Category Archives: Creative Process/Craft

Over A Decade of Blogposts

11 Wednesday Jan 2023

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Writing Life

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This post marks eleven years of “Revel and Rant ~ A Column on the Craft of Fiction.” 

Every other Wednesday, with a handful of exceptions along the way, I’ve offered a few hundred words, give or take, on the craft of writing fiction and the writing life. I started this series during  grad school as a way to capture and share what I was learning.

I’ve thought about taking a break from this project. Stepping away and reimagining a new blogpost series on another topic or aspect of my work.

Here are the reasons I’m not going to do that:

    • Stopping is a risk because starting again often takes much longer and is much more difficult than ever imagined. Momentum is easily undervalued.
    • I have faithful readers and I’d like to think they’d be disappointed. If it’s in one’s power not to disappoint, why do so?
    • I’m still learning. This cache of blogposts represents everything I’ve learned thus far about the writing life and the craft of writing fiction. I see no point in capping it here.
    • I have two ideas laying here on my desk for—what I like to think will be interesting—blogposts: a comparison of being in character on stage and embodying a character as a writer, and a riff on a drawing instructor’s advise about revision, ‘you erase more than you draw.’

Here’s to the next decade of blogposts and continuing the conversation together.

Imago Dei

28 Wednesday Dec 2022

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Writing Life

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Creativity is infectious. When there are others around me seeking to produce creative work, this spurs my own production. This is why I’m part of a creative community. I work in solitude, but not alone. Similarly, consuming high-quality creative work provides me with energy for producing my own.

Over the last several weeks I’ve been to two art museums. Thanksgiving weekend I enjoyed a visit with friends to the Art Institute of Chicago. Yesterday, my daughter Lydia and I went to Newfields, the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

Walking through these galleries and exhibits, my creative tank is filled. While in awe of the skills of others, I also gain perspective, ideas, and energy for my own creative effort. While I don’t work in the same medium as those populating these spaces, we are all in pursuit of an aesthetic, a collective effort to represent our chosen content in an engaging, surprising, and informative way. We are all responding to our own design.

We are made in the image of a Creator, a Creator who reimagined Himself and walked among us. We are creative because He is creative. When I observe creative work I’m seeing evidence of this fact. And when I join in producing creative work, I’m adding to the chorus.

Define Done

30 Wednesday Nov 2022

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Technicalities

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It’s been said many times: a writer never finishes a piece of writing, he just stops working on it. This is true. The risk is that the writer never stops working. And this would be easy to do. But we must stop working if we’re to be successful, and we must somehow decide when to cease our efforts.

Here are a few ways to define done:

  • Give the work to beta readers and see if their reader experience matches your vision for the work.
  • Send the piece to an agent or editor. While a rejection doesn’t tell you the work needs more attention, a dozen might. And an acceptance says you’re likely finished––except for the requested edit or two.
  • In the writing process you find you are getting less and less energy from the manuscript. The manuscript is telling you less of what it needs, making fewer demands for development. It may be you’ve reached done. It may be time to stop working.

Beware, there are variations on this theme. Sometimes it’s necessary to abandon a piece of writing before it’s finished. Manuscripts can fail for a variety of reasons. But this is not the case here. Here we’ve produced a piece of writing to the best of our ability. It’s time for the writing to become a part of our body of work. Readers welcome.

When Writing Upstages Story

16 Wednesday Nov 2022

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Creative Process/Craft, Technicalities

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Upstage is a theater term. This is when one actor over-acts and pulls the attention of the audience to himself––regardless of the intended focus of the script or the play. This is a selfish move, one meant to highlight the actor and his skill at the cost of the other elements of the play. Upstaging is bad acting and can be either intentional or unintentional. Upstaging is always spotted by the audience. It pulls them out of the viewing experience and results in a failed scene.

Because we are writers and writing is what delights us, there is a tendency, especially among newer writers, to allow the writing to upstage the story––to make the writing the product we’re seeking to produce vs. the story and the reader’s experience of it. This is a type of author intrusion. Such writing is characterized by overly complex language, over-use of modifiers (adjectives, similes, etc.), and awkward, unwieldy sentences. What readers say when they read this kind of writing is ‘I tried. I just couldn’t get into the story.’ A failed scene.

If your writing is trying to accomplish anything other than a lasting reader experience, refocus the work. No reader is going to come to your work for the purpose of consuming beautiful words and marveling at your skill. Readers read for the intoxication story offers. And it’s your job to enable them to do so.

Draft 18

02 Wednesday Nov 2022

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Qualities of Good Fiction

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I am in the midst of draft 18 of my current novel. This is an administrative fact, but one that carries nuance.

The term defined: This is the 18th time I’ve printed, hand-edited, and rekeyed the entire manuscript. That is the extent of the value of saying “this is draft number 18.” 

The nuance it carries: There are sentences and paragraphs in this manuscript that are in their 3rd draft and others that are in their 12th. As I write this 18th draft, I’ll be adding sentences. These sentences will be first draft sentences. These rookie sentences are joining a roster of preexisting sentences—some of which are veterans, some of which are mid-career. 

My job is to develop this manuscript as a whole, to bring all of it along, to ensure that each sentence, no matter its tenure, is carrying weight, is collaborating with the sentences surrounding it. And, if I’ve done my work well, those first draft sentences and paragraphs, those last minute edits won’t be visible to the reader. If I’ve done my job well, the reader will never consider this entire process, but will get lost in the dream that is story.

HBARP

An Opportunity to Teach

24 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Teaching Creative Writing, Writing Life

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This Fall I’ll be teaching creative writing at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana. I’ll be teaching one course—ENG 3232 Intermediate Fiction—each Wednesday and Friday afternoon for eight weeks. In this course I’ll have seven or eight students who’ve completed Introduction to Creative Writing and are either Creative Writing minors (Grace currently does not offer a Creative Writing major) or students highly motivated to write fiction.

My goal with this class is for me and my students to walk away more skilled in our craft. This will happen through their writing, and through our conversations about their writing. Beyond this, what do I want these students to know when they leave this class? Are there “guiding principles” I want them to remember? Are there ways I want them to think about Creative Writing?

Yes. Here are a few:

  • Why humans are creative.
  • The criticality of being a reading writer.
  • The craft of writing fiction as a skill.
  • The establishment of a writing practice.
  • The value of metawriting.
  • The contract your work creates with the reader.

I look forward to establishing a community of writers with these students over these upcoming eight weeks. And I know that while I may fixate on what I’m offering them, what I’ll remember after the class ends is what they offered me.

Charismatic Characters

10 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by in Character in Fiction, Creative Process/Craft, Technicalities

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What I am offering here is not mine. It is Charles Baxter’s.* I am bringing it here because it was an epiphany for me (or whatever the word is for a crystalized way of thinking about something one already knows experientially).

Baxter was speaking of charisma. He was wondering what makes someone charismatic, and how a charismatic character translates to the page. He stated that a reader cannot sufficiently experience a charismatic character on the page. Charisma requires that you be there, in the room, under the influence. 

He went on to explain that the way a reader experiences a charismatic character is by the effect that character has on other characters. It is through observation of these impacts the reader will come to understand a character as charismatic.

This is a fascinating realization.

In thinking about this further, it seems this is true of any psychologically hefty character. One who is charismatic, sociopathic, prophetic—all of these will be experienced by the reader indirectly, via that character’s impact on the other characters in the story.

Thank you, Mr. Baxter, for this lesson. Anytime we can obtain insight into how readers read fiction or how fiction works during that act of consumption, the better writers we will be.

*As presented to Sarah Enni on her podcast, “First Draft,” episode dated 1 August 2022. 

In Short: The Nature of Our Work

27 Wednesday Jul 2022

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

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You cannot trust your day-in and day-out feelings about your creative work. These are no gauge. They are no metric. They are far too fickle.  They will jerk you around. Instead, you must trust the discipline and process of doing the work. The routine of sitting down each day and bearing up the required elements of time and attention. You must trust your God-bestowed creative capabilities.

Creative work is not analytical. Creative work is not reasoned, planned, and executed. It operates differently. Creative work moves like an approaching weather front or walking into a room of people you’ve never met. You can only be present and react. The outcome remains to be seen, and is certain to be different than what you imagined.

Quote and Comment, L’Amour

04 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Quote and Comment, Role of the Writer, Writing Discipline

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Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. – Louis L’Amour

This is plain and simple advice. And the starting point for every one of us. If a writer doesn’t start, there there is no progress. Writing is a matter of will. Writing isn’t like watching television or sleeping in. Writing isn’t passive. The writer has to initiate the action. The writer has to start.

Anything we do that has lasting positive impact requires such initiative. 

Note too that L’Amour says “no matter what.” It doesn’t matter if you feel inspired, have the time,  or it’s your birthday—”start writing, no matter what.” I don’t think he’s speaking solely of the initial start, but also that daily start as well—that daily effort of getting to work.

But, in all this work, there is a reward. “…the faucet is turned on.” Writing begets writing. Productivity is the result of having initiative and doing the work. You’ll see L’Amour makes no statement here on quality. The water (writing) that comes may be lukewarm, hard with minerals, or crisp and clear. That’s not the focus. The focus here is to ensure the water is flowing. The quality of the water? Let it flow for a while and we’ll see what happens.

Writing When the Story is Failing

06 Wednesday Apr 2022

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer, Technicalities, Writing Life

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While writing earlier this week, the process felt like running in sand uphill. There was little evidence of progress. The desire to quit was great. It was then I paused and scribbled in my notebook a bit of advise to myself—advice perhaps you can use in your own work. 

“You must write, even when you feel like you’re only failing. Perhaps most when you feel you’re failing.”

Reading these sentences there in my notebook, I wondered why I’d written that last one. Why did that ring true? Why would writing when you feel you’re failing be somehow more important than writing at other points in a project? Over the past few days I’ve concluded the work takes on a certain criticality when it’s not going well. It’s imperative that we, when the story is a struggle, bear down and do the work. The reason for this is that failed drafts are what get you to the final draft. The focus of writing is not solely the draft you’re working on; it’s also the draft that will come after. The current draft is a means to an end. The only means to the end.