Write Together

November 23, 2009 at 4:18 am (Creative Writing)
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I’ve been even more quiet than usual when it comes to my blog and twitter but I have an excellent excuse. I had a brainstorm of an idea – one that helps to make Pan Historia an even better destination for writers as well as one that is helping motivate me to write my own novel. I started a writing group at Pan for those of us who want to move from just writing ongoing collaborative fiction to finally finishing and publishing a novel of our own. This concept does not exclude collaborative projects (I hope to include a version of my zombie novel in this mix one day) but does focus on story structure, discipline, craft, and actually sitting down regularly and making time to write.

For those of you who know me or know me through my blog you’ll be aware of my intention to write a novel and how I have been working on one based on the life of Wyatt Earp for just about forever. Mostly it’s been in the endless research phase with a sort of Mobius strip of trying to work out my new ‘fresh’ angle on this particular subject. When I started the new writing group Write Together at Pan I fully intended to finally write and complete this work. Our group is really fortunate to have a published author of a sort of mentor consultant and the first thing she asked me is “why am I writing this particular story” and I could no longer answer the question. I got some good feedback from my fellow writers and had worked out some possible interesting twists on the Wyatt Earp story and how to tell it in an engaging way, but there was no real purpose for me. I ended up answering that question with “I’ve been researching it? I have a book case full of books on the topic?”

Beep. Not good enough.

So I decided to shelve the project and immediately begun work on another novel idea that had been flitting around my mind for a while. This time I jumped into a genre that I have come to love writing in: horror. I’ve started work on a sort of supernatural thriller set in the 1920’s full of glamorous characters, many of whom are historical, and dark sinister magic. I’m very excited about the story and using all the resources of my novel writing group as well as the many great resources I have found since using twitter and blogging, I have already got a good working synopsis, a stable of interesting rich characters, and the beginning of an outline using a classic story structure. The basic storyline and characters has been something I have been working on for quite a long time on Pan as a collaborative novel, but my focus will be on my own ideas and characters and developing a plot that has not been told in the collaborative forum so it’s all original.

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Sex & Romance: Let’s Write It!

October 15, 2009 at 5:02 am (Creative Writing)
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Romance. We all love it, even those of us that suggest otherwise. Sex. Ditto there, folks. But is there any deeper quagmire that a writer can sink in? I’m talking about experienced authors as well as first time writers. It’s a morass. How do you write about sex and romance, either together or separately, without coming off like something from Penthouse magazine or worse just plan repetitive, dull, or clichéd? The topic is so sticky with cliché and innuendo that often people don’t even recognize when something is clichéd. They’re programmed to either go ‘ahhhhhh’ or blush, or sneer, or mock, or even giggle inanely.

For a writer, if we are writing some pure romance, or want to create a great sex scene that warms the… heart then we certainly don’t want to cause our readers to put the scene down with a humph, a yawn, or a ridiculing laugh. If that scene is part of a greater whole than we sure don’t want our readers to rush through uncomfortably, knowing that they won’t miss anything of great import. Sex, like any other human activity, needs a reason to be in the story. If you’re writing a romantic novel where boy meets girl, or girl meets girl, the sex is part and parcel of the narrative. No need to agonize whether or not to include it. The only question that needs to be in your mind is “how spicy, how explicit”. In this case that judgment call is more about your audience. Some readers like their sex soft, romantic, vanilla, and veiled in pretty words, and that’s just fine for that kind of novel. This blog isn’t about that kind of writing.

Sex, just like romance, can be rude, quirky, dirty, sloppy, hurried, insane, intense, funny, and clumsy – and it happens for a reason. In our fiction writing it happens to reveal something about the character, or lead the characters where they need to go. These are all elements that once included make the reader associate more intensely with your characters and not reject the sex as gratuitous fluff. When it comes to awkward moments we’ve all been there and done that – and good sex is like good wine: it can combine flavors that seem madly disparate like blackberries and charcoal. The trick is knowing what is sexy and what is not out of those elements. If you’re looking to turn up the heat you can be inventive and silly, but you have to know when any particular element is gross or makes your hero look like an unattractive ass. My trick is to imagine the scene completely: would I be turned on or off if a particular thing happened during sex?

Falling off the bed during the intensity of love-making can either be funny, tragic, or sexy. It will depend on the telling. Accidentally farting will always end the heat, even if the laughter kicks in (in real life you might get over it, but I can practically guarantee your reader won’t). It’s like overflowing trash in your kitchen when you’re cooking. It spoils the appetite. It’s important to keep it real, and yet, for the heat, you have to keep it from getting too real. It’s always got to be a little bit of the best sex you ever had, and not necessarily just the best sex you ever imagined.

Truly great love affairs are never easy. They’re not about candy, Hallmark greeting cards, soft focus, or soft love-making from incredibly virile men with a sardonic smirk and a searing kiss, who knows when the heroine (who is unbelievably lovely, spunky but submissive in bed) says “no, no” she means “yes, yes”. Truly great sex is often memorable for the details. Where you were, what you were doing before hand, how you felt at the time, and that warm laugh you shared when you broke your coffee mug as you swept it off your desk in the heat of passion. It’s that wonderful little bit in When Harry Met Sally when she fakes an orgasm in the deli, or Bridget Jones’s Diary where Hugh Grant strips off the cute little cocktail dress only to find granny panties. Or it’s that bit that makes you want to crawl out of your skin in The Age of Innocence where the passion of the main characters, so repressed by the societal mores of their day, is entirely expressed by Newland Archer removing the glove from Ellen Olenska’s hand during a carriage ride and pressing her fingers to his lips.

So let’s talk language for a second. I’m a fan of no beating around the proverbial bush. I find words like ‘member’, ‘tool’, and other such euphemisms amusing so they spoil the moment for me. Those that don’t like their sex written so explicitly will, violently on occasion, disagree with me. If you have to use euphemisms be cautious with them, and choose the words with great care so that you’re not accidentally inspiring laughter instead of sympathetic passion. You might be sparing your less sensitive readers much blushing but instead causing your more bold readers to laughter or worse, to feel boredom. Telling a sexy story need very rarely ever go right to the finish either. This is not porn we’re talking about. The ‘money shot’ is seldom really called for in any scene. An orgasm is only an orgasm in real life. In fiction it’s the lead up that counts. Make me squirm and shudder. Take me to the brink and I’ll fall over the edge all by myself with the aid of my own imaginative juices.

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The Passionate Salmon

October 1, 2009 at 3:25 am (Art, Creative Writing)
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salmonThe creative process is a tricky thing. Many hear the clarion call to create something – indeed it seems to be a fundamental building block of human nature – hence the proliferation of ‘things’ that clutter our lives from gadgets like egg slicers to paintings that uplift our spirits in some kind of deep and meaningful way that is ineffable. Of course the many millions of inventions that have been produced over the course of human history have many benefits, though there are many that have dubious benefit or can be labeled down right evil (the atomic bomb, the iron maiden). Our minds constantly seem to be thinking of new things. Even the least creative of us have the urge to create, improve, adapt, and otherwise manipulate their surroundings in some way. For many it’s an unconscious act (choosing wallpaper for the living room, selecting one make of car over another) that seems to have little bearing on the whole creative stream, but magnified by millions has an enormous impact.

It’s when you take a very active role in creating that the process of selection and manipulation becomes a powerful struggle. Which word? Which color? You’re like a salmon trying to swim upstream against a raging waterfall to spawn. The odds often seem against your work of art successfully being birthed into the world. Then all those little fish of creativity that do hatch then have to make their own difficult way back to that enormous sea. So few grow into a mature salmon. How do you have that original idea that will allow your small egg of concept to grown into a magnificent force of silver scaled nature? How does your book stand out of the crowd?

There are countless blogs and books out there to tell you how to write, how to be a better writer, how to sell, but there wouldn’t be a market for those things if it wasn’t actually a total shot in the dark, almost akin to that salmon heading upstream. You can be the sleekest healthiest salmon in the whole damn ocean but fate can still mess you up, you can still make the wrong move, just be unlucky. And ultimately art is not a salmon. The analogy can only carry us so far. Creating a story that lasts in the minds of your readers is not just about following rules, or even going with what’s been successful before. You can’t sit down and plan to be the next Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer (read Stephanie Meyer’s story in her own words to get a great idea what I’m next about to say to you). If you do it comes out formulaic and dry.

You can only sit down and write about something you are passionate about. No matter how much college you had, or creative writing classes, or blogs on writing you read, you will not write anything that anyone wants to read, that strikes a chord within another person’s soul, if it’s not something that sings to you. Meyer’s had a dream and she followed it through. I have not read the book, I probably won’t because I’m sick of vampires and turned off my young adult fiction, but regardless of my personal preferences Stephanie Meyers touched an honest chord in her readers and now she has her deserved fame and fortune. Some of it was just plain luck, but without the passion it’s never going anywhere.

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Reading to be Write

August 20, 2009 at 12:44 am (Creative Writing)
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Reading is to writing like water is to a fish. A couple years ago I realized that, somewhere around my middle thirties, all my reading had metamorphosed from fiction and poetry to research and essays. I was reading thick tomes on Ancient Egypt and the Wild West with a collector’s avidity and little focus on the writing. The irony is that my abandonment of reading fiction coincided with my eager beavering at writing fiction. I was reading to learn about the places and periods that inspired me to write.

It took me a while to realize that I was no longer in touch with the storytellers that had created a love of literature in me in the first place. A couple years back I pledged to make the time to read novels and short stories again. I decided that as a writer I need to breathe in and absorb the work of other artists; not to mimic them but to learn from and be inspired by them.

As a kid I totally absorbed the classics and many of the great writers of the last couple of centuries from Dostoevsky, to Dickens, to Hardy. I read Lord of the Rings about ten times (yes I was that geeky child) before the age of sixteen. As an adult I have had far more difficulty getting into novels. I’m still looking for good writing but I also need good stories and a lot of modern novelists of the literary variety leave me cold – yes, I’m that kind of luddite. I still believe in story and plot. It’s all style and in the head when I want something to actually happen. So from the classics of my youth I have been reading more along the lines of Stephen King and Elmore Leonard.

Much as I admire King’s storytelling ability and craftsmanship (and have tried to absorb the lessons in writing that he can deftly apply) he can be lacking in the sheer beauty of words. Elmore Leonard is the king of ’spare’ dry bones fiction and I’m finding that isn’t what I want either. It’s highly praised by editors and other writers at this moment in time, but I consider it just one style and just one possibility and not necessarily the pinnacle of literary mastery. I recently read No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy and it was excellent – the writing both hard edged and lyrical at the same time. McCarthy is an author that inspires me to be a better writer, and to pick up more of his books.

The key to reading fiction in order to learn to write better yourself is to read more thoughtfully. It doesn’t mean you have to lose the rhythm of the story. It’s more akin to enjoying fine wine. You just don’t pour it into a jelly jar and gulp it down; you breathe in the aroma, sifting through the myriad scents, sip, roll it over your tongue, and then drink that baby all up. Feel free to mark passages that strike you. Query word choices that pull you up short and take you out of the story. Go back and read excellent bits again.

You should even feel free to mimic as a writing exercise, just remembering that all this reading and even mimicry is just a passage to finding your own style and rhythm.

So which writers inspire you? I would love to hear back from you all – so that I can find other gems and continue on my literary journey of discovery.

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Writing the Good Guys: Give Them Black Hats

July 29, 2009 at 2:57 am (Characters, Creative Writing)
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A casual exchange in #writechat, Twitter’s Sunday writing discussion, led me to think a little bit more about writing the good guy in fiction. I stated that I found writing a hero more challenging than writing about the villain. Villains are fun. They are people I don’t need to make likeable, honorable, or virtuous, and yet we are all a little predisposed to get a vicarious thrill out of that bad boy doing what we wish we could. The hero might have flaws, even fatal flaws (one that leads to her demise), but we still need to be relating to her and rooting for her.

A good writer friend of mine at Pan says: “People adore Dexter. He’s a serial killer. How can you like him or hope he doesn’t get caught? Because he fights his insights and sticks to his code.” Dexter is a good example of the hero role turned upside down, or an anti-hero because even though he seems to be a prime example of a bad guy, he has an unshakeable code of conduct.

But what about a good old-fashioned hero?

Clementine Proulx (a nom de plume of one of our excellent Pan Historia writers who is also a published author in the real world) advises: “Readers have to care about your “hero.” She doesn’t have to be lovable or even likable, but she has to have something that makes them want to invest in her.”

I write the historical character of Wyatt Earp. I use the historical record to provide him with the flaws needed to make him a believable human being and not a TV show stereotype. The controversy surrounded Earp supplies me with plenty of ways to show that my hero is not just a nice guy. He was a gambler who consorted with prostitutes, but he was also a fearless lawman who was prepared to crack a few heads along the way. He even arrested a judge. His brother Virgil arrested Wyatt once. That kind of single-minded adherence to duty is both honorable and a flaw. Rigidity is not a likeable character trait.

Back to Clemetine Proulx:

Almost all the best heroes are essentially not so nice people overcoming their not-so-niceness. They do it throughout the story which in Hollywood is a character arc. Really “nice” people or “good” people are rather uninteresting heroes unless thrown into a plot driven story. I think of a Stephen King—The Mist—where the decent dad faces unbelievable situations. A hero is always reluctant at first, has character flaws, but eventually makes the satisfying choice. The more flawed the hero, the more he struggles, the more we care for him…so yes, Dexter could be called an anti-hero (like Hannibal who only eats rude people), but he is still a hero because he can’t help who he is, formed by one of worst childhood experiences I can think of, but he struggles against it to do – ultimately – good. Sure we all want to kill bad guys. Actually we all want to kill people in our way. But Dexter follows a code that is essentially the code we all follow…only his is obvious and spelled out.

Clementine really knows what she’s talking about. In the collaborative fiction novel FLESH she writes a character that is notable for being everything you don’t expect in a heroine. She’s old, ugly, pudgy, a fanatic fan of Tom Jones, with few social skills who was overjoyed when her mother was consumed by flesh-eating zombies, but her wit, spunk, and ingenuity gets the reader rooting for her nonetheless. In fact it is her flaws and her history (she was picked on mercilessly in school, had a sad and lonely family life) that causes the reader to love her with a passion.

In the same novel FLESH we have started a new chapter and my personal challenge is to create a hero that is essentially pretty unlikeable and yet, in the end, it is my hope that the readers are rooting for him to succeed. Michael is proud, pompous, prejudiced, and overly rigid in his thinking and actions. He’s about to be thrown into a situation where he has to help the very people he’s been alienating for years: his neighbors. You can check out my writing for this character here on my writing blog. I would love feedback, as the story progresses, about how well I’m doing at creating a flawed hero that you might hate to love.

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Happy Endings

June 25, 2009 at 9:56 am (Creative Writing)
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One of my goals for the rest of this year is to work on endings. One of the nice and not so nice aspects of collaborative fiction is often a lacking of endings. I’ve nearly perfected the technique, made famous by M*A*S*H, of stretching a scenario out over multiple installments – much like the Korean War which last but three years in reality but spanned eleven years on television and 251 episodes. But even M*A*S*H had to end and its season finale was one of the most watched TV finales in history. Ah, if only I should be so lucky.

This year may be half way through, but that means it’s a perfect time to search for some endings to some of my tales and some of my characters. I had already made the decision to actually wrap up my modern fairy tale The Midnight People with the help of my fellow writers. It’s a fantasy tale of dark versus light with lots of grey areas in between and it just naturally begs to have a grand finale like when Aragorn claims his throne and saves Gondor with an army of ghosts against the Dark Lord Sauron. It’s good stuff and the meat of the fantasy genre. My story, however, has stalled and waits me to lead it to the crashing crescendo of gore, valor, and dénouement. What causes me to pause in this plunge to the end?

I often wonder if just the thought that the story is to end makes it seem less worth while? I’m not sure if my ambivalent feelings towards reaching the natural climax of a story is something that other writers experience. Is my reluctance to take up the reins of a story that I know will then be finished and done with akin to the feelings that the writers of M*A*S*H felt as they reached the end of their tenure: a mixture of relief to be done and sorrow to have no more to do?

Since I have had such trouble orchestrating the ending of my tale of Elves and Men I have decided to work on some lesser endings. In my modern zombie apocalypse collaborative novel FLESH I have taken several story threads as far as they can interestingly go and still be a zombie story. With all the zombies nearly gone it’s time to wrap it up. Again there is a bittersweet feeling about it as these include several of my favorite characters. But therein lies the rub: no character can go on forever. When it’s time to throw in the towel and call it a night, like poor old Clyde Alden in the 1987 film version of The Witches of Eastwick putting his wife Felicia to her eternal rest, you know it. There is a feeling of ennui around the character or a feeling that you’re forcing things, desperate to find yet one more scenario to throw them into.

Better to take that poker and end their existence with some pride still intact.

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Come With Me to the Sea…

May 25, 2009 at 2:45 am (Creative Writing)
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Someone I greatly respect as an artist and storyteller once said he considered plagiarism to be the sincerest form of flattery and that it didn’t bother him because unlike the thief, he could always create more. On the other hand this very artist suffered from those that would steal his thunder and wanted to share the rarified sky and clouds with those whose feet walked above their own uninspired heads. The fact is that they were counterfeits and that the truth lay in his belief that he could always ‘create more’. It is the creativity itself that is the gift, not the individual piece.

I bring this up because one of the interesting features of sharing your writing online, whether it is a blog or at a site like Pan Historia, is this electronic act of trust. I’m putting it out there, assuming no one will take it. Of course it seems to be hubris to think anyone would, but it’s always a risk, however seemingly bizarre.

There was once a writer at Pan who was fairly good. I invited her to create a collaborative novel in order to help the site grow a community of writers beyond the standard historical or fan-based fiction. She created a whole fantasy world for her writers and I was pretty impressed. Then one day she decided to pull the plug on it because she decided she wanted to be a published author and someone might steal her material. The shock, at the time, was profound for me.

First I was very surprised that she considered the possibility of theft quite seriously, and the second that after months of working with other writers she would yank the framework from the tapestry they had built together out from under them. This being the early days of Pan it was simple enough to make sure it didn’t happen again through policies adopted, but I have never quite forgot it. It had an impact on me because I share my work all the time. I cast it out to the universe with each key stroke. I have no manuscripts lying under the bed, gathering dust, that I jealously guard.

Almost every single word I write is, in actual fact, published. Some may languish unseen in forums so old and dusty that the page never receives a call from a casual mouse click, or may have even disappeared from pixelated virtual reality all together, but every character of it has been shared. In all that unmitigated personal hubris (the assumption that anyone else would care to read it) I have never had cause to worry that anyone else was lifting it and trying to make it their own. If it came to a day when I wanted to see my words become ink upon a page – well I can write more.

Words flow outwards to the sea.

I don’t believe they should be dammed or ideas and creativity grows stagnant. You may only be a small creek, and it may only run with quick cold water after the spring thaw, but don’t impede it, and don’t consider it so precious that it grows thick and turgid with algae until it dries up completely and not even a lonely frog can find a home.

And if once those flowing words reach that great swollen ocean to mingle with all the waters of the world so that you fear that you will lose them, remember words are timeless. Who knows what shore they will one day cast up on to inspire again?

Let creativity leave and breathe. What do they say? If you love a thing… let it go.

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Is It a Rose by Any Other Name?

April 26, 2009 at 7:28 pm (Creative Writing)
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Naming a fictional character can be a tricky business. The right name can make a character greater, and the wrong name can derail all your carefully drawn details. The importance of a name on people’s perception of a character or even a real person has long been understood. In literature the Bronte sisters were originally given male pseudonyms in order to render them more serious and palatable to their potential readership. The author George Sand was born Amanda Aurore Lucille Dupin. Later on Hollywood was following a similar practice. Only in their case they weren’t hiding gender but often accentuating it with what were either considered lovely memorable feminine names or manly names befitting a man of action. Who doesn’t now know that Cary Grant started life out as Archibald Leach? They did hide, however, ethnicity in many cases. Theda Bara was actually Theodosia Burr Goodman, a good Jewish girl from Ohio.

Historically a name can make or break whether or not someone is remembered. In Allen Barra’s examination of the fame and notoriety of Wyatt Earp, Inventing Wyatt Earp, he devotes a section of the book to speculating on why it is Wyatt Earp more than his brother Virgil Earp that is remembered as the upright lawman with the Buntline Special Colt .45. He quite congenitally points out that, besides a few other details of Wyatt’s fame, ‘Wyatt Earp’ just rolls off the tongue better than ‘Virgil Earp’ does. Keeping to the western theme ‘Doc Holliday’ is a magical moniker that gives the owner a permanent password to fame. In the town of Tombstone at the very same time lived a medical doctor who was known as Doc Goodfellow, and while the name appears to be nearly as good, and then good doctor was, in fact, a brilliant physician and innovator, it is the gunfighting tubercular dentist who’s name really sings in the memory.

In fiction, as in fact, it is a great boost to memorability to have a great name. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote in his early memoir Pumping Iron of his intention to keep his funny sounding Austrian name that was hard to spell, despite Hollywood practice, because he believed that it’s very unusualness would ensure that people remembered him. It seems to have worked in his case though many actors and actresses have discarded their own prosaic sounding names. After all would Cary Grant have been quite so suave and sophisticated as Archibald Leach? The name shouts his working class roots as well as having an unfortunate association with small blood-sucking invertebrates. I have come across many unfortunate names in real life such as Doreen Wonderlick and Dick Swet. You have to wonder what the parents were thinking.

Unless you want a comic character you want to avoid doing the same thing to your own ‘children’ of your imagination. I can’t tell you how to choose a good name, but I do several things. I collect names. When I hear a good name I keep a note of it. I, of course, mix and match. It’s very important to say the name aloud a few times to make sure it sounds right. You might want something melodious or you might want something guttural and punchy. It is good to consider whether or not it fits your character. Like A Boy Named Sue it could be ironic or it could be a perfect match; something that suggests that your character just couldn’t be named anything else and be the same person.

When I write collaborative fiction at Pan Historia I often find the name coming first – surfacing out of the depths of my mind like a leviathan breaching. The name draws the rest of the beast out into the open sea of my imagination until I have a fully realized character. Most of the time though I think writers will have a character in mind and need to name them after. In your short story or novel there will be many supporting characters – each will need a name. I would give as much thought to the smallest bit part as to the hero or heroine. A small character with a funny or unusual name well thought out can become more vivid in the reader’s mind. Who can forget Ratso Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy? Now tell me what John Voight’s lead character’s name was from the same movie? Can’t? It’s Joe Buck – a name very suitable for the character but completely upstaged by Ratso Rizzo. All of these factors should be of consideration when you’re naming characters. Whatever you do, don’t just open up the White Pages and randomly pick a name.

Be armed with names ahead of time. Keep a notebook with all the great names you come across including the names of family members or friends that you find evocative. You might not have occasion to use them right away, but in time they might be just the right moniker for some well-crafted character. It’s ok, in a manuscript or draft, to play with different names, or versions of a name, until you get it right. It’s a little more difficult in collaborative fiction because you create the character before you start writing, but be prepared to delete that which does not work.

Writers: I would love to hear your tips and techniques for picking out the right name for your characters. Feel free to comment and keep the discussion going.

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When Writing Seems to be a Chore

April 22, 2009 at 5:45 pm (Creative Writing)
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When you have to write your 1000 words for the day of your novel or even a short but essential blog post and all you can think about is doing the dishes instead or doing that project in the garage that you’ve been putting off people are apt to call it ‘writer’s block’. If you overcome that block to actually sit down and do the writing you have pledged to do then that’s when you become a writer. At this moment I’m really talking to those that would like to become professionals. As an owner of a site like Pan Historia I am fully a champion of those that come to write just for the pure fun of it. If you’re a surfer you don’t grab a surfboard and head to the beach on a day you’re not in the mood. In this post I am addressing those of you that want to be professional writers, and I place myself among you.

My inspiration this morning came from my own disinclination to write a blog on writing. Over the short time I have maintained this blog I have written a number of short articles on the craft of writing, both general and for the relatively new field of collaborative self-published fiction. All the standard advice for bloggers contains the advice to keep your blog fresh with new content, but what happens when you run out of ideas? There are only so many topics right? Or is that just me avoiding writing when I know I should? It’s very probably the latter. Actually it’s definitely the latter.

Whenever, as a writer, you feel ‘blocked’ it’s time to write around it, or through it. Several things can happen: 1) you can spend hours writing a crappy post/chapter (and I still say hooray for you because there is growth in failure, perhaps more so than success) and have to throw it away. 2) you find yourself picking up speed and really getting into your topic/story. 3) you can discover what is that is really blocking you in a particular piece. If the result of writing through a block is number one you still have to do it all over again your next writing period. You cannot let that hurdle cause you to stumble – not if you want to be a professional. Remember writing as a career has deadlines and schedules just like any other job. Because most writers are their own supervisors (if not their own boss) that means developing a strong writing discipline.

Even if you are as of yet unpublished it’s a really smart idea to establish good working practices. If you’re not being paid yet (oh, grasshopper) then it’s often even more difficult to overcome the roadblocks put in your path by your own mind and by others… oh yes, others. If you work from home you know how many times friends and relatives will say “you’re not doing anything, can you help?” If you have a significant other, even a supportive one, there will be lapses. “I was at work all day, and you were at home, why didn’t you clean the __________?” You can fill in the blanks. Creating a strong and regular writing schedule for yourself, that you don’t cheat on, means sticking to it, regardless of the views of friends and loved ones. You might have a lot of diverse responsibilities such as kids, jobs, or looking after a relative, but if you are serious about being a writer you still need to carve out the time.

I have talked on this subject before, and at length, but I don’t think it can be repeated enough. I have several friends who are published writers and when a novice comes to them for advice it’s always the same: you wanna write? Then write.

There: I have written.

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Writing Scumbags and Bimbos

April 17, 2009 at 5:43 pm (Creative Writing)
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Sometimes you just have to do it.

You have to write about characters you don’t understand, you don’t like, or you even hate. I’m not just talking about the vicarious thrill of writing that demonic bad guy that gets all the women and does all the stuff you wish you could do if only you weren’t a nice law-abiding citizen (i.e. if you had the cajones). I mean the kind of person you just don’t get or want to get. Of course, for me, in collaborative writing there really isn’t any ‘must’ or ’should’. If I want to I can avoid it, but then I would never grow as a writer, and I would never have a full pantheon of human variation.

Maybe it’s just a supporting character, or a character that walks on once, but there comes a time when you do have to try and get into the head of someone very different than yourself. It’s said that ever character we write (or every portrait we paint) is really just autobiography, but I’m here to challenge you to pull the rabbit out of the hat and write a character so different that it might even make you uncomfortable to put the words to blank virtual page.

It’s an old chestnut that you should write what you know, I have dealt with my feelings on that elsewhere in this blog, but you can use other people you know or have met as a template: the bully in school, the weird guy at your last job that creeped you out, or the shallow ingenue. It’s all too easy, however, to get bogged down in predictability and cliche if you’re not careful. If you watch TV you will all too often see the stock set of character types brought out for every new episode, but if you want to convince your readers that your character is a living breathing human being you need to delve a little deeper than stereotypes.

You can start with the exterior action, but you have to find a way to get into the head of your unpleasant or unlikeable character just as much as you do with your main protagonist. What works for me is to start imagining myself as the character, doing the actions in my mind, then maybe running some interior dialogue. Your base might be close to a stereotype (after all they exist for a reason) but as you imagine the character more fully they come alive for you and might do some surprising things. If you only view them from the outside you will find yourself just sticking with cliche – stuff you have seen before elsewhere. We are all natural mimics. But going from the inside out you might achieve some unique insight that allows you to jump out of the stereotypes into a real portrayal of an individual.

One important thing to remember: whether or not a character is the hero or the villian, or a walk on bit part, everyone is the hero in their own life. If your creepy nose-picking bike messenger does something ‘evil’ why are they doing it? Maybe it’s spite because they feel unloved or slighted? Whatever the motivation ends up being it’s something you can relate to. Deep down inside of every thoughtless shallow ingenue is a girl looking for love and validation. The base ingredients of every human being are pretty much the same. Once you get inside your unlikeable character’s heads you’ll probably start to sympathize with them a little, and when you do that you start to bring them to life for your readers.

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