Snip! Snip! Cutting out a lot of what you've written.

Though I agree with the sentiment that once the reader has signed on for the investment of reading the read there's room to sit and have a sherry or two, I'm not sure I fully agree with this about not grabbing the reading from the first page. Or at least in the first few pages. I actually do not think it's fair to ask the reader for patience in the first few pages. Now some who read this post are going to whip out the time-worn, hackneyed anti-example of the Page #1 that begins in the middle of the battle, axe in mid-swing. I'm NOT talking about that. I'm not. Not. No. I just mean that if you start me in a book with some exposition or descriptions that don't feel like they are going to add up to something, then... I haven't signed yet. I haven't made my investment yet in a character or a chain of events or a happenstance. If none of those things are offered to me in the first few pages, then I'm cutting my losses. Yes, I'm that fickle. My time is more precious than the four or five bucks the eBook cost me.

Example:

I'm reading a "classic" of Fantasy right now, Lord Foul's Bane, for the first time. Donaldson almost lost me in the first few pages for some shoddy "tell" and a walk from home to go pay a phone bill the MC owed. I was almost out. Almost walking away from this book. You don't throw an eBook across the room; you just delete the file. And then the writer took me away from this silly walk into town by giving me a reason to care about the MC. The walk itself was then shown to matter. It's an act of defiance in which the MC engages, giving the middle finger to a town that has politely kept him literally on the outskirts because he is an actual (not metaphorical) leper. Oh, and what is this? Are some Fantasy elements beginning to intrude into the otherwise real world in which the MC lives? Why, yes. They are. But all of this was pretty quick. I'll give more than one line or one page to let a book warm up, but not a whole lot more than that.

 

To me, it's a balance. I have the opposite problem in my own writing. It's often too bare boned, lacking meat, devoid of any fat whatsoever. But every gourmet knows that a little fat is needed. Fat carries the flavor. But don't give me a big glob of fat on the otherwise pricey cut of meat, please. Yuck. Marbleized? Yes. Poorly dressed before preparation? No. As your reader I am not contractually obligated to put up with your three page description of the Ming vase sitting on the mantel. I don't care one lick about the hours you, the writer, spent researching vase patterns from that era, from that province, from that artist, in order to describe to me the pattern so well that I could draw it myself from just your description alone.

Now I'm not saying you are doing that, or want to do that, or have done that, but... I cannot help but feel in your words that you are saying "And where am I in all this? I wrote the damned thing! Don't you care about me, the writer?"

No.

I don't.

At all.

Not until you impress me with your story. When you do, I will cyberstalk you and read all of your interviews and buy the books that you say you are reading and make collage computer wallpapers of your image. Ask China Miéville. I think there's one restraining order that has yet to expire. I love you still, China, even if I'm not allowed within 1000 yards of you and yours.

But until that happens, I don't know you, I don't care about you, I just spent money to be entertained. If instead what I get is you masturbating your words at me, self-indulgently, um... no.

 

Yeah, I agree, @Wreybies . If the writer is showing detail just because the writer CAN, it's probably not going to add a great deal to the storytelling.

I had to delete an entire chapter from my book because I realised what I was doing was showing off my knowledge of what the cattle industry was like in Montana in the early 1880s. It was a good chapter, and it was lively, written from the POV of a favourite character ...but you know what? It wasn't needed in the story. So ...boohoohoo... I had to remove it. The whole damn thing. It was painful, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Yes, I've saved it, as it may come in handy in another story. But it's gone from this one.

 

To those who responded to my earlier post.

Before you open your mouth (or type) you should always consider your audience. Right now, my audience is you, and that means primarily unpublished aspiring writers. I'm not giving advice to Hemingway, and I'm not giving advice to Pynchon. I'm giving advice to people who haven't proved their writing works. Let Mohammad Ali fight with his hands down. Me, I'm going to lose my writing virginity as safely as possibly, and then get wild from there.

Why do I say condense to this particular audience? Because if you go to the workshop, most of us do not appear to know how to write like Pynchon. I like reading Hemmingway too, that doesn't mean everyone can write like him. It's hard to make slow paced prose that is memorizing, and to be honest, I don't think it's as simple as taking your time with plotg. Every word used is planned to maximize reader reaction, even in something slow.

Sorry, but it is a very amateur mindset to say, "I want to write like the greats " when you don't even have one thing published.

My initial advice isn't for everyone, but it is for you guys (myself included).

 

I think it depends a little bit on the state of your writing in the first place as to whether editing will make things longer or shorter.
It seems more people need to edit shorter, which means that the general advice ends up being to cut cut cut, but one size fits all advice can be problematic. I don't believe it's true for everyone. I don't believe it's true for me.

True there are some things that I needed to cut from my first draft, but there's more that I needed to flesh out. My writing has got about 10% longer in editing.
I have had a reputable published author look at some of my edited chapters and even with that extra 10%, his overall comments were that my scene structure is good, my clarity is good, and I'm moving the plot forward at a good pace, but that my main weakness is my descriptive details are rather basic which makes it hard to properly experience my setting and characters. (He implied that's a more unusual way round for fantasy writers to have their strengths and weaknesses.)

I agree that you should look for opportunities for your sentences and paragraphs to do double duty. A good story needs lots of plot advancement, characterisation, scene setting, theme building, so much of all those things you can end up lacking somewhere if you only do one at a time.
In many cases that might mean condensing elements together, but in my case it means working additional details of character and setting into my actions.

 

@123456789 - well, it's balance isn't it? I don't think it's bad or amateurish to aspire to write like the greats. In the end you're bound to try to write like the writers you admire. It's one of the ways you learn. On the other hand, I think it's flawed for amateur writers to write something and when they receive critique saying it doesn't work, their reply is, "Well [insert famous author] did it!"

The point of course isn't that you can't do something - you can do anything you like in writing - but whether you are able to do it as well as the famous one you're trying to emulate is a different story. And finding out what makes it work is part of the learning process.

But as I said, I think it takes more skill to write lengthy, detailed prose that's actually of good quality. It's better for amateurs to learn to write simply first, and then experiment later. Sorta learning to walk before you learn to run. But I don't like the discouragement that writers in general give to writers wanting to write with a bit of detail. These days anything other than the absolute most minimalistic prose gets called "Purple prose" almost right away - and I don't find that helpful. It's ended up creating an atmosphere where novices are afraid to write detail thinking it's somehow "wrong" to do so.

@Wreybies - Oh I don't mean that you should be able to write whatever you like without caring about whether it's needed for the story or whether it moves the plot forward etc, or whether it's interesting at all. Every line should be well-written and engaging for the reader. But for readers to come and say, "I don't care about any of this" after the first 2 lines - sorry, but I think if a reader doesn't have the patience to get through at least a few paragraphs then they probably just don't like reading in the first place. This is of course assuming there's nothing wrong with the quality of writing, however. For a reader to say, "Well I don't know who this character is" after having read just 1 sentence - well, it's like, duh? It's been 1 line - what did you expect? I think people simply put too much expectation - and too much pressure - on the first few lines.

 

Well, Dan Brown is an atrocious writer. I must admit I really enjoy reading his books, they are huge fun - they are like bad 90s action films starring Jean-Claude Van Dam. He has skill as a story teller - but as a writer of English: putting well-constructed and good sentences on the page, and then putting them together, he's pretty dire.

I was a bit naughty because I had a distinct feeling that throwing Mr Brown into the nest of writers might elicit such a response. It's basic writing quality,but a skill he's honed to get a specific job done - tell a story to lots of people. And I suppose that's all I want to do...with my prose of a quality at least one rung higher on the ladder
I enjoy a Dan Brown as much as the Viva pop channel;throwaway pulp. But he does it well,and that's probably because he's snipped to the nth degree. I don't mind being snipped if I'm just out to tell a rolling romp of a rollicking ride for my readers. A lot of my ideas are just stories I want to tell. I don't want to win any prizes for literature
But I don't wanna be Dan Brown either
Oh,the existential anguish

 

Even the greats don't always write like the greats. To use my example of Miéville again, his words concerning his novel Iron Council:

You know who else is like this (for me)? Clive Barker, successful novelist and creator of the Hellraiser film franchise. His stories are gobsmackingly seductive and provocative, but a wordsmith he is not.

 

I'm all for learning from the greats but I also think it needs to adapt to the changing times. Wordiness & beautiful prose has gotten condensed over the years - John Banville, Francine Prose, Chuck Palahniuk, Francesca Lia Block, Cormac McCarthy - all of them show that change.
To be honest I'd think you'd be flushing your career down the toilet if you wanted to emulate Charles Dickens/Nabokov/Steinbeck/Pynchon without some adaptation to current writing trends.

I cut scenes that aren't working to the whole. When I write I'm thinking more web-like than linear list. I don't just want scene one to connect to scene 2. I want descriptions to connect to scenes to themes to characters. I want it all to interconnect on a deeper level. For a better whole than just the plot. I'm not as concerned with axing a scene that has nothing to do with the plot, I'm more concerned with axing a scene that has nothing to do with the whole.

 

Yeah, maybe I'm a bad reader but I have zero interest in reading those classic writers. What excites me about writing today is when I read writers like Palahniuk. That condensed-ness makes writing seem possible. But then there are still folks who will draw from that ancient/awesome skillset. David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, for example, showed that he could write as if it were 200-500 years ago, and 200-500 years into the future. I could never do that though.

 

I think it's important to make every word count, but a word can count towards a lot of different aspects of a successful story. Plot, characterization, setting, beautiful, resonant language -they all contribute to a good reading experience, so words can 'count' toward any of them.

That said, if you can get words that count toward more than one at the same time without being overwhelming, then you're adding richness and depth to your writing, and I think that can only be a good thing.

 

@Mckk

You can't aspire to be a great writer, only to be the best writer you can be. I think the most straightforward way to achieve this is, like you said, walk before you can rh n. Rules and guidelines (I call them tools) apply to the majority of aspiring writers and are helpful. Personally, I think these axioms are generally more helpful than "do whatever works for you," up to the published writer level.

With that being said, I do not read Dan Brown type junk , so I agree that calling any prose more sophisticated than that to be "purple," is absurd, and certaintly, good writing exists today. On the other hand, I have learned that standards do change through time, and personally I am not sure how many new Don Quixotes would thrive today. Also, I would say it is never good to try to emulate any writer.

 

Excellent post.

 

Some typos are funnier than others. "Walk before you can!"

 

While my list of greats consisted of writers from earlier times, I'm not trying to write exactly like them. I think it would be absurd for a first time writer to attempt to write like Dickens (unless it's a successful parody). Even my favorite writing guru, John Gardner, said (paraphrasing - I can't find the exact quote right now): "My concept of a novel used to be a Mississippi riverboat, colorful and opulent, steaming serenely up the river. Now it's a 747." Even he changed with the times.

But I reject the idea of dumbing down the prose to a third-grade level. I reject the idea of deleting every single word that does not advance the plot. That kind of thinking puts plot above all things, and in my view, plot is pretty far down the list. Words, sentences, paragraphs, and scenes can be left in if they enhance the experience for the reader, even if they don't advance the plot.

When I edit my work, I usually don't edit at the word level - I edit as I go, so I know my sentences are strong in the first draft. Instead, I edit at the scene and chapter level. As a pantser, I take a lot of wrong turns before I figure my story out. This means that, in creating a second draft, I have to rip entire chapters out (and my chapters are usually 8,000 to 11,000 words long - I'm deleting a ton of work here!), or whole scenes. Then I have to write new ones to fill the gaping holes my surgery has left. Probably only about 60% of the first draft of my main novel exists in any form in the second draft. Nearly half is new material. So it's not word-by-word or sentence-by sentence; it's chapter-by-chapter.

I really only recognize one absolute rule in writing, and I'm not even totally sure of it. It's in my sig: Don't bore the reader!

Note: I should actually rephrase that, seeing as how I realize there's all kinds of readers. It should be, Don't bore your reader!

 

I turn cliches on their feet.

 

I would agree with you - I don't think it's helpful to aspire to be like any other writer, or even to become one of the greats. Being like another writer means you on some level lack your own style/voice which in turn implies you're not quite developed as a writer yet. Trying to be a great writer is a lot of pressure and really, far too abstract - what makes something "great"? So yes, I totally agree that striving to be the best writer you can be is far better - healthier, achievable, and encourages your own discoveries in writing.

In this sense, I think I understand what you mean when you say it's never good to try to emulate any writer. However, when you're first starting out, that's just what you do. You gotta start somewhere. You take what you think works from these writers and apply it - to some extent you're bound to also take to their style. It's part of the natural learning process - I don't think it's good to make emulating another writer your goal. But I do think it's a good way to learn by emulating, as long as you don't stop there.

"Do whatever works for you" is true to some extent. The problem isn't the piece of advice - the problem is novices rarely know what works for them yet. Again, it's one of those very loose, abstract kind of advice that unless you already know something about writing, you won't really know what is meant by it or what to do with it. Resulting in many novices thinking they can do whatever they like under the shining sun lol.

I think as long as you keep reading recent literature of any kind, then you're bound to catch on to what's "acceptable" writing for today and you're bound to be influenced by it.

 

I turn cliches like pancakes onto the dance floor.

 

I'm not quite the pantser for novels but I do write to find out why I'm writing and things often need to be changed drastically. Sometimes I feel like I should change my style as I've wasted precious time writing things I don't like - lol. In one novel, that I'm still not satisfied with, I wrote a two chapter incident in which a man took a friend to a forbidden trip to an island. The idea was imbedded in two previous chapters ( talk of it, planning for it ) I didn't like it so I ditched the whole thing. I lost about forty pages. I tried to replace the incident with a scene involving a commissioned piece of art - an idea embedded in over four chapters with the introduction of a new character. Didn't like that either and scrapped it. But this novel was worked on years ago, 2004? I think, and my process has become a bit more cautious. I'm also starting to cluster and brainstorm more to get the ideas out and see what will fit/work before writing it. Sort of like planning a pencil maze and getting all the dead ends out of my system before

Totally agree with this.
I'm unfortunately not very plot minded. Plot is the last thing I think about. I think about ideas, themes, characters but a plot to tie it all together doesn't usually appear till nearly the last draft. Sometimes even then it's not that concrete.

I like to take my writing cues from one of my favorite novels The Wind in the Willows. There's no major plot. Scenes are built for the enjoyment of character or ideas. The writing is so sensual it becomes an experience rather than an engine to get you from point a to point b. And Grahame never dumbs down the prose.

 

I read it as 'walk on your hands'.

But yeah, the advices I've always heard was to try not to be Already-Existing-Author V.2.0, but yourself. Make your writing the best it can be and keep working on improving it. If you start out on Dan Brown level (ie, me), then start from there and keep moving forward 'til you're not Dan Brown II.

 

I've only just noticed this post quoted me. Also, what definition of Existential are you using? Because that's not Existentialism as I understand it.

But Dan Brown has problems - he's even not trying to be literary. So I guess it all depends on what sort of writer you want to be. Do you want to be one who merely entertains, or do you want to do something else - something perhaps more important?

 

Admittedly,the existential comment was a bit much.
But I also have to admit,I do want to be one who merely entertains...is that bad? Storytelling is an art that has existed for years. I want to tell stories. I recognise that some are meant to change the face of literature. And I commend them. But that's just not me.
Nonetheless,I want to tell them well.

 

I'm with you. Interesting characters doing interesting things, well-told. That's what I want to write.

Great "literature"? Sure, I like reading it (some of it). But I have zero interest in writing it.

 

But I don't want to be the next Mark Twain. I don't want to change the face of literature and write the next greatest American novel. I just want to write to entertain myself and potentially others. Granted I'll make sure my writing is as good as it can get, but other than that, I don't want my work to reshape society as we know it. That's a tall order I'll let others deal with. Some people just don't want to be famous and legendary. I think Harry Potter summed it up well for me, "I don't want all the fame. I don't want eternal glory." You may want all the eternal fame and glory and have your name emblazoned on a golden plate underneath a sign that reads 'Best British Authors of the 21st-century', and that's fine. I just don't. And from what I see from the two posts above me, they don't want that either.

I don't believe that because some writers only write to entertain, they're somehow less important than those who want to reshape the world. So long as their writing is solid, it doesn't matter if they're world-famous or only somewhat famous in their hometown with a readership of maybe 100 people.

 

I feel like I should say, my comment wasn't in any way denigrating literature that just seeks merely to entertain the reader - not every book should be 'literary' and pure entertainment certainly has it's place. It does seem to me, though, that writers tend to aim for one or the other. I'm convinced books like The Hobbit aimed to be nothing more than fun stories, and that's one of my favourite books. Is there a problem with The Hobbit because it's not the most sophisticated novel on earth, no - not at all.

Which ever kind of writer you wish to be often has no reflection on the actual quality of your output.