I'm not talking about being a master. When we come out of grade school we're not even kindergarteners when it comes to knowledge of writing fiction. That's not my opinion, it's hard fact that any acquiring editor will be glad to corroborate And I know that because I owned a manuscript critiquing service before I retired. And in fact, one of the reasons I did was that the vast majority of the submissions I saw were written with exactly the same compositional skills: high school English, and had to be rejected—along with their check—with a note to study the basics, practice, rewrite, and resubmit. I know what editors react to, both through study, personal contact, and having been through the publication process. And though no one wants to hear it, the vast majority of hopeful fiction posted on the various writers sites would be rejected well before the end of page one, and for precisely the same reason: Sincere, dedicated and honest people, who want nothing more then to entertain their readers, are trying to write professional level fiction for the printed word with techniques and skills that are entirely inappropriate to the task. Let me put it simply: They haven't a fucking clue. And worse yet, they're getting encouragement and advice from others who have no more knowledge of what they're doing than they do. Who in their right mind would strive for a career in any profession without at least reading a book on the subject? Take a poll and see how many people on this site have had a book accepted by a real publishing house. If what you suggest as a strategy for becoming a writer is true it damn well better be more than a few percent, because any technique is measured by the success of the people applying the knowledge. And here's something else to chew on: If you find that learning the techniques that can make you a successful author are boring you're either reading the wrong books or unsuited to the profession. Since I'm assuming the former, I suggest you sit down with Dwight Swain for a few weeks. You won't find him boring. I had, and have no intention of turning this into an argument. And certainly, anyone can write in an way they care to. Certainly, too, any can express any opinion they care to on the subject of writing—but not of me, or you, or.... If you want to debate a point of craft that I bring up feel free. But the last time I looked you weren't a board moderator. So I would prefer you to respond to the OP's questions without personal attacks on me, what I believe, or how I state it. That would seem to be more in the spirit for which this site was established. This site is too good and too useful to the members to nudge toward what so many other writers boards are.
It's the result thats judged, not why and when it was written. And the results depend on the methods used. My point is that an activity promoted and sponsored by a vanity press may give the participant the feeling that they're accomplishing something, but in reality, using the wrong tools to create something you cherish because you put so much of yourself in it serves to place the writer in the frame of mind where any criticism is viewed as telling them their favorite child is ugly. And of course they've bragged to friends and family that they wrote a novel—and feel like a writer. So the one to gain by the experience? Lulu, the vanity press publisher who sponsors it. Nothing at all wrong with NaNoWriMo or any other prompt to help motivate yourself to write. Challenges are good. But sitting down and committing to spend huge blocks of time doing something which will yield no meaningful gain toward publication is a short-sighted way to a career as a writer. As far as I know, it's still walk, then run, not the other way around. Think about it. What have I suggested people do other then to spend the time to read a single book on the basics of what they hope to do? No one would disagree were the subject medicine, engineering, sales, or virtually any other profession. Yet invariably, when I mention it on a site like this, where people are hoping to write for publication you would think I'm asking people to enroll in a ten year course of study before they begin writing a novel, not a week. But of course there's the emotional element. If publishers and educational establishment are right, and there truly are skills one must acquire, over and above high school compositional techniques, the time they've already spent writing might well be wasted. And that's not something that's easy to accept. I learned the lesson after I'd done exactly what's so often suggested. Like everyone, I had not a clue that what I learned in school wasn't suitable for writing fiction for the printed page. There wasn't an Internet then, so I sat down and banged out six novels before I had a professional edit. My friends all told me I was a great writer. And after that much work I believed I had a really good handle on how to present a story. I thought I was at or very near acceptance of my work. Then the result of the edit came back and I opened to the first page. There was a sea of blue ink, lapping between the lines, in the margins, and dribbling off the edges. My characters were wooden, their behavior based on pop psychology. My presentation was cinematic in a medium that supports neither sound nor picture. And if that sounds familiar, it should, because it describes the writing of virtually everyone who has had no professional input. That critique destroyed me. For three days I was emotionally paralyzed, a zombie. But then I hit the library, the thing I should have done first, and spent the next few weeks saying, "Holy shit, why didn't I see this for myself?" It took me months of writing, editing, and re-editing, by that was when I got my first yes from a publisher. I have little writing talent. I am the last to catch on. But one thing I know. It doesn't mater how hard you work trying to solve the wrong problem. You won't accomplish your goal. I screwed up. I screwed up big time. I tried to be a pro without learning any of the things the pro takes for granted, and to "just write," believing—just like almost everyone else, that my having viewed the finished product, the novels I read, I'd learned the process. The why of it is easy. Like everyone else I left high school believing that writing is writing, and that since I had that part taken care of, all I needed was a good story idea, a bit of natural writing talent, and practice. But I learned better, and with a great deal of rewriting, three of those six novels I thought I wasted my time on were accepted for publication. But suppose I'd begun writing today, when sites like this were available. Would those novels have been published? Not a chance, because today I would have had lots of people encouraging me to continue doing exactly what I had been doing, and telling me that I'd learned everything I need to know by reading. And knowing no better I would have followed the advice because they were telling me what I wanted to hear. In the end I may only be able to convince one person in one hundred to take the step of learning what the pros and the teachers think important. But every year about two people contact me to say that I convinced them to learn a bit of craft, and that as a result they've achieved publication. I can live with that.
Good. You you're competent to write essays, papers, reports, and all the other nonfiction disciplines, because the entire purpose of public education is to provide adults who have the basic knowledge that their future employer requires. But fiction for the printed page requires the specialized knowledge of character-centric writing, not the author-centric writing you were taught. Fiction is emotion based, not fact based. Look at your own posted work and you'll see that like most people, you're informing the reader on the situation and focusing on what they would see were it a film. That's fact based writing, not emotion. Look through it and see if the reader is always aware of the protagonist's mind-state. Look for the places where you give an overview instead of having the reader live the story moment-by-moment as they want to. Look at the places where you place effect, laughter, for example, before the event that caused that laughter. In each of those places you're informing rather then entertaining. But do we read to be informed, or... Bear in mind that what I said about your writing wasn't a critique or a belittling of your effort. I can say that same thing about pretty much every new writer because with the same background and goal we're bound to make the same mistakes. As for the literature you studied, you learned about themes, intent and conflict, and other big picture items, but they spent not a moment on how to create fiction. Not a word on handling dialog and tags. They were teaching you to appreciate, understand, and enjoy, not write. It's not a matter of good or bad writing. It's knowledge. If we tell a story the way we tell it in person it can't work because storytelling is a performance skill that can't be reproduced on the page. But no one ever tells us that, except any decent book on writing technique. And as a result about half the new writer fiction is a transcription of someone speaking the story aloud. The other half is a dispassionate report on facts and events, with little that the reader will react to emotionally. Are you aware that a scene in a film or on stage isn't at all like a scene on the page? No one tells us that either. Nor do they tell us the three things a reader wants to know on entering a scene, or why a scene usually ends in disaster. In school they didn't tell us anything that had to do with creating a work of fiction. And we certainly won't learn it from people who know exactly the same things as we do because they went through the same educational system. So who's left but the pros? Seems to me that if you intend to submit your work to an agent/editor learning hw they view a manuscript might be a trifle useful.
I'm going to answer then read what everyone else said. You may be going about this all wrong. What story are you telling? Your characters are part of your story, but it's the story that guides who your characters are.
Can we all just agree to disagree and keep the focus on the OP's question? Appreciate JayG's advice as it's meant to be, ADVICE, not the holy grail of writing. I, personally, did NaNo and it taught me a lot about how NOT to write. It ruined my plot, ruined my story, and looking back... well, I can say that I did it, but it wasn't for the better. However, I also know that Night Circus was written during NaNo and I think its a fabulous book. Different writing strokes for different writing folks!
I enjoyed that book. It wasn't the next Hunger Games, but it was entertaining enough. I didn't know it was a NNWM creation. That adds another layer of wonder to the story.
yes, that was part of the course, the differences between the two and how to write them, yes we did a lot of analysing, but that was all geared towards the writing of pieces that were to be submitted as part of the course... one was prose, a story... the other a script... hell that year i did a lot of reading that year for the course...
the characters are a very heavy influence on the piece, which is why i ask, i did go further into depth with them and the plot earlier in this thread, which lead to some of the responses i have recieved. i appreciate what you have posted and will keep that in mind
@chaos Reigns It's Nov 1st and I hope you are rocking your NaNo!! Just a few thoughts on characters...Did you do one of those "fill in the blanks" character creation questionnaires where you have "eye color", "relationship with grandparents" and "favorite movie"? If you don't know how to move from there, I found a nice little technique to boost my character creation (thou I don't use it really, but it's fun) Namely, I ask myself: why does my character's eye colour matters? And then: is there some connection between his favorite attire and his great-aunt's pancakes? I found out that there are a few ways to use simple character details beside "helping the reader picture the character" (which seldom works - most readers, in my experience, ignore your feeble attempts to describe anything as you imagine it) 1) use the detail to mirror the character's inner world - "His eyes were ice-blue, and so was his heart." "You could expect her to be a warm and caring person, she always wore lovely little slippers and pink sweaters." 2) use the detail to create a contrast - "How could a blood-thirsty vampire has such warm dark eyes?" "Despite decorating his home with hundreds of photos of his parents, he couldn't stand them." 3) connect two or more seemingly unconnected details to create a general, more functional one, or to step into characterization - "Brown hair, brown eyes, white and straight - she felt so ordinary, so unremarkable, so mediocre." "He loved to dress up as a woman, play soccer and listen to Bach - all in the same time, if possible - he just didn't give a damn about what others might say." 4) etc... The most important thing, methinks, is to understand your character is not a real person - while you might expect a certain amount of "randomness" in real life (eye color and favorite music can have nothing to do with early childhood experiences and sexual preferences), in literature this randomness needs to be either highly artistic (you choose to create a chaotic, unrelated world) or needs to be toned down (because your reader wants to know why the character's brother-in-law is important, if he appears all of the sudden in the text). If you can easily change the detail without making any impact to the story or the way your character is portaited, then the detail is either unimportant, or completely random. The same, I think, goes for other details - setting and object descriptions etc. For example, when describing a room, you mention that a window faces east. Does it have to face east? Facing east means the room gets morning sun, for example. It makes the character get up early, or it brings light in his world. Ilumination becomes an important aspect of the setting. Or, a tree grows in front of an east window, blocking the morning sun. Etc. However, if you can easily substitute "east" with "northwest", so the fact doesn't really play any significant role in the story: you can as easily just drop it. Now, I'm not saying every "insignificant" detail should be dropped - I'd just rethink my reasons for putting it there in the first place. For example, your narrator might be and architect - he notices the position of every window significant to him. Or, the window might be part of a sacral building - you depend on the your reader to know how a mosque is positioned, for example. Etc. @JayG frankly, whenever someone mentions Stephen King I think of Harold Bloom. Google to get it And again, reading How-to books on a subject doesn't really qualify as "proper education"... naah...
Iiiii.... kindly disagree. lol. Mainly with points 1 and 2. As a reader, I hate reading things like that. When I'm reading, I want the world to feel REAL. I want to believe the story (no matter how unbelievable) and reading something like "His eyes were ice-blue-like his heart" is cheesy, cliché, and unrealistic. It immediately brings me out of the story, rolling my eyes, and I think less of the author for having even gone there.
@TessaT of course, examples were quite idiotic, I agree But I didn't mean that it should be that obvious - they're just to illustrate a possibility. A more serious example: In "Brother's Karamazov", Mitya and Alyosha meet after many years. Mitya remembers a seemingly random detail: how Alyosha loved cherry sweets (not sure about translation). This little, insignificant detail shows us how the crazy hedonist really cares for his ascetic little brother. Or: in "Cement Garden" Jack's one and favorite book is a cheesy pulp sci-fi, which shows us both his latent creativity, emerging sexuality and creates a contrast with bleak, concrete wasteland he lives in. Now, these examples also sound cheesy - but they really work inside their respective texts. Maybe the real problem comes with the fact we should try to look at text as writers as well (or instead) as readers. We are far from passive recipients even if don't know anything about the process behind the work. But becoming an artist of any craft means that you are gonna loose at least some of the "consumer's" innocence.
It got me a publishing contract seven times, with another in editing at the moment. But that's beside the point. Having no education is a pretty reliable way to be among the thousand rejected for every novel accepted. And counting on people who have not been able to sell their own work to tell you how to write for publication—as an alternative to self or classroom study—is definitely not the recommended path to success. Given that the average hopeful writer hasn't the time or money to spend four years obtaining a degree in commercial fiction writing, reading the views and advice of the people who taught such courses for decades, beats the hell out of guessing. And of course the people supplying the pages and pages of praise for Dwight Swain's American Amazon page, many of whom credit him with their success in the business, don't agree with you, either. Here are two comments from successful writers: and Given the sheer number of successful writers who praise that book as one of the primary reasons they were able to achieve publication, unless you can show the same kind of success while not reading such books, you may be, as the saying goes, pissing into the wind. Again: This site was not established as the place for people to snipe at what others have to say. If you want to discuss a point of craft do so. Literary debate is a healthy and productive way of acquiring knowledge. And I've learned nothing from people who agree with me. Simply saying, "You're wrong," without discussing why or presenting a viable alternative, is not.
Be aware of two things: First, not everyone has the same definition of success. Many people here do not define success as publication. They just want to get their own stories written and completed. Second, the fact that someone has not sold their own work does not mean it's bad work. It might mean (as in my case), that they haven't tried to sell it. Or at least, not very hard. I have collected a total of two rejections, both for short stories. I just don't submit my work very often. I have not completed a novel to my satisfaction yet, so I've never submitted one. Does that mean I'm a lousy writer? No. I know quite a bit about good writing. I haven't sold because I have almost nothing ready to sell, and my guess is that many other members of this forum are in the same category. Don't dismiss us just because we haven't published. It doesn't mean we don't know what we're talking about.
I don't have a problem with publishing being some measure of success - having published several dozen short stories was all very nice and sweet for me, and I can't wait to see my forthcoming hard-copy collection - as I imagine anyone would. But I do have a problem with "commercial writing" being the only writing, as well as the only successful success imaginable. "Yipie, I got money!!" is a great thing, sure. But "Yipie, there are people actually smiling and thriling and having a good time reading my stuff!" - THAT's a success for me. @JayG you are aware that you are PRACTICALLY advertising? And, to go 100% off-topic : following your logic, there would be no jazz music and no Turkish poetry. You know what music makes money? And you can guess how much money does a Turkish poet earn for his work...
Well, if you remove the requirement that people like your writing well enough to pay to read it everyone is a successful writer simply because they've found the keyboard. Anyone who is just looking for self gratification can write in any way they care to, of course They don't need advice—and won't take it in any case. The question is, should they be advising others on the best way to write when they know nothing about it and don't care to learn? There are people who come here with the goal of writing well, hoping to get solid and reliable advice. Are they done a service to be given advice that, if taken, precludes publication?
Once again, don't assume that, because someone doesn't want to write the way you do, they know nothing about writing (and don't care to learn). Also, do not assume that taking the advice offered by unpublished writers precludes publication. What Swain, Bickham, & Co. offer is not the only way to write that leads to publication. If their method was the only way, there would be no Steinbeck, no Hemingway, no Pynchon, no Matthiessen, no Burgess, and on and on. They got published.
I've never read "Advice from a Succesful Cardiac Surgeon: Learn Cardiothoracic Surgery in 10 Easy Steps". But the "How to Build a Suspension Bridge" book was a blast! Man, did you ever consider the possibility that maybe it was your talent, hard work, dedication, craftmanship, love for your subject, respect for your readers and a small bit of luck that got you published? it's a much better advertisement for your work than saying: I just followed the instructions
Some people might just want to finish writing a story from start to finish. It's satisfying on it's own for some and that's all they needed. To prove to themselves they had what it took to sit down and write to their hearts content. True, writers who did not read "How To's" or go to school specifically to learn simply did it. Not by magic but by working and picking up things as they went until they had something comparable in terms of quality and sometimes even exceed it. Everyone has their own learning methods and learn differently. Some NEED to be told, some are polymaths, some need to see, some absorb information seemingly out of thin air, some just trial and error. You can't bark down at everyone there is only one way when everyone learns differently. Perhaps reading instructional books and going to classes would murder their interest and desire to write. Small doses might be best for them as they try it out or they need a completely different method. Maybe they need novel dissection courses. Yeah... I LOVE Voltaire, I think he is a genius and the most talented musician/artist nowadays. He does well enough to support his family. He learned playing guitar by buying one at an older age and copying strings from Beatles' song books. Then he just strummed 3 strings over and over and sang over them. He's successful within his own right, doesn't need to add a synthetic beat or switch to pop music because that is the formula that works and he certainly doesn't need to visit a classical guitar instructor to become good/better/do it right. He found his own thing and he works hard until he created what he wanted to create and gave it his all toward the quality of it without removing his own touch from it. There's more to art then following a formula and making sure you do as good as everyone wants it to be. I want to be published by a publisher. Not because I want their approval or the approval of the masses and I certainly won't cater to them but give them over and over what I create and not what they want me to create. Does it mean I'll write however I like and they have to suck it up? No. I'll create quality at the best of my ability. Matters little how or where I learned, as long as it's enjoyable and entertains. tl;dr I'm rambling myself into a corner, aren't I?
Why would you assume they don't use motivation/response, don't end their scenes in disaster, don't answer the three questions a reader wants answered on entering a scene, or any of the other hundreds of elements discussed in those books? They do. You can diagram the M/R pairs in their work easily enough. Scene and sequel is clearly there. They make use of the scene goal and most of the other elements, of course. If you disagree with specific techniques taught in a commercial fiction course of study bring it up and we'll discuss it. Perhaps you're right, but we won't know till we do, and find people who successfully use the technique you suggest instead. And to quote Hemingway, “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” Dismissing the teachings of a man who was an honored professor, and another who's book has page after page of praise from published writers, as if they said only one thing, or offered a rigid set of rules for writing, while not looking at what they actually said, is hardly literary discussion. Jack Bickham, for example, sold seventy-five novels. He taught professional writing for decades—and the program and OU was literally legendary, with a student list that read like a who's who of American writing. You may not like the man, but he certainly has something to say that's worth listening to. I have fifty books on all aspects of writing and publishing in my personal library. (I needed them as a working tool when I was critiquing manuscripts). And though most of them aren't written with the clarity of Bickham and Swain's, they say pretty much the same thing, so you're not dismissing two men's work, you're dismissing the thinking of many people who made their living over a lifetime by writing and teaching fiction for the printed word. I can see it if you say you favor Ansen Dibell over Jack Bickham, for example. But suggesting that someone who's only qualification for giving advice on how to achieve publication is that they attended high school, and then sat at the keyboard typing, is equal to people who made their living through their knowledge of professional writing skills doesn't seem the fact track to publishing. I really hadn't intended this to turn into an argument. I voiced an opinion that learning your craft is a more reliable and faster path to publication. An strangely, the people most against it, who insist that such knowledge is unnecessary have not been able to sell their work through the use of that technique. If that, in and of itself, doesn't answer the question, there's certainly nothing more I can say.
Sorry, but it didn't. It wasn't till I had my first paid line editing that I learned that I was making all the amateur mistakes I saw in the manuscripts I used to critique, or the majority of writing posted on the various online sites. There weren't a few suggestions, there was a literal sea of blue ink. And as a result I took the necessary steps to acquire knowledge of what publishers think of as professional writing. And I sold the next thing I submitted to the first publisher I submitted to. I make no pretensions to being a writer of any talent. But what success I have achieved is the direct result of abandoning the idea that by attending the same English classes everyone else does I obtain a professional writing education and learning the craft the pros take for granted. That's when I gained "craftmanship."
I favor Swain but Bickham is free at the library (unless you're a pirate. I've seen both Swain's book and the audio tapes on pirate sites) The taught together for many years, so...
@JayG your loss - I'd still call you a writer of some talent, based on little that I've read from you. Knowing how to put words together, picking just the right sequence, being able to choose - you can't really learn that by reading how to do it. But - hey, great, you've done it! Good for you and good luck in future endevours! You ARE aware that I could point you to a random chapter of a random book of a relevant author where you CAN'T draw an easy diagram and that you would just dismiss my example for a random reason?
Well, I think you could do a character sheet, it might be easier to figure out your characters that way Somehing like... Name: Last name: Age: Gender: Species: (if it's not an human...) Personnality: (if you're not sure about this one, just think about the kind of character you need to keep the story going on; what are his/her motivations? Why does he/she does this or that? People don't just do things out of the blue, they need a reason to. Furthermore, you can ask ten persons the same problem but they won't give the same answer. That's why you should create your characters taking in consideration the story's necessities. Then, you add the characteristic that will allow you to know what kind of relationship they can develop between each other.) skills: flaws: What does he/she likes? What does he/she dislikes? A little about him/her: (short biography. Remember; experiences make us what we are, so this is kind of the explanation of his/her actual personnality) Miscellaneous: This is a simple sheet, you can always add what you want
