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Archive for March, 2012

Inspiration!

Posted in Ideas, tagged , , , on March 27, 2012 | 1 Comment »

The bright idea is the easy part. We tend to think of that as the inspiration, but people with creative minds have brilliant ideas quite often. (I was going to say they had brilliant ideas all the time, but that would be stretching it.)

The true inspiration is carrying that idea through into a story, novel or screenplay. Recently a couple of people have told me they have this great idea for a story.

One said “There’s this hillside, rocky, and there’s this man standing near the top looking down on soldiers, and he’s going to attack.”

I asked about the  idea – “Who is he? What’s going to happen?”

The speaker had no sense of the story, he just expected that it was there, somewhere, somehow, for some time.

Another writer knew he had a great idea – “There’s this fire-and-brimstone preacher in the pulpit thundering out “Thou shalt not commit adultery…”

He had a complete picture of the preacher and the pulpit. He even had an idea that perhaps the preacher was having an affair. But the actual story? Not there. He was having an affair with…well, er…. He was straying because…mmm, not sure.

Ideas like these are seeds. You look at a seed and what you see is a seed, not a flower.  We tend to look at our seed idea and see it as the flower. To make the seed create a flower work has to happen. You need to plant it and supply water, nutritious soil, sunlight. You need to clear off the weeds, perhaps prune a bit and then, maybe, you’ll get the flower you were hoping for.

Your idea seed needs to percolate in your imagination for a while as you try to fit it to different characters and scenarios. Maybe the obvious – the preacher’s affair – isn’t the way to go. As you get to know the preacher in your mind other avenues come to mind. You try them and discard them until…

Until one seems to fit just right. So right it takes your breath away. Now the seed is planted. You nurture it by developing and honing characters who will carry the story forward, bringing out all the nuances that are floating about loosely in your brain.

You add active scenes, strong dialog and the most vivid language you can squeeze out of your thesaurus. You edit, and edit some more. You try it on your writer’s group and edit yet again.

And finally you have a story and not just a seed idea. You are looking at the flower. Inspiration is not about a flash of a bright idea. It’s about the time and focused, intelligent work taken to grow a beautiful creation out of it.

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Bird by Bird

Posted in Resources, tagged , , , on March 18, 2012 | 2 Comments »

I want to share with you  one of my favourite books:

Bird by Bird: Some instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

“As of today, here is almost every single thing I know about writing.” These are the last words of Anne Lamott’s introduction to this book. And sharing this is exactly what Ann Lamott sets out to do.

“Bird by Bird”  wraps up all the writing lessons and tips up in stories so neatly that you hardly notice that you are learning and understanding this craft better than you did before.

In her introduction she presents herself, her life to date and how she feels about being a writer. She divides the book into five sections. The first of these, “Writing”, which takes up almost half the book, covers the basics – plot, character, settings, first drafts. It also, unusually, takes a look at false starts, perfectionism and knowing when you’re done – topics not often covered in how-to-do-it manuals.

The remaining sections “”The Writing Frame of mind”, “Help along the Way”, “Publication and Other Reasons to Write” and ”The Last Class” carry the reader through the process of writing, with the final section offering the reassurance that writing really matters.

This book is readable and literate without being pretentious. It flows smoothly and we get to know the writer as a person – quirky, humorous and warm. There are no barriers here – the writer is open and honest in the way she shares her life and her explorations in the world of living and writing.

Her message is one of encouragement, without being unrealistic. This is not one of those “follow-these-easy-steps-and you-too-can-become-a-famous-writer manuals. It is a book that urges you to look within yourself to find what you want and need to say. It shows you how to take pleasure in the process of writing.

So often I get the impression that some writers write out of sheer hubris. They are 25 years old and they kindly reveal to the rest of us the complexities and mysteries of life. No problem.

This writer has lived life, has observed it and felt it. She has poked around in the odd corners of life and learned a thing or two, much of it related to writing.. Her thoughts on all this she ventures to share with us in conversational, story form . Reading it is like listening to a friend.

The fact that she has found so many stories in her own life and in the lives of those around her qualify her to write this book. It contains topics, suggestions and advice in ways that are seldom addressed in writing manuals.v The writing is warm and personal. The writer is never didactic. She never points the reader in the way they ought to go.

Instead she suggests questions to ask, avenues to explore, and ideas to think about. This is a book that ll writers – published, emerging or tentatively starting out – can find value in.

If you like answers cut and dried, right or wrong, this book is not for you. If you enjoy the thoughtful exploration of ideas, especially ideas about writing, you’ll find this book a delight.

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Conventional wisdom

Posted in Conflict, tagged , on March 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

It’s not the most catchy title, but it’s what I want to warn you against.

In real life, listening to conventional wisdom is often a good strategy. In fiction, not so much. In fiction having a character follow conventional wisdom makes the action predictable and too ‘safe’ to be very interesting.

Let’s say the antagonist hits your protagonist. Conventional response? Hit back. If you want a conventional fight scene you’re in clover – it’s right there waiting to happen. For some stories, that’s perfectly fine.

But you have the opportunity to take this initial action (and yes, you’ve planted it there yourself, so you have some purpose in mind) and make the reaction fit your overall purpose more precisely.

How else could the reaction work? Passive aggression maybe?

“No supper for you tonight.”

“I’m leaving home.”

“I’m going back to mother.”

A storm of tears, maybe? This provokes pity from someone – a neighbor, a friend, the hitter. And this person did what? Called the police? (Conventional wisdom) Got embroiled in a fight? Ask yourself – what could they do that is more off the wall?

Could they throw a pan of cold (or scalding hot) water on the hitter? Sic a rottweiler on him? Booby trap his car? Anything but the conventional.

The initial reaction could be one of superiority,

“I always knew you were a brute and now you’ve proved it!”

“You’re drunk. Get out of my house!”

It could be one man hitting another and the reaction could be triumphant,

“Now I’ve got you. I’ll see you in court.”

What if the hitter broke his hand?

What if it was a woman hitting a man? How might he respond?

Once you’ve got a definite action, take a moment to review all the possible ways that the reaction could occur. Yes, the response has to match the character as you’ve created it, but this response also builds the character further. It can cement him in place or take him off into a different and perhaps surprising dimension.

These moments of thinking ‘outside the box’ at decision points are what lift a story out of the run-of-the-mill and give it life. These decisions are what make your writing voice unique.

Following conventional wisdom will give you a conventional story. Is that what you want?

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Publish and be Dammed!

Posted in Writer's life, tagged , , on March 11, 2012 | 1 Comment »

The original spelling might have been slightly different, but this says what I want it to say.

Sometimes, when you’ve finished a major project, or had your work published you hit a blank space. Nothing you write at that point seems to work just the way you want it to. It’s OK, but it isn’t quite right.

I suppose it is a form of writer’s block. (Memo to self: Write a blog titled ‘Ten secrets for overcoming writer’s block’.)

There are no secrets, of course. Conventional wisdom says either take a few days totally away from writing to give yourself a rest. Or write. Just write. Write  anything – stream of consciousness, memories of childhood, a blog. Just write to keep the writing muscle activated and well oiled.

But when you have just finished an important piece sometimes the two sides of your mind can be in disagreement. One side says, “That was terrific – but you’ll never write anything that good/important ever again. Don’t even bother trying.”

The other side says, “That was terrific. Get back to writing immediately so you can do another piece that’s even better.” And you, poor you, are stuck in the middle of this disagreement and paralyzed by indecision.

You spend time on a celebration. you spend time marketing but sooner or later you have to get those two warring sides of yourself working together so you can move forward.

I heard the best advice on that yesterday. It goes like this – decide which inner voice is beating you up the worst and shut it up. Easier said than done, but it works with a lot of those decisions where your mind is pulling you in opposing directions.

Stop beating yourself up about mistakes you’ve made in the past and mistakes you might possibly make in the future. So what if your writing today or tomorrow isn’t all that good? So what? There’s another day and another project.

I’ve seen writers have lovely successes and then go into a complete blue funk about the possibility that maybe they were just lucky, and that particular lightning will never strike them again.

It isn’t important that you attract lightning strikes – what’s important is that you keep growing as a writer and as a person.

What’s important is that you use past experience not as a stick to hit yourself with, but as a means of growth.

What’s important is that you look to the future as a positive and not as a set up for failure.

It’s OK to feel good about yourself when someone publishes your work or tells you it helped them or ‘likes’ your blog. Feeling that sense of reward for a job well done does not put you on the road to eternal damnation.

It’s a positive, a rock in your solid foundation as a writer. Publish and be happy!

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Petronella Ginco Billoba

Posted in Content, Main, tagged , , , on March 8, 2012 | 3 Comments »

Bet you haven’t read a blog with that title before! It probably isn’t going to do too well in SEO. Too bad, so sad.

I chose it because it is the name of a character invented and built by a very dear friend of mine – a young teenager living in Portugal. I don’t want to give you her name, let’s just call her FR.

FR would like to be a writer and she recently started a story featuring a young girl called Petronella Ginco Billoba (and, yes, Ginco Billoba, spelled differently, is the name of a tree). Petronella set off valiantly into her story and then, somehow, she ran out of steam.

Have you ever have that happen to you? You invent this wonderful character and have great ideas for plot and conflict, even for an antagonist but…

It has happened to me lots of times, and I hate it. FR is finding out while she is still young how disappointing it can be. I’m wondering how other people get over the good-idea-run-out-of-steam doldrums.

Myself, I remind myself of the need for pre-planning, outlining and building a story arc. It works wonders, until next time – when I get so carried away  with my terrific new idea that I forget again.

One friend recommends never pausing the writing in a logical place – at the end of a chapter, or in a lull. She insists you should only stop in the middle – the middle of the action, the middle of a scene, the middle of a paragraph or even the middle of a sentence.

Her logic is that, once you get going again and finish the sentence or the paragraph, you’ll have built momentum to keep on going past end of that scene and on into the next one.

Others have suggested that you build such a strong character that she (or he) keeps on going, getting deeper and deeper into trouble at every step. Then her spunkiness will carry her from one pickle to another, one adventure to a bigger adventure.

And as you are hurtling towards the first exploit, make a quick note about what the next exploit will be – who or what will challenge her and how she will respond.

Someone like FR will probably have a young female protagonist, someone spunky, adventurous but a little naive. If the character has been well developed her innate qualities  – her positive and less positive characteristics – will lead her to take some risks, encounter dangers, building from small to larger to life-threatening.

Try some pre-planning, some in-depth character delineation and finding the strength to pause in the middle of the good stuff. Those seem to me like the best ideas for carrying the stuck writer forward.

Do you have any favourite strategies to add?

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Making a Great Story – One Step Forward

Posted in Story, tagged , , , on March 2, 2012 | 2 Comments »

When I was little my mother used to say despairingly that I “always had my head in a book”. Looking back, there’s worse things I could have got into. However, the habit remains.

I try to impose discipline on myself by not reading fiction until the evening. This discipline works unless I’ve had a hard day, unless the rain is so bad it almost seems like evening, or unless I have a new book by a favorite author.

What is it about fiction that compels us to read it and write it? Part of it is the lure of visiting a different world.  It can be historical, geographical, futuristic or total fantasy, but it lifts us out of our everyday life.

If we write, we can create that world. How wild is that? But more than the geographic or social world we can create the people within it.

When I think about half a dozen of my favorite writers, they all write mystery novels – that’s my genre. Three of them have a setting in away back history, three are contemporary with a strong sense of place – Alaska, Texas and up-state New York. They are all set in a milieu that is strange to me – that’s part of the attraction.

But more important, they all have strong characters – characters who demand attention. I care about them – sometimes I think they are more real to me than many of my acquaintances. They have an inner life as well as an outer life.

As I read I feel that they are responding to events in the only way they could. I’m not distracted, thinking ‘Well, that was stupid’.

I think that, as writers, we should spend time trying to understand how the writer has made these, our favorite characters, so powerful within our imagination.

To me, one of the secrets is they way the character’s inner life drives their outer life; the way inner life and outer life are integrated. Do they have a belief system that carries them through event after event to the end of the story?

It’s fine that they have the purpose of saving the universe, but why do they want to? What drives them that doesn’t drive everyone else?

To me saving the universe is a bit of a cop out. Too easy. A whole lot of action and not much advance in understanding. It’s all the outer life; the inner life has been sacrificed.

Not everyone will agree with this, and that’s fine – literature is what our mind and imagination make of it. But we need to understand what makes a book or a story great FOR US.

Then, when we go to write a story or a novel we can follow the example others have set. We will have had the  ‘Aha’ moment that tells us how we want our own characters to be, how they will drive the plot. We’re not copying, we’ve just moved to a deeper understanding.

We’ve taken one more step in understanding what makes a great story.

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