosis, but it struck me that if
>Asimov was autistic, it wouldn't change his work one iota. He was a
>great story-teller, perhaps not a great writer and his characterisation
>sucked. OTOH, people loved his stuff. Maybe the sort of people who were
>a not terribly interested in people themselves loved his books, but
>that's a market, just like any other.
Yes. Larry Niven's early stories had little characterisation, iirc. In the
later ones he seemed to be working at it, rather consciously and
artificially. His best characters IMO are the non-humans: the Kzin and
Puppeteer. Have you tried intelligent animal characters?
>
>Then I thought about Ian Flemming (his Bond has no personality IMHO),
>Agatha Christie and others who are renowned as story-tellers, but
>perhaps not as great writers. I got to thinking that maybe I could tell
>a good story despite my disability.
Writing about of SF and fantasy, C. S. Lewis once said that when the
setting and events are very unusual, the character should be sort of
Everyman. Wonderland was an odd place, so Alice was a very ordinary little
girl. An odd Alice would be one oddity too many.
>So those are two possible routes out of my difficulty:
>
>(1) Develop a completely unique writing style based on first-person
>perspective only, and that person autistic. This may be great art, but
>would probably never sell (I could fund my "habit" by writing lawn mower
>manuals or articles on laundering your net curtains).
(1-A) Make up some alien races/cultures that have some of these
limitations. Might be limitations in processing as with autism; might be
physical limitations. Frex a race that sees only x-ray couldn't read human
expressions. Try some bits from their pv, some from the pv of 'normal'
humans who are dealing with them, etc. Give them some abilities 'normals'
don't have, also. Maybe fill in some of the info as excerpts from
non-fiction articles some other character writes about the situation. (This
sort of experiment might actually produce a real short story. :-)
>(2) Deliberately stop worrying about characterisation and just
>concentrate on a gripping story (I know I can do it because I did it as
>a kid - I was a kind of Shaharizard of the playground, avoiding a
>beating by telling the other kids stories!).
My word! If you could do that without knowing how to use your own facial
expressions, body language, etc -- you must have something going for you.
>It might not be art, but
>the public always likes a good story.
Yes. If you've got the plot right, then characterization could be added
during revision. I always start with the plot, or at least some events I
want. Then after the plot sort of works, I think "now what kind of
character would do these things? How would he/she feel while doing them?
How would the pv character (or reader) learn how the other character is
feeling?" Etc.
Actually I'm not sure just what your problem is with characterisation. I
can see several possible problems from what you've said. Whiich if any of
these problems is actually showing up in your work, according to readers
you trust?
Rosemary
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>Anybody who thinks you lack imagination or "ability to
>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself" has
>got to be nuts!!! Just your posts here are demonstrating all of the above!
Thanks. I was tired and I think I've gone down with a cold. It's hard to
be optimistic when you can't breathe. This is why I can write 15,000
words one week, and nothing the next - all the time I think I can, I do;
when I think I can't, I just feel sorry for myself.
I was thinking I'm going to have to find a way to cure myself of this
problem. I am hoping my course might help since I should get an
opportunity to learn some skills and maybe try stuff I've thought I
can't possibly do.
>>I also cannot read facial expressions or easily understand body
>>language.
>
>Fine. People who use a lot of body language themselves think they've
>communicated when it's not really down on paper.
I never thought of that. I have been told I tell people *too much* about
the body language of my characters at times - like I work too hard at
it.
>Depends on how much your characters use hints, sarcasm, etc.
I can write sarcasm. I'm great at doing it myself, it's just other
people's I can't always understand.
>Sounds like you're doing fine now. But do you have copies of any of those
>old stories from school? If you got discouraged, you might try retelling
>one of those on paper now, expanding it....
I have lost most of the stuff I did when I was a kid because we moved
house every few months (my dad was in the RAF). I still remember some of
them, however, as does my sister because I used to entertain her by
reading them (when we lived in Germany, we didn't bother with a TV, and
the radio only had English programs a few hours a day, most of which
were for adults).
My stuff was usually adventure/sci-fi and hers were usually ridiculous
comedies about talking bananas (hey! someone stole that idea! My sister
invented "Bananas in Pyjamas"). I wrote a series about a lad called Jem
(Jeremy) who was a kind of Jedi-knight type character, with super-powers
and strange, mystical beliefs who goes around the galaxy rescuing
people.
I won a competition about that time with a time-travel story involving a
girl being trapped with a clan of Neanderthals and finding out that they
weren't so different after all - in fact, they were being persecuted by
the humans encroaching on their territory. She gets "rescued" even
though she wants to stay with the Neanderthals in the past, because the
scientist assume she wants to come back home. It's got a sad ending with
her watching the sun-set and remembering her friends.
I had a story about a dolphin for which I won an award. It was entirely
from the dolphin's POV and I think in the end he witnesses some men
killing a whale and thinks it might be time for the dolphins to take
over... again (sort of twist-in-the-tale, "you didn't know it was a sci-
fi until that point" story). My teacher particularly enjoyed the
descriptions of what sonar feels like.
>Yes. Larry Niven's early stories had little characterisation, iirc. In the
>later ones he seemed to be working at it, rather consciously and
>artificially. His best characters IMO are the non-humans: the Kzin and
>Puppeteer. Have you tried intelligent animal characters?
No, not recently, but it seems to me that it might be a sensible idea
given that, as Patricia says, I could probably do an alien/non-human
better than most human writers.
Recently, I asked J. Michael Straczynski (indirectly) why he had not
androids in his stories and he replied that he couldn't make them
convincing. I was shocked by that, since I am in awe of his ability as a
script-writer. I thought "It's easy. You just imagine yourself only
seeing people, not interpreting what they do and say" and then I
realised that perhaps most people can't do that.
>Writing about of SF and fantasy, C. S. Lewis once said that when the
>setting and events are very unusual, the character should be sort of
>Everyman. Wonderland was an odd place, so Alice was a very ordinary little
>girl. An odd Alice would be one oddity too many.
So the corollory to that is that if Alice is odd, make the settings and
events very commonplace. For the record, I don't think C.S.Lewis'
characters exactly exude life either. They are like characters in a
morality play, representing different aspects of the Everyman character.
>(1-A) Make up some alien races/cultures that have some of these
>limitations. Might be limitations in processing as with autism; might be
>physical limitations. Frex a race that sees only x-ray couldn't read human
>expressions. Try some bits from their pv, some from the pv of 'normal'
>humans who are dealing with them, etc. Give them some abilities 'normals'
>don't have, also. Maybe fill in some of the info as excerpts from
>non-fiction articles some other character writes about the situation. (This
>sort of experiment might actually produce a real short story. :-)
Interesting idea. I have been working on an idea for a story involving a
society in which telepathy is the norm and some humans come to that
society and try to cope. I have played around a lot with similar ideas,
but now I'm wondering if I ought to be consciously focussing on it,
drawing on my strengths.
>Actually I'm not sure just what your problem is with characterisation. I
>can see several possible problems from what you've said. Whiich if any of
>these problems is actually showing up in your work, according to readers
>you trust?
My characters definitely lack depth and sometimes my dialogue is very
unrealistic. I am aware of this problem myself, but I get scared that I
can't improve it even if work on it.
I am frequently accused of writing in a very cliched manner (bad guys
are bad, good guys are too good etc.) and of pretentious use of language
(OK, so I did try to get "synergy" and "Gestalt" into the same sentence,
but I quickly realised my error when my very well-read, very brainy
friend said "What's that mean?" and when I explained it, said "So why
didn't you say that?").
Just for once, I'd like someone to say something nice about my stuff.
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
ty...@twinkie.cs.cornell.edu (Thomas Yan) wrote:
<snip>
>
> + You stated what his emotions were without sufficient
>corroborating detail.
> (Sometimes this is expressed as "show, don't tell", but
>some here hate that phrase because essentially *all* writing
>is telling -- it is just that some approaches are more
>convincing than others.)
I'm finding it useful to think of "telling" as "narrating",
and "showing" as "dramatising".
This helps me because "dramatise, don't narrate" doesn't, to
me, make the same sort of overall General Pronouncement From
On High sense that "show, don't tell" feels as though it
*ought* to have. Thinking of it this way makes it obvious to
me that on some occasions, you need to narrate, and on some
scenes you need to dramatise, and that there will be a
different set of tools available for each skill.
It probably doesn't help that narration, as a skill, hasn't
been too popular for a number of years. Fiction seems to
want to aspire to the immediacy of film, with a colourless
camera-eye narrator. (Okay, not always, but as a main
current in the river of fiction...) Whereas it's perfectly
possible to have a strong auctorial voice and a scene in
narration, and still get a strong reaction out of the reader.
A *different* reaction to what you'd get if you dramatised
the same events, but sometimes you want that different
reaction.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk (Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor) wrote:
<snip>
> Any other suggestions considered, just don't tell me I
>can't write.
Hello, Anna - just a piece of info that might encourage you:
I know at least one person with Asperger's who is a fiction
writer. (I say 'at least' because I have an idea I know
others, but that's the only one I know has actually had the
medical diagnosis.) So it can be done.
I saw further up-thread you were mentioning John Braine's
"Writing A Novel". Include all the usual caveats here about
'it only works for the people it works for', but it worked
for me, big time -- it was the book that made me into a
writer. I followed his "count words" maxim, and "write every
day"; and I'm one of the people who likes to write a first
draft and *then* do the plot-plan, as he recommends. For
years, it worked best for me if I wrote a first draft to find
out what happened.
Mind you, it was still a supermarket-shop kind of experience;
I chucked out the things in his book that didn't work for
me -- writing a character synopsis, frex. It didn't do the
story any harm, for me, but it didn't do it any good, either.
I think part of the reason John Braine's book worked, and
some of the more "let your creativity flow" ones didn't was
that in my teens, I needed to know about the self-discipline
involved in writing. I had "creative" out the wazoo -- most
of it crap, but flowing nonetheless. What I needed to know
was that (a) you need to sit down and WRITE, and (b) someone
else has considered the subject important enough to produce a
book *saying* that you need to sit down and write. When
you're surrounded by nay-sayers (which it seems you are) it
can be very helpful to know someone else takes the art
seriously.
These days I've had to alter the way I write, by necessity,
but I would guess that most of us continue to tinker about
with different methods as we go on. No doubt Patricia will
be along to tell me of some writer who still carries on the
method they used at 15... <g> So maybe 'most' just means 'a
fair number of', in this instance.
Mary
Lucy Kemnitzer
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Hi Patricia,
>>>but... Oh no, never mind. Anyway, I've been told there is no way someone
>>>like me could write fiction. So, I suppose I'll just have to go out
>>>there and prove them wrong.
>>
>>Oh, yeah? Who said? And why?
>
>I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and according
>to all the specialists (including my own) and most text books, people
>like me suffer from "limited imagination" and an inability to comprehend
>so-called "Theory of Mind". That is, the instinctive ability to
>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself.
Right, "people like you" who suffer from "limited imagination" are
the "Scheherezade of the playground" and aspire to be writers. I'm
not comfy with the whole Asperger's thing, anyway, and now I'm
less happy than ever. A person who spins stories over and over is
told she has a limited imagination. Oof.
>For example, I may come in a room and say "Do you want sugar?" without
>asking first if you wanted a cup of coffee - I forgot that you didn't
>know I had made coffee.
>
>I also cannot read facial expressions or easily understand body
>language. I communicate in a very literal, factual manner and have a
>hard time with hints, sarcasm etc. Obviously, this can cause major
>problems with writing, especially fiction.
I'm suppressing myself very hard so I don't get all ranty about
things, but I'd like to just suggest that functional normality
used to be considered to have a large continuum, in more than one
dimension, and if these things are hard for you, well, they are,
but you don't have to accept a "defective"label over it.
And I'd like to congratulate you for noticing that not all stories
are about feelings. Some stories are about actions.
Something I've been doing lately is going back and thinking about
those stories I told when I was a little girl, and thinking about
what they were for, and what they were about, and what kind of
stories they were -- because I'm finding that there's something
there, a core of storytelling, that when I embrace that, and apply
my grownup skills and insights to it, I do something pretty good.
I think maybe you might benefit from the same thing, perhaps.
>Because I have tried many things that I was physiologically unsuited to
>(such as training to be a nurse), people are scared that I'll be
>disappointed if I try something else. They do not believe an autistic
>person can write believable fiction so they try to dissuade me from
>trying, or if I do insist on trying, they think they are being kind by
>telling me it's a nice hobby and not to take it "too seriously".
>Somebody tells me I can't write fiction about once a week at present.
There is a very effective writer of memoirs who is autistic -- um,
her name is Temple Grandin and you probably already know about her
but did you know she has a website (naturally)?
http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html
She's brilliant, of course, but she also got her autism diagnosis
in an era when it was much harder to get it, when you had to be
really flagrantly out there to be called autistic. And she says
she thinks in pictures, not words, and that thinking in pictures
actually helps her imagination. Helps her understand animals and
helps her invent things.
>
>For a long time, I let this opinion prevent me from even trying, despite
>my love of story-telling and despite having always been the queen of
>creative fiction at school. Whenever I started to write a story, the
>words "You can't do that" sprang into my mind.
>
>Then I read about a blind artist and I got to thinking. She uses colour,
>even though she has never seen colour. She uses is very unusually
>because she has never seen the world (red grass, purple sky, whatever),
>but that very unusualness is the reason she is considered a great
>artist. I wondered if perhaps my unique view of people and the world
>could actually be turned into a feature, rather than a difficulty in my
>writing? I'm still working on how that might be, but I recently wrote a
>short story in which the characters are disconnected from the world in
>exactly the same way as I am. It worked.
>
>My favourite writer growing up was Isaac Asimov. I am naturally
>suspicious of posthumous, amateur diagnosis, but it struck me that if
>Asimov was autistic, it wouldn't change his work one iota. He was a
>great story-teller, perhaps not a great writer and his characterisation
>sucked. OTOH, people loved his stuff. Maybe the sort of people who were
>a not terribly interested in people themselves loved his books, but
>that's a market, just like any other.
But you know, his characterization didn't always. I'm a person
who reads for character, and I _loved_ Arkady: I loved Arkady when
I was almost Arkady's age. And the detective in _The Caves of
Steel_, I loved too. Just about all the science fiction writers
of his time lightly sketched characters, and some did it with a
deft hand and nobody complained. And some did it without such a
deft hand and nobody complained because they did something else
worth reading.
From what you're saying here, I'm guessing that what's going to
end up happening is _not_ that you'll succeed inspite of poor
characterization, but that you're going to do really well at a
particular kind of characterization, focussing on the character
issues that present interesting problems to you.
>
>Then I thought about Ian Flemming (his Bond has no personality IMHO),
>Agatha Christie and others who are renowned as story-tellers, but
>perhaps not as great writers. I got to thinking that maybe I could tell
>a good story despite my disability.
>
>So those are two possible routes out of my difficulty:
>
>(1) Develop a completely unique writing style based on first-person
>perspective only, and that person autistic. This may be great art, but
>would probably never sell (I could fund my "habit" by writing lawn mower
>manuals or articles on laundering your net curtains).
There's a movie out, "Memento," in which the protagonist has lost
the ability to form new memories. It's quirky and arty and the
story sold -- it got made into a movie and I think it's earning
its share.
I think that a detective in alien worlds who is autistic would be
fantastic, not necessarily arty at all: this would be a person
who, because reading faces and voices and comprehending
interactions did not come naturally to them, has made a study of
those things -- oh, a Sherlock Holmes, who seemed a little on the
autistic side to me, like that.
>
>(2) Deliberately stop worrying about characterisation and just
>concentrate on a gripping story (I know I can do it because I did it as
>a kid - I was a kind of Shaharizard of the playground, avoiding a
>beating by telling the other kids stories!). It might not be art, but
>the public always likes a good story.
>
>Any other suggestions considered, just don't tell me I can't write.
Combine the two. Or don't think about it at all, and write what
you think you'd like to write. Or go the other way around: invent
a world in which autism is the norm. Or anything you like.
And when you get scared you can't do it, say so here, so we can
contradict you.
It helped me to do that.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Zeborah
> OTOH, every time I show anyone my work, they say the same thing: poor
> characterisation, no insight into your characters state of mind, poor
> descriptions of non-verbal communication.
>
> If enough people keep telling you something, maybe it's right.
Depends on who the people are. (If enough people in the US House of
Representatives think that cloning is a great horror, does that make
them right? No, it just makes them idiots.) But even if they are
right, this is the same sort of feedback *any* writer will get as they
begin their writing. It just means you need to work at one of two
things: either a) getting insight into your characters, OR b)
describing that insight in a way other people can understand. (That
third criticism, 'poor descrips of non-verbal comm.', seems like it
might be tending to the b) side of the problem.) The critique doesn't
tell you which of a) or b) is the problem; it's not something that's
easy for a reader to know. It's something you have to figure out
yourself. Either way, it will probably be hard work, but it's fixable;
it just requires time and practice.
Zeborah
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>> If enough people keep telling you something, maybe it's right.
> Well, actually, Anna, I'd like to talk about it with you. I have a
>central character who is like that - and it is *hard* for me to get into
>her psyche. (Perhaps I feel too much? Perhaps we can swap stuff?)
If she really is like that, you don't get into her psyche because it's
too crowded (i.e. she's already in there). One tip I can give you is
that people like me often express themselves in terms of "feeling like
I've been dumped on an alien planet and nobody told me the rules".
> I somehow doubt it is as bad as you think: I don't really have a lot of
>empathy for a lot of people, and I don't think I'm much different from
>most people. And if you want to write, maybe it isn't that you don't feel
>and know these things, but that you have a learning curve in progress with
>respect to writing about these things. (Maybe you don't mention certain
>"touchie-feelie" bits because they seem too evident?)
That is probably true.
>
> Writing is about communication - the fact that you want to communicate
>must mean that you care and have connection with others (else why
>communicate with them?)
For intellectual stimulation? ;oP
You are right, however: lack of empathy is not the same thing as not
caring. Actually, I have a burning desire to communicate. I am one of
natures communicators, I think. I am told I am very unusual in that
(exceptional for an autistic).
>- so I would worry less about whether you have a
>real-life problem and more about how to fix what sounds more like a
>writing problem.
You're right. I'm letting my awareness of my difficulties distract me
from focussing on a specific problem.
> Not to downplay or minimalize what might be a real
>question, but to experiment and ascertain if what is happening is about
>you or just about writing.
That's why I'm doing this course. I'm hoping it might show me where the
problem actually lies.
>(Not that I am qualified - I just thought you
>might like something more supportive than "Oh dear, how awful".)
What use would a statement like that be? Would it change anything? You
see, that is one of the things that bugs me about non-autistic people,
the idea that if you have a problem, you want sentimental homilies. I'll
take it as well meant if there is no practical help, but I'd far rather
have a constructive suggestion than a pat on the head. You wouldn't
believe how I get patronised sometimes!
No, your reply was just fine.
Philip M. Brewer
>>Any other suggestions considered, just don't tell me I can't write.
> How about 3) figure out some way to do characterization *anyway*, the
> way the blind artist figured out how to do color?
What she said.
There's a wide range of natural ability for doing characterization (like
everything else). Most people fall in the middle somewhere. Maybe you're
at the opposite end from the natural geniuses over on the other side. (I
don't have enough information to form an opinion, but you seem to think
that.) That doesn't mean that you can't do characterization: it means
that you probably have to do it some other way.
Consider developing some tools that let you fake it.
Here's one route you might consider: I saw an article once that
hypothsized that perceiving yourself as a unitary individual is an
illusion--your brain is actually a bunch of separate parts, each with its
own agenda. Your behavior is actually a sort of vector sum of all the
urges and aversions from all these diverse parts. The perception that you
are a unitary individual who weighed and considered various possibilities
and then made a choice is an after-the-fact rationalization of this
reality. The article went on to hypothsize that the purpose of this
"unitary individual model" was as a tool to help people to understand and
predict the behavior of other people.
Whether there's any real truth to that or not, you could consider creating
a model for characters that works like that. They have certain urges and
aversions. When you want to know how a character will respond to a
situation, crank through the model and figure out what they'll do. Then,
crank through another model that provides the after-the-fact perception of
their imaginary unitary individual. Very little of that will actually
make it into the story, but if you know why they make their choice and
what they tell themselves about why they made it, you'll be in a position
to write a bit of internal dialog, show some external signs that reflect
an internal conflict, etc.
It would be a lot more work than being an intuitive genius. But, nobody's
an intuitive genius in everything anyway.
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>Hello, Anna - just a piece of info that might encourage you:
>I know at least one person with Asperger's who is a fiction
>writer.
Thanks. Actually, that is the one piece of information I needed to hear.
If I can find a single example of someone a little like me who can write
fiction, I think it possible that I can do so too.
>I think part of the reason John Braine's book worked, and
>some of the more "let your creativity flow" ones didn't was
>that in my teens, I needed to know about the self-discipline
>involved in writing.
I relate to that.
> I had "creative" out the wazoo -- most
>of it crap, but flowing nonetheless.
I did a free-writing exercise for my course recently, and I can
literally create something from thinking about the blank MS Word screen.
I guess I don't lack creativity. OTOH, it was largely nonsense.
> What I needed to know
>was that (a) you need to sit down and WRITE, and (b) someone
>else has considered the subject important enough to produce a
>book *saying* that you need to sit down and write.
Very true.
> When
>you're surrounded by nay-sayers (which it seems you are) it
>can be very helpful to know someone else takes the art
>seriously.
You're right. I am surrounded by nay-sayers. My mother takes literature
very seriously (she writes herself, but totally different stuff to me
and despises science-fiction). Before she lost her sight, she used to
read through the Booker prize nominations every year, just for fun. Her
two favourite writers are Ishiguru ("Remains of the Day") and Salman
Rushdie. Everything I write is compared against that standard, so
obviously I haven't got a hope.
My father has studied French literature and is a linguist (thus very
interest in language in general). He enjoys Proust and Tolstoy.
Everyone else that influences me either doesn't read, or doesn't write,
or does neither. I don't wish to imply that any of these people are
being deliberately hurtful, but I think it's a burden that many disabled
people suffer from: being over-protected. They're scared that I might
fail and that I might feel bad if that happens.
Thank you for identifying a major problem: I ask the wrong people for
their opinions.
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>Right, "people like you" who suffer from "limited imagination" are
>the "Scheherezade of the playground" and aspire to be writers. I'm
>not comfy with the whole Asperger's thing, anyway, and now I'm
>less happy than ever. A person who spins stories over and over is
>told she has a limited imagination. Oof.
Actually, there are some researchers at Cambridge who are questioning
this whole stereotype. They recently took "Limited imagination" off the
diagnostic criteria they use (this includes Dr Simon Baron-Cohen who
diagnosed me - he's acknowledged as a world-expert on the subject).
More likely, it is that autistic people have a different style of
creativity and perform creative tasks via a different route (perhaps
using different areas of the brain to other people). I'll have to ask
them where they've got in this research - it might be a misunderstanding
of autistic people, just as, in a former time, autistic people were
assumed to be unemotional simply because they didn't always outwardly
demonstrate their emotions.
Which reminds me of a situation recently, where the mother of a severely
autistic child was complaining that the intensive program she was using
wasn't working on him. She had the "kill or cure" attitude, heavily
laced with the opinion that the ends justified the means; but the more
she pushed, the more violent her child behaved.
"The thing is," she reported, "he hasn't got any way to communicate, so
whenever we try to make him do things he screams really loudly and tries
to bite us!"
Do you ever get the feeling you're shouting and nobody's hearing you?
;o^
>I'm suppressing myself very hard so I don't get all ranty about
>things,
Is that a writer-thing, getting all ranty? It's just I've noticed a lot
of writers who do that.
> but I'd like to just suggest that functional normality
>used to be considered to have a large continuum, in more than one
>dimension, and if these things are hard for you, well, they are,
>but you don't have to accept a "defective"label over it.
Thanks. I'm not defective, I'm differently brained ;oP
>
>And I'd like to congratulate you for noticing that not all stories
>are about feelings. Some stories are about actions.
Ah, but action stories are not respected by the literati. Question is,
do I care?
>There is a very effective writer of memoirs who is autistic -- um,
>her name is Temple Grandin and you probably already know about her
>but did you know she has a website (naturally)?
Apparently we have a lot in common. I also "think in pictures" to use
her expression, and interpret social behaviour logically rather than
instinctively.
However, we have a few crucial differences: I don't assume that all
autistic people think like me (mention her name on any autism group, and
the autistic adults go nuts and start ranting); I care more about people
than books (much as I love books); I don't think cattle slaughter is a
suitable metaphor for... well, anything really, except cattle slaughter.
(FYI, Temple Grandin is the world's no.1 expert in cattle slaughter-
houses and environmentally unfriendly animal feed-lots. These are not
achievements I would be terribly proud of and don't particularly want to
read about, least of all in a book supposedly about autism)
To be honest, I don't actually think her book "Thinking in Pictures" is
terribly good. I wonder if it would have sold at all if it wasn't
written by a person with a disability. It's very rambly, goes off at
tangents, is far too generalised about autistic people (Grandin assumes
they're all like her), has little sense-of-humour (least of all about
herself), exudes an attitude of superiority over ordinary humans, and to
be quite frank, it's boring.
If you want to read about Temple Grandin, and have fun doing so, I
recommend you read "Anthropologist on Mars" by Oliver Sacks. It covers
similar ground, but in a beautifully written, easily accessible
narrative style. Besides, I know someone that's met Oliver Sacks and she
says he was a darling.
>She's brilliant,
Hey, I'm an undiscovered genius, didn't you know? (oh, of course you
didn't. That's why I'm undiscovered - Doh!)
>And she says
>she thinks in pictures, not words, and that thinking in pictures
>actually helps her imagination. Helps her understand animals and
>helps her invent things.
Yeah, helps her understand cattle and then kill them, using ingenious
devices. I'm not a vegetarian and it's a job that someone has to do if
people like me want to eat animals, but still... Doesn't it seem rather
worrying to you that she uses her great empathy with animals to
terminate them?
>From what you're saying here, I'm guessing that what's going to
>end up happening is _not_ that you'll succeed inspite of poor
>characterization, but that you're going to do really well at a
>particular kind of characterization, focussing on the character
>issues that present interesting problems to you.
Hey, maybe!
>I think that a detective in alien worlds who is autistic would be
>fantastic, not necessarily arty at all: this would be a person
>who, because reading faces and voices and comprehending
>interactions did not come naturally to them, has made a study of
>those things -- oh, a Sherlock Holmes, who seemed a little on the
>autistic side to me, like that.
You are not the first person to observe that. Someone's ever written a
book to that effect, I believe. Hercule Piorot is another one - social
skills of a charging rhinoceros, pedantic, perfectionist, odd
mannerisms, odder dress-style (and that moustache! Obviously little
insight into how others perceived him).
>And when you get scared you can't do it, say so here, so we can
>contradict you.
>
>It helped me to do that.
Good advice. I can't believe how supportive you all are. Thanks.
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor <An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
>> If enough people keep telling you something, maybe it's right.
>Depends on who the people are. (If enough people in the US House of
>Representatives think that cloning is a great horror, does that make
>them right? No, it just makes them idiots.)
They weren't already?!
[...]
Brian
Patricia C. Wrede
Kemnitzer) writes:
>Combine the two. Or don't think about it at all, and write what
>you think you'd like to write. Or go the other way around: invent
>a world in which autism is the norm. Or anything you like.
>
>And when you get scared you can't do it, say so here, so we can
>contradict you.
Yes, all of that...and also, very important -- stop showing your stuff to
people who don't know anything about writing or writers and who are
unsupportive. Critique is a good thing...if it's good critique, given at the
right time. "Somebody like you can't possibly write fiction" isn't good
critique; it isn't even good judgement. Critique that *only* talks about the
negative points is seldom good critique. And some writers can't handle
critique in the early stages of their work or their writing careers; their
writing is still too fluid or fragile or something, and they need encouragement
at that point.
Patricia C. Wrede
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
I apologise to everyone for the length of my posts - they are turning
into novels themselves. Maybe I should write a book on how to write?
(based entirely on ripping off posts from this newsgroup) ;oP
[Don't laugh, I know someone's that done something like that on a
mailing list I was on. But thankfully I'm not that devious and far too
lazy ;o) ]
>Well, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with *your perceptions*;
>it has to do with the words on the page. You don't actually need to know what
>your characters think and feel in order to give the reader the right illusions,
>any more than a writer actually needs to know an entire
>sixteen-volume-set-of-encyclopedia's worth of stuff about the background of
>their world in order to give the reader the illusion that the world is
>developed in a detail and depth approximating reality.
Hey, obvious but true. I tend to miss the obvious.
>
>*Most* writers seem to do this part of characterization by "getting into their
>character's heads" or playing a sort of "let's pretend" or by a kind of method
>acting. That doesn't mean all writers work that way, and it certainly doesn't
>mean *you* have to do it that way. You may very well be the sort of writer who
>does the plot naturally and intuitively, but who has to logic her way to what
>the characters are like.
I find plot difficult too! ;o(
OK, so what I find easier (this is an exercise for myself, you
understand) is:
* Describing scenes. I was told by one agent that my stuff was
"exceptionally vivid". That's got to be a plus point, surely?
* Describing action.
* Realistic dialogue (it was suggested I try writing screen-plays, as
that would cut out a lot of the problems of body-language etc.)
* Taking a sideways look at things people otherwise take for granted
(i.e. I am just not normal, but to quote a friend "I've seen normal...
not impressed". Normal can be so boring.)
* Getting an SF plot out of virtually *anything*.
* Understanding science and medicine in quite some depth (good for
writing SF).
Plot seems to be about getting static scenes and static characters
actually moving. Once I get them moving, I think I'm OK, but I often get
stuck and it's hard to get un-stuck again. I wonder if plotting is
another skill that improves with practice. When I write often I seem to
get a lot more ideas than usual.
>You're writing science fiction; use the viewpoint of an alien who has *no clue*
>what human body language means or how to figure out what other people are
>feeling. It's quite possible that you could do a *much* more convincing job of
>making an alien "feel" alien to most of your readers, because since you have to
>think hard about your characters to get their emotions in, you'd be much less
>likely to slip and have your alien accidentally "get" stuff that by rights he
>shouldn't understand.
I've been told this before. Since my schooldays, I've been praised for
my realistic non-human characters. I just never really thought about it,
just like, for 20 years, I haven't really thought about the fact that I
can write better than most people. Isn't it funny how so often you
cannot see the one thing that's at the end of your nose?
>
>The second is to go for camera-eye viewpoint, or what Algys Budrys calls
>"cinematic prose." He did a series of articles in LOCUS years ago -- I think
>in the 70's (my, how time flies...) -- on the subject of this kind of prose and
>how to make it work, which to the best of my recollection, involved relying
>heavily on striking visual imagery that the reader had to interpret for
>him/herself.
Thanks. Useful tip. I do tend to tell my reader far too much.
> He used his Hugo-winning book, ROGUE MOON, as an example of how
>to do this.
I loved that book!
> Making this work is tricky for most authors -- at least, he made
>it sound rather tricky -- but it might suit you right down to the ground.
>Nine-and sixty ways...
[McCoy from Star Trek] "It sounds crazy, Captain, but it might just
work..."0
>
>The third is to make a conscious and deliberate pass through everything to
>layer in the characters' thoughts and emotions. You don't have to get into
>people's heads to do this, particularly -- you just have to figure out what
>sort of things work *in fiction* to give readers the idea of what characters
>are thinking, feeling, etc. and then do those things. It's learning techniques
>and applying them, not figuring out actual people.
I would probably need the help of a non-autistic "beta reader" to do
this. Oh, and I think you mean "parse", not pass, since you are a former
computer programmer, eh? ;o)
You are so right about it not being real life. I think that's what
confused me.
> Internal dialog isn't
>actually all that different from external dialog, in terms of how you make it
>up; what's interesting about it is that it isn't always *consistent* with the
>external dialog, and therefore provides the reader with an "insight" into the
>character's "real feelings." But really, you, the author, are just making it
>all up, external and internal and everything. This might be difficult to get a
>handle on at first, but there's always *some* aspect of writing that's really
>tough for any given writer; you just have a rather unusual one, that's all.
Thanks. This is very encouraging and I'm learning a lot. I suppose it's
the old truth that the more you learn, the more you become aware of what
you do not know.
>And of course there's always the option of going for a plot-and-action heavy
>book that relies heavily on cool ideas -- something that keeps your characters
>so busy shooting at each other that there's no *time* for the reader to worry
>about what they're "really" like.
This is the method I've had suggested to me by a literary agent I spoke
to. He seemed to think I had potential.
>
>If none of those sounds as if it'll work for you, I'll try and think of
>something else.
Aye-aye Captain!
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>OK, so what I find easier (this is an exercise for myself, you
>understand) is:
>* Describing scenes. I was told by one agent that my stuff was
>"exceptionally vivid". That's got to be a plus point, surely?
>* Describing action.
>* Realistic dialogue (it was suggested I try writing screen-plays, as
>that would cut out a lot of the problems of body-language etc.)
>* Taking a sideways look at things people otherwise take for granted
>(i.e. I am just not normal, but to quote a friend "I've seen normal...
>not impressed". Normal can be so boring.)
>* Getting an SF plot out of virtually *anything*.
>* Understanding science and medicine in quite some depth (good for
>writing SF).
That sounds like a good solid basis for writing SF/F. Mmmm...You mentioned
elsewhere that your immediate family seems to be full of people who like
literary fiction (I'm interpreting from the examples you gave). Literary
fiction tends to be much more heavily into certain specific types of
characterization than other genres. It seems to me that you may quite possibly
be able to do a perfectly good job of *other* sorts of characterization, but
not be able to do the sort that the lit-crit types prefer and value.
Play to your strengths. You'll want to learn how to get some characterization
in...though actually, you're *already* doing that. Your scene with the two
creepy cops talking to each other *did* characterize them; the problem was that
the *kind* of characterization they got was generic-thug, rather than
individual-person. So it's not as if you're starting completely from scratch
there, either.
>Plot seems to be about getting static scenes and static characters
>actually moving. Once I get them moving, I think I'm OK, but I often get
>stuck and it's hard to get un-stuck again. I wonder if plotting is
>another skill that improves with practice. When I write often I seem to
>get a lot more ideas than usual.
Yes, and yes, and there are things you can do to get over the sticky bits
faster.
>I've been told this before. Since my schooldays, I've been praised for
>my realistic non-human characters. I just never really thought about it,
>just like, for 20 years, I haven't really thought about the fact that I
>can write better than most people. Isn't it funny how so often you
>cannot see the one thing that's at the end of your nose?
One of the things that seems to be a standard human-being sort of trait is that
most of us remember all the negatives people say about us, rather than the
positives. The only reviews I can quote from verbatim are the lousy ones I've
gotten. And there's also a tendency to pile it on by comparing all one's own
skills with the individual strengths of a bunch of other people: "I can't do
characterization as well as A; I can't plot as well as B; I don't have the
stunning style of C." Whereas you may *also* be much better at style than A,
blow B out of the water when it comes to characterization, and leave C in the
dust when it comes to plot...but somehow one never seems to notice *that*
part...
>> He used his Hugo-winning book, ROGUE MOON, as an example of how
>>to do this.
>
>I loved that book!
Then you might want to study it for what he did and how he did it, compared to
what other writers do. You might also want to go to the LOCUS web site and see
if you can get hold of the articles. I don't know if Budrys has collected them
or published anything else about this kind of writing, but that might be worth
checking out, too.
>>The third is to make a conscious and deliberate pass through everything to
>>layer in the characters' thoughts and emotions. You don't have to get into
>>people's heads to do this, particularly -- you just have to figure out what
>>sort of things work *in fiction* to give readers the idea of what characters
>>are thinking, feeling, etc. and then do those things. It's learning
>techniques
>>and applying them, not figuring out actual people.
>
>I would probably need the help of a non-autistic "beta reader" to do
>this. Oh, and I think you mean "parse", not pass, since you are a former
>computer programmer, eh? ;o)
I'm not a former computer programmer; I'm a former accountant. :) What I'm
talking about here is a variation on the method that Connie Willis told me
she'd used for her first several stories, which she said was very mechanical
but worked just fine. (I don't know if she still works this way; I haven't run
into her for a long time.) Basically, she started by writing a scene in dialog
and nothing else but: "Yes," he said. "If you say so," she said. Then she'd
go through and put in the tone of voice. Then she'd go through and put in
physical descriptions of people. Then descriptions of places. Then the
physical actions that people were doing while they talked (like toying with a
pencil or drinking coffee). Then the internal dialog of the POV character.
Then emotional reactions, and so on. (The order in which she did these things
was, apparently, not fixed; the important thing was that they got done one at a
time.)
In your case, you probably wouldn't have to make so many passes through the
material -- you'd just concentrate on working in emotional reactions and/or
internal dialog in one or two passes after the basic scene was complete. IF
you thought this would work, I mean.
>Thanks. This is very encouraging and I'm learning a lot. I suppose it's
>the old truth that the more you learn, the more you become aware of what
>you do not know.
Absolutely. You wouldn't believe how much worse my stuff looks now than it did
twenty years ago when I started writing... ;)
Patricia C. Wrede
Lori Selke
Holly E. Ordway <holly-...@home.com.xxx> wrote:
>"Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" <An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>It's very counter-intuitive for me, but my article-writing method that
>>serves me so well (outline with bulletted points etc.) really doesn't
>>work for novels. It seems to kill my flow stone-dead and I end up with
>>narrative written in exactly the same way as a magazine article on the
>>treatment of diaper rash.
>
>You're not the only one in that boat! :) I only recently came to exactly
>the same conclusion about my nonfiction vs. fiction writing styles, and
>have been soliciting advice here about how to deal with it! It was in
>the thread that started out titled something like "When it's going too
>well", if you want to try a search -- I got some good suggestions that
>I plan on trying.
You aren't the only two in that boat :) I took to nonfiction writing
well after fiction, though, so I kinda figured this out along the way.
Lori
--
se...@io.com, se...@mindspring.com, http://www.io.com/~selk
"But this isn't a dance! It's upright delirium!" -- The Desert Peach
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
>>OK, so what I find easier (this is an exercise for myself, you
>>understand) is:
>That sounds like a good solid basis for writing SF/F.
I forgot to mention that I read mainly SF (on the basis of write what
you know and write what you read).
> Mmmm...You mentioned
>elsewhere that your immediate family seems to be full of people who like
>literary fiction
That's right.
>Literary
>fiction tends to be much more heavily into certain specific types of
>characterization than other genres.
My mother says that in her opinion of a good book, what happens is
almost an after-thought. The interesting question is "Who are these
people and how do they see the world?"
I like a book in which the question is "What the heck is happening and
how are they going to get out of that?"
For instance, we both read 1984. I thought the story was quite good, but
I hated the ending and thought it pointless. I would much rather Winston
Smith had found some cunning way out of Big Brother's clutches (even if
it was only in his head). I don't mind sad endings, but there has to be
some hope, some reason for the protagonists pain. I did however love the
atmosphere, that whole business about "Newspeak", and the world that
Orwell invented.
My mother found the descriptions of the world in 1984 slightly
irritating and a distraction from what she considered "the main story".
She seemed obsessed by the fact that Orwell was depressed after
suffering TB when he wrote it, and keep wittering on about how it wasn't
really about the future, it was about 1948, post-war London etc. (I
suspect she misses the entire point of SF). But she wanted to know all
about Winston Smith, his motivations, who he was, how he had come to
that point in his life and this was the aspect she enjoyed.
So, we have very different tastes. In movies, she likes "The Remains of
the Day" and I like "The Matrix".
> It seems to me that you may quite possibly
>be able to do a perfectly good job of *other* sorts of characterization, but
>not be able to do the sort that the lit-crit types prefer and value.
I think that's the root of the problem.
>
>Play to your strengths. You'll want to learn how to get some characterization
>in...though actually, you're *already* doing that. Your scene with the two
>creepy cops talking to each other *did* characterize them; the problem was that
>the *kind* of characterization they got was generic-thug, rather than
>individual-person.
They are generic thugs because their entire role in the story is to
kidnap the girl so the hero can rescue her. I can't see how to improve
on their characterisations without ruining my plot. I'll come back to it
when more of the book is written.
>One of the things that seems to be a standard human-being sort of trait is that
>most of us remember all the negatives people say about us, rather than the
>positives. The only reviews I can quote from verbatim are the lousy ones I've
>gotten.
I don't think I'll read reviews. I'll be too crushed if they're bad.
> What I'm
>talking about here is a variation on the method that Connie Willis told me
>she'd used for her first several stories, which she said was very mechanical
>but worked just fine. (I don't know if she still works this way; I haven't run
>into her for a long time.) Basically, she started by writing a scene in dialog
>and nothing else but: "Yes," he said. "If you say so," she said. Then she'd
>go through and put in the tone of voice. Then she'd go through and put in
>physical descriptions of people. Then descriptions of places. Then the
>physical actions that people were doing while they talked (like toying with a
>pencil or drinking coffee). Then the internal dialog of the POV character.
>Then emotional reactions, and so on. (The order in which she did these things
>was, apparently, not fixed; the important thing was that they got done one at a
>time.)
That is not dissimilar to the way I work. I do the background scene
first, then the dialogue, then add the other stuff afterwards.
>>Thanks. This is very encouraging and I'm learning a lot. I suppose it's
>>the old truth that the more you learn, the more you become aware of what
>>you do not know.
>
>Absolutely. You wouldn't believe how much worse my stuff looks now than it did
>twenty years ago when I started writing... ;)
20 years? Is it going to take that long? Arrgh!
I'm thinking I might post another scene from my book so you can see that
not all my characters are creeps ;o)
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Words are only as valid as the mind that chooses them, so the essence of all
prose is a form of deception"
from "The Affirmation" by Christopher Priest
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Will Shetterly
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> > + You stated what his emotions were without sufficient
> >corroborating detail.
> > (Sometimes this is expressed as "show, don't tell", but
> >some here hate that phrase because essentially *all* writing
> >is telling -- it is just that some approaches are more
> >convincing than others.)
>
> I'm finding it useful to think of "telling" as "narrating",
> and "showing" as "dramatising".
>
> This helps me because "dramatise, don't narrate" doesn't, to
> me, make the same sort of overall General Pronouncement From
> On High sense that "show, don't tell" feels as though it
> *ought* to have.
Thank you. Emma and I have made much the same point for years, but never
so succinctly. We'll be stealing "Dramatize, don't narrate," I suspect.
The reason I've been leery of "show, don't tell" is that beginners
usually don't understand that there is a difference between showing and
telling: they're telling because that's the only way they know to show.
Jo Walton
pd...@gw.dd-b.net "Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet" writes:
> That's an excellent point. It's also the case that Mr. Straczinsky is
> hardly the only person who has ever mastered foreshadowing; it's a
> venerable artistic technique. John M. Ford does it better than almost
> anybody I can think of, but there are lots and lots of very good
> examples.
There's also another thing that goes with foreshadowing, which is
mentioning things that seem like pretty sparkly details and which
turn out to be jigsaw pieces for the plot. The trick there is
marking them right to have the reader remember them at the correct
moment and make all the connections.
If anyone is looking for examples, Garrison Keiller does this better
than almost anyone, and because he's doing it in a very small space
and oral technique, it's very easy to see how he's doing it.
(And I think I've caught up, yay!)
--
Jo J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
I kissed a kif at Kefk
*THE KING'S PEACE* out now *THE KING'S NAME* out in November from Tor.
Sample Chapters, Map, Poems, & stuff at http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk
Zeborah
<snip>
> The second is to go for camera-eye viewpoint, or what Algys Budrys calls
> "cinematic prose." He did a series of articles in LOCUS years ago -- I
> think in the 70's (my, how time flies...) -- on the subject of this kind
> of prose and how to make it work, which to the best of my recollection,
> involved relying heavily on striking visual imagery that the reader had to
> interpret for him/herself. He used his Hugo-winning book, ROGUE MOON, as
> an example of how to do this. Making this work is tricky for most authors
> -- at least, he made it sound rather tricky -- but it might suit you right
> down to the ground. Nine-and sixty ways...
I once went to the trouble of getting my stupid local library to
retrieve this book from their stacks goodness-knows-where (and after I'd
read it, proving that maybe people could still be interested in this
book, do you suppose they kept it in the library for a while? No, why
would they do something halfway intelligent like that?). Um, where was
I? Okay, one thing that helped it work was that it was from an older
era of sf where character wasn't quite as important as the Cool Idea.
Another thing, which sticks in my memory the most, is that the protag is
a rather detached character, doesn't show his emotions much; at one
point, he's talking with someone about some other chap who the protag
doesn't like because he's a rather detached guy who doesn't show his
emotions much... The guy he's talking to gives him an odd look which
the protag doesn't get. It was a nice, subtle touch of irony which I
quite liked. Actually, I think that's the part of the book I liked the
most; I've forgotten most of the rest of it apart from some vague stuff
about the artifact.
> The fourth (I just thought of a fourth one) is to swipe and combine
> characters from other works of fiction. If you can take Shakespeare's
> smart-mouthed Mercutio and made him female, or combined Jane Austen's
> Elizabeth Bennet with the Guinevere of Arthurian legend, you might have
> characters you could "do" without having to "feel" -- the idea isn't so
> much to understand as to imitate, while also disguising the imitation.
Elizabeth Bennet combined with Guinevere? Oh my. Poor Arthur. Poor
Lancelot....
Patricia C. Wrede
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>My mother says that in her opinion of a good book, what happens is
>almost an after-thought. The interesting question is "Who are these
>people and how do they see the world?"
>
>I like a book in which the question is "What the heck is happening and
>how are they going to get out of that?"
That pretty much sums up the difference between literary/mainstream fiction and
genre fiction in a nutshell.
>> It seems to me that you may quite possibly
>>be able to do a perfectly good job of *other* sorts of characterization, but
>>not be able to do the sort that the lit-crit types prefer and value.
>
>I think that's the root of the problem.
Also, parents and family are seldom a good choice as first-readers, let alone
critiquers. A few people get lucky in their relatives, but most seem to be
more like me -- my father thinks anything any of his kids do is wonderful, so
he is of no critical use whatsoever, and my Mom likes mainstream and hates SF/F
(she only plows through mine because I am her daughter, and she is going to
read my stuff, goddamit.) Of my three sisters, one reads SF/F and likes my
stuff, but has few useful comments to make; one much prefers animal books but
gets mine because she's my sister (and she's gotten her kids hooked on SF/F,
yay!), and one prefers nonfiction and didn't read my stuff at all until her
then-fiance found out I wrote and ran out and got *all* my books at once and
*made* her read them (I *like* my brother-in-law!). My brother is the only one
who reads SF/F, reads *my* SF/F, and can make useful comments.
>They are generic thugs because their entire role in the story is to
>kidnap the girl so the hero can rescue her. I can't see how to improve
>on their characterisations without ruining my plot. I'll come back to it
>when more of the book is written.
That's a perfectly reasonable way to handle it...as long as you can keep them
from running out of control once you start making them into people.
>I don't think I'll read reviews. I'll be too crushed if they're bad.
I forget which Big Name Writer it was who said "I never read reviews. I used
to, but I found out that if the review was bad, I got depressed and couldn't
write for two days. And if the review was good, I got elated and couldn't
write for *three* days. So now I just don't read them." It's very good
advice, if you have the self-discipline to follow it. I don't -- I can't
resist reading whatever reviews come my way. But I *can* use my Secret
Super-Power -- determined procrastination -- to avoid seeking out other
reviews, and the only magazine I get that does SF/F reviews is LOCUS, so I
don't actually see all that many. It amounts to the same thing.
>That is not dissimilar to the way I work. I do the background scene
>first, then the dialogue, then add the other stuff afterwards.
Well, you're in good company, then. :)
>>Absolutely. You wouldn't believe how much worse my stuff looks now than it
>did
>>twenty years ago when I started writing... ;)
>
>20 years? Is it going to take that long? Arrgh!
Um, 20 years is how long I've been *published*. I sold my first novel in 1980.
It *can* take that long to get started, but most people manage it a lot
faster, even if they don't focus on writing as a main thing.
Patricia C. Wrede
Thomas Yan
>ty...@twinkie.cs.cornell.edu (Thomas Yan) wrote:
>
>> (Sometimes this is expressed as "show, don't tell", but
>>some here hate that phrase because essentially *all* writing
>>is telling -- it is just that some approaches are more
>>convincing than others.)
>
>I'm finding it useful to think of "telling" as "narrating",
>and "showing" as "dramatising".
>
>This helps me because "dramatise, don't narrate" doesn't, to
>me, make the same sort of overall General Pronouncement From
>On High sense that "show, don't tell" feels as though it
>*ought* to have. Thinking of it this way makes it obvious to
>me that on some occasions, you need to narrate, and on some
>scenes you need to dramatise, and that there will be a
>different set of tools available for each skill.
Nice! But I think that if I were to give this advice to someone, I'd
try to emphasize choice rather than rate one above the other:
"Feathers or lead? Dramatise or narrate?"
Will Shetterly
"Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor" <An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I am frequently accused of writing in a very cliched manner (bad guys
> are bad, good guys are too good etc.) and of pretentious use of language
> (OK, so I did try to get "synergy" and "Gestalt" into the same sentence,
> but I quickly realised my error when my very well-read, very brainy
> friend said "What's that mean?" and when I explained it, said "So why
> didn't you say that?").
See? You can get good advice anywhere. The trick with advice is to
interpret it. Often the solution is the opposite of the suggestion:
someone might say that a scene is too long, but it's really too short,
and it feels like it goes on forever because there aren't enough details
in it to make it satisfying.
If you boil down the responses you get, the advice is pretty good: put a
little good into the bad guys, a little bad into the good guys, and tell
the story simply.
Good luck!
Jaana Heino
> <An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>My mother says that in her opinion of a good book, what happens is
>>almost an after-thought. The interesting question is "Who are these
>>people and how do they see the world?"
>>
>>I like a book in which the question is "What the heck is happening and
>>how are they going to get out of that?"
> That pretty much sums up the difference between literary/mainstream fiction and
> genre fiction in a nutshell.
No, it does not. :)
To me the main question in genre fiction is "who are these people and
how do they see the world". The only difference to mainstream fiction is
that the worlds and people involved don't have to be my own. I get
to explore how people like me would see the world if the world was
different, and how people (aliens, whatever :)) who are very unlike me
see the world, and sometimes both.
And I know that I am not alone in this opinion, and that there are a
*lot* of people who read only mainstream fiction and for whom the
question is "What the heck is happening and how are they going to get
out of that".
What you say about relatives as first readers and critics makes sense to
me too, though. :)
(All standard disclaimers about me not being a native speaker and when
offending probably not meaning it apply here too. For some reason I feel
that I said something in a wrong way, but I cannot point it out right
now...)
--
Jaana Heino "Power corrupts, but we
ja...@iki.fi still need electricity."
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> In article <pddb.99...@gw.dd-b.net>
> pd...@gw.dd-b.net "Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet" writes:
>
> > That's an excellent point. It's also the case that Mr. Straczinsky is
> > hardly the only person who has ever mastered foreshadowing; it's a
> > venerable artistic technique. John M. Ford does it better than almost
> > anybody I can think of, but there are lots and lots of very good
> > examples.
>
> There's also another thing that goes with foreshadowing, which is
> mentioning things that seem like pretty sparkly details and which
> turn out to be jigsaw pieces for the plot. The trick there is
> marking them right to have the reader remember them at the correct
> moment and make all the connections.
I'm worrying a lot about this one at the moment -- the thing I'm working
on has a certain amount of depth that I _know_ about, and all the stuff
that I don't know yet (and my process is working normally on this one,
so I've got a floating scene and a floating event that will be in there
somewhere, and I don't know if the first one's next chapter or in the
middle somewhere).
But I've got a bunch of stuff about the world that needs to be there,
and a bunch of stuff about the plot that needs to be there, and I have
all these bits and pieces that feed into it, and I recently discovered
that someone I thought was a Bit Character is actually The Main
Character's First Travelling Companion, Collected Officially In Chapter
Two.
And I won't know if I've got the clues set up right until I write
chapter seventeen or whatever and the stuff I've laced in at the
beginning fruits. At least I've been told I've got a good hook placed
so far.
I wish there were some way of running an incluing success scan of some
sort on the text so I know if I'm being too subtle, too blatant, too
dense. . . but it seems the best way to do that is to write the rest of
the book.
--
Heather Anne Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
I'll take your invitation // You take all of me. . . .
- Lifehouse, "Hanging by a Moment"
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>In article <pddb.99...@gw.dd-b.net>
> pd...@gw.dd-b.net "Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet" writes:
>> That's an excellent point. It's also the case that Mr. Straczinsky is
>> hardly the only person who has ever mastered foreshadowing; it's a
>> venerable artistic technique. John M. Ford does it better than almost
>> anybody I can think of, but there are lots and lots of very good
>> examples.
>There's also another thing that goes with foreshadowing, which is
>mentioning things that seem like pretty sparkly details and which
>turn out to be jigsaw pieces for the plot. The trick there is
>marking them right to have the reader remember them at the correct
>moment and make all the connections.
That's how I do it, and sometimes I have no idea that such things are
*not* pretty sparkly details until very far in; but they often line up
nicely.
There are always going to be some readers who Just Will Not Notice
properly; I have learned to simply roll my eyes.
>If anyone is looking for examples, Garrison Keiller does this better
>than almost anyone, and because he's doing it in a very small space
>and oral technique, it's very easy to see how he's doing it.
Oh, yes, he certainly does; it's a very stately yet understated way of
going about it.
>(And I think I've caught up, yay!)
Whee!
--
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
Richard Kennaway
> (As an example, (thanks Madeleine L'Engle'), suppose
> Bob says Mary has "gray eyes, not grey eyes, if you know what I
> mean". While that conveys to me that Bob has a lovely sense of
> nuance, it tells me nothing about what Mary's eyes actually look
> like.)
Interesting example. It does convey something to me about Mary's eyes.
Or at least, I know what Mary's eyes would look like to move me to
describe them with Bob's words (which is, often enough, what passes for
understanding what another person says, especially if the other person
is fictional).
-- Richard Kennaway
Thomas Yan
Could you articulate what the difference is?
And actually I lied: If asked to invent a distinction, I would say
gray=blue-gray and grey=light-grey, but I don't see why everyone would
make the same distinction. In fact, I could easily make up an
mnemonic explanation for the opposite distinction: gray=Light-gRay and
grEy=bluE-grEy.
So to be perfectly honest, I should have said it does not *reliably*
tell me anything about what Mary's eyes look like.
--
Thomas Yan (ty...@cs.cornell.edu) I don't speak for Cornell University
Be pro-active. Fight sucky software and learned helplessness.
Apologies for any lack of capitalization; typing hurts my hands.
Patricia C. Wrede
Shetterly <shet...@mac.comSNIPTHISTOEMAILME> writes:
>The reason I've been leery of "show, don't tell" is that beginners
>usually don't understand that there is a difference between showing and
>telling: they're telling because that's the only way they know to show.
That, or they have it exactly backwards. I've had several different run-ins
with beginners who thought that "showing" merely meant less detail, and
"telling" more detail, and who had a *terrible* time getting it through their
heads (even *after* going through "dramatise" and "narration" as substitute
phrasing) that 'He swung his legs out of the bed and started for the bathroom.
Halfway there, he tripped on his son's dumptruck. "Crap!" he said, rubbing the
sore toe, then looked around quickly to see whether Marion had heard his
injudicious exclamation." is just as much "showing/dramatising" as the same
incident, covered in half a page.
This is one of the three or four most-commonly-misunderstood pieces of writing
advice, I think. Which is why I hate it, even when there's somebody who
clearly needs it...
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
<jant...@cs.Helsinki.FI> writes:
>To me the main question in genre fiction is "who are these people and
>how do they see the world". The only difference to mainstream fiction is
>that the worlds and people involved don't have to be my own. I get
>to explore how people like me would see the world if the world was
>different, and how people (aliens, whatever :)) who are very unlike me
>see the world, and sometimes both.
As a description of one of the sub-types of the SF/F genre, that works. As a
general description of genre fiction (which includes Westerns, Romance,
mysteries, children's books, and a couple of other things depending on who's
splitting all the genres apart and what system they're using), it doesn't work
very well. A lot of Romance novels (which constitute about 60% of all book
sales, last time I saw figures) are set in the real world, most of them in the
modern-day real world, and while characterization is clearly important in these
books, the *focus* of the book is on a very specific subset of What Happens and
How, not on how the people in the book see the world..
>And I know that I am not alone in this opinion, and that there are a
>*lot* of people who read only mainstream fiction and for whom the
>question is "What the heck is happening and how are they going to get
>out of that".
Mainstream fiction has more plot than literary fiction, by and large; genre
fiction tends to have more plot than mainstream. There's enough variety out
there that people who like plot can find enough to keep them happy in
mainstream, just as people who are very interested in characters can find
enough character-centered SF/F to keep them busy (mostly, anyway). But I
didn't make this distinction up myself; a mainstream/literary writer of my
acquaintance was the one who pointed it out to me as a central difference, and
added for good measure, "Literary fiction is currently all about
characterization; it's levitating in mid-air without any plot to support it,
and one of these days, it's going to come crashing down..." *SHE* said that,
not me.
Possibly the differences aren't nearly so striking in Finland? I know that in
a lot of other countries (other than the U.S., I mean), the genre separations
aren't nearly so clear-cut as they are here. (And of course, even in the U.S.,
the lines between genres are more like wide fuzzy grey areas than clean, sharp
edges.)
Patricia C. Wrede
Will Shetterly
Do any of the others spring to mind? I'm sure there are many, but I'm a
little annoyed that I can't think of any right now. I hope that's
because I don't use them, and not because I do.
David T. Bilek
"Write what you know" seems frequently misunderstood to me. "Know
what you write" is closer to the real meaning.
-David
Boyd & Michelle Bottorff
> Just for once, I'd like someone to say something nice about my stuff.
You know, the lack of nice things to say might be a reflexion of who you
are getting to read it, and not that the work itself is so terrible. It
is harder for many people, (myself included) to figure out what is right
with a piece, than it is to figure out what is wrong.
Michelle Bottorff
--
Family webpage: http://home.sprintmail.com/~mbottorff/index.html
Lady Lavender's Filksongs: http://www.freemars.org/lavender/index.html
25r:2a:1p
Dan Goodman
wrote:
>On Thu, 2 Aug 2001 23:22:27 +0100, "Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor"
><An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and according
>>to all the specialists (including my own) and most text books, people
>>like me suffer from "limited imagination" and an inability to comprehend
>>so-called "Theory of Mind". That is, the instinctive ability to
>>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself.
>
>Anybody who thinks you lack imagination or "ability to
>understand that other people think and feel differently to yourself" has
>got to be nuts!!! Just your posts here are demonstrating all of the above!
She may have reduced capacity for them, but have developed that
capacity a great deal.
And: I will note that the people who are most convinced that they
_do_ understand others are likely to be mentally ill.
----------
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Lucy Kemnitzer
<An...@ratbag.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Hi Lucy,
>>Right, "people like you" who suffer from "limited imagination" are
>>the "Scheherezade of the playground" and aspire to be writers. I'm
>>not comfy with the whole Asperger's thing, anyway, and now I'm
>>less happy than ever. A person who spins stories over and over is
>>told she has a limited imagination. Oof.
>
>Actually, there are some researchers at Cambridge who are questioning
>this whole stereotype. They recently took "Limited imagination" off the
>diagnostic criteria they use (this includes Dr Simon Baron-Cohen who
>diagnosed me - he's acknowledged as a world-expert on the subject).
Good.
I should say here, before I go on, that the reason I get ranty
about this stuff is that the other thing I do besides writing is I
teach, and I see some very problematic labelling and a whole lot
of counter-productive responses to the labels and the situations
that the labels apply to, and it enrages me when people put
artificial limits on what kids will do. (Aiee. I just snipped a
long digression into various teaching experiences I had, including
my very first year, when I tried to mainstream an autistic kid
into a complicated, Montessori-like first grade classroom:it
wasn't a _complete_ failure, and we both learned a lot: the kid in
question is thriving quite well, last I heard)
>More likely, it is that autistic people have a different style of
>creativity and perform creative tasks via a different route (perhaps
>using different areas of the brain to other people). I'll have to ask
>them where they've got in this research - it might be a misunderstanding
>of autistic people, just as, in a former time, autistic people were
>assumed to be unemotional simply because they didn't always outwardly
>demonstrate their emotions.
I am sure we don't understand autism at all yet: I am sure that
autism is not one entity: and anyway, we don't understand
non-autism either.
>
>Which reminds me of a situation recently, where the mother of a severely
>autistic child was complaining that the intensive program she was using
>wasn't working on him. She had the "kill or cure" attitude, heavily
>laced with the opinion that the ends justified the means; but the more
>she pushed, the more violent her child behaved.
>
>"The thing is," she reported, "he hasn't got any way to communicate, so
>whenever we try to make him do things he screams really loudly and tries
>to bite us!"
>
>Do you ever get the feeling you're shouting and nobody's hearing you?
>;o^
Oy. Poor kid. Poor mommy. She can't let go and relax because
she's so afraid for him, she has good reason to think that if she
doesn't do _something_ he will have terrible experiences. But the
only thing she knows to do is blowing up in her face.
>
>>I'm suppressing myself very hard so I don't get all ranty about
>>things,
>
>Is that a writer-thing, getting all ranty? It's just I've noticed a lot
>of writers who do that.
Well, I think for some of us, it's part of why we write.
>
>> but I'd like to just suggest that functional normality
>>used to be considered to have a large continuum, in more than one
>>dimension, and if these things are hard for you, well, they are,
>>but you don't have to accept a "defective"label over it.
>
>Thanks. I'm not defective, I'm differently brained ;oP
Well, we're all differently brained. Some of us are more different
than others, or probably more often, more visibly different. Yes,
it causes pain and trouble, but it also may lead to treasure, and
in your case, you give good evidence that it will.
>>
>>And I'd like to congratulate you for noticing that not all stories
>>are about feelings. Some stories are about actions.
>
>Ah, but action stories are not respected by the literati. Question is,
>do I care?
Which literati? Who _is_ the audience for the story you really
want to tell? That's a hard question,sometimes, and sometimes you
can't answer it without telling the story and seeing who will
listen. I keep having doubts about who my audience is, and the
way I deal with it is that most of the time I grit my teeth and
just keep writing the best I can figure out how to do and
sometimes I look around and try to find a precedent for what I'm
doing, and I do find it -- not identical work, but work that seems
to appeal to the same reader motivations.
But you could also be the first one to do some particular thing or
another, that could happen, and it might be a good thing, too.
Anyway, there's no reason a story about action couldn't be so
finely crafted and so brilliantly true and exciting and new that
it would be taken up by literary readers who were just awed by how
wonderful it is.
>
>>There is a very effective writer of memoirs who is autistic -- um,
>>her name is Temple Grandin and you probably already know about her
>>but did you know she has a website (naturally)?
>
>Apparently we have a lot in common. I also "think in pictures" to use
>her expression, and interpret social behaviour logically rather than
>instinctively.
>
>However, we have a few crucial differences: I don't assume that all
>autistic people think like me (mention her name on any autism group, and
>the autistic adults go nuts and start ranting); I care more about people
>than books (much as I love books); I don't think cattle slaughter is a
>suitable metaphor for... well, anything really, except cattle slaughter.
Oh, I hope you don't think I was offering her as a model you ought
to follow: only as a precedent for "autistic person who writes
something more than shipping invoices," in case you're like me, a
person who derives comfort from distant precedents.
In fact, I think that this:
>
>To be honest, I don't actually think her book "Thinking in Pictures" is
>terribly good. I wonder if it would have sold at all if it wasn't
>written by a person with a disability. It's very rambly, goes off at
>tangents, is far too generalised about autistic people (Grandin assumes
>they're all like her), has little sense-of-humour (least of all about
>herself), exudes an attitude of superiority over ordinary humans, and to
>be quite frank, it's boring.
Is a great sign: it means that you've got an opinion about how a
person whose perception style is similar but not identical to
yours has used it, and you're girding your loins to overtake that
work, pass it, and utterly put it in the shade. I have feelings
like this about a number of classical science fiction writers,
including some I like a lot: just an acute awareness of their
limits and an itchy feeling to go beyond them.
>
>Hey, I'm an undiscovered genius, didn't you know? (oh, of course you
>didn't. That's why I'm undiscovered - Doh!)
You and me both, kiddo.
>
>>And she says
>>she thinks in pictures, not words, and that thinking in pictures
>>actually helps her imagination. Helps her understand animals and
>>helps her invent things.
>
>Yeah, helps her understand cattle and then kill them, using ingenious
>devices. I'm not a vegetarian and it's a job that someone has to do if
>people like me want to eat animals, but still... Doesn't it seem rather
>worrying to you that she uses her great empathy with animals to
>terminate them?
Oh yes, I've always thought it was deeply weird. But, you know
the beasties are going to be killed and eaten anyway, right? So
she's doing them a favor by making the last moments of their lives
more beautiful. I realize this could go weirder and weirder in
several directions.
>
>>From what you're saying here, I'm guessing that what's going to
>>end up happening is _not_ that you'll succeed inspite of poor
>>characterization, but that you're going to do really well at a
>>particular kind of characterization, focussing on the character
>>issues that present interesting problems to you.
>
>Hey, maybe!
>
I think so. You express so much ambivalence about the kind of
story you want to write, that I think you probably have more than
one kind of story to write. And I think you have something to say
about character, and if you free yourself from thinking you are
constitutionally incapable of dealing with it, you will find what
it is to say -- in _action_ stories, the ones you like to tell.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Dan Goodman
wrote:
>There is a very effective writer of memoirs who is autistic -- um,
>her name is Temple Grandin and you probably already know about her
>but did you know she has a website (naturally)?
>
>http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html
>
>She's brilliant, of course, but she also got her autism diagnosis
>in an era when it was much harder to get it, when you had to be
>really flagrantly out there to be called autistic. And she says
>she thinks in pictures, not words, and that thinking in pictures
>actually helps her imagination. Helps her understand animals and
>helps her invent things.
Einstein didn't think in words either; he thought in kinesthetic
sensations, if I understand correctly.
Dan Goodman
wrote:
>"Write what you know" seems frequently misunderstood to me. "Know
>what you write" is closer to the real meaning.
No, I think that the meaning really _is_ "Write what you know."
But I think it would be more useful to say "Use what you know."
And follow that up with lessons in looking for analogies to what you
don't know.
I know what it's like to grow up Catholic in mostly-Protestant parts
of rural Minnesota, or Protestant in heavily-Catholic parts of rural
Minnesota; a Mormon in some parts of the Mountain West where they're a
minority, or a non-Mormon in some places with a Mormon majority. Not
because I've personally experienced any of these, but because the
accounts I've read and heard fit well with my own growing-up
experiences.
Will Shetterly
dsg...@visi.com (Dan Goodman) wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Aug 2001 23:33:30 GMT, dbi...@mediaone.net (David T. Bilek)
> wrote:
>
>
> >"Write what you know" seems frequently misunderstood to me. "Know
> >what you write" is closer to the real meaning.
>
> No, I think that the meaning really _is_ "Write what you know."
Only so long as you realize that you can always increase what you know.
Patricia C. Wrede
Shetterly <shet...@mac.comSNIPTHISTOEMAILME> writes:
>In article <20010803182918...@nso-fg.aol.com>,
> pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C. Wrede) wrote:
>> This is one of the three or four most-commonly-misunderstood pieces of
>> writing
>> advice, I think. Which is why I hate it, even when there's somebody who
>> clearly needs it...
>
>Do any of the others spring to mind?
"Write what you know." Which is nearly always interpreted as "You should only
ever write about stuff you have personally experienced," meaning either that
you can't write about anything except your own home town and ethnic group, or
that you have to do a lot of traveling (and other things) in order to be
allowed to write about particular stuff. I almost had a heart attack the day a
high school student explained to me with great seriousness all the incredibly
stupid, dangerous things he was forcing himself to do so that he could write an
action-adventure novel. Fortunately, I was inspired to wax eloquent on the
benefits of library research, and he desisted, but good grief...
There are others, but it's been 94 and humid again today, for about the third
week in a row, and I don't think well when it's like this, even if I do have
air conditioning. Maybe I can think of some others tomorrow before it gets hot
again.
Patricia C. Wrede
Zeborah
> On Fri, 3 Aug 2001 20:55:59 +0900, zeb...@altavista.com (Zeborah)
> wrote:
>
> >(If enough people in the US House of
> >Representatives think that cloning is a great horror, does that make
> >them right? No, it just makes them idiots.)
>
> They weren't already?!
I watch West Wing; it makes me hopelessly optimistic about the workings
of government. Thank goodness for the New York Times...
Mildly-on-topic: can anyone think of some feasible ways for convincing
all the idiots out there that cloning a human embryo is not
automatically going to turn our civilisation into a dystopia (worse than
it already is)? What really annoys me is I can't even write some sf to
get my annoyance out of my system; it's already been written years and
decades ago, even if all the media ever noticed was _BNW_.
Sylvia Li
>
> Ah, but action stories are not respected by the literati. Question is,
> do I care?
>
profession of storyteller is an ancient and honorable one. You know this --
you survived on the playground.
'Literati' are, by and large, pursuing something more exotic, which may
tickle other sensibilities, but seldom causes people to feel the age-old
need to know What Happens Next. Translation: These writers are not very
good storytellers.
Which would be fine, no reason they shouldn't explore other paths, some
very admirable work comes out of it, except that there seems to be a
lingering impulse to justify the abandonment of Story by sneering at those
who do it well.
*That* is like a leaf sneering at the trunk of the tree. Dead wood? Then
what is holding the leaf up to the light, and nourishing it from the earth?
--
Sylvia Li
Richard Kennaway
> >Interesting example. It does convey something to me about Mary's eyes.
> >Or at least, I know what Mary's eyes would look like to move me to
> >describe them with Bob's words (which is, often enough, what passes for
> >understanding what another person says, especially if the other person
> >is fictional).
>
> Could you articulate what the difference is?
The distinction that I associate with the two words has more to do with
the texture than the colour. "Gray" tends to be darker than "grey", but
is always more grainy -- you can get "grey" paint, but never "gray".
I expect this to be a completely idiosyncratic association, and
therefore would have nothing to do with what someone else distinguishing
the words is intending to convey. But on a smaller scale, I think that
happens a lot without people noticing.
-- Richard Kennaway
Karen Lofstrom
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> Hello, Anna - just a piece of info that might encourage you:
> I know at least one person with Asperger's who is a fiction
> writer. (I say 'at least' because I have an idea I know
> others, but that's the only one I know has actually had the
> medical diagnosis.) So it can be done.
I find it hard to distinguish between Asperger's and the social and
emotional clumsiness characteristic of some "geek" types.
When I read Goleman's book on emotional intelligence, I immediately
recognized myself as the clumsy geek. It was liberating, actually, to find
out why I'd been stumbling through life pissing off people. Just extreme
absorption in books and lack of focus on people. I am trying hard to do
better, but I'm still often boorish and offensive.
But then I read about Asperger's and say, "That sounds like me too".
So what's the difference? Is there any? Lucy is saying that she distrusts
categories and prefers continua. Perhaps what is diagnosed as Asperger's
is just an extreme case of common-garden-variety emotional clumsiness?
Or perhaps there's a difference between "brain that doesn't read emotions
because it can't" and "brain that doesn't read emotions because it has
been so solitary and bookish that it lacks experience in processing body
language and tone of voice".
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member #462 of the Lumber Cartel (TINLC)