Maybe I lack ambition, but when I accepted I'd probably never reach even close to that standard of writing, the process got a whole lot easier. Read Willy Vlautin's The Motel Life, and it will restore your self-confidence no end. And as derogatory as that might sound to the author, it's anything but.
Success in writing doesn't depend on creativity, most of the time all you need is functional prose and a good plot. I've got a collection of Zebra horrors to attest to that. And some don't even have a good plot. If your goal is to wield language like a poet though, then you might have trouble - as far as I'm concerned those guys think differently. Sometimes I feel like they've bucked the whole system. School kinda wires you to settle for the correct way to achieve an A rather than exploring and possibly getting an F. And that kinda mentality gets carried on through life. Maybe they experimented more or said f-that and did their own thing. When I want to challenge myself I experiment. But it's more a personal goal. And IMOHO functional will get you published a helluva lot faster than beautiful.
When it has come to poetry, I've managed to write some special things (I've put them on Instagram to fill the void of attention, hah!). When it comes to language, i think that it takes command of the language before one can apply it creatively - as with all things, like music, photography, driving (just kidding).
Cut yourself some slack. You can't have a good plot or theme without being creative. How poetically you put them across is your business. Look, I've spent most of my life as a professional musician, song writer, poet, journalist and writer. I got fucked up during the Viet Nam war and I've had a disabled veteran's pension for the last 20 years (my one true stroke of luck). I realize that puts me in a privileged position - I really don't have to worry about an income. However, I spent the 30 years previous to my hitting the old-guy lottery living pretty much by my wits and creativity (such as they are), and if I have any advice for people just starting into the creative life, it would be to be true to your gut feelings about your art. Don't worry about what is selling now or what publishers want. If you are lucky enough to be ensconced in your death-bed, surrounded by your loving friends and family, your thoughts will not be about how much money you made or how you made your living. Your thoughts will probably be about your real accomplishments. You are an artist, aren't you? If you weren't you wouldn't be writing; especially fiction. Write your story, not what you think the suits will buy. Don't spend your last moments with someone else's life passing before your eyes. Just some thoughts from a guy entering his dotage; make of them what you will.
I would prefer to be understood than marveled at. The best writing gets out of its own way and lets the story become the focus. I have a terrible affliction of liking what I write and writing for myself. I compare myself now to myself before. There will always be someone better. I am better now at critiquing than I was when I first joined, and jannert is still better than me. But she inspires me. When someone is better than me at something, I am pleased for them. If I care about that thing, I draw inspiration from them and/or their performance. But what I have is enough. I trust I will continue to improve whilst I wish to and strive to.
Just recently I have been pondering this question; since I'm an artist, musician and storyteller, I was looking at the differences between them, and the one thing I've noticed is a lack of artistic licence in novels. Yes you can create worlds etc, but I think of all the artistic pursuits, it appears that it is the most structured. Art can be abstract and just drips and splats and seen as a masterpiece, music can be anything from bird song, to record samples stolen from other records, film can be silent or hours of someone sleeping. But books.... Can these be abstract or not follow structures, can they break all the rules, not conform, and still be hailed as masterpieces? Is there a book out there without a storyline?
There's a reason many works share a similar structure : because it works. It's like that story about the emperor's new clothes. A great deal of time and money is spent hiring philosophers to say existential nonsense that the average person would not understand. As "art experts", their opinions are blindly accepted as objective truth.
"Novels" are only a subcategory of creative writing, though. There are subcategories of other artistic pursuits that have quite rigid expectations as well. If you get into poetry, there's significantly more room for experimentation. And even in novels, there are those who experiment and try different forms. The thing is - as with music or film, the more experimental stuff tends to not sell as well. You can make a movie that consists of someone just sleeping, but you're not going to sell a lot of tickets to it. Art is maybe an exception to this - there have been some very successful avant garde artists. But in most fields, I think there's a definite balance to be maintained between absolute creativity and accessibility.
I think the difference is scale. A picture or a song consume about how much time? A few minutes? Most songs are much more than 3 minutes. And you can stare at most parts of a picture within 3 minutes. A novel though? No novels are read in three minutes. This is why I think as Bay said. Poems are allowed to be more abstract, because again scale. A poem can be read in three minutes. As someone I know once put it. Bad movies and books tend to be easy things for people to agree on, but art and music are not. Because the lack of scale means that something that might be horrible in a more objective sense of music theory may be catchy which is the reason many will like it. You can't create somemthing as large as a novel and expect to survive on catchiness alone like you can with music or a picture. Make sense?
The pages are the canvas, the words are the paint. Want an example of out of the ordinary creative writing? Read this year's winner of the (U.S.) National Book Award for fiction "Fortune Smiles" by Adam Johnson. No zombies, no "other" worlds, no fantasy, just fantastic creative writing, stories painted with words. If by "book" you mean novel "out there" without a storyline--not one that most would want to read I would think because the story is part of the art. Writing without meaning would defeat the purpose of the art of creative writing--which I believe is to tell a compelling story creatively. Are you suggesting that random sounds put together without a melody or structure are music, so that then somehow comparatively random words put together without a clear meaning allow for artistic freedom? Maybe I am missing your point???
Slice of life lit rejects a lot of story elements. In terms of variation, writing is more like architecture in the arts: there's only so far you can go from "building."
It is as creative as it gets. Pop songs also follow some sort of structure throughout the song and that doesn't make them uncreative, does it? No, of course - unless it strictly follows a formula but that is not the fault of the so called "creative limitation" of structure. Are you implying that art has to be random in order to be "really creative"?
Speak of the devil! Look at Matt's stories, for example, it's almost like he goes out of his way to go opposite of convention and his story's rock!
Matt is @matwoolf ... Almost every post of his is a story, but I think he still might have some longer stuff on his site blog.
Try Finnegan's Wake on for size. I'm told it's a pretty out there experience, and there's a lot of people who think it's amazing. When the Wikipedia article includes the phrase: "Despite the obstacles, readers and commentators have reached a broad consensus about the book's central cast of characters and, to a lesser degree, its plot." Then it seems like a good bet. I've got a copy sitting on the bookshelf but I've not read it yet. Never really felt strong enough.
I think there's a deeper issue here. The definitions of art and music have been expanded to include, as you call them, drips and splats and bird songs. I'm sure there are still some purists out there who would not call many modern works art. Also, we don't experience writing the same way we experience visual art, for example. That's why these different mediums exist in the first place. Visual art can show us things writing cannot, and vice versa. So maybe we shouldn't apply the criteria we use to judge visual art or music to judge writing. As far as your questions go, yes, there are many books that don't follow the traditional rules but are still considered masterpieces. Finnegan's Wake has already been mentioned. I'll add Joyce's other book Ulysses to that. Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable is basically just a character sitting in a room by himself thinking. As a more recent example, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is a very unusual book as well.
Depends how bored you are, apparently: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/the-upside-of-down-emotions-1.3324570/why-you-should-embrace-boredom-1.3326665
Has anyone tried any of the Arvon writing courses? What do you think of them? I've been considering trying one.
Hey All!!!! Let me start this by saying thanks for welcoming me here to this wonderful forum!!! I have always loved to write, ever since I was a young girl. I was the one in the class that could pop out a 3000 word essay overnight easily, I never really have had any troubles finding the words I want to write. Unfortunately I never really had any training on the correct way to write, especially longer works like novellas or novels. I love to write but get very frustrated because I always have the creative juices going but get caught up on the outline of what I am writing. Here are my main questions- What is the correct way to write dialogue? Should there be a space between each line of dialogue? Is there really a rule from going from 1st person to going to 3rd person? Is there a certain word count for each chapter when it comes to Novels? Should chapters be indented? Each paragraph? I know its a lot of beginner questions, but I can never seem to find definite answers. I read places that a novel must have over 30 chapters, but I have read novels that have had less. I really want to know the correct way to write not just throwing words together on a page, which is what I really feel like is what I do now. For all you veterans out there any tricks or trips you can give me I welcome them! Thanks again!!
This is a standard way to write dialogue, with quotations marks and a new line for at least each change of speaker. Some writers don't follow either one of those, but it's rare. You're best off learning the standard way of doing it, and then if you want to deviate you'll be in a better position to do it. There's no "rule" about switching between first and third person. Generally, you're going to see a minimum of a scene break, and more likely a chapter break, at every switch between those viewpoints. There are books that have a first person POV for one character, and third person POV for everyone else. They sell well, so it can be done. No, there's no word count for chapters. You can look at a variety of books and find chapter lengths all over the map. You'll find chapters of widely different lengths within the same book. New paragraphs are usually indented. You'll see that the first paragraph in a new chapters isn't always indented. As for the correct way to write - there isn't one. You're the author, and a creative person. You can do what you want, so long as you make it work. What you'll find are common or standard ways to do things that authors have found to be successful over time. It's good to know them, but you're not stuck with them.
I would add to @Steerpike's excellent suggestions by saying just beast in there and get your work on paper. Most of the questions you've asked are simple to learn, and simple to correct if you mess up. In fact most of your questions are actually formatting questions rather than writing questions. (Except for the first person/third person one.) It's easy to learn that kind of stuff. What's harder to scrape together is enthusiasm and creativity, which you certainly seem to have. I read a suggestion a wee while ago that makes perfect sense to me. The first draft is for getting your story ideas down on paper (or the digital equivalent.) Pour your heart and soul into getting what you want to say out there, in tangible form. Then you can shape it, refine it, change it, add to it, focus it ...whatever the story needs to make it work well. A major block to new writers can be the feeling they have to get everything 'right' at the first go. They worry and tie themselves in knots, trying NOT to make any mistakes, glom through every how-to book they can get their hands on and become fixated on following formulas. I feel that, in itself, is a huge mistake. And one that's very difficult to correct. How-to books are very helpful. I certainly learned a lot from them. But I never read a single one till after I'd finished my first draft. You know what? I believe they make more sense after you've already written. You'll know for sure what they're talking about, if you've already encountered the situations they discuss. Go ahead. Write like mad, and don't lose your enthusiasm. Push on with your story until the first draft is done. Remember, enthusiasm is very difficult to add in later on, to spice up a perfectly produced (A+ from your grammar teacher), but otherwise lacklustre story. I really believe enthusiasm can't be added in at all. Writing for fun (as opposed to required writing) is really the most risk-free activity I can think of. It's not like learning to drive a car or fly a plane. As long as you're not in a rush to publish substandard stuff, there is no mistake you make that can't be corrected. And what's even better—every mistake you correct during an edit is one you probably won't make again. Good writing will get easier and easier to accomplish, the more you write and analyze your work afterwards. Enthusiasm and an original approach are what make your writing special, not perfect first-time presentation. Dive in and enjoy yourself. And make a mess if that's what it takes. Clean it up later on.
@Steerpike and @jannert Thank you so much for your input!!! It really does take a lot of the stress off. I guess my main fear is that I get all the way through my novel (I'm in the process of writing one now, about 3/4 done) and then find out that its written all wrong and can't be used, that even if I go to an editor or some professional who will help me get it in the correct format, they would have to rip it apart so thoroughly that it would no longer be my creation.
It will always be your creation and nobody else's, as long as you're willing to do the edits yourself. Once you're finished, let some people read it, get feedback, and tackle what they've pointed out could be improved (if you agree.) Rinse and Repeat, Rinse and Repeat. You don't ever need to rely on an editor or professional to correct your MS, as long as you're willing to learn. That's where the how-to books (especially the ones on editing and formatting an MS) will come in handy.
