Letter from Camp! (Camp NaNoWriMo)

So, I am deep in the midst of every writer’s favorite July activity, Camp NaNoWriMo! Okay, perhaps not every writer’s favorite July activity. I can’t even say it’s my favorite July activity, as it is the first time I have participated in it. I have done NaNoWriMo twice and won once—though the time I didn’t win, I was so close. I loved-hated both times, as it was a lot of work, and to be honest, the quality was sub-par. However, that is what revision is for! Camp NaNoWriMo is a little less stressful.

One of the nice things about Camp NaNoWriMo is that you can set your own word count, and you can even choose to edit instead of write (where you monitor time spent and convert that to words at the proposed rate of 1,000 words per hour). I chose to work on revising my novel Charybda, part of which I wrote during NaNoWriMo. Funnily, I had the bulk of the book written and used NaNo as a push to write the last part of the book. The unrevised manuscript of Charybda, in need of repairs and continuity fixes from start to finish, sat on my hard drive patiently waiting for me to finally get around to revising it. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I got off my behind (or put my behind in the writer’s chair, as it were) and started to work on it in earnest.

It has been a difficult road for me. I envy the writers who write quickly and require little revision on their drafts. I will never be one of those writers. I’m meticulous, which is good, but self-critical, which is not. It takes me a little time anyway, but I have occasional bouts of depression that bring all of it to a grinding halt. However, I am pleased to report that since the beginning of the year, I have made my way through thirteen or so chapters of the novel!

Camp NaNoWriMo was a fun way to motivate myself to work on my revising even more. I decided that, for me at least, 500 words per hour was a better conversion rate for time spent editing. Then, I set myself a goal of 10,000 words—which, by the by, is the minimum goal—equaling 20 hours of revision time. It sounded doable, and like a goal I might even surpass with a little dedication.

Another benefit of Camp NaNoWriMo is that it helped me realize something about revising. Revising, or content editing, if you will, is difficult to quantify. When you write, you have this nice concrete word count as your measurement. When it comes to revising, all you can measure is the time you spend working. Prior to Camp NaNo, I was setting goals based on the amount of the manuscript I got through—x number of chapters. However, each chapter is different. There was one chapter that took me two hours to ‘fix.’ There was another that took me two weeks. You see the inevitable problem.

I had been resisting the idea of measuring my revision in time, because there are times where it takes me an hour just to make a single change. That can be very depressing. How can one change really count for anything? I would be really hard on myself for things like this. Nevertheless, you have to quantify the work somehow, and it turns out that a time goal is a lot more manageable than a ‘distance’ goal. If not for Camp NaNo, I might not have ever realized this.

Even better, setting a time goal helps me work more efficiently. With the distance goal, I would get distracted and take a long time, so discouraged by how far away the endpoint was that I would give up. With the time goal, I find that the first 20 minutes or so are the most difficult, but once I’m past that, I get sucked into what I’m doing and work much harder than I would have otherwise.

I feel like I finally stumbled onto the answer for which I have been searching for some time now. There is always an abundance of advice on how to stay motivated while writing, but their is little said about the revision process. “Just keep writing—don’t worry if it stinks, you can fix that later.” There is a lot of silence when that later finally arrives. (Maybe there is a lot of advice out there, but I never seem to find it.) The answer for the “fixing it later” is to set small, manageable, quantifiable goals rather than looking at the big messy manuscript as a whole. Perhaps this should be obvious—the adage of eating an elephant one bite at a time has been around forever. For me, the problem was the quantifying of the goals. Now, I have finally settled into this system which works, and allows me to define the amount of work I’m actually doing. It allows me feel good about myself even when a single change takes an hour—because I have spent that entire hour working diligently to determine which change should be made. It gives me time to read the manuscript and make a plan for the next phase, while still feeling good because even if I make no changes, I have set myself up for success. I still get to count that hour as an achievement.

Another thing that has aided me in the revision process is giving myself rewards for achieving goals. At the end of every month, I give myself a prize if I meet my goal. Not just any prize, like going out for ice cream or something. No, this is a prize I’ll work my butt off in order to get. That’s right..a new My Little Pony! I bought a lot of ponies off of eBay, which are sitting in a box waiting for me to free them by achieving my goals. I only get one pony as a prize, though, so there are enough to keep me motivated for the next year or so.  It has worked well so far—there was one month where I did most of the work in the last week because I was so desperate to get that pony. (I don’t know if that’s pathetic or not, but I don’t care.) Now that I have a better system worked out, thanks to Camp NaNo, I’ll be well on my way to successfully earning ponies at the agonizingly slow rate of 1 pony per month. Even if the prize winning process is slow, the revising process has sped up, which is a prize all its own.

One more thing of note is that I have changed my terminology when referring to what I am doing to my manuscript. I had been calling it editing, which is not completely inaccurate. I am, after all, content editing. But since editing can also refer to line editing—going through line by line and fixing grammatical and stylistic errors, my subconscious was confused about what I was really doing. I would feel bad that I wasn’t at the final stage of perfecting the work. Now that I have changed to the term revising, I feel that it is a more accurate reflection of what I am doing. It also takes off the subconscious pressure that comes with the word ‘editing.’

It has been an enlightening summer, to be sure, and I feel that the rest of my year will be filled with even more successes.

What helps you out with revising your writing?

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The Number One Rule of Writing

Trust yourself to put that first word on the page.

Trust yourself.

That is all.

What, were you expecting it to be something far more elaborate and detailed? Perhaps something rigid and defined?

Well, there certainly are a lot of rules for writing, and they are all very useful rules to keep in mind. Things like: use proper grammar; avoid contractions in formal writing; avoid redundant adverbs and eliminate weak verb-adverb pairs; use 'said' as your default for speech tags; do not have your characters constantly say each other's names; have a defined beginning, middle, and end; raise the stakes for your characters and put them in jeopardy...

The list goes on and on and on. Rules about POV, rules about style, rules, rules, rules, rules.

The only hard and fast rule of writing is that there are as many rules as there are writers.

What do I mean by that? I mean that every writer out there is going to have their own idea of what makes writing good. Writing rules are subjective. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a sucker for the rules. I believe there is such a thing as good writing and bad writing. However, which is which really depends on who you ask. There is a sort of 'canon' idea of what makes for good writing, but people work outside of that all the time and still have success.  Bad writing exists, but not everyone agrees on what makes writing bad.

The commonly agreed upon reasons for bad writing are: weak plot, weak and flat characters, inconsistent style, poor grammar, and similar things. But again, people still disagree as to what is what.

So, here you are, trying to navigate the waters of being a writer. You will be given conflicting advice. How do you know which is right, which is the way to go?

This is where trusting yourself comes in. If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? Even if you follow all the supposed rules that you have read about, if you don't trust yourself, your writing will be weak and shaky. Do you really need to do something that breaks a rule, because you think it will make your story more powerful? Break that sucker.

Trust yourself.

Because you will never be as good at being your favorite author as that author is. But you can most definitely be the best at being yourself. And to do that, you will have to trust yourself.

It is not easy. I still struggle with it every day. It is especially difficult when you are editing something, and when a self-imposed deadline looms over your head like a Sword of Damocles, threatening a sense of failure.

I try to remind myself that there is no failure as long as I keep plugging away at my work, as long as I do not give up, as long as I do my best...

...as long as I trust myself.

So keep the rules in mind--because rules are useful and will make your writing stronger--but remember to trust yourself, even if that means stepping outside of the rules.

That is the number one rule of writing.

What Editing Feels Like

Oy. So clearly, I haven't been very good about getting back to my posting schedule. Real life seems to keep trying to get in the way of blogging. But, today, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on editing.

Have you ever taken a drawing class? There's a recommended way to draw the picture. First, you lay in your basic lines and shapes, then start to sketch out what you want the picture to look like. Then, you go in and refine and finish your picture. The refining and finishing takes the longest, and you can spend a long time fussing with one tiny little area trying to get it look just right. If that little bit is off, it can mess up the whole drawing. 

This is very much what editing is like. Your first draft is the basic skeleton, and editing provides the finished product.Or, to pick up my theme from last week, your first draft is like learning a music piece, and editing is like going back and adding dynamics.

So, which is easier? Writing the first draft or editing?

Honestly, they are both difficult. But if you want to talk about time investment, editing takes a lot more time than writing does. Sometimes, the difference between writing and editing feels a little bit like this:

Little people are courtesy of Microsoft Office ClipArt. I did the rest.

But don't despair - editing might seem fruitless and frustrating, but what actually happens during this process is an amazing thing. You watch your skeleton turn into a fully realized living thing. You listen to the once choppy sound of your first draft turn into beautiful music. It's really incredible.

So if you're intimidated about editing, or discouraged because editing feels to you like that little cartoon, keep in mind that you're crafting something even more amazing than before.

Thoughts on the First Draft

I don't have much of a Word-Craft Wednesday for you today. These are just some thoughts on writing that have occurred to me over the last few days. They're unorganized, but I thought I would share them with you anyway. 

I’ve been working on learning a new musical piece on my guitar. Learning the piece is just one step, though. Once you know what to play, you have to focus on how to play it.  It’s not enough to know, “Okay, I hold ‘B’ for an eighth note, then ‘E’ for a dotted quarter note.” Granted, that’s a huge part of it, but there are other factors that go into performing. For example, which note should be played more loudly? Is one accented over the other? Sometimes, the composer writes this type of information for you. Other times, well, you just have to figure out what sounds good for yourself.  

I was working on this piece the other day, and suddenly it hit me that I was playing all of the notes equally loudly – to where the canto forte (“strong song” or melody) was totally lost. It should have been totally obvious to me that this was happening, but it wasn’t until I’d practiced the thing a bazillion times before I’d noticed it. Then I felt kind of dumb. Now I’m realizing that I’ve imposed absolutely no dynamics (volume changes) on the piece whatsoever. It’s totally flat.

The writing process is very much like learning a new musical piece. First, you have to have all your mechanics in place – who does what, what happens, how long, and so on and so forth. This is what happens when writing the first draft. At least for me, when I write my first draft, I feel like I myself am learning about my story for the first time. I’m not always sure where it’s going, and sometimes it surprises me.  

Once all the mechanics are in place, you have to revisit your writing. This is when you’ll notice that the story might have a theme – a canto forte, if you will, that you didn’t even realize that you’d put in. You need to rework your writing so that this shines through, but you also don’t want to drown out the other elements. Everything has to blend harmoniously. This is what the second draft is about.Unfortunately, you'll probably notice lots of things that should have seemed obvious and you might feel kind of silly about the whole thing. However, it's fun to watch your second draft come together as you watch it improve.

But what you’ll notice about all of this is that before you can tweak the dynamics and really bring it to life, you have to have the mechanics in place. In other words, don’t put the cart before the horse. You can’t have your second draft before your first draft.

So, when you write your first draft, you ought not be thinking about it as something that people are going to read, just like when you first learn a piece, you aren’t going to perform it until you’ve polished it.

This is something that it took me a shockingly long time to figure out, believe it or not.  I wrote with the idea that I needed to polish as I go, so that when I was done writing, all I’d need is a quick once-over and Bam! my writing would be ready for publishing.  As a result, it took me a really, really long time to get everything written. There was so much pressure that writing wasn’t even fun, and consequently, I got very little writing done. Telling yourself that you need to get your writing right the first time is about as much fun as sitting down at a musical rehearsal with music you’re looking at for the first time and trying to play it in front of people. It’s stressful and embarrassing.

So you have to let go and give yourself permission to make mistakes, because right now, you’re just learning what your story is all about. Don’t go in expecting the literary equivalent of a concert performance – right now, you’re just practicing and learning.  Don’t worry about the dynamics until you have the mechanics.  Hey, that could be a slogan or something, huh?

I’ll write more about how to change the dynamics next week, but I wanted to really emphasize the fact that your first draft is your playground. Have fun. Experiment. Nobody is watching you but yourself, so write with your eyes closed and your imagination open. 

Share any thoughts in comments. 

  

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"Stealing" Ideas

Image courtesy of chanpipat at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What would you say if I told you that you could rip off major plot points from other sources and get away with it?

Would you say, “But that’s stealing and violating copyright laws”?

Would you say, “That would make me an unoriginal hack writer”?

What about, “People will know it’s a rip-off and no one will like my story?”

Let’s break this down.

“That’s stealing and violates copyright laws.”

Copyright laws are dodgy things. If you write a story that is basically exactly the same as somebody else’s, using the same characters (even if you change their names), then you have violated copyright laws. There’s no way around this. But if you were to look at Lois Lowry’s The Giver and think that forced hormonal therapy is an interesting concept, and you decide to use that in your story, that is not violating copyright laws.  You’ll probably want to do your take on forced hormonal therapy differently – that’s why it’s your take on it.

But isn’t it still stealing?

Let me tell you a secret. Nothing is original. Nada. Zilch. Zero.  Have you ever heard of William Shakespeare, a man still hailed today as a master of literary genius?

Yeah, he ripped off a bunch of other stories to make his plays.

So, yes, maybe it is ‘stealing’ story elements, but don’t think of it as stealing. Think of it as ‘drawing inspiration’ from another source. It’s not immoral or illegal – not the way that selling a story with Frodo the Hobbit in it would be.

I promise you, even if you come up with an idea all by yourself, the likelihood of seeing that somebody else has done something similar is really high. Does that mean you’re stealing? No. It just means that somebody else had a similar idea to you. Nobody has a monopoly on ideas, and nobody can copyright an idea like forced hormonal therapy. 

Now, if you put it in the exact configuration as The Giver, well…that’s  different story. Then it does become stealing.

You see, there is a definite difference between stealing and drawing inspiration from a source. It might seem fuzzy, but it is definitely there.

“That would make me an unoriginal hack writer.”

Was William Shakespeare a hack? The debate on this rages, but most people think highly of Shakespeare. Would you say Suzanne Collins is a hack? She borrowed a lot of elements for The Hunger Games from Roman history. Oh, and have you ever of J.R.R. Tolkien, a man widely regarded as the father of modern fantasy? He lifted a lot of stuff from Norse mythology. Does that make him an unoriginal hack writer? What about Rowling? Harry Potter took a bunch of stuff out of mythology, too.

So, what is it that makes these authors original, if they have so much unoriginal stuff in their writing?

It’s the way that things are configured. It’s sort of like starting with a ball of yarn. Give five different people a ball of yarn and tell them to knit a scarf. At least one of those scarves will be different than the others. It’s all about the way you tell your story – the way you spin a yarn, if you will. Yours will be unique, because it’s told by you, and you’ll make sure to tell it in a way nobody else has told it. That’s where the originality comes in.

As long as you tell the story your own unique way, you won’t be a hack.

“People will know it’s a rip-off and no one will like my story.”

Okay. This is just patently false.

Tolkien practically has a cult following, even after his death.

Shakespeare is studied in schools all around the world.

People liked their stories. Even though they heavily borrowed from other sources.

So what is it that really brings the originality to these stories – what is it that makes them original?

Two major things: setting and character.

I’ll give you an example – and this was what gave me the idea for this blog post in the first place.  This story begins with me admitting to the fact that I occasionally watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. (I’ve collected ponies since I was four, and I just never stopped liking them.)

Courtesy of HasbroStudios.com. Used for review purposes only.

On Saturday, a new season of My Little Pony started, and I decided to watch. It was actually a really interesting episode. The main characters went to a village where everybody had the same cutie mark. If you don’t watch the show, suffice it to say that cutie marks reflect each pony’s individuality and special talents.

Everybody had the same cutie mark so that no one was special.

Nobody had special talents, so that nobody was better than anyone else.

Everybody had to think the same way and have the same beliefs.

Is this starting to sound familiar?  The more the episode unfolded, the more this town started to look communist. They even called it a ‘utopia’ in one of the songs. But it was clear that it was anything but a utopia. It was a classic dystopia, vaguely reminiscent of 1984 and Animal Farm. Nobody could say anything that went against the status quo, and if somebody did, the other ponies were supposed to rat them out.

It started to have even more elements of dystopian novels, such as brainwashing. The main characters were locked in a room and forced to listen to a loud recording of what they were supposed to believe – things like “To excel is to fail” and various other maxims of this dystopian society.

Finally, the leader of everything was revealed to have her own unique cutie mark, which she kept hidden from everybody else. The first thing that came to mind when I saw that was, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” (That’s from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.) This pony argued that she had to have her special talent so that everybody else could ‘enjoy’ life without theirs. That made me think of Napoleon from Animal Farm, who argued that he had to have more power so that everybody else could live in harmony.

So yeah. An entire episode of My Little Pony that basically took classic dystopian novels, put them through the grinder, and reshaped them. They didn’t even try to be the least bit subtle about it. It was super obvious where they were getting this stuff from.

But you know what? I loved it. I bet the other adults who watched it still loved it. I bet the kids who watched the show loved it.  So what makes is special and unique?

Because it’s a show about frickin’ talking horses! With songs and dance routines! With magic! It’s the characters and the setting that makes it what it is, that makes it fresh and fun and original, even when it’s obviously a rip-off.

So there you have it. Don’t freak out if your idea is similar to someone else’s. Draw inspiration from other places all you want – just be unique in the way that you put it together.

 Don’t use talking, dancing, magical, brightly colored horses, though. I think that might have been done already.

What do you think about the idea of ‘ripping off’ other sources? Share your thoughts in the comments. 

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Metanarrative in Storytelling

Image courtesy of holohololand at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of the coolest things about being a Christian is realizing that you are part of a massive story that has been going on since the dawn of creation.  This evening, I’ll be participating in a worship service that uses a liturgy that has been around for centuries, centering on an event that that happened two thousand years ago which fulfilled a prophecy that was given the day of the fall into sin.

I am a participant in a massive story—a story that many people, Christian and non-Christian alike, have referred to as the greatest story ever told.

If you think about it, we all are participants in one big story. Even if you’re not a Christian, you can see that your existence is little more than a snapshot in a huge, continuous story that has been going on…well, basically, forever.

We—every last one of us—are all elements in something which is called a metanarrative.  A metanarrative is a narrative which surpasses and encompasses every other narrative in existence – a ‘higher’ story, if you will, than what the regular narrative tells. I first learned the term from my husband, who learned it in one of his theology classes.  It’s commonly used to differentiate the overarching story of the Bible from the individual stories therein (the exodus, the times of the judges, etc.).  

You don’t have to be Christian to understand or agree with the concept of a metanarrative, but it certainly is one of the easiest examples.

So why am I talking about metanarratives? Well, I wanted something that I could tie in with Good Friday (I wish a blessed Good Friday to you all), but the concept of metanarrative is really important in storytelling.

Every story you will ever tell is an element of some metanarrative.

You’ll see the most evidence of this in fantasy storytelling—The Lord of the Rings is probably one of the best examples. In fact, Frodo and Sam even talk extensively about how they are just a small part in a much, much larger story.  Read The Silmarillion, and you’ll see just how true this is.

Even if you aren’t writing a fantasy story, it is still part of a larger story.

All right, you say, so this is all very fascinating and everything, but what’s the point here?

The point is that when you sit down to write your story, you should spend some time thinking about what part your particular story plays in a much larger story. Is it the culmination of a family struggle? The inception of one? Your story is not an island, so if you want your story to be rich and fulfilling, make sure that you have some kind of metanarrative that is happening over it all.

Obviously, your metanarrative is not something you will write down per se. You are just writing the snapshot, after all. But every picture has a background.

Also, your metanarrative should be something which meaningfully connects to the current narrative that you are writing.  For Christianity, of course, the promise of the Christ and fulfilling of that promise is the metanarrative.  Now, if your story is about a family that stops feuding after years of hatred, Christ’s death on the cross is not your metanarrative. No, your metanarrative is all of the events that lead up to this story. 

Not only should your metanarrative be pertinent to the story, it should be the other way around. Whatever you are writing, make sure it is the highest, most crucial point in your metanarrative. Anything less is, well, anticlimactic.

For example, the whole Bible is basically about Jesus coming to die on the cross.  It starts out with that as its focus and it ends with that as its focus. Yes, Christ’s impending return is a big deal, but it’s only a big deal because of the cross.

Or, as in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the story occurs at a crucial juncture in the overarching story. Everything before has been leading up to this one moment when the ring falls into Mount Doom; everything after happens as a result of it. A massive shift of power goes from Elves to Men. Yet everything that happens before and after is hardly as interesting as the pinnacle event itself.

That should be your model when you’re constructing your story and its metanarrative.  You want this to be the most exciting part of the whole story. 

And you definitely want it to be more exciting than this blog post has been. 

What do you think of the concept of metanarrative? Share any thoughts or questions in the comments.

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Some Good Advice on Writing

Well, my life is still busy, but I was reading my favorite websites the other day and saw this article by Nina Amir about writing a book.  Since I just recently started my own exercise routine, the author's comparison of writing to exercising really resonated with me. Check it out!

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So You Want to Write a Book? Just Do It!

Start with page one. Then write page two and so on. Before you know it, you’ll have a manuscript. As author Donald Murray once told America’s Writing Coach, Roy Peter Clark, “Remember: A page a day equals a book a year.”

I admit I’ve simplified the task a bit. There are the ideation and research that go into writing a book. You have to determine the structure and content. Some writers need a gestation period before they begin writing. And you may feel you need time to learn how to write a book. But the best way to become an author—actually the only way—involves producing a manuscript. You must write.

As the adage goes: Writers write. If you want to be a writer or an author, there’s no way around this fact.

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Check out the rest of the article at http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2015/03/so-you-want-to-write-a-book-just-do-it/

Share any thoughts or questions in the comments. 

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Flashbacks Again

Hello, readers! Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I have been busy, and it's been hard to make time for blogging.

After my last post on flashbacks, I was asked if I could provide an example of how it's done. Being short on time, I cheated and did a Google search. I found this awesome blog post by Paige Duke that breaks down the anatomy of a flashback in The Hunger Games. 

Here's a teaser for their post. I highly recommend that you read the whole thing. 

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Creating a Strong Framework

Because a flashback halts the forward motion of the narrative, the reader must care about the character before you throw the car in reverse. Collins’ flashback comes in Chapter 2, which might seem early, but we’re already hooked into the action of the story and tied to the fate of the character. Because Katniss has just volunteered to take her sister’s place in the Games—a death sentence for sure. And she’s about to find out who else she’ll have to face in the arena.

Peeta Mellark! Oh, no, I think. Not him … I try to convince myself it doesn’t matter. Peeta Mellark and I are not friends. Not even neighbors. We don’t speak. Our only real interaction happened years ago. He’s probably forgotten it. But I haven’t and I know I never will.…

The First Sentences

There are two things to note about a strong first sentence of a flashback. First, it’s a transition, so it needs to be strategic. Whether it’s smooth or abrupt, seamless or jarring, it should be that way intentionally. Maybe this flashback comes to your character in a natural way when a sense of smell triggers the memory. Or maybe they’re thrust back into a tense and painful moment in time, caught completely off guard. The effect is different, so use this transition point to its full advantage.

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Read more at http://www.standoutbooks.com/writing-flashbacks/

I hope that helps everybody write stronger, more awesome flashbacks! Now get out there and write!

Share any thoughts or questions in the comments. 

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Flashbacks

Photo courtesy of graur razva ionut on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Okay, let’s talk about flashbacks.  Flashbacks are an important part of most narrative storytelling, as we all experience those times when we think about our distant past.  So, it’s really important to learn how to write them well.

A heads-up: while there is some objective advice in today’s post, such as the mechanics of flashbacks, I want you to be aware that there is also a lot of my personal opinion in here. My opinion is not law.  I think it’s good advice, but I’m not conceited enough to think that my way is the only way.

Something that I see a lot from new writers (and occasionally from experienced ones) is that they indicate flashbacks using italics. This can in fact be done.  It’s not a bad method per se – in fact, Jay Kristoff uses it in Stormdancer.  (While Stormdancer is his breakthrough novel, I doubt that he’s a writing rookie.) He also uses another method commonly used – using line, chapter, or page breaks to demarcate (set apart) where the flashback begins and ends. I do think it’s a little ungraceful, but it works and it didn’t ruin the story for me. Even one of my favorite authors uses this in one of his series, but the flashbacks he wrote without this method were far superior.

Another way to write flashbacks, by way of explaining history, is to use the character’s dreams. It’s really easy to do it this way, but easy does not equal awesome. Personally, I really dislike this. It’s overused and a little unrealistic, since most people don't dream exact scenes from their pasts. It can work, such as in cases of PTSD where people really do re-live what happened in their dreams.  If you’ve done this in your writing, don’t feel bad. I’m not saying you are a bad writer or anything like that.  I’m not even saying you have to change it – after all, it’s your story, and only you can make that decision. But it is kind of an easy way out, and the easy way out isn’t generally the best way.

An exception to this is for letting characters relive traumatic events, but it works best if you only give the tiiiiniest little tease. It leaves the reader hungry for more. If you do the whole memory in a dream, in one big clump, it can disrupt the flow.

The preferred way, at least according to academics, is the in-story flashback.  This, instead of being set apart by visual aids or dreams, is set apart by tense changes.  This is the way I was taught to write flashbacks in either my junior or senior year of high school. (The curriculum I used was Writing Strands, which is a great resource if you ever want to look at it over a summer or something like that.) There are a set of pretty rigid rules as far as using the tense changes themselves, but don’t worry – there’s still plenty of room for creativity.

Before we get to the tense rules of writing a flashback, I’d like to put in my two cents about all of this. Every single method I’ve listed can be used to write flashbacks, and every single method can be used well.  However, the first two have disadvantages that the third one doesn’t.

I have written both in-story (without being visually set apart) flashbacks and flashbacks that were set apart physically.  In my PERSONAL OPINION (that means that you should take this with a grain of salt, and decide for yourself what you think), in-story flashbacks are by far superior.  You don’t disrupt the flow of the story, and you don’t practically shout to the reader: “Hey! Lookit! A flaaashbaaack!!” There is a time and a place for visually set apart flashbacks, but they tend to be cumbersome and ungraceful, in my opinion. (Keep in mind that I am including my own work in this category, so don’t feel bad or like I’m putting you down if you have done this.)

So, how do you use tense changes to write flashbacks?  Perhaps the easiest way to start is with this chart demonstrating what tenses should be used when.

Flashbacks are simply the character thinking back to something that has already happened.  If past tense is your main tense, then you will use the past perfect for this regardless of how long ago in the story arc the flashback happened. However, if you’re using present as your main tense, you’ll want to use the regular past tense for things that happened, say, earlier that day or the day before.  For things that happened a long time ago, you’ll want to use past perfect tense.

Now that we have that established, here are the steps of writing an in-story flashback.

Step 1 – the lead-in

This is how you cue your reader to the fact that they are about to be reading a flashback.  It could be as simple as, “He remembered a time in his life when he had been happy,” or you can use more complex, creative things too.  Either way, you want there to be an obvious indication that we’re about to learn about something that has already happened.

Step 2 – the lead-in tense change

If you’re writing in present tense and are writing about something that happened very recently in the story, you’ll simply switch to past tense for the duration of the flashback. Easy enough, right?

The trick comes when you’re writing in past tense or you’re bringing up the distant past.  Have you ever tried to write an entire paragraph in past perfect? It’s obnoxious to write, and it’s obnoxious to read.  So what you do, after you’ve got your lead-in sentence that cues us to be on the lookout for a flashback, is write two to four sentences in past perfect. How many you write depends on how long the flashback is. The rest of the flashback can then be using the simple past tense.  If the flashback is really, really long, it doesn’t hurt to throw in another sentence in past perfect here and there, just to help the reader remember that this is still a flashback.

Step 3 – the ending tense change

Assuming that you are writing in past tense or the distant past, the last two to four sentences of your flashback should be written in past perfect. This is a solid reminder everything mentioned is in fact in the past and has already come to pass.  Once this has been finished, you switch back to your main tense.

Step 4 – the jolt back to the present

Just like the lead-in tells the reader a flashback is about to happen, this out-tro of sorts lets them know that it is over.  Generally, working the word ‘now’ into the sentence somehow is a really good way to do it, but there are a lot of opportunities for creativity.

So, more or less, that’s how an in-story flashback works. If you want to, you can combine this with the visual separation techniques for a very stark contrast. (This is all about the style you want to achieve. Kristoff did this in Stormdancer and it worked well.) As I said, I’ve discovered that I like the subtlety of in-story flashbacks better than the other method.

If you decide to write a dream flashback, then don’t use the tense change rules. Dreams are something that the character actively experiences, so all you need to do is indicate that the character is dreaming and then relate the events in your main tense. It’s a good idea to avoid not telling the reader that something is a dream, unless it’s a very brief dream.  If you have a big ol’ long dream, it can be annoying for your readers to suddenly discover that what they thought was actually happening happened a long time ago. (At least, this is what the writing books tell me.)

Think carefully about which type of flashback works best for your story. It won’t always be the same, and you may use multiple methods per story.  But when you want a smooth, even flow and readability to story, then the in-story flashback really works the best.


Share any thoughts or questions in the comments!

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The Sounds of Poetry

Hi! I decided to do a vlog about how poetry is affected by the sounds of words. So, without further ado:

Here is the poem that I discuss in the video:

"A Mongoloid Child Handling Shells on the Beach"
by Richard Snyder (1971)

She turns them over in her slow hands,
As did the sea sending them to her;
Broken bits from the mazarine maze,
They are the calmest things on this sand.

The unbroken children splash and shout,
Rough as surf, gay as their nesting towels.
But she plays soberly with the sea’s
Small change and hums back to it its slow vowels.

[Snyder, Richard. “A Mongoloid Child Handling Shells on the Beach.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Seventh ed.  Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Longman, 1999. 732]

Here's a great essay about the meaning of this poem, if you're so interested.

Also, here are some links to some of the other poems I mention in the video.

The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls (Tennyson)

Break, Break, Break (Tennyson)

The Second Coming (Yeats)

Also, one poem that I don't mention in the vid but is totally awesome: Goblin Market (Rossetti)

Share any thoughts or questions in the comments!

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Writer's Block

Let’s talk about some ways to bust through writer’s block!

No, seriously.  I’m all ears.

I’ve had more than one request for covering the topic of dealing with writer’s block – but I’m afraid that it’s pretty much the blind reading the blind. Writer’s block is one of those mysteries I have yet to develop a solution for.  I’ve read countless articles, blog posts, books, etc. about how to overcome it, but I really haven’t found a solution that works for me, every time.  Here are a few of the things I have seen suggested, so feel free to give them a try.

• Exercise before you sit down to write
• Write while standing (put your notepaper or computer on a high counter)
• Write while sitting on an exercise ball instead of on a chair
• Brainstorm while exercising (this one works for me most frequently, when the exercise is walking)
• Think about something else for a while; clean house, watch a TV show, etc. before going back to your writing
• Work on a different writing project temporarily
• Try meditating or deep breathing exercises to relax and clear your mind
• Do a warm-up writing exercise
• Listen to music that motivates or inspires you
• Find a friend who can be a sounding board for ideas

I have personally had success with these in varying degrees. But a lot of times, writer’s block feels like a antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, where each type of ‘treatment’ works partially, but then results in a vengeful relapse.  Most frequently, I have success with walking around while brainstorming, trying to act out how scenes will go. Then, I have all of these great ideas…

…which somehow don’t make it through the keyboard.  Sometimes, I just sit and stare at the monitor.

Most of the time, I have project-specific writer’s block. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this might be the more common problem. There are some people who are of the opinion that if you have a long period of blockage on a specific project, then you need to dump it and move on to another, in the same way that you would dump a bad relationship. However, I think this is a bad policy.  It leads to a cycle of starting things and never finishing them, which has honestly been a problem for me my whole life.

My problem is that I tend to give up at the first sign of mental resistance, when perseverance would probably make a difference (in the same way it does with housework or chores).  This is especially crippling when I have true writer’s block – where I really can’t seem to write anything. But for when it’s just a specific project, I tend to work on frivolous side projects in an effort to break through the writer’s block on the main project. Sometimes, it works.

Usually, it doesn’t.

What this says to me is that perseverance is really the only way to actually get through writer’s block. There is one solution that tends to work, but it requires pushing past that resistance: fake it ‘til you make it. It seems disingenuous. You’re not writing from your soul! But let’s face it, if the soul isn’t writing when you need to be, then you need to take action.  You can’t edit a blank page, etc. etc.

All of this great advice won’t do anything for you unless you’re willing to try to crash through the brick wall yourself.  So that’s that. Can’t write? Write anyway! It seems to overlook the main problem, which is that you can’t write.

Why?

This is the real question. Why can’t you write? You’re capable of it, so what’s the issue? A lot of times, it goes deeper than that simple feeling of helplessness you have when you look at your computer screen.  This is where we get to talk about fancy psychological stuff.  Victoria Lynn Schmidt, author of the book “Book in a Month,” suggests that the reason we have writer’s block is because we actually are resisting the writing.  It’s not that the writing eludes us – it’s that we are subconsciously holding it back.

If you have a project that you really hate, it’s obvious where the resistance is coming from.  But what if it’s a project that you’re really passionate about? What then?

Well, what happens when you’ve finished writing something? You have to edit it. You have to critique it. You have to be mean to it. You’re going on a quest to find all of the flaws in the work you’ve done.  And, chances are, you’re going to have other people help you in this process, which is even worse.

In other words, when you finish a writing project, you are rewarded for your labor with even more grueling labor, and it can be really depressing.  Subconsciously, you think, “If I never finish this project, I’ll never have to criticize it.” This is really unproductive thinking. Criticizing it can’t be any worse than sitting there feeling miserable about the fact that you can’t write.

Schmidt suggests that if you find the true core of your writing anxieties, acknowledge and address that fear, then you will be able to break past the writer’s block. Once you’ve done that, then all of the tricks that I listed above should be able to help you.

But, it’s not a one-and-done process. You have to keep working on it, or it comes back.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that writer’s block doesn’t have any one single cure. It’s a constant process.  It doesn’t matter what method you use – the point is that you keep trying anyway.  Don’t resign yourself to it. 

I hope that this has helped some. Like I said, I’m all ears for methods of breaking through the block.

Maybe someday we’ll find the cure.

Have you tried any of the methods I listed above? How did they work out for you? Do you have a favorite writer’s-block-busting technique? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Third-Person POV

Photo courtesy of graur razva ionut on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Woo-hoo! It’s Word-Craft Wednesday on a Friday! Since I totally didn’t get my third-person POV piece written in time for Wednesday, I decided to post it today instead. Don’t worry, though – just because it’s Word-Craft Wednesday on a Friday doesn’t mean that your weekend is delayed. (Thank goodness!)

By the way, if you find any typos in here, I am blaming them on my cat, who decided that my lap belongs to her, not my laptop. I am typing with the cat pretty much on my hands, and she is purring quite contentedly.

So, let’s talk a little about third-person POV. You already know the basics – you use third-person pronouns. But let’s break it down a little further. There are three types of third-person narrative: omniscient, objective, and subjective.  Since subjective is a lot like first-person, and we just talked about that last Wednesday, let’s do a quick comparison and contrast between the two.

Third-Person Subjective (Limited)

I will just straight up admit that this is my favorite narrative POV to use and to read. For whatever reason, writing first person doesn’t come naturally to me, and I tend to have a harder time getting into books written in first person. This isn’t to say that I dislike first-person narrative, it’s just not my natural inclination.

A lot of the ‘rules’ of first-person narrative apply to third-person limited as well. A lot of the reading that I have done, however, seems to indicate that third-person limited allows for a little more leeway when describing your character. It’s easier to slip that kind of stuff in there without disrupting the narration – the reader is already in a mindset of observing this character rather than seeing through his/her eyes, so it won’t seem jarring.

HOWEVER.

It won’t seem as jarring, but it is way, waaay to easy to abuse this. You only get a tiny bit more leeway than you do in first person. Character description is like an energy drink: it’s awesome in just the right amount, but too much will make people want to steer clear of you (yes, I speak from experience here).

If you want your narrative to be rich in description (and why wouldn’t you?), the key is not to focus on the POV character. Focus on landscapes and rooms, focus on the other characters, focus on the sounds and sights and smells and sensations your POV character is experiencing. This is what will make your narrative seem more real to the reader.

The benefit of third-person limited, as I have said before, is that you immediately give the reader a person to latch onto – sort of a companion that they can follow through the story. The drawback? It’s…well, limited.

Third-Person Objective

This is the narrative point of view that almost all theatre and film is told from. It’s sometimes called “camera lens” or “fly-on-the-wall” narrative. I say ‘almost,’ because any film where you ‘hear’ the thoughts inside the character’s head is not strictly fly-on-the-wall. Plus, some movies and shows have the main character narrating them (such as the excellent show Burn Notice).

Basically, when you write from this POV, you have to write the narrative like it’s a movie. No peeking into people’s heads. You don’t get to know how the character feels. All you get from your character, in order to indicate that, are facial expressions. Think of how actors portray characters. That is what your narrative voice needs to do. This mode of storytelling, more than any other, relies on showing, not telling. You can’t say, “She was sad.” You have to say, “She frowned,” or “She wept.” So, it’s definitely one of the more challenging ways to tell a story. Now, “show, don’t tell” is really important no matter what, but it’s crucial for third-person objective.

The benefit of third-person objective is that you really allow your reader to draw their own conclusions. Books intended to be very thought-provoking work well with this type of narration. It’s an artful form of storytelling. The drawback? It’s hard to write.

Third-Person Omniscient

Have you ever taken an open-book test and discovered that it was almost harder than taking a multiple choice test?

That’s kind of what third-person omniscient is like. You have so much freedom, and so many things to cover, that sometimes you have to pick and choose what to relate. This can be really challenging, sort of the way that when you take an open book test, there are a couple of things that might answer the question, but you’re not sure which one your teacher is looking for.

On the other hand, because you get to choose what to tell or what not to tell, you have to ability to make your reader think one thing when something else is the way things actually are.(This is known as the untrustworthy narrator.) It’s actually pretty fun, but it requires a lot of planning to pull it off.

One of the most important things to remember is that your narrator still is, in a way, a character of the story. This means that your narrator needs to have a consistent voice. Just the way that in first-person or third-person limited POVs you need to use a consistent vocabulary and style of telling things, this applies for an omniscient POV. This means that if you do explore people’s feelings and thoughts, you need to do it in a way that sounds like the unique voice of the narrator, not the voice of the character whose mind you are exploring. (Unless you have the thoughts in italics or quotation marks. Current style favors italics, but both are acceptable.) If you just slip into something like third-person limited anytime you jump inside somebody’s thoughts, you are no longer following an omniscient POV. You are doing something called ‘head-hopping,’ and it’s considered a rather egregious error by the writing industry.

That being said, third-person omniscient really has the benefit of freedom.  While you can’t get away with everything, you don’t have limitations the way you do for the other narrative POVs. The drawback? You need to be careful. Your readers don’t want to know every single detail, and some details will just bog the story down. As with real life, freedom frequently comes with its own set of limitations. The tough part is that you have to set them down.

So, there’s your crash-course in third-person narrative POVs. This is far from comprehensive, but it’s a little bit deeper of a look into the concept. If you’re enjoying this series of Word-Craft Wednesdays (or Friday, as the case may be today), you’ll probably really like Character and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card. It’s a comprehensive look at this very topic, and he really tackles the nitty-gritty details.

Next week’s Word-Craft Wednesday will touch on tense in storytelling (and yes, it still has to do with POV and narrative). I mentioned this briefly when I talked about first-person POV, but it’s certainly worthy of its own blog post.

What thoughts do you have on third-person narrative forms? Sound off in the comments.

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Transparent Words

You’ve probably been told not to be repetitive in your writing. You were probably told this back in middle school, when they gave you an assignment to write a brief story, or perhaps when they were explaining how to write a book report. Don’t be repetitive. Don’t be repetitive. Don’t be repetitive…

It reaches the point where you want to tell them to stop being repetitive.

It’s good advice, in general, but not all repetition is bad. In fact, there are some words that are repeated over and over again and we don’t even notice, not even if they are in close proximity to each other.

For example: there are three words that I used five times thus far in this blog post. You may have guessed that one of them is 'repetitive.' You are correct.  But the second and third words might not stick out to you as much.  I can sort of imagine you hunting for the other words. (If you aren’t, allow me a moment of delusion.) There are quite a few words that I use more than once, but not five times.

The other two words are ‘to’ and ‘in.’ ‘Be’ comes in at four times.

You’ll almost always notice larger words – nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs – but some will elude your attention altogether. These are what I call “transparent words.” We are so accustomed to seeing them that our brains practically skip over them, much in the way that they skip over punctuation. Now, we’ll notice if they need to be there and aren’t, but we don’t really notice them when they are there.

You know, except for when you are reading a post like this, and then you’ll probably be hyper-aware. Exhausting, isn’t it? Noticing every tiny little word?  It’s probably similar to when you’re learning a foreign language, like Spanish, and you notice that they use la/el way more often than we use ‘the.’ You notice that they use ‘de’ close to every other word in some sentences. Guess what? Native speakers don’t really notice how often they use ‘de.’ It’s as transparent to them as ‘to’ usually is to us. They would probably think it’s ridiculous how often we use ‘to,’ since their infinitives are one word and ours are two words – one of which is ‘to.’

So, the point is that repetition is unavoidable when it comes to these words.  It’s precisely because they are repeated so much that they are transparent. When writing fiction, there are a couple more things that need to be transparent: character names and dialogue tags.

Wait a second…character names?

Yes. This means that even – especially – if you need to identify the same character five times in one paragraph, you need to use only one name for the character. Every time.

Isn’t that super-repetitive? Yes. It is. But what makes the other words transparent? They are repeated so often that your brain notes their meaning, but you’re not really consciously aware of them.

With very few exceptions, character names should also be transparent.  Because you have to name the character so frequently, especially in multi-character dialogue or action scenes, you want that to be as transparent as possible.  Suppose you have a character named Carissa. Carissa is blonde, slender, always wears pink, and is a cashier at a local store. Changing the character’s identification (Carissa, the woman in pink, the cashier, the blonde, the slender woman) actually creates repetitiveness where the same word over and over does not. 

This is because changing how you refer to the character makes it painfully apparent how often you are referring to her. Furthermore, it forces your reader to stop and decipher what he or she is reading. It takes a concept that is best left transparent and makes it opaque, in the same way that my opening paragraph’s use of the word ‘repetitive’ was opaque.

As the writer, you will notice the fact that you’re using the same name constantly; your reader will probably not.  Remember that reading and writing are very different processes. Repetition should be avoided to some degree. Varying your word choice is good, varying your sentence structure and paragraph length is good, but varying things that should be transparent makes them opaque. 

Transparent things should not be opaque. You don’t really want your reader to be aware that he or she is reading. You want them to be so absorbed in the story that they forget they are reading it.

Dialogue tags should also be, for the most part, transparent. ‘Said’ is the best choice in most cases, as it almost functions more as punctuation than as an actual word. Try to use as few tags as necessary; when you have a lot of them characters speaking in sequence, avoid using the same thing over and over again. For example:

“Ready to do this, ladies?” Leigh said.

Rachel grinned. “I was born ready.”

“Yeah, girlfriend!” Michelle cheered.

“I guess I’m in, too.” Shrugging, Danielle followed them.

Be careful of constantly varying things in dialogue; in very intense sequences, repetition can be helpful because your reader will be trying to read things as quickly as possible (he or she will be excited) and the repetition aids in this. In slower parts of the story, however, dialogue tags may be a little more varied.

Now, there are some who think that using anything but ‘said’ for a speech tag is bad. A lot of people in the publishing industry favor this style. So, my use of ‘cheered’ for Michelle instead of ‘said’ would be frowned upon. (But it’s better than “said with excitement.”)

I kind of disagree with that. (Well, obviously.) I think there are other speech verbs that our minds sort of glance over, but only once or twice. For example, if you use ‘cheered’ a lot, your readers will notice that in a way that they won’t notice ‘said.’  Even some of the never-use-anything-but-said camp will admit that ‘asked’ is acceptable when used occasionally.

Remember my post about ways to improve your writing without writing? I recommended reading books on writing, but cautioned against setting too much store by them.  Don’t ignore the suggestions, but don’t swallow them whole. You are your own person. But…you do need to be aware of how often you are using alternate speech tag verbs – because while the occasional switch-up is fine, too much switching is painfully opaque. And I mean painfully.

(As an additional caution: don’t use words that aren’t actually speech words for speech tags. You can’t ‘smile’ a sentence, or ‘laugh’ it. You might be able to ‘sigh’ one word like ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but using it for a whole phrase might be stretching it. If your character is laughing or smiling, feel free to make note of it, but don’t use it as the tag. While we’re on the topic, I would like to caution you against using ‘spoke’ for a speech tag. ‘Spoke’ is the same thing as ‘talked,’ not the same thing as ‘said.’)

But yeah. If you’re getting tired of using ‘said’ repeatedly, don’t use speech tags at all. Just use beats, or leave the tags out if you can. For more on dialogue, check out the post I did on it a while back. I don’t really touch on the transparency issue there, since it focuses on the mechanics of dialogue.

I hope that this post has made sense. It also ties in with my current Word-Craft Wednesday series on narrative POV, since the identifier you use for a character depends on the POV character. (More on this will be discussed next Wednesday.)

And as a reminder: I am not the end-all-be-all of writing advice. I really don’t think anyone is. But in my experience, this advice is pretty sound. Just be aware that writers and editors amongst themselves over this type of stuff ad nauseum, and don’t set too much store by any one person’s opinion.

[Addendum: When I say that you need to identify a character, I mean that you are in a situation where you can't use a personal pronoun without confusing people. I posted this and then realized I forgot to say that.]




Share any thoughts or questions in the comments.

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