A Structure For Short Stories

I was going to take a break from talking about story structure but I came across a fabulous post by Chris Winkle over at Mythcreants, “Outline a Short Story in Seven Steps,” that I have to share.

I encourage you to head over to Chris Winkle’s site and read his article for yourself, what follows is what I’m going to call ‘a creative summary.’ Inevitably, I’ve filtered his ideas through my own point of view. One of the results of this is that CW’s seven points have blossomed into nine.

1. Create a problem

This problem will be the central conflict of the story. I like to think of this as ‘the engine’ since this is what drives the story forward, as well as what will initially grab the reader's curiosity. Additionally, this problem is what propels the protagonist to action.

CW advises writers to make this problem neither too easy nor too complex. He writes:

“... if you choose something trivial, you’ll work harder to make it meaningful, and if you choose something daunting, you could struggle to find a solution.”

Instead: “Look for a significant problem that can be solved by one person, in one scene.”

Great advice! I’m realizing why so many of my short stories morphed into novellas or novels: I have the habit of using problems that are much too big.

2. Create a character (the protagonist) to have this problem

CW (wisely) advises us to follow KISS (keep it simple ... silly). We’re trying to write a short story, so don’t describe anything that isn’t integral to the story.

CW also advises that the protagonist be consistent, distinctive, driven, complex, deep and evolving. (To read more on this see CW’s article: The Six Traits of Strong Characters. Jim Butcher has also written about this on his Livejournal account: Characters.)

3. Answer the question, Why does this problem matter to this character?

CW writes: 

“The more important the problem is to the character, the more important it becomes to the reader. Come up with a solid reason why this character cares; this goes double if your problem is trivial. Raise the stakes until it has emotional impact.”

Humans are ruled by their curiosity. Yesterday I was watching a recording of a live performance and the only thing I remember about it is that one of the people in the balcony had his jacket draped over the edge. I kept wondering, Will it fall? 

I know, this was completely trivial. It was just a silly old jacket. Even if it did fall the stakes were infinitesimal. Imagine how captivated I would have been if, say, the President of the United States were to pass underneath?

This also illustrates an important principle: How does a problem become important? By raising the stakes. (Also, by showing the character’s motivation to win the goal.)

4. Introduce an obstacle that prevents the protagonist from achieving his/her goal

If the problem is solved too soon, there is no story. So an obstacle has to be introduced, something that will keep the protagonist from quickly and easily achieving their goal.

Character is revealed in adversity, so throwing a bunch of trouble at your protagonist is, all around, the best thing you could do for the story.

The protagonist’s external arc

Often the obstacle is introduced by an antagonist. That is, by someone who is very similar to the protagonist in that they have a strong, clear, goal. In the antagonist’s case, of course, this goal is in direct opposition to the protagonist’s goal.

Let’s say the protagonist wants to go off to a college in a far away state in order to study environmental management. Their goal is to, eventually, preserve a patch of wetlands near their childhood home, one that is threatened by a proposed development. If this were the case then the antagonist would want exactly the opposite.

The antagonist doesn’t have to be a villain. For example, the antagonist could be the protagonist’s mother, someone who wants to keep her child close, and safe, and cared for. Someone who doesn’t want them leaving for four long years. 

Or, if we wanted a villain, the antagonist could be an unscrupulous land developer who wants to build a shopping mall over the wetlands.

And so on. The crucial thing is for the protagonist’s goal and the antagonist’s goal to be mutually exclusive. If one attains their goal then it must be impossible for the other to. (Although they can both lose.)

The protagonist’s internal arc

What I’ve written about, above, concerning the wetlands, etc., would be part of the protagonist’s external arc. CW points out that if you want your protagonist to have an internal arc as well as an external one, to “make their obstacle a personality flaw.” (For example, Mr. Monk.)

5. Have the protagonist fail

CW advises us to include at least one try-fail cycle but no more than three. And be sure to show the consequences of this failure. That is, show the consequences for the protagonist and those he cares about. This is how one builds suspense. 

CW writes that “after every attempt, they should be worse off than when they started.” (This is usually done in a sequel. For more on this see, The Structure of a Short Story: The New Plan.) 

6. Build the solution to the problem into the protagonist’s failures

This is excellent advice, the kind that makes me want to pick up a pen and start scribbling! CW advises that we ...

“Give each failed attempt a small step toward the solution. It might be a clue, a tool, or a piece of advice that will help your character. That doesn’t mean they’ll recognize it right away. In fact, it’s better if they don’t.”

7. Create a critical turning point

After the last, biggest, most devastating defeat something happens—perhaps the protagonist has an epiphany—and the hints you scattered in (6) finally come together in the protagonist’s mind.

CW writes: “They have a stunning realization, a clever idea, or finally understand a piece of wisdom.”

Sounds happy, doesn’t it? If tragedy is more your cup of tea, CW has advice for you as well:

“If you’re planning an unhappy ending, the hero’s realization may be false or incomplete. Perhaps the hero latches on to the wrong solution to their problem.”

Note: Even if the protagonist will ultimately fail, your readers should still feel there’s hope.

8. Show the hero achieving (or failing to achieve) his goal

Whether the protagonist wins or loses should hinge upon a choice he makes. There isn’t much to write here because, to a large extent, what happens is determined by all that has gone before.

9. Wrap up

CW didn’t explicitly include this step, and perhaps it is implicit in the above, but I’ll mention it anyway. Here we show the stakes being cashed out. We show how the protagonist’s world changes because he achieved his goal. If there were other main characters, show what happens to them.

Also, if the antagonistic force was a character (sometimes it’s simply a ticking clock and time), show her receiving her just deserts.

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Every post I pick something I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I'm recommending a book I wrote about—fittingly!—story structure: The Structure of a Great Story: How to Write a Suspenseful Tale!

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That’s it! If you haven’t, I recommend reading Chris Winkle’s article in it’s entirety. He scattered links throughout, links which lead, like magical breadcrumbs, deeper into a dense maze of captivating articles.

See you Wednesday!

Other articles you might like:

17 Ways To Write A Terrifyingly Good Horror Story
How To Write A 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Story
Short Story Structures: Several Ways Of Structuring Short Fiction

Crying Uncle: When Should We Lay A Story Aside?

When should we lay a story aside? 

It’s a difficult question. I know, I’m struggling with it. Though I’ve finished other stories over the past few months, one remains stubbornly unfinished, the one I care about most—my murder mystery.

It boggles the mind. How can I love reading murder mysteries, how can I watch them incessantly, and not be able to finish writing one?

Am I too close to the story, too emotionally involved? Perhaps I judge my mystery stories more harshly than my other work? Perhaps, even though I love cosy mysteries it just takes practice. It’s not something I should expect to work on the first (or even the fifteenth!) try.

Reasons aside, because of my predicament, the question has been taking laps around my brain: When, if ever, is it okay to lay aside a story?

1. Too Big

Sometimes a story is too big, too complex, and it overwhelms the writer. This happened to me several times when I first started out. It was like catching the tail of a dragon, I wasn’t strong enough (yet) to hold on and the dragon wrenched free and flew away.

2. The Story Changes

I think, at times, a story changes too much from conception to execution, from that initial red hot idea to the cold, sedate, logical outline one finally hammers out. It’s a bit like falling in love with someone then taking them home to see one’s parents, sitting around the dinner table. Suddenly, one sees them in a new, and not very attractive, light. What one once thought whimsically romantic becomes childish and ill-conceived. 

Though I like to outline I think that, if the story is changed too much, it can disintegrate, twisted beyond recognition. Although it is perhaps a tad melodramatic to say, it’s as though the story loses its soul. 

When that happens, one’s passion seeps away.

Often, when a story is left to lie for days, weeks, months or years what kills the story isn’t that we lose the thread—though, absolutely, that happens—but that we lose the story’s heart. 

We fall out of love with it, with the characters, with the setting, with the initial idea that captivated us.

And, yet ... In my mind’s eye I see a phalanx of professional writers frowning, saying, “It doesn’t matter if you’re in LOVE with the story, it’s a job! You finish what you start or you don’t get paid, end of discussion.”

And that is, of course, correct. One doesn’t have to be enthusiastic about a thing in order to do it. One doesn’t always FEEL like going to work, but one still does it.

But, against that, I would argue that if one can’t sustain passion for the core idea of the story, for the characters, long enough to write a first draft then one doesn’t care about the story enough to see it through the umpteen drafts it takes to turn the raw clay of one’s first attempt into a finished product.

I think that, for myself, the golden rule is: Write a complete zero draft BEFORE one begins outlining.

Perhaps—and I realize this is a grizzly analogy—it’s a bit like a brain surgeon trying to operate without first mapping the patient’s brain. With a finished zero draft in hand, I have a better grasp of what is essential to the characters, to the story, before I begin operating/outlining.

3. There’s no such thing as writer’s block, just put your butt in a chair and WRITE!

I’ve heard this often, and I think I know what the people who say this want to express.

When I have a deadline, it doesn’t matter if I feel inspired, I have to hand something in.

When one has a contract to deliver a certain story by a specific date, it doesn’t matter if one feels one’s story is as exciting as uncolored cardboard or as interesting as drying paint. One is on the hook and must turn something in. And chances are what one turns in won’t be as bad as it seems when writing. But, from a certain perspective, it doesn’t matter. One gave one’s word that something would be turned in, so something (no matter how dreadful) WILL be turned in.

Even so, writer’s block exists. It’s a real thing. I know, I’ve had it. I couldn’t write after my father passed away. Every time I sat at my computer, fingers poised over the keyboard, time would warp and I saw my father’s face. Not his face as it was in life, but as he lay dying, his brain shutting down, his humanity being stripped away.

In retrospect, I was likely traumatized, my thoughts pulled back to the moment at which my life had become warped, the moment at which certain things had stopped making sense.

I got through it with the help of friends. I realized I could still write, just no longer at the computer. I could write longhand. My journalling practice dates from then, from that realization.

Sorry for rambling. To sum up, I DO believe that writer’s block is a real thing, but I also believe there are ways around it.

Just because you lay a story aside doesn’t mean you’re giving up.

The point of this meandering essay is: Boxing a story is not giving up. 

Recently I finished a story I began over a decade ago. It was unfinished because I didn’t know the ending. The story came into being as a writing exercise. I hadn’t intended to do anything with it, but the characters drew breath and insisted I finish what I had begun. 

The problem: I had NO idea how the story ended.

I took various runs at it over the years, but nothing stuck, nothing felt right. Then, one day, a friend’s chance remark kicked off a cascade of ideas that lead to me looking at the story differently and the ending popped, fully formed, into my mind. I have no words to describe the ecstasy of that moment, the joy, the relief of realizing my story was complete.

Summing Up

Although I finish the overwhelming majority of stories I begin, there is still the occasional tale, one I’m writing for my own amusement (which is how I begin most of my stories) that will demand to be laid aside. But that doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the story. It took Stephen King over 30 years to finish “Under The Dome.” As Bob Wiley said in “What About Bob”: This one’s just temporarily disconnected.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

What Are You Reading?

I've often stressed the importance of reading so, today, let's talk about what books we're reading. (And, yes, I got this idea from Chuck Wendig!)

At the moment I'm polishing off Brimstone , the fifth book in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s fabulous mystery-thriller series featuring their quirky yet indomitable sleuth Aloysius Pendergast. Preston and Child know how to generate suspense. Their books keep me up until indecent hours!

I'm also reading—and, yes, this book has been on my to-be-read list for a while—The Secret History by Donna Tartt. For some reason I thought the book would be dry and academic, but when I picked it up at the bookstore it hooked me immediately. 

I like having two books cued up, ready to go, so my third book is J.D. Robb's (/Nora Roberts) futuristic mystery-romance Holiday in Death .

If I had to pick one book out as a favorite, one I've read fairly recently, I'd have to go with Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects,” but “Gone Girl” is fabulous as well. I highly recommend the audiobook since those particular narrators helped bring the characters to life.

What are you reading? What's your favorite genre? Please share!

What Bad Books Can Tell Us About Good Writing

Today I want to discuss what bad books can tell us about good writing. To do this I’m going to discuss the history of an intentionally bad book—Atlanta Nights—and tell you about something surprising (well, surprising to me) I’ve discovered.

Atlanta Nights

First, Atlanta Nights. This book was created as part of a sting operation against notorious vanity publisher, Publish America. James D. Macdonald organized a group of science fiction and fantasy authors to pull off this travesty, each author taking a chapter (one was computer generated!), with the goal of creating a story so bad only a vanity publisher would accept it. Appropriately, the group pseudonym they adopted was: Travis Tea. (See: Atlanta Nights)

Happily, Publish America accepted the book allowing everyone to ask a very good question: Why on earth would a respectable publisher, one who made their money from book sales, accept such absolute dreck? After all, it was so bad the publisher couldn’t possibly hope to make money on it. Unless, that is, Publish America wasn’t a respectable publisher at all. (If you’d like to read more about Publish America and the controversy swirling around it, head over to Absolute Write.)

What Atlanta Nights Can Tell Us About Good Writing

Here we have a rarity, an intentionally horrible book. It turns out (and this is the surprising bit I’ll go into in more depth at the end of this post) that writing a bad book isn’t easy.

Story vs Prose

Here’s how I look at things, writing—good or bad—is composed of two things, the prose itself and the story the prose expresses. I agree wholeheartedly that the story expressed by the prose in Atlanta Nights is awful, horrible, irredeemable. But the prose itself, it’s actually not that bad. It’s not good, but it’s certainly nowhere near as bad as the story it expresses.

From the outset, I’d like to make one thing perfectly, vividly, clear: Atlanta Nights IS a bad book. I know that’s not a technical way of putting things, saying just that something is ‘bad’ isn’t descriptive. So I’ll let you judge for yourself. What follows is a quotation from Chapter Two of Atlanta Nights:

The Atlanta sun slanted low in the west, rain showers predicted for later that afternoon, then clearing. Bruce Lucent looked from the side window of his friend's shiny Maserati sports car as they wheeled their way westward against the afternoon traffic.

"I'm glad you could give me a ride," Bruce Lucent muttered, his pain-worn face reddened by the yellow sunlight. "What with my new car all smashed and all."

His old friend, Isadore, shook his massive head at him. "We know how it must be to have a lot of money but no working car," he said, the harsh Macon County drawl of his voice softened by his years in Atlanta high society. "It's my pleasure to bring you back to your fancy apartment, and we're all so happy that y'all is still alive. Y'all could have been killed in that dreadful wreck." Isadore paused to put on the turn signal before making a safe turn across rush-hour traffic into the parking lot of Bruce Lucent's luxury apartment building. "Y'all'll gets a new car on Monday."

"I don't know how I'll be able to drive it with my arm in a cast," Bruce Lucent shoots back. "It's lucky I wasn't killed outright like so many people are when they have horrid automobile wrecks." (Atlanta Nights—this link leads you to a free pdf of the story; it’s on the website of Andrew Burt, one of the authors.)

This is certainly NOT good writing, and intentionally so. (This bit was excerpted from the chapter penned by James D. Macdonald.) I’d say the authors collectively called Travis Tea did a fabulous job creating a story no respectable publisher would buy.

But, as I said, there’s a problem. It turns out that while we all intuitively recognize this writing as bad, that, in one respect, it’s ... okay.

Let me explain.

I’ve been creating a program, a writing analysis program, that has the ability to analyze a book and compare it to other books along various dimensions.

For example, my program will look at how many “-ly” adverbs, wh-adverbs, how many superlative adjectives, how many verbs ending in “-ing,” and so on, a book contains. Based on this my program will generate a score for the book.

One thing I was curious about was how close my generated score (a score generated from objective and quantifiable characteristics) would align with the subjective scores I had assigned each book.

The Results

It turns out that the score generated by my program and the subjective scores I’ve assigned to each of the books are strongly correlated. 

So far so good. 

But there is a problem. It turns out that while my program generated scores are quite close to the user defined scores for the higher scoring books that the generated scores are off when it comes to one low-scoring book.

That book is Atlanta Nights.

It turns out that although humans have no trouble identifying Atlanta Nights as bad, it throws my program for a loop. While it should put Atlanta Nights in the same group of books as The Eye of Argon, my program consistently puts it closer to James Patterson’s books (and, while Patterson’s books aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, they certainly aren’t bad in the same way Atlanta Nights is bad.).

In the beginning, this caused me no end of concern. I thought something had to be seriously wrong with my program since it scored Atlanta Nights high.

But, what I’ve come to suspect, is that the writers of Atlanta Nights did one thing well and one thing not so well. What they did well was telling an awful story. What they did not so well was WRITING an awful story. That is, they couldn’t help themselves, their prose itself (as opposed to the concepts expressed by that prose) wasn’t in the same badness category as, say, The Eye of Argon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it was good! Far from it. But it wasn’t horrible. 

Now, I’m not at all trying to cast aspersions on any of the writers involved in the creation of Atlanta Nights. I’m just saying that, in a way, they failed. Their prose (as opposed to the story expressed by their prose) wasn’t all that bad. Or, rather, wasn’t as bad as some books that have gotten published by traditional, non-vanity, publishers (case in point: The Eye of Argon).

This seems to point to something truly interesting, and the reason I wrote this post: It’s possible that one’s prose style is built up over a long period of time—years—and becomes ingrained, like one’s accent or culinary cravings.

It’s possible that we, as writers, aren’t even completely conscious of our prose style and so find it very difficult to change, even when we want to!

What do you think? Whatever your opinion, I invite you to create a truly terrible microstory of 100 words or less.

Crafting An Effective Writing Prompt

As many of you know, for the past few months I’ve been posting one writing prompt a day on Google+ (I’ve begun archiving them on Pinterest), a practice which has given me ample time to reflect on a deceptively simple question: What makes a good writing prompt?

What Is A Writing Prompt?

First and foremost, a writing prompt is one that—as the name implies—provokes someone to write. In this writing prompts are a bit like jokes. Can a joke really be called a joke if it doesn’t make anyone laugh?

Some connoisseurs of prompts are picky and demand that one only write about one’s characters and then only in the third person. I disagree. I encourage folks to reply in whichever person strikes their fancy (and, let’s face it, prompts are an invitation to try out unfamiliar and perhaps quirky styles of writing, such as second person future tense). And if one wishes to recount something about one’s own life (or one’s re-imagined life), that’s fine! 

After all, writing prompts invite quirkiness, they invite experimentation and stretching one’s writing muscles by doing something one has never done before, whether this is writing about a certain subject matter or writing in a person or tense one has never tried.

3 Characteristics of Effective Writing Prompts

I’ll be the first to admit there is no formula for creating a writing prompt which gets people to put pen to paper and write something. But, with that caveat, here are a few qualities I’ve found most of my popular prompts shared.

1. An effective writing prompt is short.

A while back, I experimented with the length of prompts and discovered that the shorter the prompt the more responses it got. So I’ve made it a rule: If a writing prompt can’t fit on a 3 x 5 inch index card, it’s too long.

2. An effective writing prompt asks something about the writer/reader.

Or, possibly one of the writer’s characters. But I’ve tried posting conundrums having to do with one’s characters rather than the writer/reader themselves, and it seems to me that most of the popular prompts have asked about the latter.

3. An effective writing prompt has a clever twist, something that captures the writer’s/reader’s imagination.

This is something that is definitely more easily said than done. It isn’t as though one can sit down at one’s desk and say to one’s muse: I need a clever twist, please. At least that’s never worked for me, you may have better luck!

What I’ve found is that if a particular thought fires up my own imagination, if it makes me puzzle about how I’d write a response to the prompt, then it’s probably going to have the same effect on others.

Conclusion

Perhaps prompt writing is a bit like comedy in this sense. One has to expose one’s work to the public to see what will catch. If a person laughs (/responds to your prompt) it’s a keeper. If not, back to the drawing board.

That’s it!

If you’d like to read some fun prompts pick up a copy of “642 Things To Write About: Young Writer’s Edition,” or Ryan Andrew Kinder’s excellent volume of prompts, “1,000 Awesome Writing Prompts.”

Talk to you again on Monday.

10 Favorite Writing Blogs

I’m fortunate. I’m amazed whenever I compare the sheer amount of excellent writing advice available today—for free!—to what was available when I was a kid. Which, really, was nothing.

Even in school, though we were encouraged to read and to write, no mention was made of character arcs or pacing, about how to build suspense or craft well rounded characters.

(Saying this, I feel a bit like the old codgers of my day who went on and on about having to hike 10 miles through the snow—uphill—both ways.)

These days we have a wealth of wonderful blogs on the topic of writing, blogs that regularly cover the bones of how to write suspenseful—which is to say, dramatic—prose. And, by taking a look at the material from a different vantage point each time, it is never boring.

I haven’t shared links to my favorite blogs in a while so I want to remedy that today. I’ve looked through my Twitter feed and written down a few names. Let me stress, though, that the names I share below barely scratch the surface of the number of blogs I read regularly. I’m sure if I had a complete list in front of me I’d be sharing dozens of names!

In any case, here they are in no particular order:

My Favorite Writing Blogs

Elizabeth Spann Craig

The Write Practice

Live Write Thrive

Mythcreants

Janice Hardy

Writer Unboxed

Jane Friedman

Jami Gold

Chronicles of the Scribe

Catherine, Caffeinated

That’s it! Good reading and writing, see you Friday. :-)

4 Ways To Create And Nurture The Habit of Writing

Creating and maintaining a writing habit is, like writing itself, simple but far from easy. I know. There are habits I would love to have but don’t. In part, this is because there are only so many hours in the day and, in part, because certain habits seemed as though they’d be more rewarding than they turned out to be.

These ruminations have been brought on by an article I read over at BrainPickings.org: Mary Oliver on How Habit Gives Shape to Our Inner Lives. 

The Value of Habit

This essay got me thinking, reflecting, ruminating, about my blog and about what has allowed me, despite my natural inclination to disorder, to blog more-or-less regularly over the past few years.

If I hadn’t formed the habit of blogging, this blog would not exist. And that would be a shame, because my blog has turned out to be one of the most personally significant undertakings of my life. Not—alas!—in terms of money made, but certainly in terms of the folks I’ve met. 

Creating A Habit

After the first year or so of daily blogging, it began to feel odd, even uncomfortable, if I didn’t blog. It felt as though a part of me had gone missing. I felt almost compelled to sit down and write. And so it was that my blog made the act of writing an important part of my everyday life.

Thanks to you, my readers, giving me feedback—or just stopping by to say “Hi!”—I’ve had (and hopefully will continue to have) the wonderful experience of reaching through the page to connect with others through my words. I’ve been able to share my thoughts, my musings, my hopes and fears, my triumphs and deep losses, with a community.

And all this thanks to something that can seem to some relatively trifling: a blog. Well, a blog and the habit it helped to form. 

The habit of blogging is really the habit of putting my butt in my office chair in the mornings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and keeping it there until an idea finds me.

Of course, as you may be all too aware, that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I cast about for something to write, something that grabs me, excites me, but nothing comes. Still, those days, I stick at it and, eventually, words find their reluctant way onto paper and an essay of sorts will take shape. The important thing, though, is that my butt goes in the chair and stays there until either, hours later, I’m convinced it’s a lost cause OR something happens. And, thankfully, it usually does. (Knock on wood.)

What gets me into trouble, what can always completely derail me, are two things: a big, massive, gargantuan idea, one much too involved and complex for one blog post and, second, tinkering with my writing analysis program (but that’s an entirely different post!).

In any case, for what they are worth, here are my tips for the creation and nurturing of a habit.

1. Take it seriously

I have the unfortunate tendency to think of some of my goals as unimportant in the grand scheme of things and so let other concerns crowd them out. When it comes to my blog, folks have actually said to me, “You shouldn’t prioritize it. After all, it’s only a blog.” I think there is something of a prejudice against blogging. Why, I don’t know. Perhaps because one doesn’t make money from it? Hopefully not, because that’s also true of many of the most satisfying things in life. In any case, I digress.

Whatever it is you are trying to make a habit of, it can be tempting—especially when time is short and other concerns are pressing—to minimize the importance of the thing, the activity, you are attempting to make habitual. Resist this! How? Through resisting the desire, the urge, to procrastinate. Again, how? Through recognizing that this urge, this desire, has been spawned by fear. (Or so I would argue.)

2. Fear is the enemy

To paraphrase Frank Herbert: Fear is the habit killer. 

Forming a new habit represents change and change can be scary. Whenever something new is created, something old must die. One minute spent writing is one minute away from your children, your spouse. It is time away from exercising, from watching movies and chatting with friends.

Fear of the future, fear of being laughed at, fear of pouring your heart into something and being rejected. These are all reasons to procrastinate, to let your new habit die on the vine. 

3. Do it for yourself

Create the habit because it will nourish you, because you will get something personal out of it. (Really, I think this is the secret to accomplishing anything.)

That may sound odd so let me use my blog as an example of what I mean. Yes, I think it is a good idea for writers to have a blog. For starters, I believe that regular blogging helps to build that mysterious thing called “a platform” (and, actually, that’s why I began blogging). But at some point every single one of those external reasons will be stripped away. At least, that happened to me. Those were tough times and I would have stopped blogging if the act itself didn’t fulfill something deep within myself.

4. Find, or create, a support group

It’s a rare thing, but if you find a support group—that is, a group of people who will encourage you to write no matter what—then treat them like the treasures they are. 

And, here, I’m not suggesting that if someone says to you: I’m going to quit my job and write full time because I know I can produce a New York Times Bestseller within the year,” that you should paste on a smile and say, “You go girl!”  

There is one very simple rule I follow when giving writers feedback: Writing is better than not writing. No matter a writer’s level of skill, there is only one way to get better: keep reading and keep writing. Ultimately, a good support group will encourage its members to do just this. 

So write! And if you’re not writing, read! Form those productive habits and, above all, never, ever, give up.

See you on Wednesday. :-)

Photo credit: This is a collage I adjusted and assembled with the aid of Photoshop.

Writing And Gaming: Tabletop RPGs, Character Creation And Conflict

I’ve already written about how many of my favorite authors are avid gamers. (BTW, Chuck Wendig—a long time gamer as well as a game designer—has written a fabulous article about gaming and its relation to storytelling: Twenty-Sided Troubadours: Why Writers Should Play Roleplaying Games.)

Recently, I’ve started gaming over at Storium.com and my interest in RPGs has come back with a vengeance. And not just because, as Chuck Wendig and many others have said, it can help exercise one’s storytelling faculty. As it turns out, gaming is fun. (grin)

Gaming Systems

In the past, whenever I thought of tabletop gaming I thought of Dungeons & Dragons. It hadn’t occurred to me there might be other gaming systems, systems which were significantly different from each other in important respects. I won’t enumerate the various systems here—a Google search will give you that—but I’d like to talk about one of them, RuneQuest.

RuneQuest

“In Britain in the 1980s RuneQuest was recognized by the gaming world as one of the ‘Big Three’ games with the largest market share, the others being Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller.” (RuneQuest, Wikipedia)

RuneQuest was published by Chaosium in 1978 (love that name, ‘Chaosium’). The reason I’m writing about RuneQuest is that, of the very few systems I’ve researched lately, it seems one of the most conducive to storytelling—or, really, group storytelling. For instance:

“In many ways, the [RuneQuest] system was developed as a response to more scalar systems, such as Dungeons & Dragons' level-based system. Through the removal of leveling, and the adherence to skill improvement, RuneQuest avoided many of the perceived flaws of such systems.” (RuneQuest, Wikipedia)

Pendragon

As I read about RuneQuest I stumbled across a reference to King Arthur Pendragon. This game is set in King Arthur’s England and has been described as a game with “a moral point of view” because of its use of virtues and vices in character creation. Also, it seems to succeed in closely wedding the game system with the game world. One of my goals as a writer is to ‘hook’ my characters and their actions into the setting, the environment. To make the environment both real and vital to the story.

In fact, Pendragon reminded me of a system for characterization I struggled to put together not too long ago. In any case, I thought it was interesting enough from both a gaming and storytelling perspective to share with you.

Character Creation in Pendragon

In Pendragon, personality traits are handled a bit differently than in other systems.

Personality Traits

Personality traits come in virtue-vice pairs:

1. Chaste / Lustful, 

2. Energetic / Lazy, 

3. Forgiving / Vengeful, 

4. Generous / Selfish, 

5. Honest / Deceitful, 

6. Just / Arbitrary, 

7. Merciful / Cruel, 

8. Modest / Proud, 

9. Pious / Worldly, 

10. Prudent / Reckless, 

11. Temperate / Indulgent, 

12. Trusting / Suspicious, and 

13. Valorous / Cowardly

The opposing values of each trait must sum to 20. So, for instance, if one has 17 points in “chaste” one will have 3 points in “lustful.” (While one can have a trait that is split 20/0—or, conceivably 0/20 although no gamer is likely to choose that since it means constant and certain failure—I take it this is discouraged by some game mechanic not mentioned in the article.)

Let’s say you want to jump a chasm and your Energetic / Lazy score is 11/9. If you rolled 1-11 on a 20 sided dice (d20) you would succeed in reaching the other side. If you rolled 12 to 20, though, laziness would win out, you’d miss your target and fall. 

What I love about this system is that it balances positive attributes with their opposing, negative, traits. If I were tinkering with it I think I would require symmetrical virtues and vices. For instance, if one pair was 17/3 another pair would have to be 3/17—though this might work out better for story purposes than for gaming ones!

I’m not sure if others have this problem, but I have the regrettable tendency to want my characters to be wonderful people who live pleasant, happy, lives. But that’s boring! This system helps remind me that (generally speaking) every plus comes with a minus.

Analysis

What immediately struck me about Pendragon was that the conflict in the story was being generated from the very essence of the characters. Contrast this with my experience with Dungeons and Dragons which was, essentially, that some sort of external obstacle blocks your progress and you must remove it, or get around it. Whether this occurs depends primarily on physical attributes such as how strong, or quick or or charming or intelligent, and so on, your character is.

In Pendragon, though, the conflict seems to be generated internally from a clash of virtues and what are called passions (loyalty, love, hate, hospitality and honor). Here’s an example adapted from the wiki:

Imagine your character has a high hospitality score. One of your character’s enemies, an insufferable snob, comes to your home and requests shelter. You would love to refuse him. You know he wishes you ill and, besides, he’s unpleasant to have around. The guy is an expert at one thing and one thing only: getting everyone within ear shot to hate him with a burning passion—which is probably one reason why he had to ask your character for shelter, no one else will have him!

You have a choice: turn the enemy away and incur a penalty for acting contrary to your character’s passion or do the hospitable thing and invite the man in even though you know he will take advantage of your generosity.

I believe the essence of conflict is two characters passionately trying to fulfill competing goals. That’s why I am so excited about Pendragon. There, since game conflicts spring from the core natures of the characters themselves, conflict is woven into the very warp and weft of the game.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in tabletop gaming take a look at RuneQuest. I suspect that certain systems—while one is not better than another—may be more conducive to generating the kind of conflict that makes a wonderful, suspenseful, character driven story.

Also, the Call of Cthulhu (CoC), first published by Chaosium in 1981, a game which uses the basic role-playing system first seen in RuneQuest, seems to have broad and energetic support from many gamers. Which I can understand. I mean, a merging of  occult and Holmesian style mysteries, what’s not to love?

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading. Good gaming. 

Links

- Co-operative Roleplay: An Interview with Ian Millington

- Starting To Collaborate

- Fudge (role-playing game system)

- GNS Theory

- The Big Model

- Tabletop role-playing game

- Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)

- RuneQuest

Talking About Detective Fiction

Have you ever read P.D. James’ insightful and beautifully written book, “Talking About Detective Fiction”? In it she gives an impassioned defense of mystery as an art form as well as a fascinating history of how the genre came to be. In what follows I focus on what makes murder mysteries unique.

The Essential Ingredients of A Murder Mystery

P.D. James writes:

"Although the detective story at its highest can also operate on the dangerous edge of things, it is differentiated both from mainstream fiction and from the generality of crime novels by a highly organised structure and recognised conventions. What we can expect is a central mysterious crime, usually murder; a closed circle of suspects, each with motive, means and opportunity for the crime; a detective, either amateur or professional, who comes in like an avenging deity to solve it; and, by the end of the book, a solution which the reader should be able to arrive at by logical deduction from clues inserted in the novel with deceptive cunning but essential fairness."

So there we have it:

a. A central mysterious crime.

b. A closed circle of suspects, often in an isolated, rural, community.

c. Each suspect should have a motive for committing the crime, the means to have done the dastardly deed as well as the opportunity to have done so.

d. A detective “who comes in like an avenging deity” to solve the mystery when the police are baffled.

e. A solution, one which the reader should be able to arrive at themselves from the clues left by the writer (clues inserted with “deceptive cunning but essential fairness”).

f. A respectable and prosperous setting.

g. James holds that the detective story proper is fundamentally "concerned with the bringing of order out of disorder and the restoration of peace after the destructive eruption of murder."

As James notes, this definition of a murder mystery came to us from those stories written in the inter-war years (roughly, 1919 to 1939), that period of time known as the Golden Age of Murder Mysteries.

Still, James feels that certain core elements of a murder mystery will be present in any murder mystery story. Namely, (a) and (e) above.

The Role of the Police

Generally speaking, while murder mysteries may portray police officers as “ineffective, plodding, slow-witted and ill-educated” they are never corrupt. James writes that:

“Detective fiction is in the tradition of the English novel, which sees crime, violence and social chaos as an aberration, virtue and good order as the norm for which all reasonable people strive, and which confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible and moral universe. And in doing this it provides not only the satisfaction of all popular literature, the mild intellectual challenge of a puzzle, excitement, confirmation of our cherished beliefs in goodness and order, but also entry to a familiar and reassuring world in which we are both involved in violent death and yet remain personally inviolate both from responsibility and from its terrors. Whether we should expect this detachment from vicarious responsibility is, of course, another question and one which bears on the difference between the books of the years between the wars and the detective novels of today.”

The History of Murder Mysteries

I confess I didn’t know very much about the fascinating history of the murder mystery genre before I read “Talking About Detective Fiction.” James takes the reader on a journey from Edgar Allen Poe and his detective, C. Auguste Dupin (1840s), through Wilkie Collins' “The Woman in White” (1860) and “The Moonstone” (1868). That’s just the beginning, of course, she ruminates about the changes brought to the world by the end of the Second World War, the differences between American and English murder mysteries, and much more. James makes the history fascinating and I would highly recommend the slim volume for this section alone.

What I’ve discussed here barely touches the surface of the wealth of material in P.D. James’ extraordinary book. I highly recommend it to any and all readers—and writers—of detective fiction.

Well, that’s it for today. Thanks for reading and good writing!

Photo credit: Halloween.

About Words

I’ve been obsessed. That’s my excuse for not posting anything for the past week or so. Like Dr. Frankenstein, I’ve been busy creating (in my case, programming) my own personal monster.

Yes, this is the very same writing analysis program I began creating months ago as a way to figure out whether Stephen King was taking his own advice when it came to adverbs.

Writing: An Art or a Science?

Lately I’ve become interested in, perhaps even obsessed with, the question, “What is this thing we do, writing, and is it an art (a dark one!) or a science?”

If writing is an art—which it undoubtedly is in certain respects—then we wouldn’t expect there to be objective criteria for success or failure in the same way there are in, say, engineering or physics.

Engineers know the tensile strength of various substances. They know how they react when exposed to various conditions. If a beam breaks when it encounters a specific force then we expect that whenever a beam composed of the same material in such and such conditions is exposed to that very same force it will break as well.

This is, of course, not true when it comes to writing. The very same story will have the power to reduce one person to a puddle of tears but will leave another cold. And, yes, certainly, this has a great deal to do with these individuals’ different life histories, as well as their differing temperaments, but the fact remains that we cannot predict the effect a story will have on someone in the same way we can predict the effect a blow will have on, say, a pane of glass.

Further, in science we have objective measures regarding whether various statements are true. What lies at the heart of the scientific method is testing two hypotheses against each other, two statements that make contradictory predictions concerning observable phenomena.

In art, though, no such rules apply. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

When you write, you are free to write about whatever you choose in whatever manner you choose. I love that about this peculiar form of expression. As Stephen King has said, writing is an extension of our souls; it is a way to reach across space and time to share our thoughts and emotions with others.

So there IS a kind of measure of success. Did you communicate what you intended? If so, you succeeded.

The Craft of Writing

I’ve always, somewhat stubbornly, held that there must be a quantifiable difference between strong and weak writing.

To quantitatively define this difference is the purpose of my program. (Yes, I know. Tilting at windmills. ;)

Two Qualifications

1. I’m not saying that some writing is good and some bad.

2. I’m not talking about story, just about prose.

At one of the writing conferences I attended, a workshop on pacing, we were urged to read (or re-read) the Da Vinci Code with an eye to plot and pacing. Sure, when it comes to prose my taste runs more to Neil Gaiman or Margaret Atwood, but Dan Brown is no slouch when it comes to setting a brisk pace.

And James Patterson, while he did win the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel, has purposefully, self-consciously, changed his style. He uses short sentences made up of short, easy to understand, words. He is, in many ways, every bit the craftsperson other writers are, but his focus is on producing easy to read, fast paced, suspenseful prose. Stephen King may not care for Patterson’s prose but it is the way it is through effort as opposed to inexperience or inattention.

Groups A and B

I don’t want to use the terms “good books” and “bad books” because I view these terms as shorthand we all use, myself included, to talk about books which we like as opposed to those which we don’t. Instead, I’m going to talk about literary books versus non-literary ones.

Group A

These books are National Book Award winners as well as finalists and semifinalists for various prestigious book awards.

Group B

“Fifty Shades of Grey” is in group B as is “Atlanta Nights” by Travis Tea. You get the idea.

There are other books, Stephen King’s “Needful Things,” for instance, that occupy a no-man’s land between the two groups. I love King’s writing. He is a skillful writer, but there is a difference between, say, “Under The Dome” and “The Goldfinch.” I’m not saying one is better than the other, or even that one is more skillfully done. But there is a difference.

The Point

So, where am I going with this?

For me, writing is fundamentally about the communication of thoughts and feelings. Certain types or kinds of writing can do that better than others. That itself is something objective, something publicly observable.

Yes, of course, good grammar has a part to play in this, but there are more subtle factors at work. At times, the writing itself can be distracting. For instance, an over-reliance on “-ly” adverbs can distract one from the thoughts the writer is attempting to express, as can overuse of verbs ending in “-ing.”

Similarly, liberal use of “very” and other modifiers can make one’s text feel bloated and difficult to read.

Yes, the thought expressed by two sentences, one bloated, the other not, can be the same, but folks are much more likely to skip the former (tl;dr) and read the latter.

In any case, what I’ve been spending every spare nanosecond on is looking at the words that have been used to express various stories and seeing if there’s some sort of a … well, a regularity. I’ve been hoping to pick up on something objective, something that could help me figure out whether a certain book is closer to Group A or Group B.

So, really, I guess I’m looking for an objective measure for a subjective impression.

In any case, I’ve gotten my analysis program to the point where it assigns a book a number that represents whether it’s closer to Group A or Group B.

A Result

In part, I began this program as a reaction against claims that certain words are inherently weak and, therefore, shouldn't be used.

It can make sense that certain words, for example, “things,” are inherently weak because they are so vague and, as such, should be shunted aside in favor of more concrete terms. Instead of “things” talk of seashells and clouds, cats and alligators. Trade in the nebulous for the specific.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

But what would you say if I told you that Group A books have a higher frequency of use of “things” than do Group B books? They do!

That particular result knocked my proverbial socks off!

For example, Margaret Atwood uses “things” 153 times per 100 thousand words in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Similarly, Marilynne Robinson uses it 214 times per 100 thousand words in “Lila,” a National Book Award winner. In contrast, E.L. James in “Fifty Shades of Grey” uses it only 30 times per 100 thousand words.

In Conclusion

What does this mean? I’m not sure it means a whole lot, but it is a reminder not to take admonitions, especially when it comes to writing, at face value.

I’m not saying that just because, for instance, a National Book Award finalist used a certain word in her book that you should go and do the same. Not at all! I’m just saying that, clearly, one can use “things” quite a bit and still write a hell of a book!

As I continue to measure my expectations against reality I hope I will continue to be amazed. Thanks for reading!

Photo credit: "random" by Robert Couse-Baker, CC BY-2.0.