I'm always fascinated about how the most brilliant idea when I'm carrying grocery bags home from the store looks so ridiculous when I am sitting at my desk two hours later. It's like when I'm punchy at 4am, and the next day I don't get my own joke. But at least it's productive.
Hi all, I wondered if anyone had faced similar and had any advice. I've wanted to write novels all my life, and from childhood (starting around 8 years old even) through college I started several novels, but I wasn't serious enough about it so never completed one. Now I am more serious and would like to give it another try. I'm sure up to this point the story belongs to many here. But the challenge I feel like I face every time I sit down at the computer is defaulting to technical writing. I've had to do technical writing as a part of my job for the past decade, and I feel like I've lost the ability to put creativity into my writing. It tends to be very concise, fact-driven, overly-logical, straight to the point, following precise formats prescribed by my job. Great for sharing information, but doesn't work in storytelling. I am bored reading my own stories, lol. Does anyone have any advice for re-finding that creativity and breaking out of a decade long habit of technical rule-based writing?
Would it help, may just as an exercise, to write in first person as a person very different from you?
That's actually a very good idea! Just enough of a break from my standard way of writing that it might trigger some of my more hidden creative side. I will have to give it a try. Thanks!
Believe me, I know your pain. I only ever wrote a few chapters of fiction back in undergrad before switching to pure technical writing for the next 10+ years. My brand was scholarly articles so I always feel the need to explain every detail about things to make sure that there isn't any confusion, but that's not exactly good for story flow. I've found it helps to go back after writing a section (maybe wait a couple of days) and see how well it reads to you. I find it's easier to see what needs to be changed when your in reading mode vs writing mode, but that's just me.
Start with studying things that are not technical but have a systemic structure & dynamics. - How motives evolve? - Story structures. - Character arch types - both basic types of them: narrative and social. - The socio-emotional structure of human beings. Cognitive structures of technical writing are rigid. If you study things that have flexible but existing cognitive structures you get tools to loosen the structures you use while thinking and writing. Read humour that has two simultaneously existing truths that exclude each other. Technical writing is a bit like pumping iron in a gym using all those machines that allow you to use only one trajectory. It makes you sttrong but stiff. Now you must flex a lot before you start to move in a smooth way. - Intellectual flexing. - Stylistic flexing - Flex you views, the way you observe. Technical writing demands a lot of intellectual work but in a very single dimensional way. Too much of it does make you to be institutionalized to single minded intelligence. So you might need few years of very multidimensional thinking before the world starts to open to you. So the road map looks like this: 1. Narrow rule based world. ==> 2. Add more rules that have connections to structures and dynamics but not much connections to the first world. ==> 3. Add the world of those rules. ==> 4. Add the anomalies of that world. ==> 5. Add another worlds that are inside of that world you added. 6. Remember to flex in every step. And now... Flex more. 7: Write. You can write stories in steps 2-5 but those stories won't find much audiences. It will be more like practising. Practising is very good, but don't fool yourself by thinking it is producing. It is not. It is practising. Go all the way to past 6 before you start the real thing. Then you are ready. If you know any creative multidimentional thinkers, ask they help. It can be very difficult to someone with technical writing background, but do it anyway. Creative multidimentional thinkers use to make an impression of not serious, not "professional", not... but don't let it fool you. They live outside dominance hierarchies and often competent hierarchies also*. Identifiers of those hierarchies are jokes or tools or decoration or... to them. And quite often they let it see. It is one of the many ways they test and evaluate you while you think that you evaluate them. It is a bit like two sided mirror. They see through it, and you see some of your own expectations in a twisted way. And they see how you react to that. And you don't seee that they see it. * Supreme intellectul and creative competence is outside hierarchies. The top level of value hierarchies has a processual nature. It is qualitatively different than other levels. That is why it always has a bit childish and "easy" nature.
How do you balance this with the frequently-given advice to just power through the first draft? Does this not break your internal flow of the story to be editing while you write during the first draft? I have attempted to write an entire story in my current form with the expectation that I'd edit the heck out of it later - but I get too bored in that case, everything is flat and I can't get emotionally involved. But I'm afraid of editing too much as I go, as well. Yeah, I've pretty well determined at this point my first draft of a novel is going to be a throw-away. Just a learning piece to play with. So I'm not putting any pressure on myself to produce something great. MAYBE it'll be able to be re-written entirely into something later, or more likely it'll just be tossed forever. But I know it's not going to be some great work of fiction to start with. Thanks for all your other tips. I will definitely be trying to incorporate what I can. At this point I think EVERYTHING is worth trying, until I find what does or doesn't work.
Personally I have a hard time with the "power through" approach. I don't go back and rewrite every section, but when I feel like I'm not happy with them I try to. Recently there was a big part that I wasn't happy about but couldn't figure out what was wrong, so I did the "power through" approach and moved on, but I eventually realized what the problem was after thinking about it for a while. In that case the issue was very large, so I asked the community if I should go back and change it, and most of them said yes. Most of them didn't specifically say to change it immediately, but I'm of the mindset that if you know you're going to change something you might as well do it. It helps me out by letting me not worry as much about the quality of what I've already written so I can focus more on what's next. I also have a pretty detailed outline that for the most part I stick with, which I think helps keep my internal flow in tact. I don't stick to the outline religiously (this next section I'm about to start I'm throwing the outline out almost entirely because I think the plot's theme was way too similar to other subplots, and those need to have that theme for the sake of the overarching plot), but for the most part I adhere to it. ^example of me over-explaining when I write in that last paragraph btw
I feel your pain, @hummingbird! I have done technical writing as an officer, then an engineer, for the Navy, and while my technical writing gets high marks for volume, clarity, and the speed with which I can crank out a 200 page document, properly formatted, ready to print and distribute, the best complement one can ever get on technical writing is that it does not put the reader to sleep. And I never took a course in creative writing. I picked up a number of skills doing my technical writing, one of which is very rapid editing on the fly. I hit the return key, and immediately scan the preceding paragraph for typos, SPaG, mis-statements, etc. And my fundamental outline is to proceed from the simple to the complex, a rule of thumb given me by my cab-driver father with an 8th grade education. So I have developed a thought flow that works with fiction as well, because that is what you are doing there as well, going from the simple, the introduction, to evolving complexity of the plot. Learning how to do document layout, headers, footers, and all of the tools available to you in Word, that is a plus. Most of my documents begin with a purpose statement: who is this document aimed at, and what should they take away after reading it? Having that thought in mind, though not explicitly stated, helped guide my thoughts through fiction. In fact, perhaps it might not be a bad idea to add the purpose paragraph to your novel: who is your audience, and what will they learn from reading your story? That will focus your writing on your objective, just don't forget to flush it on the first edit! So you have acquired a lot of skills that will carry over to novel writing. I have done one thing differently in writing fiction. My technical writing is preplanned exquisitely before I start writing. I have the chapter headings, sub-chapters, sub-sub-chapters, all laid out, then I start filling in the blanks. I absolutely refuse to do that with fictional writing. Instead, I allow my characters to tell most of the story, and often I am as surprised as the reader at how a chapter turns out. The last chapter of my first big (240K word) novel, though I had had it in mind for most of the 20 years while it was in work, well, that wasn't quite how it happened. My characters were much more mature than when I first thought about how to end the story, and they told it differently than I thought they would. I am challenged by my sequel, which is ten or so characters scattered around the world of 2000 years ago, who have to individually come together in the Middle East in time for the Roman invasion of Mesopotamia in 115AD, of course not knowing there is a reunion coming. And there are major historical events that my story has to align with. So I am doing more pre-planning than I did with the predecessor and I am stalling out a bit. I recommend the power through approach to writing. Edit a paragraph after it is written and and the chapter when finished, then mark it as done and keep going: my wife and I review each other's work that way. Get to the end, then go back back and edit it. I find that editing is critical, while writing is creative, and I can't have both modes in my head simultaneously, it stalls me out. So good luck, technical writing is not a negative, it brings a lot of positive skills to your story-telling toolkit
I have been thinking this because one of my relatives might have a bit similar problem. And both the good and bad news is this: You can't put creativity to your writing. Creativity is where you start. (Those who don't have it start by stealing, imitating...) If you lack creativity, you must go beyond writing first and then came back. What ever you find, you can use in a creative way. If you have technical background you can take steps to design. Seek for the area where aesthetics and practicality meets. Try to understand how they cause each other. Aerodynamics, bridges, what ever that smiths forge, nature. Think about fractals and nature. Think about mathematics in nature and music and arts... Read Feynmans memoirs. Read Gell-Mans Quark and the Jaguar. Read Voglers Writer's Journey because you must do that journey to wake your creativity from it's hibernation. (If you have some. Maybe 95-99% of adults do not.) You must flex your brain. Creativity rises from flexible and adaptive ming. Technology and corporate business is almost opposite. There folks apply. Almost no one creates. (Some dudes in marketing and design do, but they stay out of non-creative staff.) If you know any creative people, take time with them and tell that you need help to revitalise the small creative child inside you. If they are creative, they will help even it harms they own life in a small way. If they are not, they will tell you excuses and "can't find time" in months. And you must invest - a lot. You must invest time, undivided attention and effort. Your brain might tell you that "here is a shortcut, you are so clever you can use it and get the same reesults". If it does, don't believe it. It is just brains way to tell it is lazy and wants to avoid working. If you really, really think this, it will help you a bit. If you do this, it will help you a lot. But if you do it, you will not be the same person after it. You will be much better and intellectually richer. Can you stand that?
Short, concise and to the point is not necessarily a bad thing, @hummingbird. One thing which might help is to avoid narrated exposition in favor of dialogue. Let your characters tell what they see/feel/smell/hear/think, instead of you the writer describing it for the reader. Since neither you nor I use dialogue in technical writing, you might get past that hurdle that way. I am doing a book that will be self-published on relativity physics, but I introduce some narrated dialogue in there. Instead of the dry reference frames S and S*, ct=1, ct*=1.7432, and x=vt, I have "Sally leaves earth at noon at 0.5c. At 1PM, Sam, in mission control on earth, calls Sally and asks her what time it is. At 3PM, he gets her answer, that she got the message at 1:45PM. Sam is very puzzled, because by his radar tracking, she should have gotten the message at 2PM. Is her clock running slow? He looks through his powerful telescope, able to see into her spaceship's cabin, even at this great distance, and sure enough, her clock is reading 1:45PM."
Art, aesthetics, sports, social and emotional things... There are many things where you (propably) don't use technical jargon or thinking. You - Hummingbidd - can train descriptive writing with them if you want to.
Technical readers want to read your work, fiction readers don't. They want to be entertained. Is your writing entertaining?
I've been meaning to do this for ages. Structure a year of self study, along the lines of a formal creative writing course with monthly modules, including texts to read, study and daily exercises. If you were to create a course of self study in fiction writing, what would your modules be and how would you order them throughout the year?
There are loads of classes available online. You're probably going to run into three camps on the subject: the folks who claim writing can't be taught, so you'd be wasting you time anyway; the ones who feel everything you need is already available online for free, so pay-to-partake classes are a waste of money; and the people who believe if you want a curated experience, you'll be paying something for it. The rub is, if you don't know what you need to study, how will you know what to look for? The pay classes can run anywhere between $15-25 per class to upwards of $800-$900 for the one class... That can get overbearing fast. MIT has one for about $3500 (yeah, that MIT.) The free stuff is always welcome, but then you have to deal with the caliber of the material. If you're already working from a more advanced skill set, the beginner classes (which many are) are just going to be a refresher for you. Ultimately, it's going to depend on where you are, where you want to go, and how you want to get there. I've been trying to get there for about four years now, broke and not able to pay $200 and $300 per class. It's not easy, but it's been worth doing. Hang in there and keep at it. My suggestion is to start with studying rhetoric, grammar, and punctuation. Make sure you have a solid grasp, there, and other aspects of story and structure will fold in with much less difficulty.
Write, at least four hours a day or 2500 words. Write badly until you write well. Education rots your brain with other peoples ideas that may well be WRONG. Read the monthly short story contest to see what the winners did right and the rest did wrong. It has done wonders for me.
I agree to some extent, but I would advise: A writer should pick whatever word count that they can actually manage. They don’t actually need to do 2,500, that’s a lot. They just have to do something, routinely. It adds up. Writing advice is valuable, it helps a writer guide themselves in the right direction. But different credible sources will contradict each other constantly. My advice would be to consume advice regularly and from many different sources. Whenever one reads “do X to succeed,” interpret that as “doing X is one way to succeed.”
I see my local university (University of British Columbia) is offering online creative writing courses. They even offer three different courses on novel writing. I have been writing for 35 years or more. I have at least four (or is that five?) unpublished novels under my belt, not counting my current 82,000 word WIP. So maybe it tells me something about my efforts that nothing has ever been published, but I am such a do-it-yourselfer that I am skeptical about going to take courses at my age (65). I'd be embarrassed to even take an online course with a prof who was half my age, even if they have been published and I have not. I had a 28 year journalism career too, so I have well over 200,000 words under my belt. So tell me, is it never too late to take courses, or should I continue to be a stubborn old fart and keep writing away at my novels, continuing to make all the greenhorn mistakes I should have learned to avoid 30 years ago?
Generally those courses are workshop classes. Which means you'll write short stories and your classmates will give you feedback. You'll give them feedback too. No one will know ages and your professor will do some mild advising and give you some feedback in your writing as well. You could probably find this for free if you know where and how to look. For instance, this website has critique. Some writers find or build writing groups locally or online that do this. If you have the money to burn and rather have a collegiate setting then go for it though. Or, maybe it's not a workshop?
A course? Mine would be: 1. Self reflection + writing. 2. Character development 3. Character arch, theme, plot 4. Monomyth, 3 act structure, structural working 5. Writing & mundane life. Handling it, inspiration, research, procrastination, stucking, stress... 6. Handling creativity and it's tools. 7. Weaving arches, themes, subplots, social space, worlds... together. 8. Character action extra: (backstory => ) needs ==> motivation ==> action ==> conflicts ==> resolutions. 9. Writing as a job. Genres, markets, publishing, money, time, networking... 10. Self reflection extra: wider & deeper overview including Q&A. 11. Recap 12. Q&A - about anything, also things that have not been on course. Extra task to participants: Write after one year and tell if and how this course has helped you. The structure of course would be like that because I stress self reflection as extremely important tool more than about 99.99% of authors, writers and story consultants. If my story is not good enough, the reason is not a story but me. There is some blind spot, lousy workflow, wrong expectations, not enough knowledge or skills... I must find and fix that first and get back to my writing after that or I keep on repeating the same problem. Problems in story are reflections of problems I have as a writer. I must see them in me in order to be able to find and solve them in story. Those 12 are topics. Participants would be asked to write a very short story about the topic every time.
Study is great, but be aware there is no substitute for the 'doing' part. You couldn't pick up a guitar and immediately play the riff of Sweet Child of Mine without practice. Accept that you WILL write badly, at first, but that each time you do you will learn a little something and improve.
