Ernest Hemingway And The Purpose Of Writing

I woke up today thinking about tragedy and its role in creating art.

What is it we hope to accomplish by writing? Do we write to evoke emotion? Do we write to create a world more real than the one in which we live? Do we write to tell the truth; not the literal truth, but the real truth?

Yesterday I blogged about how to create suspenseful stories and the importance of making what your character has to lose--the stakes--both high and obvious. I led with a picture of a real-life tragedy taken by John L. Gaunt, one that won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1955.

The photograph was of a couple who had just learnt their small son, he was only 19 months old, had been swept out to sea and was dead. The picture captures the parents as the woman, the enormity of her grief settling on her, turns toward her husband, the sea at her back.

Down by the water, Gaunt finds a distraught young couple by the shoreline. Moments before, their 19-month-old son was playing happily in their yard. Somehow, he wandered down to the
beach. He was swept away by the fierce tide.

The little boy is gone. There is nothing anyone can do. Gaunt, who has a daughter about the same age, takes four quick photographs of the grieving couple. "As I made the last exposure,
they turned and walked away" he says. The little boys body is later recovered from the surf.

I find Gaunt's photograph emotionally compelling. It is difficult for me to look at it and not feel grief.

But not every story needs to evoke raw emotion--grief, loss--in the almost brutal way this picture does.

One of the authors I admire most is Ernest Hemingway. I think Hills Like White Elephants is the best short story I have read or will ever read. And, yes, there is a tragedy, a loss, but it is, compared to the enormity of the loss captured in Gaunt's photograph, more muted. It is, among other things, the loss of innocence, of hope.

So, what's my point?

Genre Versus Mainstream

Most of the books I read--urban fantasy sprinkled with horror as well as the occasional mainstream story--are not heavy on tragedy. Not the kind of tragedy evident in, say, Hamlet.

And that's not a bad thing.

I suspect that one of the reasons genre literature occasionally gets snubbed by those whose tastes run more toward the mainstream may be just this difference: genre fiction tends to be lighter. Funnier. It has happy endings. Not all the time, but a lot of the time.

Does that mean genre fiction is any less literature? That it is in some way lesser?

I don't think so. Perhaps it all hinges on how a person answers this question:

What are we supposed to be doing when we write? What is this whole writing thing about, anyway?

Some folks say, and I know this is glib, that "the purpose of writing is to evoke emotion" and that's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't say much. For instance, what kind of emotion? How intense should the emotion be? Why emotion and not, for instance, thought?

Earlier today I came across a quotation that articulates my answer to this question far more eloquently than I could. Unsurprisingly, it is from one of Ernest Hemingway's letters.

Ernest Hemingway On What Makes A Writer

This is the most true thing I've ever read:

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer. ("Old Newsman Writes : A Letter from Cuba" in Esquire (December 1934), Wikiquote)

What is the purpose of writing? To tell, to communicate, the truth whether that be through evoking emotion or thought. When I say "truth" I don't mean the literal truth, I mean the real truth. But it's not just that, good writing also creates a place, a space, another world for others to experience, if they choose.

I've shared my musings about why we write, what the purpose of all this scribbling is. But that's just my opinion. What's yours? Why do you write? Do you write to evoke emotion in your readers? Do you write to tell the truth--not the literal truth, but the real truth? Do you write to share your world, and your worldview? Or is it something else? 

#   #   #

I had hoped to write about the importance of making your characters, especially your protagonist, flawed. Oh well. At least I have my blog post for tomorrow!

Other posts you might like:

- Revising Your Manuscript And Building Suspense: Making Your Character's Stakes Both Clear And High
- The Starburst Method: Summarizing Your Story In One Sentence
- F. Scott Fitzgerald On The Price Of Being A Great Writer

Photo credit: "Untitled" by thejbird under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Revising Your Manuscript And Building Suspense: Making Your Character's Stakes Both Clear And High

I love it when someone gives advice about writing that not only makes sense to me, but that makes me want to stop reading and write.

Often that someone is Steven Pressfield.

Stories Are Lame When The Stakes Are Low

Today SP wrote about stakes, about what your protagonist stands to lose if she doesn't achieve her goal. SP writes:

My own rule of thumb: the stakes for the hero must always be life and death. If possible, they should be life and death for every character in the story.

When I first came out to Tinseltown, I was struggling with a spec script. I just couldn’t make it interesting. I told my friend, the late director Ernie Pintoff. He said, “Have a body hit the floor.”

What he meant was raise the stakes.

Stories are lame when the stakes are low.

(By the way, all quotations from Steven Pressfield have been taken from: Have A Body Hit The Floor.)

Make The Stakes Clear

Make sure the stakes for each of your characters are clear. If they are even a little vague write a scene that makes the stakes clear.

Be concrete. How, exactly, would your character's life change if he didn't achieve his goal?

Do One Draft Just For Stakes

SP advises us to devote an entire draft to examining the stakes of our characters.

This is what I mean by devoting one draft to this topic only. Go over the entire story, asking yourself, “Are the stakes high and clear for all characters from start to finish?”

When the stakes are high and clear, the reader/audience’s emotions become involved.

The Ultimate Stakes

SP focuses on upping the body count in one's story as a way of increasing the stakes. That works and has advantages. It's beautifully concrete and easy for the audience to understand. You don't have to explain why a character doesn't want to die! If they did, that would require explanation.

But there are stakes other than life or death. SP writes:

A final note about “life and death.” The stakes don’t have to be literally mortal. But they must feel like life and death to the specific character. If Faye Dunaway loses her daughter to John Huston’s incestuous depredations in Chinatown, she will not literally die. Her fate will be even worse.

Destruction of the soul. Those are the ultimate stakes.

Don't Flinch

Robert Wiersema talked about stakes at the Surrey International Writers' Conference in 2011. I try and practice this.

Stakes, consequences. You've created a situation with potentially tragic results. There will come a time when you will want to save your character, to protect them. Don't. Don't flinch.

This moment is terrifying. If we were decent people we would protect our characters. You want a happy ending, but you can't cheat to get it.

You've created characters with flaws and turned the monsters loose on them. You have to be brave and unflinching. You have to do horrible things to nice people.

You don't need to beat your reader over the head with gore and lots of ugly details. You can leave these implicit. Readers have great imaginations, they will fill in the details.

If you do it right then it will hurt. It hurts us to hurt our characters, it hurts us to manipulate the reader. One thing you must realize: we also manipulate ourselves. Ultimately, we do all this manipulation because we are building truth.

We must have courage and strength and you must realize that, yes, you are cruel but here's the real truth: truth hurts and it is crucial that you don't flinch. (SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Two: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema)

The Stakes: Scene Questions

This is going to be my assignment for the day, to think about my work in progress and, for each scene, as well as every character in that scene, ask:

a) What is this character's goal?

- Is this clear? Is it concrete?
- If this character is a POV character, is her goal in this scene related to her ultimate goal? For instance, if she doesn't achieve her goal in this scene, will that make it less lightly for her to achieve her ultimate goal?

b) What are the stakes?

- What will happen to this character if she doesn't achieve her goal? What will happen if she does?
- Are the stakes obvious? Make it obvious how achieving her goal, or not, will affect your character's life. What does she have to lose? What does she have to gain?
- Are the stakes concrete? "My character will lose faith in mankind" is not concrete. "My character will be shot to death by Johnny" is.

c) Are the stakes high enough? 

- Death and loss of soul, loss of self, that's about as extreme as it gets. Depending on the kind of story you're telling, I don't think the states are going to be this stark, this extreme, for all your characters in every scene. And there are other kinds of loss. Loss of friends, loss of one's position in society, loss of independence, loss of faith.

What is the worst thing you've ever done to a character? Was it worth it? Would you do it again?

Other links you might like:

- The Starburst Method: Summarizing Your Story In One Sentence
- F. Scott Fitzgerald On The Price Of Being A Great Writer
- Using Public Domain Characters In Your Stories

Photo credit: "Tragedy by the Sea" by cliff1066™ under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

This is the description of the photograph (see above) Tragedy by the Sea:

Tragedy by the Sea 1955 Pulitzer Prize, Photography, John L. Gaunt, Los Angeles Times April 2, J 954. Los Angeles Times photographer John Gaunt lounges in his front yard in Hermosa Beach, Calif., enjoying the sun. Suddenly, a neighbor calls out. "There was some excitement on the beach," says Gaunt. "I grabbed a RoIIeiflex camera and ran."

Down by the water, Gaunt finds a distraught young couple by the shoreline. Moments before, their 19-month-old son was playing happily in their yard. Somehow, he wandered down to the beach. He was swept away by the fierce tide.

The little boy is gone. There is nothing anyone can do. Gaunt, who has a daughter about the same age, takes four quick photographs of the grieving couple. "As I made the last exposure, they turned and walked away" he says. The little boys body is later recovered from the surf.

The Starburst Method: Summarizing Your Story In One Sentence

This is the final chapter in The Starburst Method. It has been quite a journey!

Our goal has been to work from an initial concept to produce a one sentence description that communicates who the protagonist is, what she wants, as well as the central conflict of the story.

For some reason this has been the most difficult of all the posts to write, but the idea here is simple enough. We're going to take the five paragraphs we crafted over the last few days, take the ideas we developed, and use those ideas to craft one gloriously concise sentence that describes the essential concepts in our story. (For an earlier discussion of this see: The Structure Of Short Stories: The Elevator Pitch Version)

Last time, in The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 3, I gave an example of the hero's journey using The Firm as an example. Here I'll extend that example and summarize it using one sentence.

A One Sentence Summary Of The Firm

Mitch McDeere is a smart, motivated, young lawyer living in Boston. But when he gets a job with a group of crooked lawyers, Mitch must thread his way between the dual threats of the FBI and the mob in order to preserve both his life and his law degree.

Here's how I came by this (by the way, this is all thanks to Nathan Bransford):

[protagonist name] is a [description of protagonist] living in [setting]. But when [complicating incident], [protagonist name] must [protagonist's quest] and [verb] [villain] in order to [protagonist's goal]. (Query Letter Mad Lib)

Let's look at one more example, this time using The Matrix.

A One Sentence Summary Of The Matrix

1. Protagonist's name:
Neo

2. Description of protagonist:
Office worker by day, hacker by night

3. Setting:
The Matrix, which appears to be North America in the late 1990s. Neo senses some of this, he wants to know the truth, but has trouble believing.

4. Protagonist's goal:
To expose the Matrix and defeat the machines.

5. Antagonist's name:
The machines. The main minion of the machines: Agent Smith

6. Description of antagonist:
Agents are protectors/servants of the machines that built the matrix and enslaved the human race.

7: Antagonist's goal:
To protect the matrix.

Notice some of my answers are long and rambling, that's okay. We're still at the brainstorming stage. Now we take this information and plug it into our formula:

Neo is an office worker by day, hacker by night, who hates his job and is looking for something more: The Truth. When Trinity, an infamous hacker, introduces Neo to Morpheus and the truth of human existence Neo must decide whether to embrace the bitter pill of truth or go back to the comfortable reality created by the machines who ensnared humanity. 

The way I've written this up The Matrix looks like a Character Story. At the beginning we have a character, Thomas Anderson, who is dissatisfied with his role in society and at the end our character, Neo, has found a new role: he is The One.

This Character Story is also, to a lesser degree, a Milieu Story as well as a love story. The other stories are either closed out first or at the same time as the Character Story.

Getting Our Description Down To One Sentence

Now let's be brutal and get our description down to one sentence. No rambling allowed!

What is the main element? Since this is a Character Story the main element is that the protagonist, Thomas Anderson, is dissatisfied with his role in society and, at the end, succeeds in changing it.

Since I don't want to give any spoilers--this is the description you'd give to anyone who asked what your book is about; telling them the ending wouldn't be friendly--I'm not going to talk about the ending.

I'm sure you could do better but here's what I came up with.

My one sentence summary of The Matrix:

When Thomas Anderson, an office worker by day and rebel by night, meets infamous hacker Trinity and learns the true nature of reality--the we are all trapped in an illusion--he wants to free himself and others, but can he defeat the machines?

If I thought this was a Milieu Story I would have summarized the movie this way:

When Thomas Anderson discovers the strange new world of the Matrix he learns humanity has been enslaved by intelligent machines and he is the only one who can save the world.

You know what? I like the second way better! Even though I don't think this is a Milieu Story, that's the version I'd tell folks. Besides, the goal is to craft a single sentence that describes the story and both of the above give one an idea of the main theme of the Matrix: The One--Neo--will save humanity from the machines and the prison they have created for us.

Want to try summarizing your work in progress? Please do! Why not share it in the comments.

Other articles you might like:

- F. Scott Fitzgerald On The Price Of Being A Great Writer
- Using Public Domain Characters In Your Stories
- Link Mashup: The Million Follower Fallacy, Showing Not Telling, Goals Not Dreams

Photo credit: "Shanghai Rollercoaster." by @yakobusan Jakob Montrasio 孟亚柯 under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

F. Scott Fitzgerald On The Price Of Being A Great Writer

Can writing be taught?

Yes, but there's a price.

Here's how F. Scott Fitzgerald put it:

You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

This is the experience of all writers. It was necessary for Dickens to put into Oliver Twist the child’s passionate resentment at being abused and starved that had haunted his whole childhood. Ernest Hemingway’s first stories ‘In Our Time’ went right down to the bottom of all that he had ever felt and known. In ‘This Side of Paradise’ I wrote about a love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a haemophile. (F. Scott Fitzgerald on the Secret of Great Writing)

Of course that's not to suggest we don't need to study to become better writers, or that we don't need to write, write, write and practice the craft.

For instance, no one is born with a writing 'voice'; that takes time to develop.

Lately I've written about the goal of writing: to evoke emotion in our readers, and about how we can do that, techniques we can use. And I think things like that are helpful. At least, they help me!

One of the reasons we need to read is because we need to see how others have done what we want to do, how they achieved a certain effect within us; or how they failed to do so.

Writing Can Be Taught

Recently Chuck Wendig wrote in defense of the idea that writing can be taught, and I agree. Just as math, and cooking, and skill at sports can be taught, writing can be taught. Chuck sums it up:

Writing and storytelling can be taught. If you want it bad enough, you can learn it.

And I think that's the key: if you want it bad enough.

Certain things can't be taught, they must simply be done. (As Yoda might say, "Do or do not, there is no try.") But anyone can do them--writers aren't foreordained--it's just a matter of whether we will.

There is a certain kind of brutal, searing, honesty great writers have; the ability to relentlessly tunnel down within themselves to the truth--their nakedness, their pain--and wrench it up into the daylight exposing it on the page for all to see.

No wonder many artists are basket cases!

But I'm not suggesting that if this emotional exhibitionism isn't present in your work then you're not now, nor will you ever be, a great writer. Far from it.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to Frances Turnbull, there is a price of admission.

You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.

It's up to each of us, every time we sit down to write, to decide whether we're going to pay the price.

If you haven't read F. Scott Fitzgerald's letter to Frances Turnbull, I highly recommend it. Also, Chuck Wendig's short rant on the "You can't teach writing meme," is well worth the read.

What do you think? Can writing be taught?

Other articles you might like:

- Using Public Domain Characters In Your Stories
- Link Mashup: The Million Follower Fallacy, Showing Not Telling, Goals Not Dreams
- Connect With Readers' Emotions: How To Make People Cry

Photo credit: "Alone" by Bhumika.B under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Using Public Domain Characters In Your Stories

Ever thought about using a public domain character? You could. Felix the Cat is available, as is Black Beauty, Oliver Twist and Dr. Dolittle (See: Famous Public Domain Characters).

Under US law, anything published before 1923 is not under copyright (see note 1, below). What does this mean for writers?

Public Domain Characters

As Robert Smedley writes in “Elementary, my dear Hamlet!” – Copyright, Public Domain & You the public domain is a writer's "toy box of free to use characters". Specifically:

There’s no catch; the intellectual property rights of characters and their stories have expired and they’re anyones to use and write about. Only occasionally will you find a character who has strings attached, like Winnie the Pooh or Peter Pan, but they’re rare special cases. It’s always best to check, and that can generally be accomplished with a quick Google.

Differences Between Public Domain Works And Public Domain Characters

Someone over at TvTropes.org (an excellent site) had this to say:

A distinction should be made between public domain characters and public domain works; Bugs Bunny is a trademarked character and not in public domain, but his earliest individual cartoons are.

It should be noted that, in general, a trademark is forever. As long as the holder of the trademark is creating some kind of "product" (media counts), and that they fulfill certain requirements (protecting the trademark is generally required), they can demand that the courts enforce the trademark. This is another reason why trademarks have become more common.

So hands off The Bugs. And, interestingly, despite Sherlock and Elementary, the great detective, Sherlock Holmes, is not public domain. Robert Smedley writes:

2022 AD, is a year when you’ll likely start to see an increase in the number of new Sherlock Holmes stories published by authors who aren’t Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Why? Because 2022 is when Holmes fully leaves copyright and enters the public domain, which means that anyone – you, me, anyone – can use him in their books. He joins such figures as Captain Nemo, Ebenezer Scrooge, Dracula, Hercules, and Cinderella. You may think Holmes is already in the public sphere. Well yes and no. You see, Holmes is a maddeningly grey area for copyright lawyers. All but one of his stories are now public domain. Whether that one story still under copyright means the character is under copyright, no one is quite sure. All anyone knows is that come 2022, the Great Detective will be fully jettisoned from the safety of author-ownership, and thousands of writers want to get their hands on him. (“Elementary, my dear Hamlet!” – Copyright, Public Domain & You)

Why Use Public Domain Characters?

As with so many things, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Robert Smedley cautions that if you plan to use a public domain character be sure you have a good reason for using him. He writes:

[T]hink about the potential of that character, of whether there is anything new or meaningful you can add to their history and the shared public consciousness of that character. ("Elementary, my dear Hamlet!").

Audience Familiarity

A public domain character--Dracula for instance--already has an audience, many readers love Bram Stoker's story of horror so you have a build in audience. Which, incidentally, is also a reason not to use a public domain character. All those fans have high expectations. Even if we time-travelled and grabbed the original author and forced him to write more stories I think some fans would hate them.

It's daunting!

Question: Have you ever used a public domain character? If not, would you?

Other articles you might like:

- Chuck Wendig On Writing: How He Writes A Novel
- Connect With Readers' Emotions: How To Make People Cry
- Writer Beware: UK Speaker Scam

Notes

1. The following is from Wikipedia, Copyright law of the United States:

Works published or registered before 1978 currently have a maximum copyright duration of 95 years from the date of publication, if copyright was renewed during the 28th year following publication^[33] (such renewal was made automatic by the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992; prior to this the copyright would expire after 28 years if not renewed). The date of death of the author is not a factor in the copyright term of such works.

All copyrightable works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain;^[34] works created before 1978 but not published until recently may be protected until 2047.^[35] For works that received their copyright before 1978, a renewal had to be filed in the work's 28th year with the Library of Congress Copyright Office for its term of protection to be extended. The need for renewal was eliminated by the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992, but works that had already entered the public domain by non-renewal did not regain copyright protection. Therefore, works published before 1964 that were not renewed are in the public domain. With rare exception (such as very old works first published after 2002), no additional copyrights will expire (thus entering the public domain) until at least 2019 due to changes in the applicable laws.

Photo credit: "[46/365] Count Brickula" by pasukaru76 under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Writer Beware: UK Speaker Scam

Scammers are sending out fake invitations to speak at Bexley College. So far mostly SF/F writers have been targeted.

Courtesy of Victoria Strauss, from Writer Beware, here is the email making the rounds:

From: Arthur peterson [bexleycollegeoflondon@gmail.com]
To: [email address redacted]
Date: January 5, 2013 at 7:23 PM
Subject: BEXLEY COLLEGE HALF TERM BREAK SEMINAR.

Greetings [name redacted],

I am Prof. Arthur Peterson from Bexley College (Holly Hill Campus) here in London UK. We are officially writing to invite you and confirm your booking as our guest Speaker at this Year Bexley college Seminar which will take place here at the campus ground.

Bexley College (Holly Hill Campus).

The Venue as follows:
VENUE: Upper Holly Hill Road Belvedere, Kent
London, United Kingdom
POST CODE: DA17 6HF
Expected audience: 450 people(mainly students & invited guest). Duration of speech per speaker: 1 Hour
Name of Organization: Bexley College Campus.
Topic: ”Mystery of Life and Death”
Date: 18th February 2013

We reached your profile at http:// www.aboutsf.com// and we say it’s up to standard. The College will be so glad to have such an outstanding personality as you in our midst for these overwhelming gathering. Arrangements to welcome you here will be discussed as soon as you honor our invitation. If you have any more publicity material you wish to share with us, please do not hesitate to contact me.

An Official Formal Letter of invitation and Contract agreement would be sent to you from the College as soon as you honor our Invitation. The College have also promised to be taking care of all your travel and Hotel Accommodation expenses including your Speaking Fee.

If you are available for this date, include your speaking fees in your reply for it to be included in the DOCUMENTATIONS.

Stay Blessed
Prof. Arthur Peterson
Bexley College (Holly Hill Campus).

Tel: + 44 702 407 0611

When I first read this email I was puzzled: the scammers don't ask for money so how are they benefiting? Victoria Strauss writes:

The mark is told s/he must pay a "Government (United Kingdom) Main Application Fee for a UK work permit" of several hundred pounds. Once that money is sent, the scammers ask for more:

More information on the scam:

- Alert: UK Speaker Scam Targets Writers (and Others)
- UK Work Permit Church Scam for Speakers
- Scam Attempt Warning for SF/F Writers

Photo credit: "Caught in the Act" by *saxon* under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Link Mashup: The Million Follower Fallacy, Showing Not Telling, Goals Not Dreams

I've received some great, fantastic, fabulous news today and, as a result, I have the attention span of a humming-bird at a candy factory. I would love to tell you all about it, but I can't.

It's nothing super big, but it is super big to me. I'll tell you all about it in a few months. :-)

SO, instead of writing anything of my own, I'm going to give you some links to articles I thought were fabulous.

The Million Follower Fallacy

In this post John Ward talks about The Million Follower Fallacy. The short version: It isn't how many followers/friends you have, it's how connected you are to them. Well worth the read.

John also put together a great post about how to build up a community. This is something John Ward knows a lot about so, again, well worth the read.

Finally, here's a post from John Ward and Nathan Lowell about why books bomb.

How To Elicit Emotion With Your Writing

Yesterday I wrote about how to make your readers cry and, today, found this amazing article on the subject written by writer and editor Kim Aippersbach: Writing Emotion: How do great writers do it?

Kim talks about how to elicit emotion through physical sensations, metaphor, gestures, objects, other characters and dialogue. And she includes LOTS of examples. I can't recommend her article, or her book review blog, highly enough.

Penelope Trunk: Don't Be A Dreamer

Penelope Trunk's blog is amazing. Really. She covers a diverse range of topics. Sometimes she'll write about bedbugs--and make it interesting!--sometime she talks about time management, sometimes about writing, and sometimes about the difficulties she's having in her relationship.

Today Penelope blogged about how dreams can be a distraction. The trick is to come up with a plan, to make goals, to achieve your dream.

Penelope writes:

Goals are dreams that have a plan. Goals get done. Dreams don’t get done. 
My son is obsessed with the apocalypse. I’m not really even sure what the apocalypse is. I thought it was peak oil, but increasingly I think that it’s zombies. At any rate, he has joined the ranks of those making extensive preparations. At first I ignored his rants about off-the-grid heating and stockpiling food. But then I thought: learning moment. And I showed him how to use Microsoft Project to turn his dream of survival into a plan.

Now each family member has assignments, and, surprisingly enough, we are doing them. The Farmer just bought a generator, I found Enerhealth’s bucket of food for forty days of survival (it’s organic!),  and my son is investigating Radiant Heating for our floors.

Penelope's links are great too, that's one of the things I love about her articles. Be warned, though! They can be where your free time goes to die.

Well, that's it for today! What are your dreams? How have you translated them into goals for 2013?

Other articles you might like:

- Chuck Wendig On Writing: How He Writes A Novel
- The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 1
- 7 Tips On How To Get Your Guest Post Accepted

Photo credit: "Adventure Time And Relative Dimension In Space" by JD Hancock under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Connect With Readers' Emotions: How To Make People Cry

Yesterday I talked about how Chuck Wendig writes a novel. Chuck gave great advice, but one point in particular stayed with me: make your characters compelling.

What we as writers want, the goal, is to reach through our prose and connect with our readers, our audience, emotionally. Or intellectually. But chances are we won't be able to do anything with their minds unless we've got their hearts.

But how do we do this? How do we reach out to our readers through words and move them to laughter, to tears. How do we make them joyful or sad?

(And I suppose this raises the question: What effect DO we want our stories to have on our audience? How do we want to leave our readers? Filled with happiness over a long lost love rekindled or terrified out of their wits, hiding under bed covers, scared to use the loo because they don't want a clown to eat them? [That makes me sound bitter about reading It, but it truly was one of my favorite books!])

Here's what I'd like to talk about today: How to make someone cry.

I know that sounds mean! And I'm not mean, I'm nice. Really! But I think of these blog posts as writing 101--this isn't creme brulee it's bread pudding. We're looking at the basics.

I think one of the easiest emotions to evoke is sympathy, sympathy aroused by an injustice.

Let's talk about how to build character identification, what sorts of character traits we'll need, what sort of trials and tribulations we'll need, if we want to move our readers to shed tears.

1. Give The Reader A Chance To Get To Know Your Character

Don't be too quick to put your character in jeopardy. Build some character identification first. Marg McAlister in Make Your Readers Cry writes:

You've probably been advised many times to plunge the reader into the story right away. Start at the point of change. Dive into the action; involve the reader.

This is good advice - to a point.

I've read far too many books (published and unpublished) in which the author has begun with Something Bad happening to the main character. The idea is to get the reader hooked from the first sentence. Oh my goodness... how will Jane get out of this?

The bad news is, it doesn't always work. And almost always, the reason it doesn't work is because we're reading about strangers. To become really involved you have to 'become' the viewpoint character. Then you will feel her pain!

2. Slow Down And SHOW, Don't Tell

This point is about pacing. Sometimes you want to move the reader quickly from one scene to another. No one wants to sit beside your protagonist as she drives to the corner store to pick up some milk, but we (ghoulish readers that we are!) would like to be there for the holdup she'll walk in on.

This applies especially when we're writing about something sad that we want to focus the readers attention on. Jody Hedlund in Creating Characters that Make Readers Cry writes:

Slow down and show. In those especially charged scenes, I slow down the action and I take the lens of my mental camera and zoom on specific details and emotions. This isn’t the time for a panoramic or big picture shot. This is the time for a close up. I point my camera around the scene trying to capture the heartache in ways that SHOW the emotion and tension I'm trying to convey. 

3. Go Primal

In order to make readers care we have to tap into primal desires. In Save The Cat, Blake Snyder writes:

You say “father” and I see my father. You say “girlfriend” and I see my girlfriend. We all have ‘em — and it gets our attention because of that. It’s an immediate attention-getter because we have a primal reaction to those people, to those words even! So when in doubt, ground your characters in the most deep-seated imagery you can. Make it relevant to us. Make it something that every caveman (and his brother) will get.

Make it, say it with me now…primal!

Blake Snyder's quotation is by way of Therese Walsh's article, How to make readers cry, in six steps.

Has anyone ever cried when reading your prose? Have you ever cried when you wrote, or when you later read what you wrote?

Other articles you might like:

- Chuck Wendig On Writing: How He Writes A Novel
- The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 3
- The Magic Of Stephen King: How To Write Compelling Characters & Great Openings

Photo credit: "Untitled" by seyed mostafa zamani under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Chuck Wendig On Writing: How He Writes A Novel

The Terrible Mind of Chuck Wendig

Late yesterday I wrote a short post about Chuck Wendig's fun writing challenge and someone joked I should write about how he works his writerly magic.

I LOL'd back and didn't think much more of it until I saw Chuck had written an article on editing. Oh! I thought. This will be interesting. THEN I found out he'd written about ... drum roll ... how he writes a novel!

It was like the sky split open and trumpets sounded. How could I not write about that?

(All quotations, unless stated otherwise, are from Chuck's blog post: How Chuck Wendig Writes A Novel.)

1. The Right Idea

Every story begins with an idea. But not just any idea. It has to be the right idea.

How do you know which one is right?

Chuck puts his ideas through a kind of interrogation. I'm not sure what he does with the ones that don't make it and I'm sure it's better that way.

The right idea will be:

a) interesting to me beyond the moment in which they are conceived
b) potentially interesting to other humans who are not me
c) potentially interesting to the giant amorphous blob known as the “publishing industry”
d) about a character in a world and not just a world
e) and de actionable, meaning, an idea that suggests a book I’m actually capable of writing

The idea that makes it through the final inerview goes on Chuck's "idea list". He writes:

[L]ater I dump it into a file I’ve created that’s meant to be a storehouse of such potential ideas. For the record, this dump file now looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shelves and shelves of crates and boxes, each a mystery container whose story remains untold.

If I could make a humble suggestion: Dropbox and Google Drive are your friends.

If you keep your important lists in the cloud, you're guaranteed to have an updated version of the lists on your computer(s) as well as in the cloud (wherever that is) so even if the worst happens and all your electronic devises spontaneously combust you'll still have your ideas, your stories and your Excel worksheets.

2. Barf Up A Blob Of Incoherent Thoughts

I love Chuck's headings. I mean, right off, you knew that was his, right?

Anyway, the second step is to get your thoughts out of your head and out into the world: put them on a sheet of paper, virtual paper, spreadsheet programs, mind-maps, whatever works for you. As Chuck writes:

The notes taken at this stage are almost stream-of-consciousness. Sentence fragments, mis-spelled words, grocery list thoughts interspersed in the middle, whatever. It’s just to ruminate on the idea. And it’s also to test the idea in a way. Is there more here than than initial idea? A great many ideas are dead seeds planned in fallow ground — they won’t grow a good goddamn thing. So, this stage of the game is very much about seeing if this thing has legs. Will it walk? Can it run?

3. Get To Know Your Characters

Chuck calls characters "The way through every story". You need to know who a character is in the same way you need to know what the story is about (we'll get to that in a moment).

a. Name your characters

Names have power. I find it difficult to write about a character before I have some idea what her first name is. Last names are the trickiest, often they won't come to me until I'm working on my second or third draft.

Naming resources:
- Websites for baby names
- Google Map street names
- Scrivener
- US census data
- Movie credits
- The names of characters from other books, mixed and matched.

b. Take your characters out for dinner and get to know them

For each character ask:
- What are his wants? (Both conscious wants and unconscious.)
- What are his needs?
- What are his fears?
- Why does he need to keep going?
- What goal will drive him as he progresses through the story?
- What obstacles are in his path? Which obstacles will prevent him from reaching his goal?

Some of these obstacles MUST be bound up with what the character fears.

c. Create a simple character arc: Beginning, middle, end

Chuck writes:

Finally, I do a little three-beat character arc for the character. Three words or sentences that are meant to indicate the state of the character across the story — beginning, middle, and end.

Poor cat down on his luck wants to see a change in this country –> elected president, way over his kitty head –> once again a poor cat but now knows the intimate details of the democratic process and oh did I mention he nuked the middle of our own country into oblivion.

d. The test: Are your characters compelling?

Some writers want their characters to be likable. Chuck doesn't. He wants characters that are interesting, readable and, above all, compelling.

Why do you find your character compelling? What are they good at? What have they failed at? What events have made them who they are?

4. Ask The Foundational Question: What Is Your Story About?

Answering this question will help you begin to not only lay the foundation of your story, but it will also test your story idea to make sure it's really one you want to spend months of your life with.

Here is the big question:

What is your story about?

I love examples, don't you? So, before we go any further, here are examples of what Chuck means when he asks: What is your story about?

“This is about how you can’t escape your past.”
“This is about just how fucked up people can be.”
“This is about how the education system fails its kids by adhering to antiquated ideals and stats that don’t mean anything and notions of ‘learning’ that remain separate from notions of ‘humanity.’”
“This is about the coming of age of MONKEY SQUID DEATH WOMBAT. Raaaaar!”

I tend to think of stuff like this as THEME. Just the other day someone asked whether he should know the theme of his story before he started to write or if it could be worked into the story later.

If I remember what he wrote in On Writing, Stephen King often doesn't know what his story is about until the second draft. The theme is there, but he hasn't discovered it yet.

Chuck Wendig is definitely a know your theme first kinda guy and I do see his point.

Why you want to know what your story is about before you begin writing

In his article Before You Start Writing, Ask: “What Is This About?”Chuck points out that knowing your theme before you start writing has a number of benefits.

i. It will tell you why you are writing this story

Answering the question, What is this story about?, will tell you what you want to say.

In order for the story to work you need to write about something more than what interests you, you need to write about what compels you, what haunts you.

ii. Binds your story elements together

Knowing what the story is about will tell you why you're writing it and THAT is the mortar which binds your story elements together. Chuck writes:

Point is, the web, the structure, the whole recipe comes together when you have this answer. You can look at the whole picture, nod, and just say, “Ohhhh.”

iii. Gives you a thread

Knowing what your story is about is like being handed a magical thread that will help you find the way through the labyrinth of your story. It will help you decide what to do.

Just as in a labrynth you need to decide, "Do I go right, left or straight?" when you write you're going to be presented with choices. How does a particular character react to such-and-such? How does she respond when she fails to achieve one of her goals?

Knowing what the story is about will help you understand what needs to happen next, where to turn, how to proceed.

iv. The test: How you know if you've found out what your story is about

If the answer to, "What is your story about?" doesn't get you excited, if it doesn't connect with you emotionally, then that's not your answer. Keep excavating. Chuck writes:

If you don’t love the answer, and that answer doesn’t get you all jizzity-jazzed about the process of writing this thing, then ... that’s not your answer. The answer needs to engage you. It needs to excite you. It needs to give you purpose and be the lash on your ass-cheeks to spur you forward. (Before You Start Writing, Ask: “What Is This About?”)

Now let's move on to talk about how we can discover what our story is about, how we can discover our story's theme.

5. The Marvels Of Mind-Mapping

At this point we've got some character sketches and, maybe, a vague idea of what our theme is but nothing we can pin down. What we need is a much clearer idea of what brings all these disparate elements together. We need a handle on what our story is about. What is its theme?

We need to create a mind-map.

What the heck is a mind-map?

Chuck has written an excellent article on this: Who The Hell Are These People? Mind-Mapping Your Story’s Characters. In that article he has embedded an image of a mind-map he created. You can get there through Chuck's article or you can click here. Here's how Wikipedia describes a mind-map:

A mind map is a diagram used to visually outline information. A mind map is often created around a single word or text, placed in the center, to which associated ideas, words and concepts are added. Major categories radiate from a central node, and lesser categories are sub-branches of larger branches. Categories can represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items related to a central key word or idea. (Mind map)

Why use a mind-map?

- It's easy, fun, gives you a lot of information at a glance.
- It is simple to do and can be done anywhere (you can do it on your smartphone).
- It helps you explore character without locking you into anything. It doesn't feel as serious, as written in stone, as when you're sitting at your desk typing away.
- It can help you spot themes, a deeper storyline.

It's this last point I want to spend a moment on. Chuck writes:

I was going through the characters [using a mind-map], and I started to see some similar elements pop up: elements of legacy, of family, of blood. And I was like, holy shit, I just figured out what this whole story’s *about.* I mean, I had the story in mind. I know a rough sequence of events for the plot. But I didn’t really have a deeper throughline.

And in the mind-map, the character’s exposed themselves (tee-hee) and showed me the theme of the piece.

Just through the act of dicking around with fun little word bubbles and connective tissue, I suddenly stumbled upon one of my great unanswered questions, a question I didn’t think I’d answer so soon.

That’s the joy of the preparation process. It’s like preliminary archaeology. You dig and dig and uncover things you never expected to find. (Who The Hell Are These People? Mind-Mapping Your Story’s Characters)

Sounds great!

I've never used a mind-map before but after reading Chuck's articles I'm going to give it a try.

One of the benefits of using a mind-map is that you can get an app for your phone and do it anywhere. Chuck even recommends an app: SimpleMind.

6. Write A Pitch

I was excited when I read this, because it's what I've been saying in my Starburst Series! 

a. Write a logline/elevator pitch

Sum your entire novel up in a single sentence. Chuck uses his 'cat for president' story idea as an example:

A cat is elevated from poverty and is elected president only to learn that cats shouldn’t ever serve in public office because cats are assholes.

b. Write a blurb

Write a longer pitch of under 500 words. Basically you want a longer version of the blurb for the back cover of your book without giving spoilers. But this should be easy since you don't know exactly what's going to happen.

7. Build A World, But Be Like Scrooge

Chuck cautions that writers should do only as much work as you have to in order to begin writing. You don't know what material is going to get cut so only do the bare minimum.

For instance, in one story I'm working on I knew I needed a slow moving mammal but I didn't know what kind would fit so I just wrote <slow moving mammal> in my first draft and moved on.

8. Know Your Beginning And Your End

Figure out how your story begins as well as how it ends. Chuck writes:

Here’s why I like to have the beginning and the ending in mind: because as I write, my eventual outline will fail me. It just will. No plan survives contact with the enemy and eventually I’ll be somewhere in the middle of the book, spinning wildly in the swampy mire of my own fiction not sure exactly what to do next. And when that happens I will look to the ending and I will say, “I need to go there,” and then I will march the story toward that point and eventually get the outline (which by now may require modification) back on track.

Make sure there is an element that links your beginning and your ending

This element could be elemental, thematic or physical. For instance,

In the Mookie Pearl short story, “Charcuterie,” it begins and ends with him pulling up at the bar with his friend and boss, Werth.

9. Outline

Chuck Wendig uses a four act structure. Christopher Vogler uses four as well but Michael Hauge uses three. TV has gone to a six act structure. It's up to you, whatever works.

Write the key scenes first

Chuck figures out what needs to happen in the story (something which is much easier to do if you have an ending!) and then writes those key scenes.

Write the dramatic scenes second

Also, there may be a few different kinds of scenes you want to enclude such as a:

- reversal of fortune
- a key betrayal
- a battle scene
- a moment of shock or, as Chuck puts it:

I’m also always on the look out for at least one HOLY SHIT NO HE DIDN’T moment — some jaw-dropping pants-crapping event or revelation in the narrative that sticks you in the ribs with a story shiv. I like those moments. One of my favorite things is obliterating reader expectations in one fell swoop.

10. Let It Sit

At this point you've got a fat-ish folder, either physical or electronic, and you may need to let the story sit for a bit before you nail yourself to your chair and write it.

11. Spreadsheets Are Your Friends

Chuck Wendig keeps his writing schedule in an Excel spreadsheet. He writes:

One spreadsheet I particularly require is the one that keeps all my writing schedule on it. I don’t use a calendar — I use Excel. I have the whole year planned out in terms of when my deadlines are and where the books slot in. (Then I also identify gaps and, ideally, figure out how to best use those gaps.)

Mark down when your writing projects need to be completed then write down how much you know you can finish per day (underestimate a little to give yourself a bit of wiggle room) and figure out how much time you'll need to complete each one.

For me, it's not so much the writing that takes time, it's the editing. My rule of thumb is that for every hour writing I reserve 4 hours for editing. (Of course I never edit what I just wrote! Gah! The very thought burns!) I'm learning--or trying to learn--how to juggle multiple projects at different stages of completion.

Also, on your spreadsheet keep track of both your projected and your actual word count.

12. Write

Chuck writes:

I write. I write with my head down. I write linearly, first page to the last page. I write without listening to the doubting voice that tells me I’m a total asshole for even trying this. I write without regard to safety or sanity. I write with the freedom to suck and the hope that I don’t. I write to finish the shit that I started.

That's (basically) it! Chuck Wendig has written another article on how he edits his stories and you can find that here: How Chuck Wendig Edits A Novel.

This was a gargantuan article! Sorry about that. I try to keep my blog posts to 1,000 words or less but I'm in the process of writing three different series and I didn't want to add a fourth, so I wanted to get this post done today.

I'll be briefer tomorrow. :-)

Other (much shorter!) articles you might like:

- Using Excel To Outline Your NaNoWriMo Novel: Defeating the sprawl
- Mary Robinette Kowal and The Mysteries of Outlining
- The Starburst Method of Writing

Photo credit: "Free Old Converse All Stars Creative Commons" by Pink Sherbet Photography under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Chuck Wendig's Flash Fiction Challenge

I just learnt about Chuck Wendig's Flash Fiction Challenge from a nice person in John Ward's Writer's Discussion Group. 

It's a fun challenge that doesn't take a lot of time since your story has to be under 1,000 words. It's nice to write something one can (theoretically!) write and edit in a few hours.

Here are the rules (I've copied this from Chuck's website, terribleminds):

I’m going to give you three categories. You will pick randomly from each category, maybe with a d10 or using a random number generator. From your choices, you’ll have 1000 words to write some flash fiction. Post this fiction at your online space. Link back here. Due by Friday, January 11th, at noon EST.

Chuck gives you a SUBGENRE a SETTING and an item or kind of thing your story MUST FEATURE. Actually, he gives you 10 in each category and then you randomly select one.

It's a fun idea! This way chances are everyone is writing a different kind of story with its own unique challenges. Here's the link if you're interested:

Flash Fiction Challenge: Spin The Wheel

When you're done, don't forget to publish the story on your blog and leave the link in a comment to Chuck's post.

Other articles you might like:

- The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 1
- How To Format A Word Document For Uploading To Amazon
- 19 Ways To Grow Your Twitter Following

Photo credit: "5:00am… Wake up before the sun, start to run." by Untitled blue under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.