#Craft of writing

[summer-gh0st]

I'm writing a story with some interactions where a nonbinary character is meeting people they couldn't tell the gender of and I end up with a lot of confusing "theys" even when I use proper nouns for the character in question. any ideas of how to not just toss around a bunch of "they said"s and such without saying the same descriptors over and over like "the one on the right" ?

Ah, what I live for!! You market yourself as an lgbt+ editor and then all you get is straight romance or fantasy with straight romance. Bleh

Moving on! This is really interesting, because it’s probably really context dependent and I’m not sure I can give the best answer without grappling with the lines themselves. I would possibly point to my previous post with character/setting/action, to try to avoid dialogue tags by describing the character who’s speaking, the setting, or the action they’re doing. This is a good way to avoid getting confused in any situation where two characters use the same pronoun (ie, when two he/him characters are the only ones on the page). Especially character can be helpful — if the reader knows that the main character has blue hair, let’s say, and the new character has brown, then a dialogue line ending with “…they ran their fingers through their brown hair” or something like that will help differentiate who’s speaking.

Also, using names is never a bad thing, and while it can get overused, tolerance for that is usually much higher when we have a same-pronoun situation.

Another method of differentiation is different speech patterns. If we know our main character with blue hair (let’s call them Blue) has a particular way of speaking, then making the new character have a different way of speaking will set them apart in a very easy to read but hard to notice sort of way. It’s meta, and really engrained in the style, but can be awfully effective. Let’s say Blue has a somewhat posh tone — they use fancy words because they read too much and have a very refined sense of style from studying philosophy at university. The new character could then have a southern accent, and speak very slowly with lots of y’alls, and ums, because they literally grew up in a barn with their beloved horse companion and don’t know how to talk to people. An extreme example, but it showcases my point: could you ever imagine these two people having the same tone of voice, and getting their dialogue lines mixed up with each other? Usually, no. And that’s one of the great, wonderful, and magical things about dialogue. :)

To sum up, I think that would be my general advice: character/setting/action; names are okay, and overusing them is harder in a same-pronoun situation; different tones of voice (this one is my favorite because it forces a lot of characterization!).

I hope this helps + wasnt too long, and let me know if you have any further questions. :)

[mkaneshige]

Mark's Musings #50

Little things done well make the big things happen.

[nighttime-novelist]

Reframing Show vs Tell

Notes and excerpts from the section on Showing vs Telling in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne. I thought the way she reframed show vs tell gave us a better understanding of their respective function in a story. Basically:

Showing → Scenes

Telling → Narrative Summary

Scenes take place in real time; the reader experiences what is going on at the same time as it occurs in the text. Narrative summary, on the other hand, describes what happened after the fact. Both are essential to a story, but writers tend to overly rely on narrative summary. 

Narrative Summary (Telling)

Large-scale

Don’t use this to start your first chapter–you want to engage your readers early on. Turn any narrative summary you have into an actual scene taking place and deliver the information you want to give through it

Varies the rhythm and texture of your writing. Scenes are immediate and engaging, but sometimes you want to slow things down and give readers a chance to catch their breath, and narrative summary is a good way to do so.

Gives continuity on a larger scale. Narrative summary can capture weeks or months of slow, steady growth and development. The critical moments of this development should be captured by scenes, but the summary can help fill-in the gaps of a longer period of time.

Helps consolidate repetitive actions. For example, if there are multiple races occurring, not all of them may be important enough to justify a scene. Summarize the unimportant ones and give scenes to the crucial ones.

Use it when a plot development isn’t important enough to justify a scene. For example, you can narrate a minor event that leads up to a key scene. Or two key events being separated by narrative summary of what occurs between the events puts emphasis on the important key events while giving reprieve between the scenes.

Small-scale

Avoid telling us character traits or emotions. Examples include: “Wilbur felt absolutely defeated” and “Geraldine was horrified at the news”. It’s better to show these by describing their reactions, expressions, words, and body language. However, I personally believe sometimes it is okay, and even preferred, to tell emotions and traits. Just don’t overdo it, and save the telling for when it’s difficult to express by showing.

You don’t want to give your readers information. You want to give them experiences. Resist the urge to explain

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers Checklist

How often do you use narrative summary? Are there passages when nothing happens in real time?

Do the main events in your plot take place in summary or in scenes?

If you have too much narrative summary, which scenes do you want to convert into scenes?

Does any of it involve major characters, where a scene could be used to flesh out their personalities?

Do you have at least some narrative summary, or are you bouncing around from scene to scene without pausing?

Are you describing your character’s emotions too much? Have you told us they are angry/irritated/excited?

[withpatiencecomespeace]

The cinematography, the color choices, the set design, the dialogue, the pacing — what wasn’t KAOS simply superior at?

Still trying to wrap my head around how it weaved — what, SIX storylines together as it was approaching its climax?

[coruscantiscribbler]

This is turning into the longest chapter in the history of chapters, and I just can't find a graceful place to break it up. Chapters need to end with a sharp period, something that propels the reader to want to keep reading. Chapters just can't just peter out, they need to sizzle.

[vickihinze]

Picking A Theme by Tara Randel

When setting out to write a book, there are many aspects that need to be considered. What is the story about? Who are the characters? The plot? The theme? All the components that, as an author, we sit down and consider before we even begin to type the first page in our story. Since there are genres in fiction, the answers to these questions depend on if you are writing a romance, or a mystery or…

[bellemorte79]

Behind on writing

I am behind on writing because my life currently sucks. I hope to update my story this weekend. It is hard to crawl out of anxiety.

[johnmanciniwrites]

Arts and Crafts

Finding Meaning in the Things We Create

Consider the gilded frame, the illuminated pedestal, the banana duct-taped to the gallery wall. Art wants to stand out, to be seen as special, more than just craft. I mean, sure, anyone could do it, but who in their right mind would try?

From Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) to Bruce Nauman’s Self-Portrait as a Fountain (1970), art in the twentieth century was especially bold. In the 1970s, performance artists seemed to try and outdo each other with the amount of self-inflicted pain and humiliation they were willing to suffer: whether running face first into a gallery wall or having themselves nailed to a Volkswagen, these guys wanted attention--and got it.

The closest literary equivalent might be Ginsberg’s “Howl,” Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, or Kerouac’s On the Road. Art in the twentieth century was raw, unsettling, intimate, and confrontational. Where did all this defiance and aggression come from?

Until Jackson Pollock swaggered onto the scene, the English pursuit of truth and beauty via John Keats seemed reserved for the intellectual set. Your father would rather you become a banker, a lawyer, or a linebacker. Then the hard-drinking, football-playing Kerouac arrived, writing like he talked, writing like Pollock painted—hurling globs of words in an inebriated frenzy.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

—Kerouac, On the Road

This is word jazz, improvised and unfiltered, but it was Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway who introduced concision and immediacy to American literature, whittling prose to bare bones:

Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down.

—Anderson, “Hands”

Outside it was getting dark. The streetlight came on outside the window. The two men at the counter read the menu. From the other end of the counter Nick Adams watched them. He had been talking to George when they came in.

—Hemingway, “The Killers”

Until this sort of understated plain-speak came along, American writers tended to put more butter on the bread.

Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs...

—Thoreau, Walden

After ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.

—Miur, “First Glimpse of the Sierra”

This is writing that wants to transcend--like poetry--and as the poet Housman said, "Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it." But from the factories of the Industrial Revolution to the carnage of the World War I, transcendent illusions were shattered, art got surreal, and language got difficult:

​It is very difficult so difficult that it always has been difficult but even more difficult now to know what is the relation of human nature to the human mind because one has to know what is the relation of the act of creation to the subject the creator uses to create that thing.

—Stein “What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them?”

Huh? you might ask. That matronly figure of modernism, Gertrude Stein wrote self-conscious prose, her complex, layered style tending to fragment and obscure--like Cubism. Here she is as painted by Picasso:

When I was living in LA, I briefly worked—“briefly” characterizing most work in LA—at a nonprofit that offered arts enrichment programs at elementary schools. Navigating surface streets from Crenshaw to Brentwood, I arrived at playgrounds with my box of supplies, and spent the afternoon struggling to keep eight or so kids busy until their parents arrived. I handed out wood scraps and hammers and nails and showed them how to build birdhouses. When I turned my back, one little boy would inevitably start throwing nails at the girl he liked, which I realize now was actually more of an artistic act—performance!—than the lame activity I had been assigned to teach. Here was an artist! A lovesick one, too.

These kids were not learning art; they were learning a craft. A birdhouse, like a rocking chair, however well-crafted, doesn’t mean anything. It's not art; it’s practical. The phrase “arts and crafts” always makes me think of fourth graders taking a break from science class to glue some dried macaroni to posterboard—like recess, only less sweaty. The problem is that the word “art” suffers from semantic bleaching, like genius or amazing. We have the art of the deal, the art of seduction, the art of the talking points memo. None of this has helped art’s case for separateness.

There are different sections in libraries for fiction and literature, and when you walk into a bookstore (if you can find one) you may see a section devoted to Classics and another to Best Sellers. I always felt bad for the writers who got lumped in with the mass market romcoms and spy thrillers. What does one have to do besides die in obscurity to be elevated to the academy of Literature? Must the artist's pants be fancy?

The tendency to think of “art” as something stylish, rather than plain, especially in the literary arts, has led to a lot of beautifully written novels in which nothing happens. (I’m looking at you, Proust.) Some great novelists sacrifice momentum for verbal acrobatics. Unfortunately, most fiction readers are looking for a good plot, and as Auden said, "Poetry makes nothing happen."

So if you want to sell some books, tell a story, and if you want to tell a story, keep it simple. When we’re engrossed in a ripping yarn, the sentences dissolve. Verisimilitude is like old school virtual reality—no oversized goggles required. 

Ever try to get a dog to look at something by pointing at it? The dog looks at your hand, not the thing. This is the problem with modernist literature, and most poetry. The eye is constantly drawn back to the surface. If you learn how to manipulate syntax, and you listen closely, you may replicate the voice of a ten-year old girl in a Tennessee trailer park, or an English aristocrat aboard the Titanic. Both pose interesting style choices--but beware. As Stein said to Hemingway: “Ernest, remarks are not literature.” What she was alluding to, I think, was the importance of depth, structure, and artistic intention in a work of art.

Somewhere around the late nineteenth century artists stopped looking for beauty outside themselves and started painting what was in their heads. Painters abandoned the representational image, and writers started admiring their sentences too much. They all started playing mind games. They left bloodstains on the floor and taped bananas to the wall.

Reason for being is a big subject, and short of going down a rabbit hole of relativism in which your truth is just as valid as any other and we can all go home and stare at our bellybuttons, maybe we can agree that there is a pantheon of great art into which over time more are admitted through discovery or changing taste. Sometimes a tree falls in the forest, and we don’t hear it for a very long time.

These writers were dead long before they were appreciated: Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, William Blake, Herman Melville, Sylvia Plath. And there are others. So maybe you don’t have to make a lot of noise or concern yourself so much with being heard. Maybe crafting the thing with care and intention is enough. But if you decide to throw nails at the girl that you love, I wouldn’t expect her to love you back. At least not right away.

*If you enjoy essays like this, read Living by Fiction by Annie Dillard.

[authortoberecognized]

WRITER’S FORUM  INDIE WRITING

                        WEBSITES HELPFUL TO WRITERS   This is a series of posts which, I think, will be beneficial to writers. But first, I would like to include my usual warning about using websites. Whenever you check a website you are, in my opinion and I talk from experience, being put on a list for sale. So, expect the possibility of being bombarded by ads from companies you, perhaps,…

[summer-gh0st]

Okay, I pulled out my work glasses for this so let's go.

First, the points about dialogue: I don't have much in my old revision letters to authors about specific dialogue tags (I probably usually just suggested deleting them during the line edit stage) but I DO have this interesting information about what I call "Character / Setting / Action":

Character/setting/action is when something happens between the lines of dialogue, such as a character being described, the setting being described, or the character making an action. These donʼt have to be done all at once. One at a time will do, and it doesnʼt have to be in every line of dialogue; only where it would be helpful to break up the dialogue a bit. Describing a character or a character's action in the same paragraph as when that character speaks will take over the purpose of a dialogue tag while making the scene more evocative and interesting. This can also help to describe the setting, as characters will interact with the environment, which will ground the reader in the scene. An example: “I donʼt want to go!” he yelled. vs. He stomped through the kitchen and knocked over the pitcher of water. “I donʼt want to go!” The second creates a far more vivid scene, describes an action, and tells the reader whoʼs speaking all at once. Further, the dialogue tag is unnecessary. Based on the sentence itself, the exclamation mark, and the description, itʼs pretty clear heʼs yelling. Editors and other authors give authors a lot of criticism based on their use of dialogue tags̶. They say dialogue tags need to be creative. I personally donʼt see any problem with said, yelled, asked, etc. Those are fine, as they convey the sentence's meaning and allow the readerʼs eye to glaze right over them and keep reading. Getting creative with dialogue tags causes problems̶. My favorite example being the disaster of a sentence “Snape ejaculated” in the Harry Potter books. How Rowling got away with that, I do not know. A much better way is to get creative with removing dialogue tags. [comment specific to author]... when you remove the dialogue tags, remember to replace them with character/setting/action.

Second, let's talk about adverbs!! As Stephen King put it, "The road to hell is paved with adverbs." Adverbs are closely linked to both dialogue and showing vs telling for many authors, but I'll try to keep it to adverbs alone here. Here is a note about adverbs I wrote to an author a long time ago that puts it well:

A note about adverbs: most of the time, they are unnecessary. ʻ“I love you,” she said sweetlyʼ is an example of an unnecessary adverb. If someone says, ʻI love you,ʼ theyʼre usually going to say it sweetly or in a similar way. If you want to change the meaning, thatʼs when you use the adverb. For example: ʻ“I love you,” she said angrilyʼ changes the readerʼs perceptions and is unexpected; however, too many adverbs, even unexpected ones, bog down description and dialogue. Try using action verbs instead of adverbs to convey meaning and give the reader a picture of whatʼs happening. From the above example: ʻShe crossed her arms and shot me a hard glare. “I love you,” she spat.ʼ

The main takeaway about adverbs is that there is almost no instance ever where a good verb could not take the place of an adverb. "He ran quickly" can always be replaced with something more powerful, like "He zoomed" "he dashed" or even "he catapulted"! Adverbs make writing weak, or rather, it's much easier to have weak writing with adverbs. Strong verbs are almost always preferable. The only exceptions are when the adverbs are surprising and I mean REALLY surprising. One of my favorite examples from a book I edited was: "The table was suspiciously still." That was so hilarious, and what a good way to break the no-adverbs rule!! Tables are normally still, right? So why ... suspicious? It's intriguing, it captures the reader's attention -- and THAT'S what a good adverb does.

Conclusion: dialogue tags are fine, but be creative about not using them (rather than being creative with the tags themselves) and don't use adverbs unless they could really knock the reader's socks off. HOWEVER -- I just want to say really quick that this is important for the editing phase. Don't ever let it stop you from just writing. If you're capturing a scene and throwing it into your word processor for the first time, then heck yes write "ran quickly!" That can be deleted and changed later. Don't worry about that. No need for the inner editor while you're writing. They can always be called up later. :) You can't edit something that doesn't exist yet.

Okay, that was all from me for now but honestly I guess now that I've revealed myself as a former novel editor then feel free to ask questions?? I'll happily answer them! And maybe I'll even put some of my own writing on here sometime.... not something I expected to say but well, what can I say. I love art of all kinds :) thanks for reading!

I know everyone says it’s best to just stick to “said” as a dialogue tag bc it disappears and that’s true and I mostly do but I want to take a moment for my all-time favorite dialogue tag, “lied.” Absolutely nothing hits like “‘I’m here to help,’ he lied.” NOTHING.

[theoldaeroplane]

worried that thing you put in your art or writing or game or music is too self-indulgent, too self-referential, too niche for anyone but yourself? fear not! you can do whatever you want forever. and you should.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Nothing will dispell the "the curtains were just blue" myth faster than writing something yourself, because the amount of pretentious symbolism i am putting in my silly little fanfics is ridiculous. I mean SO much with these words, literally every single one of them. This fic has twenty five typos and zero correct uses of punctuation but if there's curtains you bet your ass I put thought into what colour they were.

[mkaneshige]

The Starting Point

It all starts with a dreamIf you can find onethat you’re truly passionate aboutthen your journey can begin

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[stevensaus]

Calling Writers: New URL, Same Flash Fiction Challenge!

Important Note: The Flash Fiction challenge is now hosted at https://weeklyflashfiction.com. If you had an account before, you will need to re-register! WRITE WITH US WITH OUR FLASH CHALLENGE! Poetry, flash fiction, memoir, anything that is inspired by the prompt (or some of your work in progress). It’s free and easy to sign up, either via e-mail address or one of a number of social login options. We only have you sign up at all to protect your rights to your story. Join us! The prompt is already up! Several of us have started our own, self-hosted, flash fiction challenge that we call Obsidian Flash -- although now it's at https://weeklyflashfiction.com. over at a website we’re calling Obsidian Flash. It’s on a forum behind a password, so that anything you write and submit is considered unpublished. Registration is quick, free, and pretty painless. Seriously, this thing is the perfect thing for you to do if you think writing is hard (or finding time for writing is hard), and especially if you haven’t been writing for a while. It’s also great if you have problems with getting past ideas that “you suck” (every first draft sucks, face it) or self-doubt. Go sign up now at https://weeklyflashfiction.com and we’ll see you writing this weekend! Note: If you do not want to do the “challenge” and competitive element, please feel free to SHARE your story and just mark it “Not for voting” at the top. Featured Image by StockSnap from Pixabay Read the full article

[starsandsplats]

My Next Novel - Crash Planet

My Writing Goals for 2024 I’ve set 3 goals for my writing career in 2024. Keep in mind I am still writing in my spare time. There are plenty of writers out there who can crank out 3 or 4 or 10 books each year, but that’s not me. I hope that someday I will be able to write full-time and make a living at it, but that’s still a long way off. I work a full-time job which means most of my writing is…