Tagged: advice

Even The Best Advice

It is vital for writers to seek feedback, from beta readers and also from our fellow authors. Finding out what works and what doesn’t is the only way to get better. But, you need to bear in mind that all this input is coming through a filter, and ultimately it’s up to you to decide which notes to apply and which ones to disregard.

When you get input from another writer, it’s usually them saying you should do it the way they would do it. It might not be phrased with quite such blunt honesty, but when anybody gives advice about anything, how else can it work? Your colleagues are trying to share the benefit of their experience. They mean well. But if you’re not careful, you might get steered toward someone else’s voice and vision.

When you collaborate with a partner, you have someone telling you to do it the way you do it, only better. Your partner has an intrinsic sense for how things are intended to come across, and thus won’t offer advice that leads you astray. Jen and Kent are co-authors, but a similar partner dynamic could exist between, say, a writer and an editor. The key is that you’re teammates with a shared vision, so when you advise each other you’re honing in more strongly on the desired end-product, not diluting or distorting it.

Working with a partner is not a substitute for seeking outside feedback, and you really should listen with an open mind to the comments and suggestions other people offer. That same remove from your work that imposes a filter also lends perspective. They’ll see things that you and your partner missed due to being too close to it. Gathering and processing outside feedback together with your partner helps in identifying which notes are important.

A writing partner is like a voice inside your head, but in a good way.

Getting To The Point Is Not Always The Point

Writing advice tends to be preoccupied with efficiency. Grammar and syntax tips are all geared toward minimizing the number of words to express an idea, and as you go up to broader levels you find tips about minimizing the number of ideas that you set out to express. The explicit assertion is that briefer is always better.

Are there other art forms where creators are told, “This is great, I just wish there was less of it”?

Communicating efficiently is not a bad goal, but a writer should aspire to more than that. Pull a favorite off the shelf and choose a random excerpt, relive the moment when you read it for the first time. Whatever it was about this text that moved you, it probably wasn’t its avoidance of waste. The prose might well be a fine example of clean, efficient expression, but if it didn’t make you feel something, or show you something new about the universe, you wouldn’t care.

We want a good tale, well told. Well, we say we do. In practice, many a cherished story amounts to a good tale adequately conveyed. We have no use at all for a poor tale, regardless of whether the telling is any good.

Focus on having a good story to tell. Then worry about getting better at telling it.

Write What You Know (and other suspect advice)

That time-honored edict seems to get followed in at least one way, because something lots of writers sure like to write about is writing. We do it here, quite a bit actually, so we’ll be careful about throwing too many stones in this glass house.

Many authors pen books of guidance for aspiring writers, and a seemingly disproportionate number of protagonists are themselves writers. (We have a major character who is a novelist, and we have a main character who is a journalist, and we’ve used various forms of the book-within-a-book device.)

It’s probably not that there’s something wrong with writers. All professions probably have some form of this, but when painters paint about painting or plumbers plumb about plumbing it doesn’t result in a book. Anyway.

As far as actual advice is concerned, we say writing is best done with a partner, and we try to illuminate how we make that work. We can only speak with any authority about our own experience, and we try to be consistent about acknowledging that it might not be what works best for anyone else. Hell, it could turn out not to be what even works best for us. We try new things and adjust our process all the time. And then we blog about it.

They say, “If you really want learn about something, teach it.” This might account for much of the tendency among writers to write about writing, because the act of writing is very much a way of teaching yourself. So, even if there were no audience of aspirants to serve as a market, writers would probably still do this.

Chuck Wendig shared some insightful points about his own journey in regard to this topic. Check it out over on his blog: https://terribleminds.com/ramble/2022/10/05/why-i-dont-talk-as-much-about-writing-anymore/

 

“Say No More!”

  • by jenand things of that nature
  • has a living raccoon on his head
  • witchcraft-induced hair color change
  • losing sleep all week because of this
  • I will come and claim you

Tune in next time part 617      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Say no more!” the emcee chortled with an elaborate wink. “You are clearly a discerning gentleman.” He went on in a highly suspicious British accent, insinuating that I must have elaborate fetishes and fantasies, and things of that nature. It’s hard to take a man seriously when it looks like he either has a living raccoon on his head, or perhaps merely witchcraft-induced hair color change. What I’m saying is, the theatre would benefit from a higher wig budget. But it’s not like I’ll be losing sleep all week because of this, or anything: I’m not a theatre critic anymore.

I gestured for the show to continue, vaguely curious about the amazing sex fundamentals I had been promised.

“During intermission I will come and claim your winning ticket!” the emcee (or his wig) threatened with another lewd wink. “And now, on with the show!”

The orchestra worked itself into a frenzy.

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You Gotta Love What You Do

It’s surprisingly common to find remarks from writers to the effect of, “if you don’t hate what you’re writing, then it must not be any good.” In a world awash with bad advice for writers, this stands out as perhaps some of the worst. (Especially if what you’re writing is a novel.)

Writing a novel is a commitment. It will probably take years. The writing itself will likely take many months, and then there are revisions. A novel-in-progress is often likened to a child, which is a fair analogy. If it’s more like an irritating roommate, maybe things aren’t going to work out. The idea that throughout such an undertaking you should expect to feel powerful negative emotions about the thing you’re creating… no.

You do need a certain critical distance. Saying you love the work doesn’t mean you don’t want to see it improve. That’s what the revisions are for. Allow it to be flawed, and don’t hate it for its imperfections. Circle back and put in better words.

So, why would anyone say such a thing? Why would they want you to hate your work? They don’t want that. What’s really going on there is that the writing process is often frustrating. Especially if your goals are ambitious, it’s likely that the early drafts will not really work, and it’ll be hard not to feel discouraged about that. Many novices expect the perfect flowering of their thoughts to just land on the page. That’s not typical. A common mistake is trying to combine the modes for initial creation and fine-tuning, which puts you into a very stressful bind of not being able to please the internal editor.

If you find yourself genuinely hating what you’re working on, lay it aside. Put it in time-out and give yourself a break from it. Maybe it’s not what you should be trying to write. Maybe just move on. But maybe giving yourself some space will help you see its strengths and weaknesses objectively, in which case you might feel inspired about it again.

Another thing to reflect on is your process. If you’ve always been a pantser, and you seem to spend a lot of time resenting your works in progress, there could be a connection there. Try giving yourself a rough outline, or imposing some other light framework, and see how it feels. (Full disclosure: Rune Skelley has a highly developed and structured process. That’s what most of these blog posts are about. But, we’re all different, so what works for us might not be the answer for you. If you’ve used a detailed process and you’re still having trouble? Maybe what you need to do is write without a net sometimes, take a break from planning.)

The final point to make about this “hate your own work” ethos is that it’s probably often borne of isolation. Writing is generally seen as a solitary occupation, but Rune Skelley is here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. Working with a co-author inoculates you from the creeping doubt that can afflict someone toiling alone. If you don’t have an actual writing partner, form a good partnership with some beta readers, or participate in a critique group. A network gives you support as a human being, and (hopefully) constructive input about the issues in the work.

The Harshest Critic, The Biggest Fan

r-avatarSome pretty smart people, including Harlan Ellison and JK Rowling, recommend that authors write to please themselves. We embrace this advice and encourage you to do likewise. Trying to predict the market is a recipe for frustration, as is trying to imitate the style that you imagine other people want from you.

In practice, this is a bit more complicated when there are two of you. We pointed out way back in the Skellyverse’s earliest posts that a writing partner has to be someone whose tastes and interest align with yours, because the first thing you’ll have to agree on is what to write.

If you can do that, next comes agreeing on how to write it. Even if you both love science fiction with strong female characters, you’re still working in a huge space. That’s a good thing, because you have lots of room to work. But it does present the possibility that you and your partner might get separated.

If you can collaborate within a framework, so you know you’re both writing the same book, then you can fly in loose formation. If you don’t have a good feel for the voice, and you have to check in with each other over every sentence, then you’re not getting the value out of your collaboration.

Working with a partner, you have to write to please each other.

Have A Method, Or You’ll Have Madness

r-avatarMagical thinking sounds like something that would be very helpful in creative pursuits such as writing fiction. Instead, it’s the culprit behind many plot holes. Even if you work from an outline (which we recommend strenuously) — even if you use stubs — you’re not protected completely.

Stuff that looks fine from a distance can hide serious logical problems, things you sometimes don’t discover until you’re writing the scenes. A common form of this, from our experience, is when a conversation must cover certain topics (plot points) but the characters refuse to talk about those things. Didn’t they read the outline? In broad strokes it’s easy to say, “Jack and Jill chat about climate change,” but up close it might prove difficult for Jack to engage Jill on the subject because his beliefs are so radical. But that’s what makes them interesting, and the conflict here resonates with their later need to cooperate in order to survive, so you know you have to find your way through.

We’re not saying tools like outlines are worthless. Just the opposite. It’s even easier to get tangled up in problems when you have no structure to work from. Without an outline to put it in context, how would you know whether it’s worth it to chisel away at the climate change convo? How long do you have to let Jack and Jill ramble for them to get to something you can use? And whoops, Rufus is in two places at once. Fixing that means the boat chase needs to take place ten miles inland. That could be… different. Yeah. No.

Have a process, is what we’re saying. An imperfect process is better than none at all.

We’re coming up on the time of the year when aspiring writers are exhorted to just go for it. Write like a maniac. That advice has its place, but it’s not a good way to proceed if your desired end product is a salable manuscript. What is a good way? Find the right partner.

 

Writer’s Block? Our Ounce of Prevention = Stubs

r-avatarWe haven’t talked about the special sauce in our team-writing process lately. We still rely on stubs, and so should you. Besides curing warts and controlling the weather, stubs have another miraculous ability we’ve neglected to mention. If you use them, you’ll rid yourself of writer’s block forever! Okay, sometimes it might still be hard to get rolling, but we find our stubs help us keep on track and on task, and make the tyranny of the blank page almost a thing of the past.

Here’s how it works.

The stubs themselves are “burner” writing. You know you’re the only one who will ever see them, so you can give yourself permission for the prose to suck. That’s terrifically liberating, and paradoxically can lead to your best work. If the stub starts to get “too good,” that’s fine. You’ll be able to mine it for gold later on.

When it’s time to do the “real” writing, the stubs give you something to use as a jumping-off point. There might be gold in there, after all. Even if there’s not, the stub holds all the minutiae for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. This lets you apply your energies to crafting magical sentences and inhabiting the characters.

The next time you feel blocked, think of stubs as a way to get get unstuck. Optimally, they’re part of a system that begins with a thorough outline, but you can get a lot of bang out of them even without additional infrastructure. Maybe all you need from them is their disposability, so you can get out of your own way and start writing. Or maybe your stub will just be a list of the key details you need to keep track of in the scene. The important thing isn’t to use them right, it’s to use them to write.

Can’t Stand the Pressure

r-avatarAmong the most common recommendations thrown at writers is to always end a chapter/scene/paragraph/sentence on rising tension. Man, that makes for irritating prose.

Like most advice, good or bad, this is primarily aimed at those still learning. Limp plotlines are a common problem for newbies, so the impulse to remind them to keep us engaged is understandable. And even veterans are susceptible to info-dump and purposeless dialog and throat-clearing, all the bugbears that make the text drag. The problem here, as with all bad advice (badvice?), is not the intent.

The problem is that it’s the wrong prescription, and it’s overprescribed to boot. In some genres, a pell-mell dash with no letup is desired. But if you’re writing in that niche, you know that’s what you’re about. The reminder probably doesn’t mean much. No, this advice gets broadcast all the time as general-issue guidance. Did you think you were going for a somber tone, evoking loss and regret through imagery? Wrong — go back and punch it up. Laying the groundwork for a stunning reveal? Nope, we can’t allow that — tension only ever rises, haven’t you been listening?

Given the goal of reader engagement, writers have several options that are unrelated to the state of tension. Having something significant to say is a great start — wanting to write as opposed to wanting to be a writer. A strong voice will carry just about anything. An inventive premise will hook readers, as will rich world building. Stories do need tension, sure, but the art lies in managing and manipulating it. Requiring that it go up and up and up, always up, makes it predictable and wearying.

The reason most advice fixates on things like rising tension has less to do with whether it’s a common deficiency and more to do with it being somewhat empirical. Readers are likely to agree on whether or not tension is increasing, whereas tastes and moods determine our assessments of things like voice. But just because they’re difficult to quantify doesn’t mean you can’t get better at them. Let your story flow where it must. Never artificially raise the tension.

For more thoughts on the scarce good and copious bad advice writers receive, you can view our “advice” tag. Also, Reggie Lutz has weighed in on the matter recently, so go check that out!

Fools Rush In

r-avatarRune Skelley uses an extensive outlining process, predicated on the theory that well begun is mostly done. We devote a large amount of time up front and reap the benefits later. Kent finds this philosophy a natural fit for any kind of moderate- to large-scale project, because it’s a key tenet of best-practices software development: don’t rush into coding, because changes are much more expensive to do in code than on a whiteboard. And there will be changes.

So in fiction, don’t rush into prose. Writing is rewriting, and it’s wise to budget your heavy lifting for the places where it will pay off. Think of it this way: you’d rather spend money on an addition for your house than shoring up a sagging foundation. You expect the foundation to be solid, and if you need to work on it after the house is standing then something has gone terribly wrong.

It’s easy to imagine scrapping an entire chapter, say, once you discover where a story is going. That could happen no matter how detailed your outline was, but it’s more likely you’d be scrapping a line from your outline and never need to compose the chapter in the first place. There are more insidious traps that lack of preparation can create for you, though. Worse than a superfluous chapter is one that’s needed, and has much in it that you’re in love with, but suffers some systemic flaw. The main character’s voice finally coalesces in your head, and now there are passages that simply aren’t in that voice. The subject matter of a conversation needs to change, but you already worked so hard on that dialogue that you can’t hear it any other way.

There are people who extol writing with less structure, and there certainly are writers who have success via a totally unstructured process. Words like “fluid, creative, unhindered,” tend to get thrown around. Just bear in mind these three things:

  1. a sound plan is not the antithesis of creativity; you still need to make stuff up, and an outline doesn’t breathe life into your characters for you — you still have the opportunity to perform
  2. in the words of Dwight Eisenhower, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,” a phrase which here means your outline will certainly undergo substantial changes once you get started writing, and that’s okay
  3. given a large enough sample of writers, you could find successful ones following any process imaginable; choose or invent a process that speaks to you, but don’t be swayed by anybody else’s results

We’re not asserting that the best writers never have to throw anything away, or he writes best who writes least. Far from it. In addition to an outline, we often generate many pages of apocrypha, prose that’s never intended as part of the manuscript. It helps us get our ear in for the voices, among other things. A lesson we’ve learned is that it’s better not to use our first chapters as the getting-acquainted phase of that relationship, for the reasons mentioned a few paragraphs ago. It’s a ton of work, no mistake, but it’s a smarter-not-harder scenario. Having a good process increases the rewards, although it won’t necessarily reduce the efforts.

How do you approach the initial stages of a new project? What level of structure works best for you?