Category Archives: Creative Process/Craft

If You’re Bored

30 Wednesday Jun 2021

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer, Writing Discipline

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If you’re bored, no…if you’re not thoroughly riveted by the piece you’re writing, it’s not ready for a reader. And until this criteria is met, it never will be.

If you're not thoroughly riveted by the piece you're writing, it's not ready for a reader. Click To Tweet

In my 2 June post I wrote about a different situation––one in which the writer has a pair of contrasting positive emotions about the piece s/he is creating. But here I’m speaking to when the project, no matter how much you’ve tried, holds no interest for you. The material doesn’t draw you in. The project is utterly failing to take on a life of its own.

So what to do?

Option #1: Narrow the Scope

There’s likely something that brought you to the project to begin with, some nugget, some core. Go and reimagine the project based on that core. What brought you to the project? Perhaps what has happened is you’ve lost that initial excitement as you’ve sought to develop the story and it’s become diluted, cluttered, overgrown. Find that core, narrow the scope to only that core, and start again.

Option #2: Abandon the Project

You may have to abandon the work. Recognize that this is not about you, your work ethic, or your ability to finish. This is about the work. The work either functions or it doesn’t. And you don’t have time to focus on work that isn’t begging you to.

In the end, you are writing for a reader. The first step in gaining a reader’s trust starts long before you encounter them. You must write work that pulls you to the edge of your creative seat, work that grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let go. Anything less is not worth your precious time. And won’t be worth your reader’s precious time either.

That Counter-Cultural Somersault

16 Wednesday Jun 2021

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

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I’ve concluded that it’s not the writing that’s difficult. What is difficult is making and maintaining space in our lives in which creativity can occur.

I've concluded that it's not the writing that's difficult. What is difficult is making and maintaining space in our lives in which creativity can occur. Click To Tweet

Creative work isn’t necessarily difficult. Such effort is a matter of tenacity, the acquisition of a skill––not unlike learning to play the piano, leaning French, or learning to weld. But creative work requires two elements: 1) focused attention on a task and 2) solitude. Our culture does not promote either of these. There are a hundred demands for our attention at any given moment and antidotes for being alone are just as plentiful. We have come to believe the myth that multitasking is not only possible, but a desirable skill. Being alone is seen as a state to be avoided, and boredom has been all but eliminated from our experience.

Great results can come from being alone and bored. Focused attention on a task allows for deep learning. Solitude reduces stress and allows us to hear past all the noise our society generates. And this is the space in which creative work gets done.

Creativity is in our DNA. It is part of our created design. Thus, the greatest task is not doing the creative work, it is routinely performing that counter-cultural somersault of building a fortress in which to focus, alone.

Crush or Commitment?

02 Wednesday Jun 2021

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer, Starting a Novel, Writing Discipline, Writing Life

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I have a long-form fiction project I’d like to discuss for a moment. Let’s call it Fabula. (Fabula is Latin for story.) When I’m working on Fabula I enjoy it very much. I enjoy the discoveries I make as I cobble it together and the connections inside the story that are generated. The characters, especially the protagonist, have me hooked. The writing really clicks. This could all be interpreted as a reason to stay with the project, evidence Fabula has legs.

But there’s an issue. A nagging, always present, issue.

I am missing an underlying motivation for Fabula. I don’t know why I’m writing it. I don’t know what question I’m seeking to answer, what curiosity I’m exploring.

Completing a novel is a great deal of work. The project must create fire-in-the-belly for the writer. The micro-delights I’m experiencing will occur with any project and can’t take the place of the story’s reason for existence. Any confusion on the author’s part of a crush (being enamored with the daily writing) and commitment (the depth of underlying, long-lasting, motivation for a project) will be sniffed out by the reader and impact their experience as well. A reader can tell when the author found this deeper purpose in creating a manuscript. They can also sense a missing core. Such energy (or lack of it) translates. As always, the reader’s experience comes of the author’s.

Experiment: A Beta Reading Group

19 Wednesday May 2021

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Technicalities

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It is key to the late-stage development of any piece of long-form creative writing to engage beta readers. These are individual readers who read widely and are adept at giving constructive as well as appreciative feedback. My previous work has benefited greatly from such thoughtful readers, and I wouldn’t consider moving a project forward without them.

But a beta reading group?

Sunday evening, May 2nd, I provided six copies of my latest manuscript to a group of ladies who will be spending the next several weeks reading and discussing the book. I will go and sit in on these conversations, take notes, and listen to their exchange about the reader experience.

This is a well-established, cohesive group of women. They are avid readers and critical thinkers on matters of faith who care deeply about words. They are my reading demographic.

Establishing this beta reading group is an experiment for all involved. I’ve never had a beta group and they’ve never beta read a manuscript. 

I have a hunch this is going to be invaluable.

Quote and Comment, Bradbury

24 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Qualities of Good Fiction, Quote and Comment, Ray Bradbury, Reading as a Writer

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Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. 

Ray Bradbury

Over ten years ago I read my first book by Billy Collins, Ballistics. Since then, I’ve consistently had a book of poetry in my reading stack. While I don’t think Bradbury was necessarily aiming his comment at writers, reading poetry has impacted me creatively in a variety of ways. More specifically, I believe it’s had a positive impact on my prose––especially my novel in progress.

As Bradbury states, it builds muscles that might ordinarily get little or no attention. 

So exactly what does poetry bring?

Reading poetry brings new perspective to sentence length, word choice, and euphony––the music or rhythm in poetry. It brings awareness of how the prose looks on the page and how it reads aloud. It reinforces the importance of ending a paragraph with the penultimate phrase, or starting a paragraph with an image that demands the reader’s attention. Good narrative poetry provides insight into how to tell a story, when to be a minimalist, when to be an impressionist, and how concrete details––the right concrete details––can bring an unmatched realism.

Perhaps you don’t have any poetry on your shelf and don’t know where to start. Consider picking up a copy of Mark Lilley’s debut, Lucky Boy. Or start where I did, with Ballistics. Perhaps read through the Psalms in the Bible––a collection of ancient Hebrew poetry. Follow Bradbury’s advice. You’ll be glad you did.

Writing at Papa’s House and Yours

24 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Ernest Hemingway, Writing Life

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Monday morning, instead of logging on to my computer in my home office and dialing in for my first meeting of the day, I made my way to Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West, Florida. 

While I’m not not greatest among Hemingway fans, it was on my bucket list to roam through the house where he lived while he composed such American literary masterpieces as The Green Hills of Africa, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

The highlight was poking my head into his writing studio on the second floor of a building behind the house. While much of the house is minimally furnished, feeling much more like a museum than a home, his studio seemed like a space that remains fully his, the only room he might walk into and find functional and intact.

I was reminded again of the importance of having a place set aside for writing, or your creative work of choice. Having a space set up and purposely furnished is just as important as a garage for a mechanic, a wood shop for a carpenter, or an operating room for a surgeon. It need not be a large space or an elaborate one, but productivity comes of place. And judging from the work that Hemingway produced at his Florida home, he understood this as well.

Percy’s Six Elements of Story: Delay Gratification and Withhold Information

10 Wednesday Feb 2021

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

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[This is the sixth and final part in a series of posts started on December 2, 2020. We’re exploring Benjamin Percy’s foundational elements of story as found in the opening of his book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction.]

Delay Gratification and Withhold Information

You’re several drafts in and your story is starting to pop. You’ve established the narrative goal. Your protagonist is acting with unwavering urgency, meeting obstacles that are building her resolve, while also creating tension for your reader. You’ve got most of the lower-order goals in each scene working and a ticking clock has been put in place.

So why hold back? Why not give your reader everything at once?

In the opening pages of Burden of Proof by DiAnn Mills, a female FBI agent stands in line at a store when a woman, also in line, her tells the agent she can’t care for her baby anymore and thrusts the child into her arms before walking out. A beat later a man approaches the agent and tells the agent that he’s the father. The child responds to her father’s voice. The father proceeds to ask the agent why she kidnapped his daughter.

There is a lot of information withheld from us as we read that scene. But this doesn’t stall the momentum. Instead it draws us in. Makes us turn the page.

Such withholding of information and delaying the gratification of a reveal can be done on a grand scale, such as when the solve comes at the end of a 300-page gauntlet, or on a scene-by-scene level as details are held back to drive up the reader’s wonder.

Your reader, whether they realize it or not, doesn’t really want to know what happens next––yet. This is the joy of story, the desire to discover. Discovering what’s next isn’t the joy; the joy is the desire to discover what’s next.

Percy’s Six Elements of Story: Create Lower-Order Goals

13 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Benjamin Percy, Contract with the Reader, Creative Process/Craft, Qualities of Good Fiction

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[This is the fourth in a series of six posts started on December 2, 2020. We’re exploring Benjamin Percy’s foundational elements of story as found in the opening of his book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction.]

Create Lower-Order Goals

So, you have the narrative goal and a protagonist with the unwavering urgency to pursue that over-arching goal. You have laid out the obstacles that will hinder this character all along the way and create tension. The next concern is building the scenes that will form the overall story. 

Scenes can be thought of as mini-stories. Each scene moves the protagonist along in their quest. The best scenes have a goal, what Percy calls a lower-order goal, that propels that particular scene forward under the overall arc of the story. Just as the human urgency speaks to the DNA of the protagonist, these lower-order goals should as well. These goals should not only provide momentum but also develop the character, be integrated with what they say and do, and deepen the setting as well. Of course, the primary concern in this is your reader. Bring your reader along with pace and tone that creates the certainty––the certainty they will turn the page.

Percy’s Six Elements of Story: Create Obstacles that Ramp Up Tension

30 Wednesday Dec 2020

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

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[This is the third in a series of six posts started on December 2, 2020. We’re exploring Benjamin Percy’s foundational elements of story as found in the opening of his book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction.]

Create Obstacles that Ramp Up Tension

So, you have the narrative goal and a character with the unwavering urgency to pursue that goal. If the character pursues and achieves their goal unhindered, there is no story. There is no action. There is no change in the character and there’s nothing to draw a reader in. 

Instead, what must happen as the character unwaveringly pursues his/her goal? Bad things. And a lot of them. The more bad things and the worse they are, the better. We don’t want to simply pile on tragedy. This will create pity. Instead, with each obstacle, the character is shocked, processes, and regroups—renewing their resolve in the pursuit of the narrative goal.

This is why novels are set in wars—All the Light We Cannot See—or amidst deep societal and familial ideals and decorum—Blessings—or on the edge of apocalyptic events—Station Eleven. In these scenarios there are plenty of narrative goals, human urgency, and assured obstacles which create conflict and result in tension. Story will occur. The reader will be thrilled.

Percy’s Six Elements of Story: Human Urgency

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by in Benjamin Percy, Creative Process/Craft

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[This is the second in a series of six posts that started on December 2, 2020. We’re exploring Benjamin Percy’s foundational elements of story as found in the opening of his book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction.]

Human Urgency

Motivation that demands prompt action. This must be coupled with the narrative goal. Neither can stand alone. There must be a character who wants to achieve the goal and there must be some urgent reason for doing so. This reason is at the character’s core, it’s intertwined with who they are.

Ideally there are layers of urgency, multiple internal and external reasons why the character must accomplish the goal. These are called stakes. The stakes may be outcomes that are material as well as metaphysical—relationship, money, recognition, revenge, desire. The urgency is tied to who the character is, their needs, and he or she is willing to sacrifice to achieve these stakes—to sacrifice comfort, possessions, the stability of home.

Human urgency is the force that propels action.