Jon University by Jon Law

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 JO  J O N U N I V E R S I T Y

 J O N M C R   AA E  

 

 

 

 

T E N E S N V N C T E N E B E R I S

 

 

 

 J O N U N I V E R S I T Y    First Edition, 2012

© Jon McRae. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 3.0 International license.

That means pass it on, copy it, print it, make it into an audiobook or a slideshow or a diorama. None of these things for profit. If you have a commercial project in mind, contact the author about licensing.

 jonmcrae.net

 

CONTENTS

ORIENTATION   1 0 1 ,   B A S I C T E C H N I Q U E  

 

1  3 

2 0 1 ,   A D V A N C E D T E C H N I Q U E  

17 

3 0 1 ,   T H E O R Y   

31 

4 0 1 ,   PR A C T I C E 

44 

1 S T   A P P E N D I X ,    I N S P I R A T I O N  

56

2 N D   A P P E N D I X ,    P U B L I S H I N G  

61

3 R D   A P P E N D I X ,    P E T P E E V E S  

63 

4 T H   A P P E N D I X ,    R E A D I N G L I S T  

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COMMENCEMENT 

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ORIENTATION

The advice contained in these courses is one part mine, nine parts the advice of my peers and my lessers and my  betters. In art very ve ry little is true or false. f alse. I deal in what is useful or useless. Put each piece of advice to the test for  yourself. Keep what works, discard discard the rest. The proof is in the pu pudding. dding.

For those of you who prefer a set of credentials to knowledge that speaks for itself I will provide a brief bio. I write.  You may read a few fe w of my stories stori es at  at  jonmcrae.net. jonmcrae.net. I am a published author, just like Umberto Eco or the Olsen Twins. I read, I critique, I travel. If I were stranded on a desert island the five books I’d bring are the collected  works of Shakespeare, The Koran, Blood Meridian, a Chinese / English dictionary, and a blank blank book to write in. A  blank book with many, many, many pages. If I didn’t have a pen I’d twist my hair into a nib and use my fluids for ink.

The sum advice I have to pass on is divisible into four courses: Basic Technique, Advanced Technique, Theory, and Practice. These courses are supplemented by four appendices on the topics of inspiration and publishing, with a small section outlining literary pet peeves and a list of recommended reading.

Before we begin, let us establish a few compass points so that we may properly orient ourselves throughout the courses.

1. 

The best fiction convinces us it’s real. Coleridge said poetic faith is the willing suspension of disbelief. In plain terms that means the reader forgets he’s a reader.  Whether he reads to escape, to understand, understand, or to explore is his business. Our business as  writers of fiction is to help him experience, if only for a while, something that does not exist outside his imagination or ours. If we write well he will finish our story and say, ‘Oh wait, that didn’t actually just happen, it was only a story.’ If we write poorly, he will realize this before he’s finished and his suspended disbelief will reengage. The story from then on will only ever be a story to him. He might even quit reading. For lack of any convenient technical term I call this a hiccup. It is a seed of doubt that may grow to corrupt your reader’s entire poetic faith. It is in your base killing your dudes. It is your

 

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artistic nemesis. 2. 

There are no good or bad writers. Only writers at different stages of development. Each of us starts off writing poorly. Some of us choose to develop from there, others choose not to. Some don’t even recognize improvement as an option in the first place.

3. 

The term ‘body of work’ is no coincidence. A body has lovely parts like eyes and curves,  but it also has h as less attractive parts like armpits and an asshole. You will write armpits.  You will write an asshole. Admit it. Come to terms with it and move on. Otherwise  you’ll end up paralysed, either by your fear fe ar of failure or because you will mistake poor early attempts for failed attempts. It is not a failure to write an asshole. Imagine a body  without the ugly parts. It would just be a face and breasts and legs floating disconnected disconnected in the air. What good is that? Lovely parts unbound by mundane and ugly parts have no meaning and so become alien, untrustworthy, ugly themselves. No part is unnecessary. No part is unimportant, because it takes every part together to complete a body. Give each part, each story or novel or poem, the care and attention it deserves. Make it as good as you can at this stage in your development. The next one will be better.

4. 

Let me be clear about my position on rules versus exceptions. It is essential to learn the rules. It is wise most of the time to follow the rules. It is on occasion a legitimate and powerful gesture to break the rules. Any idiot could lie and claim to be Spartacus. It’s doing it at just the right time, in just the right way, for just the right reason, that makes it an act and a measure of greatness. gre atness.

 

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101, BA SI C T E CH N I QUE

This is by no means an exhaustive study of technique. It is merely a review of certain techniques I find particularly useful, which are commonly misunderstood or ignored, or which have revolutionized my process and I’m excited to share. A number of these techniques span several levels of skill, so expect to revisit them accordingly throughout the courses. For now it’s just the basics.

 

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P U N C T U A T I O N ,   I — First a brief refresher of the problem marks, followed by an explanation of why I consider them the problem marks. Spoiler alert: it’s most of them.

 



The semicolon. A semicolon joins ideas related enough to share a sentence but not congruous enough to be joined by a comma. This includes long or complex articles in a list. ; 

 

The colon. A colon introduces a list or an apposite. : 

 

Parentheses. These delimit thoughts outside the narrative flow but pertinent to it. (Like





so.)   



The em dash. This badboy can function as parentheses— by inserting a related thought or detail—or, chameleon that it is, it can function as a colon — by offering a dramatic introduction or apposition.

 



The ellipsis. An ellipsis indicates that th at some part of a quotation has bee beenn omitted. … 

The semicolon. Where do I begin? First, it is widely overused. Not only that, but it is easy to overuse. I rarely see discerning use of the semicolon. If you give it an inch, it will take a mile. Use of semicolons is an easy way to make  your writing look intelligent or informed.

Second, given that the semicolon’s function is more or less halfway between the comma and the period, its use is largely arbitrary. I say go big or go home. Separate your clauses with a comma or a period. A period lends stark outline to either clause. A comma provides a solid bridge from one clause to the next. A semicolon weakens the position of both clauses. Next time you read an article or a story imagine each semicolon replaced by a period or a comma + conjunction. Do the sentences lose anything? Does the narrative have h ave less impact? In almost every case I find the writing stronger for having clear cut punctuation.

Third, one of my biggest pet peeves and a sure sign of amateur writing: semicolons are often misused in place of colons. I don’t know where this habit started but it has become rampant in online articles and occasionally even in  

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published stories and novels, which must have been printed while the editors were all on vacation. I vacation.  I have to tell you something; I love you. you. Look at that. I found it in the dictionary next to the entry for ugly. The worst part is that the semicolon’s function is so wishy-washy that its use in this case is perfectly acceptable. You could replace most periods and commas in any piece of writing with semicolons and they might all be acceptably used. All the more reason not to give it an inch. If and when you decide to use a semicolon, at least be sure each part of the sentence it divides is an independent clause. That means each clause must qualify as a sentence by itself. Lines like  I love the way her hair smells; the way her eyes sparkle fail sparkle  fail the test, because the second clause amounts only to a subject. There is no predicate to make it a proper sentence.

The colon. Not a problem mark so much as one often forgotten or misunderstood. As indicated above the colon rather than the semicolon is the appropriate mark to introduce a list or an apposite.  I admire three things in a  person: honesty, consistency, and grit . Simple enough, n’est pas? In the case of apposition you may just as easily use a colon as an em dash. A colon or dash in this case is like an arrow pointing at some important statement which follows the logic of the introductory clause. There was only one flaw in his plan: he forgot to lock the door . On to parentheses. These aren’t a problem in a technical sense so much as they are in a stylistic sense. They can be used to humorous effect, much like footnotes, by breaking the fourth wall. The problem arises when they’re used in all seriousness. Your job as a writer is to compose the narrative in a consistent, believable format. The use of parentheses is tantamount to admitting you are not very good at that job. Parentheses effectively say, ‘Oh wait, I forgot something. Here’s this other point I’m not skilled enough to weave into the narrative.’ That, of course, amounts to a hiccup. It reminds the reader he’s being narrated to, and not very well at that. In the case of a subordinate clause or other aside within a sentence, prefer commas to parentheses. Given the size of the city, its colossal towers and sprawling streets, it could take weeks to find where they’d hidden the disk disk.. In the case of an independent sentence, try it first without parentheses to be absolutely sure they’re necessary. Odds are they’re not.

The em dash. I have very few problems with the em dash. In fact, I like it. I prefer it in places I might otherwise use a colon or parentheses. My only advice is to be wary of overuse. Especially in the case of dramatic introduction. The em dash is a great visual cue, almost cinematic in effect. This makes it all the more tempting to abuse. Too many dramatic introductions make your work read like a movie trailer or some sensationalist investigative report show. He thought he could get away with it—he was wrong. She’d entered a race against time—and she was already too

 

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late. Et—cetera.  Et—cetera. 

Ellipsis. The most abused of all the marks and by far my least favourite. Use an ellipsis when you’re writing an rub.. Like that. Do essay and need to trim unrelated material from a quotation. To be, or not to be…ay, there’s the rub not, as many lazy or ignorant writers do, use an ellipsis to indicate a pause. It is the job of a comma to indicate a  brief pause, like this. It is the job of a period to indicate a longer pause. A full stop, as it were. In the case of a dramatic pause, use an em dash. If the pause is in dialogue and long or otherwise significant, consider it an opportunity for narrative flourish. Describe a character’s body language in the pause to give the reader a sense of her mood. Or describe the scenery to indicate a character’s preoccupation or wandering attention. For example:

‘I thought you were dead!’ she said. ‘Me too…I guess I’m just lucky.’

‘I thought you were dead!’ she said. ‘Me too.’ He opened his collar to show her the stitches along his neck. ‘I guess I’m just lucky.’

 You might say, say , ‘But plenty of published authors use ellipses to indicate pause or to emphasize…certain words.’ Does that make it okay? I don’t know. Plenty of pop stars star s lip sync in concert. Does that mean you should?

 

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D I A L O G U E ,   I — Consider this an extension of punctuation. How to punctuate and attribute dialogue. In an attributed line of said tag—the attribution is considered part of the same sentence. It is said or dialogue—that is, one with a he said  or she said tag—the accordingly separated by a comma. Examples: He said, ‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ he said.

In the first example the period is enclosed by the quotation marks. In the second example the comma is likewise enclosed. This is standard. Leading with attribution as in the first example is almost always more awkward than following with attribution, but it is occasionally useful. Also in the case of leading with attribution, the comma is interchangeable with a colon. He said: ‘This is also acceptable.’  

In cases where a brief line of narrative intervenes between lines of dialogue, there are two ways to punctuate. The first involves attribution. The second does not. In the first case, construct everything as you would without the narration and just tag the narration to the end of the attribution. In the second case, the dialogue is not attributed and the narrative is a separate sentence.

‘I don’t know,’ Jenny said, biting her lip. ‘It just seems, you know, wrong.’  

‘I don’t know.’ Jenny bit her lip. ‘It just seems, you know, wrong.’

 When using a character’s name in attribution there is no hard and fast rule about whether to lead or follow with said   or said Name. Name. The rule I follow is sound. Which sounds better? One method will suit and the tag.  Name said enhance the rhythm of the sentence. The other method will detract from it. Each case is different.

I take the same approach to determine where in a long line of dialogue to intercede with attribution. Almost every time the best place is in the first natural pause in the character’s delivery. Compare the following variations:

 

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‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to call you.’

‘Hi, I’ve been meaning to call you,’ he said.  said. 

The first is stronger not only because the narrative accommodates the character’s delivery, but because it establishes the identity of the speaker sooner rather than later. Especially in a scene where multiple characters are speaking, it is a courtesy to your reader to make it clear who says what. At least at the beginning of an exchange. Once a dialogue-heavy scene has established its rhythm it isn’t always necessary to tag each line. In a scene with only two speakers you may outright drop the attribution once either party is clearly iidentified. dentified.

said.. Even when the line is a question, the question  As for terms for speech, it is best in almost every case to use said inquired , , he posited , are unnecessary. If the character is not in fact asked , he inquired mark is indication enough. Tags like he asked , screamed   or she whispered  laughed   or she spat   or whatever might apply. whispered  or he laughed speaking it is suitable to use he screamed However, if your dialogue is written well enough, even these aren’t often necessary. An exclamation point may be indicated , , she theorized theorized   enough to inform the reader how the line is delivered. Tags like he argued , she lectured , he indicated are not worth your time. Instead, construct the dialogue so that the reader will hear the character’s delivery. If you can do this, you will require re quire attribution only to distinguish between speakers.

‘Yes,’ he agreed.

‘I hate you!’ he said angrily.

‘My name is Robert,’ lied George.

 Although at first the attribution in these lines seems appropriate, when you think twice it is in fact redundant. Trust your writing. Trust your writing and trust your reader to decipher it. Otherwise you risk insulting him, and that is a patented recipe for hiccups.

 

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SHOW

V S .   T E L L ,   I —

 A common piece of advice in writing poetry is to show rather than tell. It is just as important in writing prose. It is was   also often misapplied and misunderstood. I’ve seen writing advisors go so far as to say that any use of the word was constitutes telling and to avoid it. tell is the difference between explaining an event and depicting that event. A vague  At the basic level, show versus tell is distinction, I know. Consider the following examples:

He didn’t like it . 

That is telling.

He frowned. frowned. 

That is showing. Both lines communicate the same sentiment. One exposes the character’s internal reaction. It tells the reader directly what the character feels. The other depicts the character’s external reaction. It implies his feelings via behaviour.

There is a place in prose for both showing and telling.

 

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E C O N O M Y ,    I —  A good writer is not one who uses small words or big bi g words, few words wor ds or many words, but one who uses each  word well. Balzac put it best: ‘Power is not revealed by striking hard, or strik striking ing often, but by striking true.’

 

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D E S C R I P T I O N ,   I —  As a reader I tend to forget description in direct proportion to its length and intricacy. A long description is a grocery list. Her eyes are like this, her cheek like that, her nose like this, her hair like that. Who cares? Even if we as  writers have a clear and complete portrait in our head, there is only so much we can influence our reader’s imagination. Past a certain level of detail our descriptions can actually frustrate their own purpose. The reader  becomes overloaded with details so he forgets them all and substitutes his own. Or, worse, he recognizes our amateur writing for what it is i s and he abandons our story altogether.

 As a general rule, in any given description I provide provi de a broad overview overv iew and one or more memorable details. That goes for characters, settings, objects, anything at all. The descriptee is roughly like this, plus it is notable for features x and  and y  y..

 As I reader I am most affected by this approach, so it’s what I gravitate toward as a writer. The overview gets the reader in the ballpark. He might not share your exact vision of the character or the scene, but he gets the idea. A detail or two gives the overview some foreground. Even one striking detail can create a real sense of depth  between that foreground and background. If there is anything crucial about a given person, place or thing—a landmark that will figure in the plot, an article of clothing that conveys some part of a character’s history or personality, a scuff just so on a piece of furniture that tells us it’s been used in an unusual way—include it as just such a detail.

The office was a glass and steel monolith with a two story concrete H over the entrance. It hardly matters how many floors the office has, or exactly how tall it is, or what colour the windows are tinted. Saying it’s big and glass and steel gets you in my ballpark. Later in the story a saboteur will plant a shaped charge on the concrete H, which will tip it onto the CEO at the ribbon cutting ceremony. The H is the only detail I need  you the reader to remember. What you imagine is probably probably some skyscraper in your city with a big H tacked on. It doesn’t matter if you and I picture the exact same building, because both pictures serve the story equally.

The detective had just returned from a three week bender starring himself, the couch, the TV, and a chorus of gin. The chief called it a suspension. He called it a much-needed vacation.

 

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In this example nothing is actually said about the detective’s appearance, but the man you picture is probably close to the one I envision. A man between thirty and forty, scruffy and maybe a little dishevelled. He might have dark hair and he might have chiselled features a la romance novel detectives. In any case there is no need for a grocery list description. If I want any detail explicitly understood, I will include them. I might append, You could light a match on his cheek if it wouldn’t ignite the gin fumes still wafting off him , him , or some such line to establish that he is dishevelled. I might include his age. If he’s young, you will probably imagine him as handsome. If he’s old, you will probably imagine him either rugged or dumpy, and even that can be resolved with some other miniscule detail.

That goes for people and things. The same approach works for places too. I cannot count how many books I stopped reading because they opened with some socialist rendering of a scene. By socialist I mean each detail is given the same priority and airtime as every other details. This sort of descriptions blends into a meaningless soup. By the time I reach the last article on the list I’ve forgotten the first. The trees were like this, the bushes were like that, the stream was like this, the clouds were like that, the road was like this . In some cases each article is allowed a digressive inspection, its own exploration through metaphor. This is all well and good in moderation, but when each article is treated so expansively the reader is likely to feel lost. I see nothing wrong with a little fascism in description. Give a broad impression of the scene and pick a few significant features to point out. Trust that the reader will fill in the rest on his own. Establish the important facts of the scene early. The reader will get to know it further as the story unfolds and incidental details emerge.

 A reader’s intellect plays secretary to his imagination. If you appeal to the secretary, you will have to wait for the secretary to puzzle out your message, to decide its priority, to petition the boss for approval, et cetera et cetera. It is usually ideal to bypass the intellect altogether and engage the imagination directly. I like to build my descriptions around a single image or metaphor that is sharp and palpable. An image so immediate and identifiable that it knocks the intellect over and grabs the imagination. Get the boss’s attention and the secretary  will be obliged to fill out your paperwork in due course. Your writing should never never need an appointm appointment. ent.

Take for example this line:

The embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the  ground before them.  

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The comparison of embers to a heap of living viscera is so unexpected and unconventional that our intellect has no time to process it before our imagination leaps into action and pictures it clearly, fully, powerfully. It is simple and direct. It evokes not only an image but a mood. Cormac McCarthy, who gave us this line in Blood Meridian, is known for this sort of grim, sidelong description. You might not intend your style to be as eccentric and brooding as his, but you can just as easily employ in your own way the principles that make his writing memorable.

Give the reader an overview. A rough shape, a background, a ballpark he can match with a person, place or thing already present in his memory. Then give him some detail or details to accent the shape, to provide foreground to the background and thereby create a sense se nse of dimension, to establish as a new entity that person, place or thing he already has in mind. The reader will do half the work for you if you let him. For every thing you try to transpose from your imagination to his, there’s something already there waiting to be drawn on.

 A picture is i s worth a thousand words. A thousand words depreciate real fast when you spend them all on just one picture.

 

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 A D V E R B S &   A D J E C T I V E S   —  Adverbs and adjectives are present in every piece of writing. As a result it’s easy to forget that they are not building  blocks. Even if they are often useful and sometimes necessary, they are not strictly required to communicate a series of events. Still, it’s natural to use them even in the earliest stages of drafting a story. To make sure you’re only using them when useful or necessary, ask yourself: what’s the default?

If the average reader will assume a condition by default, there is no need to explain what is already inferred.  It was a dark night . Duh, right? If I say night  , you will assume dark on dark on your own. The ocean covered the horizon, blue and sparkling . If I say ocean what ocean what colour do you assume it is? i s? Blue. You might even assume sparkling, if the sun is up.

 You do not have to narrate the norm. norm. You have only to narra narrate te whatever diverges from it. The amount ooff work this  will save you is inestimable. If, say, the aforementioned ocean is in the tropics, I might say instead it iiss  green and sparkling . Then you picture something you wouldn’t have by default.

Some ascetic editors recommend throwing out adverbs altogether. I admit no love for adverbs, but they are in rare often , occasions useful. A few of them we commonly forget are adverbs and we cannot do without. Case in point: often , only , never  , always. always. only ,

 As for adverbs you can do without, there are hordes. Employ the same guideline as adjectives: what’s the default? quickly. If a character is stroking his chin, it is If a character is running, it is redundant to say she’s running quickly. unnecessary to tell us he’s doing so thoughtfully thoughtfully because  because the whole gesture is one of thoughtfulness. If a character is falling, you need only modify that verb if the character falls calmly or gracefully or in some other manner the happily , , praying  praying lustily lustily , , creeping quickly , quickly , et reader would not assume by default. Likewise if a character is shouting happily cetera. Modify an action only if it is not conducted in a natural fashion.

If you want to add drama or power to a particular action, don’t rely on adverbs. A regular verb plus an adverb is gracefully , , try not nearly as effective as a single strong verb. A verb is a building block. Instead of saying she moved gracefully sashayed  or she swept   or use some other verb which more precisely and fully paints the picture you want. she sashayed   Whenever you feel inclined to use a verb  verb  + adverb combo, take a minute to see if there’s a verb already for the action you want to describe.  

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S E N T E N C E  V   AA R I E T Y   — It is a courtesy to yourself and your reader to vary the structure of your sentences. How drastically you vary them is a matter of style and taste. I will only supply a caveat rregarding egarding a couple of weak sentence structures.

The first follows this pattern: she did this as that happened. happened. Everything takes place as something else is taking place. as   sentence has its place. Also like every good structure, that place is not Like every good structure, the as everywhere. Use sparingly and wisely.

The second follows this pattern: verbing this, he verbed that . Have you ever used this structure when you speak? house.. Say it out loud, go ahead. Use it in a ghost story at the campfire. I Say it out loud. Tying his shoes, he left the house dare you. Not only is this structure unnatural to the ear, but it also usually depicts a contradiction. The verbs get in each other’s way. Have you ever walked out of the house at the same time as tying your shoes? If so, that lazy sentence doesn’t do justice to the acrobatic humour of the scene. Even iinn a functional example, as in the following from Haruki Murakami, the phrasing is stiff and unnatural: Sucking on a lemon drop, I leaned against the chain-link  fence and looked at the garden. garden . There is no contradiction between the actions, but the sentence remains awkward. This structure is a last resort even in a famine of sentence variety. Use that garbage when you speak. I dare you.

 

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N A M E S &   N O U N S   — Following a note on variety, this is a note against it. Whenever you feel tempted to use synonyms or alternate descriptions of a person, an object, et cetera, I advise you to resist. It is a bad habit to introduce multiple terms for single entities. Let’s say a narrator introduces a bottle of gin. In the next sentence when the gin is poured into a liquid.. In a third sentence it is called the deceptively water-like substance in glass, the narrator refers to it as the clear liquid the glass glass.. This says the writer isn’t confident in his writing. There isn’t enough originality or variety in his characters, plots, scenes, et cetera, so he must make up for it in original and varied terms for mundane articles. He fears his wheel won’t roll well enough so he tries to reinvent it.

If you want to describe a commonplace object or substance, consolidate your description into the thing’s introduction. If you think your reader doesn’t know gin is clear then state it when the gin first appears. If you think  your reader is an idiot and doesn’t doesn’t know gin is liquid tthen hen by all means tell him. him. Just do it first thing. From tthen hen on, refer to it by its common name.

Likewise with characters. Resist the temptation to sprinkle relevant info throughout the text via references. Bill references.  Bill Smith did this. The professor did that. The avid cyclist and father of three said this . Did I mention Bill is a professor and an avid cyclist and has three kids? Three disparate and non-complementary references to the same guy is just asking for hiccups. If you have something to tell the reader about a character, do it at the character’s first appearance. Or do it in a more natural way in a later scene, by showing the character at his work (Reader: ‘Oh, he’s a professor.’) or his day off (‘Oh look, he likes to ride bikes.’) or at home (‘Oh, he procreated.’). Otherwise refer to each character by a standard name. Their first name, their last name, their title, whatever. Pick one. Consistency is  what’s important. If you refer once to Bill and later to Mr. Smith the reader will tthink hink some other dude has entered the scene.

I make and recommend exceptions to this rule in cases where a character has several titles each disparate enough to underscore a given narrative line with mood or tone. In the case of a prime minister, a royal, an ecclesiastic, et cetera, using a title versus a name can show a different side of the character. Even then, of course, it is important to clearly establish what titles and stations belong to the character before you switch between them. the m.

In general, if there’s already a word for what you want to say, use it. That’s what words are for.  

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201, ADVANCED TECHNIQUE

If 101 is black and white then 201 is shades of grey. Basic Technique is your line, your shape. Advanced Technique is the shading that will more than anything else define your style. These are not rules so much as considerations. How to approach, rather than how to execute.

 

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D I A L O G U E ,   I I — Dialogue must be plausible. That’s 101 level stuff. Dialogue enters the realm r ealm of 201 because it has more dimension and function than simply rendering characters plausible in the reader’s estimation.

First, dialogue may be used to create variety in the structure of a story. It is one of a group of narrative modes. Other modes being action, description, exposition, introspection, summarization, recollection, transition. There is no universally agreed-upon set of modes but these are at least the major commonly accepted modes.

 Aside from the events of a story, the manner of its telling and the balance of these modes modes will determine how good it is. By good, I mean loosely that the story is well constructed, entertaining, capable of holding the reader’s attention and suspending her disbelief. A story with too much exposition is boring. A story with too much dialogue lacks action and scenery. A story need not have each mode in equal parts to be good, but it does want a  balance appropriate to its purpose, purpose, its theme and its events.

Second, dialogue is just as capable of informing the reader as narrative exposition. The most common note of critique I make when reading novels, professional and amateur alike, is ‘That paragraph could be dialogue.’ Most often the author has broken up a solid scene of dialogue with exposition to explain each line. The author follows a character’s speech with his private thoughts about what he just said, that sort of thing. In each case it would be more natural, more consistent, and less hiccup-inducing to bundle all the info into the dialogue. Naturally the info must be arranged to suit the character’s delivery. It might end up incomplete, ambiguous, or not entirely true, but this will only serve to better establish your characters. It shows the reader how they express themselves. If the info is so crucial to the story that you cannot afford to have it misinterpreted, then save any relevant summarization until after the dialogue has run its course. If it absolutely cannot wait, at least save it for a lull in the rhythm of the dialogue. As we discussed dis cussed in PUNCTUATION , I: save an ellipsis, narrate a pause.

Robert De Niro said of acting, ‘It’s important to indicate. People don’t try to show their feelings, they try to hide them.’ Excellent advice, and it applies perfectly to writing. A writer is an actor responsible for portraying the whole cast. This doesn’t mean you have to be an accomplished actor, of course. It only means you would do well to understand the principles of a convincing performance. How people speak, what they reveal and what they  

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conceal, with whom they are pushy and with wi th whom subordinate.

I recommend against the use of italics in dialogue. Try instead to employ metre and rhythm to convey subtlety in speech. This gives the reader some leeway to enact the lines for himself, to imagine the speed and intonation of a given line. The minute you emphasize a word with italics, you neuter the reader’s ability to hear your characters.  And if you italicize one instance of emphasis, why not every instance? The same goes for words in all capital letters. Write well enough that you never need to use them.

Have faith in your dialogue. Let your characters speak for themselves.

 

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SHOW

V S .   T E L L ,   I I —

De Niro’s advice carries over from characterization into our general approach to exposition and explanation. Think of show show versus tell in terms of connecting the dots. To show is to give the reader dots. To tell is to connect the dots for him. It is wise to connect a few dots to get the reader started on the big picture. If you don’t connect any, your story will  be nearly impossible to penetrate. Everything happens at a remove, leaving the reader excluded. The dots are uniformly spaced and without any connections to even hint at the final picture. The reader is entirely free to draw conclusions about the significance of the story, about the characters, about the events, but she isn’t likely to care.  Any interpretation she makes is exactly as valid as any other. If, however, you narrow the endless possibilities down to a few potent alternatives via a little telling, the reader’s choice becomes personal and significant. She may ask, ‘Did the protagonist sacrifice himself out of love or despair?’ To reach an interpretation she will draw equally on the narrative and her own feelings. Without clues she can only ask, ‘Did the protagonist sacrifice himself out of love, despair, boredom, charity, revenge, alienation, hatred, or by accident?’ The wealth of possibilities devalues the act of choosing one.

On the other hand, if you connect too many dots your story will read like a report. Its events, characters, themes, and significance are all laid plainly on the table in one configuration and one configuration only. There is no room for the reader to interpret or to draw her own conclusions at all. The author has flat out explained exactly why everyone did everything and what each event means. This excludes the reader from the story just as much as too much showing. Everyone knows the saying easier said than done. Keep this in mind when you write. In most cases the easy tune.. If this is a approach to narration is to say plainly, This character is shy, works at a bakery, and can’t carry a tune tertiary character and it would be too digressive to convey these qualities by devoting a scene to showing them, then by all means just tell it. If, however, this is your main character and these qualities figure significantly in the story, then take the time to establish them by showing the character in his natural habitat. It is a story after all, not a speed date or a job interview. Let your readers observe. Let them get to know your characters as they would real people.

 

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In description, what counts as showing is the apparent facts. The journalism. The who, the what, the where, the  when.

He was tall and red. He had dark hair, a crooked grin, and a tail.

 What counts as telling is anything not apparent. The why, among other things. Anything that may be inter interpreted, preted, anything that is difficult to measure, anything not immediately i mmediately plain to the five senses.

He was intelligent, ancient, and pure evil.

Notice that the qualities enumerated in the first example above imply the qualities told in the second example. Tall and red, crooked grin plus tail. That’s Th at’s a fair description of the devil. Given that the devil is a commonly known symbol, it is natural for us to assume he is ancient and evil, and probable for us to assume he is intelligent. But these are subjective, relative qualities. Even after a character has been introduced he can still be scrutinized for interpretable qualities. You may introduce the devil as intelligent, but acts he perpetrates later in the story might  be viewed by the reader as unintelligent. Ancient tells us he’s old, but it doesn’t tell us how h ow old nor whether or not he looks old. Everyone knows the devil is supposed to be ancient but when is he ever depicted with grey hair? That renders ancient moot as a descriptor. descri ptor.

Better than tell the reader a character is like this or like that, just show that character behaving however they will. If  you depict a red guy with a tail tormenting people, insinuating himself h imself into the highest echelons of society and then gumming up the works, and relating firsthand stories of the dawn of time, then the reader will connect the dots on his own. He will wi ll recognize that your devil is evil, intelligent, and ancient.

Be careful with a mixture of showing and telling. If you describe the devil as evil and then narrate his evil works,  you risk not sharing definitions with your reader. You might show the devil stealing candy from a baby. Your reader might think nothing short of murdering that child is evil. If the reader finds your claims and your evidence at odds, he will hiccup.

This advice covers not only characters but other nouns you will describe. Must you say,  It was an eerie scene? scene ? How about instead you describe to us a disused Victorian manor on a precipice under moonlight with bats flying

 

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around and the wind howling. Odds are the reader will catch on that the scene is eerie. Or at least that it’s supposed to be eerie.

This will lead to variation in how your readers perceive the meanings and themes of your work, but interpretation is part of the fun of reading. Given that each of us sees through the lens of our experience and beliefs anyway, there is nothing you can do to guarantee that each reader will get the same thing out of your work. And why should they?

 

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E C O N O M Y ,    I I — In the commerce of fiction words are not the sole currency. There are also scenes, settings, characters, action, themes, and other elements of style and composition. Look on each with wi th an economic eye.

That tertiary character who shows up late in the book. Is he worth keeping? Does the plot hinge on a decision he makes? Is he the foil for revealing an important characteristic of the protagonist? Does he provide a moment of levity to counterbalance the gravity of the climaxing story arc? If he doesn’t serve a clear purpose, cut him. Likewise, if you have a clear need, find a natural way to serve it. By natural I mean let the solution arise from within the story rather than inserting an arbitrary solution, deus ex machina. Prefer reuse of a character or device you’ve already established. The fewer unnecessary new elements you introduce, the better. Unless, of course, your purpose is to knock the reader off balance with a game-changing wildcard. Even then your purpose is better served if the wildcard is introduced i ntroduced early in the story but is ssoo innocuous or forgettable the reader never ssees ees it coming.

 You might already know the rule called Chekhov’s Gun. To wit: if there’s a gun on the mantle in act one, it had  better come into play in act two or three. Chekhov I think meant it in a fairly literal sense, but I take it in a broader sense. The gun doesn’t necessarily have to be discharged in order to serve a purpose. It may adumbrate a character’s past. It may punctuate the story’s theme of violence or colonial tyranny. A character may one day take it down from the mantle and smash it because to him it symbolizes his impotence. Whatever the case, the rule stands. If you include a conspicuous or decorative element it had better be there for a reason. If you need filler or fluff, make it relevant.

 As for economy in themes it is tempting, especially in first novels, to explore as many themes as possible. To convey every brilliant idea or belief you have. To share with the reader every epiphany you have thus far experienced in life.

Resist.

The more themes you explore, the less potent each theme becomes. Naturally any story will touch on multiple subjects and depict a variety of relationships and convey an array of messages both intended and not. These are ingredients whose proportion and combination determine the overall flavour of your story. Be judicious.

 

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Otherwise your stories will taste like swamp water.

 Also, if you’re in the writing game for the long haul you would be wise to bank some of those ideas and that experience so as to mete them out over a long and prestigious career. Don’t spend it all in one place.

 

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D E S C R I P T I O N ,   I I —  A description is capable of being more than the sum of its parts. Even the description of a simple object can communicate a great deal to the reader. Tone, themes, mood, tension, textures. For example:

He crossed the street into his old neighbourhood. The houses leaned shoulder to shoulder up the street, their windows open and curtains lifting in a breeze.

He crossed the street into his old neighbourhood. The houses crowded the street, their windows like eyes vacant of whatever soul once lay behind them.  them. 

Both examples depict the same scene, but each has a unique tone. They set a mood without having to say what the mood is. Especially in a story which shows more than it tells, moody description can establish pathos and give the reader a view to the inner workings of your characters and scenes without ever really exposing those w workings. orkings.

 

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O P E N I N G S &  C L O S I N G S  — I’m a big fan of strong simple beginnings. Nine out of ten books I pick up in the shop I put right back down  because the openings fail to interest me in the slightest. Not always for the same reason. One opens with Elmore Leonard’s hated rundown of the weather. Another opens with a conversation in medias res—a boring conversation at that, or one which dully sets up the plot or dumps a heap of back-story in the reader’s lap. The list of weak openings is endless.

 A strong opening can use the descriptive mode or the eexpository xpository or whatever particular mode best suits the story. The strength of an opening does not depend on its mode. Its strength depends, rather, on its simplicity and its relevance.

 A simple opening functions in prose as a thesis functions in an essay. It is brief enough to establish a place, a person or a concept central to the plot. It does not launch a circuitous journey which concludes several paragraphs later at the introduction of a central figure. It also does not meander or digress, forestalling the direction and tone of the story rather than establishing it immediately and authoritatively. It should be relevant. It should give the reader a clear sense of the story. Its identity. Its essence. Whether it does so in a literal, symbolic, or emotional sense is your prerogative.

Time seems to pass.

That’s the opening sentence of Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist . This is what I’m talking about. Simple doesn’t have to mean short, of course, but it is easier to be simple and short than to be simple and long. Time seems to pass. That establishes the story in its purest form without really telling the reader anything at all. Not time passes, not time seemed to pass. A number of books open with philosophical propositions or explorations that span several paragraphs before anything of the story is revealed. This one line accomplishes just as much implication and inquiry in only four words, without digressing di gressing one iota from the story it’s employed to introduce.

 It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone telepho ne ringing three times tim es in the dead of night, and the voice on the other o ther end asking for someone he was not.

 

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That’s the opening sentence of Paul Auster’s New Auster’s New York Trilogy. Trilogy . As much as I love the book this is in my opinion a perfectly mediocre opening. It leads into the story without any frills or ceremony. It establishes a mood of mystery and a noir hint of things not being quite right, which are integral to the story. It might prefer function to form, but I’d still take a mediocre opening over one that tries too hard to be good.

 Jack Torrence thought: Officious little prick .

That’s the opening to The Shining   by by Stephen King. It is nearly a good opening. It establishes the protagonist, and even though it opens with a conversation in medias res at least that conversation is interesting. So we assume, given it’s between a sarcastic lead and a self-important clerk. Where it fails is in the delivery. King abandons the usual order of thought then thinker (or speech then speaker), which both reads counter-intuitively and scans terribly given its rhythm. See how many different ways you can rewrite that line. Which is best? Try the same exercise with your own opening lines.

Wax crept along the ragged fence, his boots scraping the dry ground.

That’s the opening of Brandon Sanderson’s Alloy Sanderson’s  Alloy of Law. Law. It isn’t as bad as some purple romance novel opening,  but it’s lame enough to serve as an example. Of the articles an opening may and ought to establish—character, setting, theme, plot, mood—this line establishes only one. A man named Wax. The rest of the line is needless and unclear description. If the fence’s raggedness is noteworthy then why not its material or its height? Since the ensuing paragraph describes the fence in some detail, and the fence has nothing to do with the story, it would be  better to drop the adjective entirely. The same goes for the ground. Is it dry stone, dry dirt, dry jello? Before you use a generic term like ground, ask yourself if you wouldn’t be better off using a specific category. Prefer concrete terms to generalities. From the scraping boots we may infer one of two things: the character is an amateur when it comes to creeping, or the author and his editor don’t understand that scraping one’s boots is noisy and counterproductive to sneaking. The rest of the paragraph makes it clear the latter is true. This is nitpicking with a fine-toothed comb, I know, but if you give hiccups an inch they will take a mile.

 As for closings, I’m a big fan of punch. I like to finish a story and have to sit bac backk for a minute to steady myself from an impact likewise literal, symbolic or emotional. All of the above at best. I like a closing that leaves me not with the need for points to be clarified, but with guesses as to what the story’s ambiguities might mean. A strong closing

 

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makes you want to read the story again. A strong opening you will understand twice as well once you’ve reached the end and begun anew.

This isn’t just creative advice, it’s also business advice. Literary agents begin reading dozens of manuscripts per month. They do not finish reading dozens. You have about the first five pages in which to make an impression. If  your genre of choice is literary fiction, don’t recoil because you think a punchy opening is some offence to aesthetics. Pulp novels may be hundred metre dashes and literary novels may be marathons but both start with a pistol shot and both end in some display of fanfare and satisfaction.

The counterpoint to this advice is to beware of gimmick. In the case of openings and closings, strong is not inherently synonymous with shocking. Try too hard to be strong and you will only end up reeking of, well, trying too hard.

 

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PERSPECTIVE  — Briefly, when deciding between first or third person, present or past tense—or, you daredevil you, second person or future tense—consider the effect each perspective has on the narrative. First person is intimate. The narrator is directly involved in the story. Third person is remote, even when omniscient. Present tense creates a sense of urgency and heightens the tension of events by describing them as they occur. Past tense is stable, perhaps more convincing because it gives us the feeling that these events are facts of history rather than improvised scenes.

There are a number of nuances comprehended by each perspective. Is the narrator limited or omniscient? Is the narrator reliable? I have no strong opinions on their use so I leave it to you to learn the differences.

The only other note I have on perspective comes from John Gardner. He made a point in The Art of Fiction that Fiction that it is often unnecessary to point out in description that a character is witness to said description. He saw that this had happened..  She heard footsteps. happened footsteps.  They noticed Christ floating down in some clouds. clouds. If you establish that the character is present in a scene, the reader will naturally assume the character observes anything you go on to describe in that scene. If the character misses a detail you may tell us he missed it. A lot of he saw  saw  and she heard heard kind  kind of stuff is hiccup territory. It only reminds the reader that she is not involved. She is merely reading about fictional people engaged in fictional enterprises for fictional stakes.

 

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N A R R A T I V E M A T H   — Last but certainly not least of these advanced techniques is narrative math. I hew to a formula of narrative time : time : narrative importance. importance. Anything I describe, expose, summarize, et cetera, I strive to do so in direct proportion to its importance to the story. If a particular character makes only a brief appearance I will only if at all describe her in the briefest terms. The progress of the story does not hinge on the colour of her eyes. Conversely, if most of a story takes place in a single city or building, I will devote appropriate paragraphs to its description. If it’s a real place—say, Paris—rather than describe La Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, the Louvre or other features everyone already knows about Paris, I will instead describe trivia which bears on the story or sets the mood. A grimy alley, a posh café, an old neighbourhood, et cetera.

If an event which occurred prior to the narrative contributes greatly to later events in the story I will indulge in some use of recollection or summarization to inform the reader. I generally avoid these modes, since they’re the most telling. If said event doesn’t have any significant repercussions in the story I will instead relegate it to a passing mention in dialogue, or whatever mode is appropriate at that point in the story. story .

Likewise if an action or behaviour is signature of the protagonist, if it demonstrates her general attitude or establishes a definite quality of her person, I will take appropriate pains to narr narrate ate it.

This ties in to economy. If buddy has a smoke, I won’t waste time explaining the minute steps involved. Most people are familiar already with the process of smoking a cigarette. Why go on about how He drew the cigarette out of the packet, tapped it on the desk, pinched it between his lips, flipped open his Zippo, cupped the flame and lit it ? it  ? In rare cases you can use this kind of detailed description to set the mood or to create tension by drawing out a mundane event when the reader knows some serious action is on the way. Mostly, though, no one cares. Just smoke the damned thing and get on with the story.

 

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301, T H E ORY

This is the writing you do when you’re not actually writing. It pertains in part to your style and in part to your attitude and approach to the craft. These are strengths you will accumulate through practice, reflection and study.  When you draft you put theory to the test. Then you read over your work and alter the theory according to how pleased you are with the results. Then you draft again. In this way theory empowers technique, and technique refines theory.

 

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B A L A N C E , I — The idea of balance is so broad and already implicit in these courses that I hesitate to address it openly. Nevertheless it bears addressing. So far we have examined a number of elements of style. In order to write well we cannot simply master each element individually. We must master their use in concert.  At one end e nd of the prose spectrum we have the Hemingway type, direct and ascetic. At the other end e nd we have h ave the Faulkner type, profuse and involved. Both were excellent writers. Both styles are valid. I happen to believe not all  writers fall between. Those Th ose who have found their voice do. Those who have not found their voice fall somewhere outside that spectrum. Or below it. Or they just plain fall.

I nearly put quotation marks around found their voice. It is a tremendously cliché phrase in discussion of writing, and vague at that. But as with any cliché it has a legitimate root. Find your voice is a platitudinous way of saying experiment with rules of style until you find a set that best suit your stories. Then stick to those rules, purify them, stake an indisputable claim on the literary acreage.

How heavily do your stories stori es rely on dialogue? Are your be best st transitions made via description, introspection, or are they cold scene breaks? How much exposition is too much? How many dots do you prefer to connect for the reader, and how many do you want him to connect for himself? How remotely or intimately do you like to reveal  your settings, be they actual or fictitious or mixed?

The more you refine your style the more comfortable it will be to write. Readers are like children. They can sense  when you’re not at ease. When you labour in the dark the reader has no light to guide her. h er. She bumps into the  wall. The wall is you. On the other hand, when you hit your stride the reader is carried along light as a feather in  your slipstream. When she gets gets to the end she’ll have a smoke and pre-order the sequel, no questions asked.

 

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P U N C T U A T I O N , I I — To carry over from the last section: experiment with punctuation until you find a style for yourself. I might gripe about semicolons but they’re not so bad if they’re used consistently. I put down a lot of books because the author has no apparent sense of definite function when placing his punctuation marks. In one sentence he uses a semicolon to join independent clauses. In the next sentence he uses a dash for the exact same purpose. One side note he escapes with parentheses, the next with commas. Then he uses one of those sentences rendered labyrinthine by a gamut of marks all thrown in together at cross-purposes. This is nitty-gritty nitpicking, I know,  but it only takes one chink in a piece of armour to undermine the whole suit. If an author can’t get a handle on a few little marks, how much better will he h e fare with complex relationships and momentous plots?

By now you must know that I favour simple, artful prose. In this sort of prose, punctuation is the tiger’s whiskers rather than its stripes. It facilitates his smooth movement rather than decorating or obfuscating him. Whether or not I write well in this style myself is open to debate. In any case you might favour an entirely different form of prose. You might adore sentences like puzzles that must be solved s olved before the next may be read. You might despise punctuation and compose your sentences with as few marks as possible. You might be anywhere in between. So experiment and refine. Be conscious of your use. Be consistent.

 

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SHOW

V S .   T E L L ,

III

— I’m satisfied with the coverage in 201, so rather than explore the topic further I’d just like to share an analogy  which may shed a different light light on it.

Every work of art that I consider great has the same effect as a Rorschach test. The artwork imitates shapes and colours found in nature. On a canvas or in a book these natural elements are severed from their moorings in the  world, freed from context. Isolation opens them to interpretation. A rabbit we see in a field is just a rabbit in a field. A rabbit on a canvas may be a symbol. A rabbit in a David Lynch movie—who knows what crude or sinister ideas it might represent or how he might use it out of its natural context to invoke some reaction in the deep angles our hearts.

In the Rorschach test when we see these basic familiar shapes we tend to assign meaning to them. Did I say we tend to? We practically line up to. Is it because we’re so uncomfortable with the lack of context that we invent order to impose on the chaos? Are we just curious by nature, problem-solvers, seeking patterns or signs? Is it that there exists no shape we have not seen and therefore everything draws comparison to something else, no matter how reduced or disfigured?

I haven’t got a damned clue. Maybe that’s why I’m still so enamoured of art. Maybe the pattern I’m looking for is the pattern of looking. I can’t be certain even of that, and so much the better. If I knew for certain then there  would be no surprise left in experiencing new art. No revelation.

So then, if your writing is a Rorschach card, what does it look like? It may be a tack-sharp, black-and-white, hairfor-hair outline of the rabbit. Or it may be the rabbit’s remains splattered on the altar of a haruspex. It may be anything between. But what? It is impossible for us to predict everything a reader might get out of our work. It is nevertheless important that we are conscious of what we put into it, and what we leave out.

The beauty and cosmic terror of the Rorschach test, as Alan Moore so masterfully explored it, is that no matter  what we see and no matter matter why we see it, we can never, ever, be 100% certain that it’s actually there.

 

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E C O N O M Y ,  I I I —  As with SHOW VS. TELL , III this is not so much an expansion on ECONOMY  I  I & II as it is another way of looking at them.

 Bone.. The line that has most influenced my approach to economy in writing comes from Jeff Smith’s comic series series Bone The hero is chased into a cave by some rat creatures. A dragon peeks out and says ‘Boo,’ which scares them off. The hero rebukes the dragon for not being able to do something cool or mystical. The dragon belches fire all over the hero and says, ‘Never play an ace when a two will do.’

The poker analogy extends itself perfectly in writing. By volume, most of our prose equates to number cards. Occasional passages equate to face cards. A line here and there equates to an ace. If the deck were all aces the game would be no fun. Aces might be exciting and have big payoffs, but they are not necessary to win. Number cards are your bread and butter. Four twos outrank a full house of kings and queens.

One sign of amateur writing is zeal. In my experience zeal is especially common in the work of creative writing students. There is an urge in academia to put a new spin on everything. Why play a two when you can play an ace?  Aces, aces, everywhere. Even aces get tired. Even aces get boring. Pace yourself. Keep in mind adages like gilding like  gilding the lily and lily and reinventing the wheel wheel..

In my teens I fell into a lead guitar position in a band even though I was hardly a decent rhythm player. Rather than pace myself, I tried to compensate for inexperience with activity. I noodled my way through every minute of every song. I was deathly afraid that what I played wasn’t interesting enough. I ignored the other ingredients of the song, the other players. I forgot everything I knew about enjoying music as a listener myself. In hindsight of course I recognize my mistake. Still, I appreciate it. I learned a valuable lesson. The structure of a story is similar to the structure of a song: there are verses of newly covered ground, there are choruses where themes are revisited, and there are transitions and breaks where those themes evolve. And there are solos. My, how there are solos.

Eric Clapton opens a lot of his songs with a little lick, a little riff. Then he backs right off into rhythm for the verses. One of the most renown and soulful rock n’ roll guitarists alive and still most of what he plays is plain old rhythm. Plain old deuces and treys. Every now and then he drops a face card to accent the lyrics. When the time comes for

 

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aces, he’s already played the other cards and has built his way up and boy he lays them aces on the table like they  were hammers and there ain’t nothin you can do to stop him.

If you feel tempted to spice up your story with clever phrasings and your own slant on grammatical clichés, then okay. That’s fine and dandy. Just be discerning about it. Don’t exhaust half h alf your vocabulary in description of ssome ome unimportant character. Don’t endeavour to coin new figures of speech just to tell us the waiter poured some coffee. Save the innovation for pivotal scenes. The main characters. The crucial actions. The thematic vistas. Your reader will absorb the significance of these things so much more for the simultaneous intensity of events and syntax. As with the formula discussed in N ARRATIVE M ATH , this is a congruence of content and and style that will lend grace and power to your writing.

Never play an ace when a two will do.

 

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LISTEN  — The most important piece of advice I have in the arena of theory is to listen. Listen to yourself. Trust your gut. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that art comes from inspiration, from a source internal or external, from God, from spirits, from nature, or from no inspiration at all but that all creativity is simply laying bricks and a finished  work is no more than the sum of its parts. What you believe doesn’t matter because it does not alter the measurable facts of writing. Before you sit down to write, the story is not apparent in the world. After you stand up from writing, the story is physically evident on paper or on a computer screen. Before you act there is nothing.  After you act there is i s something. That something comes from somewhere. You are free fr ee to give that somewhere a name. I don’t.

The one belief I have is that it is best to leave belief at the door when you enter the writing space. Leave yourself, leave your self. As a species we have a tendency to think we know what’s best. It is a chronic, epidemic, unaccountably destructive tendency. Our biology gifts us with fine instincts. Feel a spider on your arm and you’ll flinch to get it away. Close your eyes and you’ll still bristle when someone enters the room. Other instincts are more overt, like hunger and tiredness. Bill Cosby said intellectuals are people who go to school to study what other people do naturally. It is the intellect that gets in the way of instinct. When my body tells me I’m thirsty I often think, ‘I’m busy, I’ll get a glass of water in a minute.’ An hour later I wonder why the hell I’m so th thirsty. irsty.

I’m not listening.

In writing, whenever I have to reason my way out of a corner, I pause and sit back instead. Maybe I’ve hit a knot in the plotline or reached a conflict between characters I just can’t resolve. In any case once I sit back and take stock of the dilemma it becomes obvious that I can’t reason my way out because reason is what got me there in the first place. I dug myself a pit. Digging more won’t help h elp me escape.

Somewhere, out there or in here, the story already has a shape. The story knows its shape. The story tells itself, but its voice is quiet. Much quieter than my loudmouth brain.

So I quit the Chaplin routine. Trying to pick up my hat but kicking it out of reach with each step. I put aside that knotty plotline. I shelve that unresolved conflict. I put down the pen. I listen. What comes next varies but only in

 

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the incidentals. First I retrace the story or scene thus far, point by point. At certain points alternate events suggest themselves. I think about those alternates. I imagine how they might alter the chain of consequences. How they might impact the story’s causes and effects. My inner monologue presents these wonderings in the form of specific questions. What if this happened instead? What if he said that instead? What if this character were a woman instead of a man? I hesitate to say I imagine the answers, because it is not a conscious act. I imagine the questions. The answers suggest themselves. Alternates play out in my imagination. I let one run its course. I make notes during or afterward. Then I let the next alternate play out.

 When alternates stop suggesting themselves I stop to review my notes. I keep listening. I think about each alternate in the context of the whole story. It is often immediately clear which way the story should unfold. I assume this is because I’ve been lucky enough to detach from my brain and let my instinct, my gut, do the thinking. But the gut doesn’t think. It knows. The gut is your connection to the story. The story knows itself. It tells itself. Listen and you will hear it.

In rare cases when the proper course of the story is not immediately clear, I might try cobbling my notes together into hybrid alternates. Or I might sleep on it. Or I might spitball the ideas with a friend. Eventually, every knot I have ever come up against has come undone, for no other reason than I listen.

I hope this works for you too but I promise nothing. Listen anyway. Trust your gut.

 

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 A U D I E N C E   — Speaking of trust, it is important to trust your reader. Our expectations of the reader are often inaccurate, unfair, condescending and wildly varied. These are easy and natural expectations to have. Not sensible of course but natural. The potential audience for our work is anyone at all.

If it helps, imagine a target audience. As in every industry publishing has target markets. What I’m suggesting is not to write to a demographic, but to imagine an ideal or typical reader of your sort of work. Of x sensibilities,  sensibilities, y  y   education, z number of pets, whatever your criteria may be. Too demographic and you might limit your work too much before you’ve even written it. You risk censoring yourself. You risk second-guessing your audience, which  Andy McKee says is the signature move of a hack. I agree.

That said, I myself aspire simultaneously to the general reader rule and to its paradoxical counterpoint, summed up in a line from Joni Mitchell: ‘I didn’t really think about audience.’

Ms. Mitchell didn’t really think about it. That means she probably thought about it a little. If we dwell too much on audience we become hacks. If we don’t think about audience at all, though, we risk losing our anchor to the  very act of storytelling. Nothing remains to stop us from spiralling into impenetrable plots and alien grammar. We cannot write wholly for others and we cannot write wholly for ourselves.

I see a clear line between the art and the business of writing. The art is what we do out of love. It bursts out of us. Trapped on a desert island with nothing but a lonely death to wait for, we would still write because that’s what  we’re made to do. But, of course, we’re also cells of a civilization. We have bills to pay. We make the art for ourselves but we also want to share it. Others want us to share it. Our art has value. It is natural to ply a trade in exchange for goods and services or for f or legal tender by which to obtain them.

 As much as I can, I try not to let these halves h alves of the process mingle. The art and the business. This is where wher e the general reader + no audience team takes the field. I know what kind of books I like. I know what kind of reader I am. Left to my own devices I would write exclusively for myself and to myself. I did. I spiralled. After feedback from peer reviewers I realized this was a very narrow-minded approach to writing. Especially because I already know how all the dots connect in my stories. I had no idea how the picture looked from the outside. It never really

 

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occurred to me that there was an outside view at all.

Now when I write I consider an audience at the outset. I model the imaginary reader not on myself but on some fictitious alternate me, someone with similar tastes but who has no back stage pass to the story. I determine how much I want to reveal to him and how hard he should work to piece together the rest. I decide which dots to connect. Then, once I start writing, I forget about him. I’ve set up the obstacle course, now it’s time to rrun un it. I will inevitably stumble and knock down a few hurdles. So what? That’s no reason to stop. I put that imaginary reader out of mind and he stays that way until the first draft is finished and it comes under the editing knife. At that stage,  with input from peer reviewers, I evaluate the th e dots and the connections and refine them. I tend not to cede much ground. I am not a fan of compromise in style. I do, however, strive to make my abstractions as clear as possible. I  want the reader re ader to work, but I want her work to be enjoyable and satisfying. I don’t want her to suffer. I want her to sink her teeth into the story and to savour it, to digest it, and hopefully to gain some nourishment from it. I want her to come back for more.

 

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‘ W R I T E  W H A T  Y O U K N O W ’ — Sound advice, right? No one writes about aliens because no one has ever met them. No one who is innocent of murder ever writes about murder. No one writes epic battle scenes who has not led armies against an ancient evil risen again to threaten our feudal way of life and that of our estranged buddies the elves and the dwarves. No one  writes a girl who is a boy.

The real value of this adage requires a grain of salt. Forgive me if I sound like a bad teenaged poet, but what we all know is emotions. The range of human emotion is, with a few precious and hideous exceptions, exactly the same for each of us. Every person on the planet is capable of love, of fear, of empathy, of pride, et cetera et cetera. Our  job as writers is to become intimate intimate with this range and then to ddepict epict these feelings. To evoke them iinn our readers  with no more than words.

I don’t need to kill a guy to have felt the sort of anger or frustration that could lead a person to kill. I don’t need to have driven Aston Martins and tanks in her h er majesty’s secret service to hhave ave felt a thrill. What I do need is to convey these feelings accurately and plausibly. I need to compose my narrative in such a way that my reader feels these things as authentically as I do. Authentic writing helps the reader borrow these feelings from his own experience,  whereas inauthentic writing wri ting seeks see ks to lodge foreign for eign objects in the reader’s eye. The inauthentic writer wr iter cries, ‘See this, feel this!’ The authentic writer doesn’t have to say a thing.

Of course I can write about aliens. I’ve felt alienation. I’ve felt fear and isolation. Anything I’ve felt I can access in my reader because odds are he’s felt them too. Ridley Scott tore that shit up in Alien because he had the tools and talent to invoke our memories of nyctophobia, of claustrophobia and xenophobia. And if we had not suffered those particular phobias he knew how to insinuate them by evoking fear in general. He and Ms. Weaver conveyed those feelings so urgently and palpably that we could not help but share them. Our disbelief froze in its tracks. Not  because killer aliens from outer outer space are plausible, but bbecause ecause the characters with whom we connected are.

Of course this is not a free ticket to just make shit up. Do the research needed to render your settings and events plausible. Even the most realistic characters can’t save your story if you set it in a Camelot which features flushing toilets and whose peasants are happy-go-lucky intellectuals. Write what you know, yes. If you don’t know something, learn it. Knowledge has never been so free fr ee as it is now.

 

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‘ K I L L  Y O U R D A R L I N G S ’ —  A man who taught me a great deal of practical skills and practical knowledge once told me: ‘You know what the old man says, ya gotta be ruthless.’ I wish you could hear him. The emphasis on ruthless. The nasal impersonation of his father, a turnip farmer, passing on the wisdom of his father before him. The simple earnest truth of it.

This advice applies mostly in the editing stage, which is when we bridge the gap between art-for-ourselves and artfor-sale. When we stroll back through the rows we spent so long planting and tending and we tear up all but the  best, most suitable, most plausible fruits of our labour. It can be a painful process. pr ocess. Everything you write is your darling. But this is a beautiful pain if we allow it to be. Cathartic. It purifies the work. Not every idea we cut is a  waste, necessarily. Not every character killed or subplot axed or description junked or chapter halved. Some ideas are just unripe. Others are not meant to be eaten themselves but will germinate and turn into a whole orchard of ideas later on. Be ruthless in dividing the useful from the useless, but salvage what you can from the useless pile and set it aside. It might prove useful one day.

Ruthless. From reuthe , meaning pity, compassion. To be ruthless is not to be cruel. It is only to be impersonal. To set aside pity. If I had a child and that child were, say, bitten by a zombie, it would be my duty as a father to set aside pity and shoot the child to save it from misery. Not for my good but for his. Certainly not for my good. In  writing and revision, although I do not like to equate artworks to children, it is our duty to do what is best for the story. We must set aside our own desires—or better yet, conform our desires to those of the story—and put those unripe phrases, scenes, characters and chapters out of their misery. Kill those darlings. Ya gotta be rruthless. uthless.

 

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 A   C O U P L E R E M I N D E R S   — Remember the senses and how they can be used to convey ideas and themes. How they can be used to hook the reader’s imagination. Even the most cerebral fiction has a stronger impact when the reader is drawn into the physical world of the story rather than left to orbit it in a sensory vacuum. It’s easy in this day and age of 3D block busting CGI-out-the-yin-yang movies to forget f orget that there are senses other than the visual, other than the THX bombarded aural. In a book all senses are equal. A simple flake of milled pepper on the tongue can kindle a reader’s imagination more swiftly and completely than ten sprawling cityscapes or thirty conflagrant sunsets.

Remember also the basics of journalistic writing. Who, what, where, when. How and why. This will help keep you grounded. It will help you from straying too far off track, especially into introspection or heady exposition. Unless  you’re Sartre, in which case who am I to argue? In which case who am I at all?

 

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401, P RA CT I CE

Technique and theory are all well and good but without practice they are nothing. Nothing. If a man knows everything there is to know about grammar and style, if he knows how to weave a perfect story or depict a character so real it breaks your heart, if he understands how to construct a world that will capture your imagination—if he can do all this but he never actually puts pen to paper, he is not a writer. On the other hand a hormone-ridden teenager who has no conception of style, who thinks writing is not an art because it does not hang in museums, and who hacks his way w ay through Sonic the Hedgehog or Snape / Spock fan-fiction—this kid is a  writer. Why? Because he writes. It does not matter if his stories are graceless and perverse. It does not matter if his grammar is abominable. It does not matter if his characters are dimensionless or borrowed. He writes. He qualifies. The following are a set s et of practices that may help you qualify too.

 

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B A L A N C E ,   I I —  Write a story twice. In the first version use short simple sentences, no more words than necessary, no semicolons and generally minimal punctuation, and present no overt themes. In the second version write as extravagantly as  you please, narrate whatever digressions and themes arise. Do it well, mind you. Writing extravagantly is not the same as writing poorly. Once you’ve written both versions, set them aside for a while and later rewrite a single  version from memory with whatever balance balance of style comes natural naturally. ly.

 

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SHOW

V S .   T E L L ,   I V —

Same deal. Write a story twice. In the first version expose your characters’ thoughts, motives, feelings, everything.  Write it from an intimate perspective even if the narration is third thir d person. In I n the second version expose nothing. Give only the external view of events. Leave every conclusion unspoken so that the reader must come to her own. Set both versions aside for a while and later rewrite a single version from memory with whatever balance of showing and telling comes naturally.

 

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R E A D   — The first practice in writing is reading. It’s also the only practice in this course which does not involve your own  writing. Read, read, read. Read everything you can get your hands on. R Read ead works in genres you like to write. R Read ead  works in genres you would hate to write. Read famous authors, read obscure authors. Read authors you adore, read authors you despise. Read gold, read shit.

The artistic process begins with imitation. First we copy the masters, either directly or in flattering mimicry. Imitation is followed by assimilation. This is when we incorporate several influences and package them in our own concepts and devices. Assimilation is followed by innovation. Our influences become so numerous and finely enmeshed with our own invention and tastes that our product is unique, never before seen, not ye yett imagined.

 Although it may seem like reading is mostly important in the initial stages of this process it is in fact equally important at all stages. It is always important. If you are a writer then reading is your fuel.

By reading we learn what has come before us. What territories have been explored, what twists utilized, what standbys and clichés established. We also learn what territories remain virgin and which known territories are just  begging for a new expedition. More than once I learned by reading that an idea I had was not only already done  before but already tired and passé.

Say for example I wanted to write a vampire story. God forbid. Lo and behold! It’s been done before. That doesn’t mean I should throw my idea out. It does mean that I can skip explaining certain common knowledge points of the mythos. Vampires drink blood, burn in sunlight, look like Udo Kier, et cetera. It also means I may choose to spin or reinvent other points. Maybe my vampires suffer from liver disease. Maybe my vampires thirst for feces instead of blood. Maybe my vampires sparkle.

 Would you trust a skinny cook? An uneducated teacher? A musician who doesn’t listen to music? To be a writer  worthy of trust you must read. Read, read, read.

 

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C R ITIQ U E  — In addition to reading published work, read unpublished work. Join a writer`s workshop in your city or online. If  you can’t find one you like, start one. Seek out your peers and read their work. Let them read yours. Learn both to enjoy the writing of your peers and to weigh its artistic merits. Tell them what you think. This part works, that part is weak, this drew me in, that bored me, this character I loved, that one is one dimensional, this plotline is overused, that device is brilliant.

 As you critique you will learn to do so in increasingly greater depth and finer detail. You will learn to better articulate the principles of good writing as you understand them. You will learn to adapt your suggestions for  writers of varied temperament and skill level. This will help you view your own work with a critical eye. You will learn to construct better outlines, which equates to fewer roadblocks when you draft. You will develop a clearer sense of your characters and their purpose, both as imaginary people and as devices inherent to your story. You  will recognize and control how the events and descriptions in your story convey moods and meaning to the reader.

 You might find that a lot of peer review is useless praise, and the rest is mostly undue insult. Critique that is thoughtful and useful is hard to come by. Put your work out there anyway. Mining for good feedback is like mining for anything else. For every ounce of gold you pan there are truckloads of dirt and rocks.

Some of those rocks are jagged. Thicken up your skin. The tone of any criticism is irrelevant. Your work has no emotion inherent in it that leaps off the page and possesses the reader. It only evokes. If a critic shows emotion, it is because your work has evoked it or because the critic brought it to the table herself. When you receive a critique, first trim away everything but the bare points the critic has made. Then you may sort the points according to  which are helpful h elpful and which are not. Do this only after careful reflection. If someone says your story sucks they might just be trolling or it might in fact suck. Give every criticism, however absurd, at least some small consideration. You never know where help might come from. Resist the urge to critique the critic. No ifs ands or  buts. Just say thanks.

 

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MIX IT UP  — In general we aim to write good stories well. Whenever someone tells me they feel blocked I suggest writing a bad story, or trying to write a story poorly. Naturally the artistic instinct takes over. They can start a bad story or start  writing poorly but eventually they are compelled to write well well.. The words come despite their so-called block.

I suggest this also as a general exercise. Write a bad sstory tory poorly. Write a bad story well. Write a good story poorly. It is important to know the difference between these things. In art the best way of knowing is doing, and contrast is an excellent if a very blunt teacher.

 

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B A C K T O B A S I C S   —  Another useful exercise is to write a sstory tory using only essential words. Nouns, verbs, pronouns, conjunctions. In other words write a story without adjectives or adverbs. Or, take a story you’ve already written and strip it of adjectives and adverbs.

Read it over. Pretty stark, right? But it’s functional. It gets the job done. Nothing gets in its way. It is a Spartan.

Now, with a new perspective on the story, build it back up. Insert adjectives that genuinely enhance the meaning. Insert whatever adverbs, if any, the sentences genuinely need in order to function.

 

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G I V E I N T O T H E D A R K S I D E   —  Write a story in the dark. The first draft of a brand new story, the second draft of a story you already wrote, or the Nth draft of a story you’ve been writing since high school. It doesn’t matter which. By dark I mean in just enough light to write by but not enough light to read by.

This exercise is, to use the vernacular, throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. You cannot edit as you go.  You will continually forget all but the gist of what you wrote a moment ago. You will have no outline, no character sketches, no dictionary or thesaurus. It’s just you and the story.

For extra credit in B ALANCE , I and SHOW VS. TELL , IV write the final unified versions of those stories in the dark.

 

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R E A D  A L O U D   — In D IALOGUE , II we discussed the writer as an actor responsible for portraying portr aying the entire cast. To broaden your approach to dialogue and the sound of narrative in general try reading your stories aloud. Learn to hear what you  write. Keeping a mental note about run-on sentences is one thing. Actually running out of breath reading them  back is another level of feedback feedback entirely.

 

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Q  U E R Y I Z E ,   S Y N O P S I S I F Y   —  A query is a brief letter written by an author to hook h ook an agent interest interes t in a novel. nove l. A synopsis is i s a point-by-point summary of a novel. Both are gruelling to write. Writing query letters and synopses is a skill every writer should have, not just novelists. Learn to write them. Lean to love them. Love the gruel. The ability to write a query or a synopsis will improve your drafting and will exponentially improve your outlining.

 A typical query letter provides an agent with the prospective novel’s title, its word count and its genre. It also includes a teaser summary a few paragraphs long. The first of these paragraphs should answer the following questions, each in as few words as possible: 1. 

 What is the main character’s name? name?

  2. 3. 

 What problem or choice does the main character face?  Who wants to foil the main main character’s plan, and why?

The subsequent paragraphs indicate how this setup unfolds. They may hint at the conclusion but they do not give it away. Their chief function is to convey the stakes and the tension of the story. A query is bait.

 A synopsis on the other hand is factual and journalistic. It tells an agent or editor exactly what takes place in the story. Who is who, who does what, why they do it, where, wher e, how, when, and how it all ends.

 Where a query is difficult to write because it is short, a synopsis is difficult to write because it is fiercely fier cely resistant to style. In a synopsis your story is laid out on the table like a dissected lab animal. It may have style, of course, but foremost it must be clear and to the point. It is exactly because synopses are difficult to write that you should learn to write them.

 A synopsis is just an outline written after-the-fact. In practice they are fuller and more flushed out, but in principle they are outlines. If you can write an outline you can write a synopsis. Conversely, if you can write a synopsis your powers of outlining will multiply. If you get blocked in a draft all you have to do is step back and work on the synopsis. It will remind you in plain terms where the story is headed and what needs to happen.

 

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 A query is just a streamlined version of the blurb you give your friends when they ask what your book is about. A sales pitch. A query condenses the most important elements of the story and delivers them in rich punchy sentences. Knowing how to boil your story down to its bare essentials will help you keep track of those essentials  yourself. In drafting it’s easy to get carried away with subplots, intricately described locales, conceptual explorations, et cetera. If you get lost like this all you have to do is step back and work on the query. It will bring  you face to face with the story’s beating heart.

For extra credit, write taglines for your stories too. A tagline is a simple sentence or two whose job is to convey the  barest elements of the story and to hook the interest of a potential reader. Think movie poster text. For example, a real..  tagline for Romeo & Juliet might go something like: Two households, one love. Shit just got real

 

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 W R I T E ,   M O T H E R F U C K E R    — Don’t find the time to write. Make the time. Don’t think about it, do it. Just sit down and write. There is a voice in  your head right now saying you you could stop reading tthis his and go write instead. Listen Listen to it.

I assume between the last paragraph and this th is one you went to write for a while. Either you y ou did and you feel fulfilled and deserving of whatever entertainments the rest of the day holds, or you did not and you might just feel like a coward and will until you actually write, or you aren’t a writer and just happen to be reading this. In any case consider the basic math of the writing equation. If you write for a half hour each weekday. That equates to ten hours a month. One hundred and twenty hours per year. Now say you produce an average of five hundred words in a half hour session. That’s ten thousand words in a month. One hundred and twenty thousand words in a year. 120,000 words.

To give you some perspective, most authorities draw the minimum length of a novel at fifty thousand words. The average length of a novel is between seventy thousand words and one hundred thousand words. Novels of a hundred thousand words and more are usually fat f at fantasy books. books.  Books by  Neil Stephenson, for example. Heart of  Darkness clocks in under forty thousand words. The Trial is  Darkness clocks Trial is about eighty thousand. Moby Dick  runs two hundred thousand.  Moby Dick runs Peace , Atlas  Atlas Shrugged Shrugge d and  Infinite Jest  , while not the longest novels ever published, and eleven thousand. War & Peace ,  and Infinite each weigh in around six hundred thousand words.

That means if you write even so little as a half hour a day, just five hundred words a day, you can draft and revise a  whole novel each year. That’s taking the weekends off.

Stephen King says the first million words you write are practice. For a guy with such formulaic stories and lukewarm prose he sure knows a hell of a lot about the theory and the profession of writing. I trust his estimate. Put in nine years at 120,000 words a year and by year ten you’ll probably be writing decently, you should be  writing well, and you might just be writing incredibly.

Don’t find the time. Make it. Most people spend a half hour a day on the toilet. A half hour lying awake before they fall asleep. A half hour channel surfing even though nothing good is on TV. A half hour shuffling around the house picking things up and putting them back down. If you have a half hour to waste on this shit, you have a half

 

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hour to write. If you have a half hour you can probably bulk up to a full hour after a month or two, once writing is engrained in your routine. If you can write a thousand words a day you’re laughing. That’s a novel in a year with room to spare for a day job, a family, a vacation, and a hobby or two without even breaking a sweat.

 Write, motherfucker.

 

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INSPIRATION

I recently browsed a list of questions posed to Margaret Atwood by an online writers group. Every other question  was ‘What’s your inspiration?’ or ‘What inspires you to write?’ In almost every interview of almost every artist this question in one of its many forms is posed. The answers are infinite in variety. Here are a few viewpoints for reference:

Inspiration.. Circa 1300, ‘immediate influence of God or a god,’ especially that Inspiration under which the holy books were written, from Old French inspiration inspiration , , from Late  Latin inspirationem  (nom. inspiratio  ), from Classic Latin inspiratus , pp. of inspirationem (nom. inspiratio ), inspirare ‘inspire, inspirare  ‘inspire, inflame, blow into,’ from in-‘in’ + spirare spirare ‘to  ‘to breathe’ (see spirit ).  ). Etymology Online  Online 

urrents of Divine Thought vibrating the  I am convinced that there are universal ccurrents ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired. Richard Wagner  Wagner 

The artist must raise the cup of his vision to the gods in high hope that they will  pour into it with the sweet mellow wine of inspiration. Paul Brunton  Brunton 

 Art is worship.  Abbas Effendi

 A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all. Rita Mae Brown

super-consciousness, or perhaps of sub Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-

 

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consciousness.  Aaron Copland

What is indispensable to inspiration? Sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion. Ralph Waldo Emerson

When inspiration doesn’t come, I go halfway to meet it. Sigmund Freud

 I don’t know anything about inspiration because I don’t know what inspiration is;  I’ve heard about it, but I never saw saw it.  William Faulkner

 A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader’s business.  W. H. Auden

The longings to produce great inspirations didn’t produce anything but more longing. Sophie Kerr You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.  Jack London

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always  generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. action. Frank Tibolt

 

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 Inspiration comes of working every day. Charles Baudelaire

 I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.  W. Somerset Maugham

play?    JC: Where do you get the inspiration to write a play? play.  NS: I’ve never had the inspiration to write a play.  NS: I’ve you must have had  JC: But that’s impossible. You’ve written so many plays, you  JC: But inspiration to write them.  them.  write.  NS: Nope. Never had the inspiration to write.  NS: Nope. writing?    JC: Well then, how do you know when to sit down and start writing?  do.   NS: Well, that’s easy. Eight o’clock in the morning. That’s my job. That’s what I do.  NS: write?   JC: But what if you don’t have anything in your head to write?   JC: But NS: It doesn’t matter. I write anyway. Then I look aatt what I wrote. Sometimes I like NS: It it and I keep going. Sometimes I don’t and I throw it away. That’s my job.  job.    Johnny Carson interviewing Neil Simon

 Nothing is more harmful to creativity than the passion of inspiration. inspiration. It’s the fable of bad romantics that fascinates bad poets and bad narrators. Art is a serious matter. Manzoni and Flaubert, Balzac and Stendhal wrote at the worktable. That means to construct, like an architect plans a building. Yet we prefer to believe that a novelist invents because he has a genius whispering into his ear. Umberto Eco

The answers are infinite infini te in variety, but what about the tr truth? uth? I don’t know. That is, I know what’s true for me, but I don’t know what might be true for you. Each of the artists quoted above is or was accomplished in his or her own right, yet their opinions on the subject run the available gamut. That tells me there probably is no single truth of the matter. My experience agrees. Even if there is a single truth, I favour whatever answer gets th thee job done.

 

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 What’s true for me is that th at inspiration is irrelevant. That’s not entirely true. I should say whether or not inspiration is relevant, it is out of my hands so I don’t think about it. It does not factor into my equation.

 Me + Work = Result  As I said in LISTEN , the story exists out there. It makes no difference where exactly if it exists within me or in some ethereal elsewhere. The story is not a delivery made to me but a discovery I am permitted to make. The story is its own inspiration. You might ask what happens if I sit down to write and no story announces itself to me, does that not equal a lack of inspiration? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way it makes no difference to me. If nothing comes to mind, I sit back and let my mind wander. I imagine. I am by whatever agency or power or acquired skill allowed to access that womb of stories. I have h ave never come away from daydreaming empty-handed.

I do this because it comes naturally. It is what my instincts guide me to do. As in other areas of life, of survival, inspiration is largely beside the point. The why is not so relevant to survival as is the how. If I’m hungry I eat. If my  bladder is full I piss. If I have to write I write. Being a citizen of a nation which affords me many freedoms, opportunities and conveniences, I have the luxury of reflecting on the inspiration behind these acts. I may investigate the science of hunger. I may consider the philosophy of artistic expression. But I must be careful not to think my way into a corner. Not to assign so much significance to the why that I become paralyzed by dread or reverence for the how. A caveman tens of thousands of years ago did not have the luxury or powers of reflection that we have, but he also did not bear the vulnerability of doubt that we do. He painted the walls of his cave  because he had something to record. I record. I hunted some elk elk.. There are ten people in my tribe tribe.. Inspiration wasn’t a factor. Does that mean the caveman was a clerk rather than an artist? I don’t know. What I do know is that he never sat there with his dye of crushed berries staring at a blank cave w wall all unsure what to paint.

 Whatever the truth of inspiration is to you, I recommend giving this instinctual approach a try. Feel free to consider inspiration but do not depend on it. Do not wait. Sit down and write. Trust your gut. Maybe that’s all inspiration is: the act of trusting yourself with a duty with without out asking why it’s yours.

 

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PUBLISHING

I consider art and commerce two sides of the same coin. Although they are necessarily linked, they cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Write for your heart, publish for your stomach. Writing is intimate, dire, sacred. Leave any thoughts of money and fame and even rent at the door when you enter. Publishing on the other hand is convoluted and protracted and indifferent. Shield your heart or it will get broken.

There is a very simple and typical career path in writing fiction. First, before you have any credits to your name, submit your stories to pro bono or low-paying magazines, reviews, journals, quarterlies, whatever publication your stories suit. Once you’ve been published and have a few credits to your name, submit to publications that pay a  better rate for your work. Work Work your way up the chain.  an online index of story and I only have one resource to offer for story publication, and it is the best:  best:   Duotrope , Duotrope , an poetry publications. It is searchable by genre, by story length, by pay scale and by a variety of other conditions. It tracks submissions versus rejections and acceptances based on your feedback.

If you write novels, you will still benefit a great deal from having short story credits. When you send out query letters to literary agents those credits will tell them people pay to read your work. You might even have an established readership. It might still take a hundred query letters before an agent offers to represent your work, but that’s just how publishing works. Something like a million or more new titles are published each year. Millions of people write. Millions. Agents get thousands of query letters a year. Of those thousands they might ask a hundred or fewer prospective clients to send the first three chapters of the novel for them to read. Of those hundred or fewer they might ask a dozen to send the full manuscript. Of that dozen they might offer to represent one or two.

If you want to be that one or two, I recommend subscribing to  to   Query Shark   and trawling the archives of the unfortunately discontinued  discontinued  Miss Snark . Even if you don’t write novels, as I said in Q  UERYIZE ,  S YNOPSISIFY  you   you can still benefit a great deal from f rom knowing how to query.

For a comprehensive list of agents and publishing houses, as well as other resources related to publishing, I

 

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 Editors.. Their site design might be out of date, but their info is gold and might just save recommend  Predators & Editors recommend  your ass.

 

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PET PEEVES

 You might have noticed by now that I’m a picky reader. I try to be as picky a writer too. To carry the obsession a step farther I will be a picky teacher and share with you certain phrases commonly misspelled and misused. These are very, very minor errors which no one should feel guilty about making. If you acknowledge the error and you continue to make it anyway, however, then you may certainly cer tainly feel guilty. In fact I insist. 1. 

 By in large large. It means in general. By large. By in large.. The correct phrase is by and large. general. By and large, that bi was large. large means nothing. To its credit, at least, I have only rarely se seen en this misused.

2. 

 Intensive purposes purposes.. The correct phrase is intents and purposes. purposes. Although some people mix up the  words, they use this phrase correctly to mean something like as far as I’m concerned. It is an embellishment. It serves no real purpose. If for all intents and purposes I mean to nit-pick this phrase, then I just mean to nit-pick this phrase. You could apply it equally to anything you almost definitely intend. For all intents and purposes these are some words in a sentence. My guess is some ad company coined this phrase in a commercial and people adopted it into their daily vocabulary in order to sound informed and important.

3. 

 Low and behold behold.. A common and understandable error. Most people’s exposure to older forms of English comes in the form of forced and quickly forgotten high school readings of Shakespeare. The correct phrase is lo and behold , behold , which to Joe Twelfth-Grade-Reading-Level probably makes no more sense than low and behold behold does.  does. How would he know lo lo is  is an old diminutive of look look??

4. 

Try and [verb] [verb].. This is one that rankles me, try as I might to be mature and impervious in matters of  I’ll try and see if I can make it . He’ll try and meet us. us. The correct use in these cases is try to grammar. I’ll grammar. [verb] , not try and [verb] [verb].. In these sentences the predicate is try. The second verb, whatever it may  be, is a complement to try, since it is what the subject is trying to do. Not, as is painfully obvious in this very example, what the subject is trying and do.

5. 

Supposively. Supposively. This is not a word. The adjective is supposed, not supposive. The adverb is therefore supposedly supposedly..

  6.

 Alot . This one has been covered much more skilfully than I could do it, so I’ll just point you in the right direction:  direction: The Alot. Alot. 

 

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RECOMMENDED READING

I think it can be useful to talk about writing. I think it can be useful to read about writing. I think it can be especially useful and that it is in fact our duty as writers to share the techniques and experiences that have improved our work. These activities can be beneficial but they are peripheral. They are not writing. They do not accomplish the work, they only support it. If at any time they take the place of the work itself then they have  become counterproductive and perhaps even destructive. As Camus says, whatever prevents you from doing your  work has become your work. A person person who talks about sports but rarely pl plays ays is called an armchair athlete. Do you  want to be an armchair armchair author?

There is a time to play, a time to spectate, a time to coach, and a time to ape Pete ‘Ecclesiastes’ Seeger. It is common knowledge even outside the realm of medical science that the human body has an internal clock. The human soul, spirit, qi, chakras, genius, creative force, right brain, whatever else you might call it—this part of us also has a clock. You and I probably do not share the same circadian urges toward ingesting and expelling art. Maybe no two people do. It doesn’t matter. You only have hav e to know your own. Know it well.

The body has convenient systems for indicating hunger and the need to void the bowels. One system, really. Pain. Greater pain indicates greater urgency.

In my experience the heart employs the same system for indicating creative needs. If I go a few days without reading fiction I first feel an uncomfortable boredom. If I ignore it and go even longer without reading then the discomfort becomes irritation, and I get the creative equivalent of hunger pangs that tell me something important is missing from my body. If I ignore this too I eventually just get stir crazy. The need for creative influx becomes a nail in my shoe that jabs me at every step. The same is true when I go without writing for a while. I do not, like Byron, write to avoid this pain. I write because I love to write. The pain is merely a symptom of withdrawal from that love. Read when you need to, write when you need to. Just as you breathe in when your lungs are empty and  breathe out when your lungs are full.

 When I’m hungry for knowledge knowledge or have less urgent need need of it I read things lik likee the following:  

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Style or The Chicago Manual of Style. Style. -The Elements of Style or -The War of Art  by  by Steven Pressfield. -The Artist’s Way by Way by Julia Cameron. I was fortunate enough to encounter this and The War of Art  around  around the same time. They complement each other very well, with w ith a striking and natural masculine / feminine dynamic. -10 Rules of Writing  by  by Elmore Leonard. -Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules rules..  -How To Write Badly Well. Well. 

 

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COMMENCEMENT

If you retain only one sentence from this course, let it be this summation: define success in your own terms, learn to keep what is useful and ditch what is not, and just sit your ass down and get to work already.

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