Category Archives: Technicalities

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.

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. 

Editing Your Work

29 Wednesday Jun 2022

Posted by in Role of the Writer, Technicalities

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Writing and editing are vastly different tasks. Both are essential and both must be undertaken. It’s important to know when you’re doing one vs. the other, and to ensure they don’t overlap—or when they do you recognize it and control it.

We often slip from writing into editing too quickly. You’re writing along and you come to a pause in your flow. Too often the next step is to go back, read what you’ve written, and start tweaking it. This is a move from writing to editing. You have ceased the flow of putting words onto the page and begun the process of analyzing what is there.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this switch. You just want to make sure it’s intentional. Don’t interrupt the flow of creating words to begin editing. Try allowing yourself to simply stop and think about what it is you’re trying to convey instead of bowing to the tendency to begin editing.

There are two primary types of editing.

The first is called copy editing. The effort in copy editing a manuscript in preparation for a next draft is in scrutinizing what is on the page, and spotting what’s not. Copy editing is an effort to flag sentences or paragraphs that aren’t yet working. It’s a macro effort.

The other type of editing is proofreading. This is a line-by-line effort to identify grammatical, word choice, or punctuation errors. This is sometimes referred to as line editing.

If you were to come and sit in my study and watch me write, you’d often see a fellow typing and sipping coffee; however, sometimes you’d see a fellow sitting, his hands resting on the keyboard, his coffee getting cold as he stares off into space. This is the part where flow has paused and thinking has taken over. It’s the result of a decision not to edit—not yet.

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.

Fire

28 Wednesday Jul 2021

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

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I am finishing a late draft of my current long-form project. The setting of the story is agricultural, pre-electricity. The family uses open flame for light. A couple of days ago, I was working on edits to the manuscript when I realized I had all the elements needed but had fully missed an opportunity for tension, conflict, and story.

A fire.

For some mysterious reason it had never dawned on me that a fire should occur in the story. I thought I’d mined the story line for all the tension it could offer, but in doing so I’d overlooked an obvious option.

Now there’s a fire. 

And now that it’s occurred, it’s hard to imagine the story without it. The conflict opened up another facet of characterization––for more than one character––and gave the reader another reason to turn the page.

What opportunities for conflict or tension are you overlooking in your current story? It could be as simple as taking the existing elements of the world you’ve built and letting them naturally interact.

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.

From the Archives: About the Blurred Line

05 Wednesday May 2021

Posted by in Reading as a Writer, Technicalities

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[This blogpost first appeared here on 4 May 2016]

I’m going to get a bit academic on you here. Bear with me. The post is only 430 words (including the footnotes and the title), so I suppose I’ll not try your patience too greatly.

Like you, I am often amazed at the length and breadth of a novel. Take a book like All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. What a sweeping achievement. The characters, the great sense of place, the language – as readers we are in awe that the author has written such a wonderful, super-long story. 

But this is an illusion. 

As practicing writers we know something about such a book that the average reader doesn’t realize. This novel is not a single super-long story. It is a collection of related short-stories that are strung together, crafted in such a way that they read within one massive arc.

In fact no novel is one long story. A novel is always a litter of small pieces joined together so that they stand as a whole.

It is for this reason that there is so much discussion (in writing circles, of course, not in the real world) about the blurred line between a collection of short stories and a novel. Take a look at Jesus’ Son by Dennis Johnson, or Kentucky Straight by Chris Offutt, or American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell. These are commonly considered short story collections. However, the case can easily be made that these are novels. The stories in each carry a similar weight, the setting is in focus throughout, and the voice is distinctive*. We soon see that such distinctions serve the Marketing Department far more than the reader.

Here’s the take-away. Don’t get caught up in a tug-o-war with yourself or anyone else about whether you’re writing a novel or a collection of short-stories. Focus on the writing. Let the material on the page decide what it will be.

And if you’re really successful the Marketing Team will argue the point for you.

*The trend toward short chapters in long books – even the titling of each chapter – as Doerr has done, continues to fuel the fire of this distinction. Other than the character development spanning the entire book (although this is seen in “short-story collections” too – see Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried), this book is perhaps the best example I’ve seen recently of the blurring between these two genres from a traditional novel perspective.

Note: This post is again the result of a conversation with Ben H. Winters, at LePeeps, of 71st St. in Indianapolis, 10 March 2016.

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: Ticking Clock

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Benjamin Percy, Contract with the Reader, Qualities of Good Fiction, Role of the Writer, Technicalities

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[This is the fifth 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.]

Ticking Clock

Your story is really starting to come together. You’ve established the narrative goal. Your protagonist is acting with unwavering urgency, meeting obstacles that are building her resolve, and creating tension for your reader. You’ve also got most of the lower-order goals in each scene working as well.

Your main character is already fully motivated. What will adding a ticking clock do for your story?

It will bring to the forefront that reality with which we all live––there is only so much time. The narrative goal, if not accomplished in time, will result in even greater angst for your protagonist. Perhaps this ticking clock is driven by some aspect of place or setting, perhaps it’s driven by an ever-closer approaching antagonist, or even by some simmering character trait of the protagonist himself.  

A ticking clock will get your reader’s heart racing, it’ll pull your reader down into the story like little else can. Time is an element you must manage in your story, regardless. Why not manage it in a way that will cause your reader to––quick––hurry––turn the page?!