Ordinary Horrors: A Blog - Lowell Mick White

I Answer Some Questions about Writing 16

5/14/2021

"Because I said so."

Still, BYOQ....

Probably the best way to get a feel for short stories is to read short stories. They are actually very odd constructions.
Observe the world. That's it!
Pay attention to the world around you.
Imagination is very simple—it's just looking at something and asking, "What if...?"
So—see things and then apply imagination--
You rely on your memory and your observations of other people.
You've been sad, right? You remember what that was like, and paste it into your character.
This is what actors do! This is how writing is like acting—you are inhabiting a character.
Please do!
Too many students sadly end up taking a very bland approach to their writing and end up writing about...nothing....
Funny odd bizarre openings. (Please see the story "Chango" in the Casares book).
Oh, writing a short story is much much harder!
Short stories have to be really super focused. Novels can spread around all over the place....
I'm very happy when students are deeply engaged in the real world and write about all the problems that arise from the real world.
I got some great pandemic stories last semester! I'd really like to see MORE!
Try writing longer sentences—70, 80, 100 words....
I don’t forbid writing serial killers in my classes—I just say it is really hard to do, and I discouraged it.
But sure—why not murder? In the past five years, I've received 59 stories that had murders in them....
Life. The world I see around me. I write to understand the world.
OMG—dissertation time! Ha!
I'll ask you a question. How do we see the world differently than in, say 1900? (You weren't around in 1900, but you can guess....)
The class is "creative writing," and I have long felt that CW classes don't spend enough time on the creative aspects.
Criticism as in people hated it?
Depression and grief. These are deeply interior emotions that are hard to describe. How to display them? Have a secondary or teriary character interact with the depressed protagonist and make them—do something.
Anger, is, interestingly, apparently difficult for some people to write. Very often written depictions of anger turn out as sarcasm or snark.
All three emotions are difficult, maybe, because our society disapproves of their open display...?
I just sort of visualize what happens in the story, then I make a quick outline—bullet points for the title and character names and the basic action. Then—I write. I assume the beginning will be bad, but I know I can make it better with revision.
For many stories, it's best to start as close to the ending as possible.
I guess I still have a soft spot for the novels of James Michener, who had huge bestsellers in my youth and is much forgotten today (except for his charitable contributions, which last on in his name). I liked a few of the techno-thrillers of Tom Clancy before he got too right-wing political.
I like Stephen King a lot, though by now he's such a part of our popular literary culture that he transcends high/middle/low culture formulations. The crime novels of Elmore Leonard are in a similar cultural position.
He's my advice: don't feel guilty about any work you take "pleasure" in—music, film, books, food, whatever. Pleasure’s often hard to come by in this world. Take it when you can.
But we can go over them if you want!
Transitions between scenes are important. When revising, take a pass focusing just on transitions.
For the how-do part of your question, look to our readings. They all do this really well, especially Jennifer Egan’s "Found Objects."
Please be careful with some writing software! Students in the past have had trouble producing properly formatting stories (and, yes, that is something I notice!)
But you should always know the tools you use.
I was mainly talking about length and complexity. But movies of any kind differ from prose stories in that they are totally external—they're visual, and unable (even with a voice-over) of getting into a character's thoughts
Or you can get really close inside the character's head. Don't write the story—live it through the character's awareness....
I've been writing in first person a lot recently. I am interested in voices, and how we communicate.
I often push students toward first person also—it's easiest....
Background in a short story can be dangerous. It's easy to get carried away!
Try to stay in the story present as much as possible.....
A short story outline need only be a few bullet points—a title, character names, a few bits of action that will happen in the story.
Novel outlines are more elaborate. The outline for my work-in-progress is at 24 pages and will be longer....
Why people give up so easily.
There is always peer pressure to like certain artists. You can always focus on their craft, if not their content....
By using a world that's already created—like the beautiful world we are lucky to live in.
Also—try writing about action—about people doing things. Not about abstractions.
Too many metaphors and similes. They get in the way of the narrative.
An engaging character (usually). The threat doesn't have to be overwhelming....
It's important to remember that Europeans had no idea what they were looking at when the first arrived. Almost everything was new and outside of any context.
She was interested in nature and the world around her. Simple as that.
Well, just about everyone who doesn't live in a dome has to deal with weather. But the weather is different in different places.
The themes will be about the usual English class stuff--race, violence, climate, power....
Yep, she was out there in the desert paying attention to the world....
Not so much. But it's always good to keep in mind....
I think the ending is perfect.
Wealth and power almost always do win out, sadly!
But I really do think that where we live affects how we live, and so geography is important....
They sure will!
I'd advise you to just read everything....
They probably have the same effect. But it's interesting that artists build off of one another, and are influenced by one another. No one works in a vacuum.
No, not really. (The crew in Blood Meridian is out to make money, but it's not treasure!).
Our old friend J. Frank Dobie wrote a couple of books about lost treasure—but he was presenting it more as folklore than as fact....
I had a great uncle who moved out to the Mojave Desert when he retired. He got water trucked in--once a week a big tanker would come and fill up his cistern.
So—if I had water delivered, sure, I'd be fine. Otherwise I'd be reduced to dust....
It might come up. Aridity always lurks in the background in the Southwest....

"That text is flawed."

I Answer Some Questions about Writing 15

4/2/2021

The work-in-progress can be unruly....

Yes, still BYOQ....

They demonstrate something about writing that students need to know.
I do.
But—not necessarily autobiographical. Just something you see/hear/touch transformed into a—story.
Flannery O'Connor once said that by the time a person is 17 years old, they have experienced everything there is to experience in life.
(Think about whether or not that is true, or how it might be true...).
We'll stick with imagery and emotion.
But if you want to write a sonnet or a villanelle, have at it....
Go read some writers from @120 or so years ago—someone walks into a room and there's page after page of room description.
Yeah. No. We don't see the world like that anymore.
Look at it this way:
Your protagonist walks into a room.
What do they see?
What do they see that's important?
Focus on what's important.
Gatsby was out of print when Scott Fitzgerald died. Moby-Dick was forgotten when Melville died. They both died thinking they were failures.
Me, History can look after itself. I try to live in the near-future (or the near-past)....
Some cases of Writer's Block are a form of depression and can be treated with SSRIs. Most (way the most) cases of writer's block are merely the voice of the writer's internal editor telling the writer that they are not good enough. We all have that voice. The trick is--to slip past it and get work done....
We can discuss "how-to" as the semester progresses.
For anyone interested in this subject (and I get questions about writer's block all the time), I highly recommend The Midnight Disease, by Alice Flaherty. The best book on writing....
You don't. At all.
Once a story (book, poem, whatever) leaves your hands it's not yours any more. It belongs to whomever reads it.
And—they might not like it. You have no control over whether someone likes your work or not.
What you have control on—total control—is the text itself.
Write for yourself.
Nope, no prescribed topic.
The cw teacher and novelist John Gardener once said that there are only three basic stories:
…the romance/relationship story….
…stranger rides into town….
…hero sets off to find their fortune….
So...you'll end up writing one of those stories. You'll be fine!
I'm glad you asked this question!
When I was young? I wish I’d found a (better) way to deal with depression.
Nope. I wish more students would write horror.
Excellent!
Me, I'd just read the whole thing. It's short....
Yep, you do the readings and writing assignments outside, on your own.
We'll be talking things over—the readings, these questions, stories, poems, weather, whatever....
There are indeed reasons for this—very good reasons, to my mind. But it's easier to explain orally than in writing--
Thanks for asking this question!
The revised edition is fine!
I usually ask for six poems as part of the poetry assignment....
But you can write as many as you want (and probably should...).
Yes—our class is a little literary community. And we Venn Diagram out into the larger Literary Community....
You sure can! Start a conversation! Express yourself--
That's a good thing!
I'm pushing you more towards free verse. But if you want to write a sonnet or a villanelle, that's fine....
It's always good to see other people when you talk to them, and see the occasional cat or dog wandering by....
But if you have a problem with it, that's fine. Put yourself first.
(Last semester a young man zoomed in from a hot tub. He won the semester).
Sure—every text has multiple audiences. Here are some that you will have:
Me
The other people in this class
An ideal audience that you would like to write for
Keep all of audiences in mind. At the same time, write something that reflects your own heart.
It's tricky!
In our zoom meetings, I'll go over these questions and answer some of them at length, and maybe I'll go over a story or two or we'll look at some slides or whatever....
Basically, we'll talk about writing. That's my teaching method....
It's due at 1159pm...
It might be nice to read it before class, but not required....
I sure hope so! But people are individuals, and will react individually to different things.
Maybe an appreciation for the complexity of this beautiful and fascinating and tragic world...?
My fave part changes every semester. My favorite film in this class is "The Big Lebowski," which we'll close the semester with....
Nope. We will press on relentlessly.
The pandemic teaches us to be flexible and resilient. If we have to cancel a class meeting...we'll find a way to get around it....
Usually a work set in the Southwest. Or maybe about characters from the Southwest doing things elsewhere....
But usually—almost always—setting....
Where we live affects how we live. A story set in the gloomy rainy forests of the Northwest will have a different feel from a story set in the arid Southwest...And the characters will be doing different things and have different priorities....
Sure. (See above). Where we live affects how we live.
Maybe 10 days or so....
Just do the work.
I often get this question in my creative writing classes. My usual response is, "You don't have to 'like' something to learn from it."
(That said—it's more fun when you "like" something. Try pretending to "like" something).
You can also make the class into a game, to keep yourself amused. (This is how I got through grad school).
One of the cool things about teaching a class is that I get to choose books/movies I like....
But as the course proceeds you will see, I think, that there are thematic connections between them....
Oh, yes. For one thing, we're online instead of face-to-face. That makes a big difference in how we relate to one another.
And this has caused some changes in material. For example, I use far less visual art than I would ftf. Less emphasis on music and food....
I teach Texas Lit occasionally. There is some overlap between the two courses, since Texas is partially in the Southwest. But part of Texas is also in the South. And while the Panhandle is part of the Southwest, it is also part of the Great Plains....
So—in Texas Lit, I try to represent all regions of the state....
We are going to cover the books faster than I would like (or you would like, probably)....
But the readings slack up toward the end of the semester....
They are essays. I will post three or four prompts, you'll choose one of them, and write an essay....
I'll put the prompt up maybe 10 days before the due date.
There are a lot of places that have used copies of these books—so, shop around.
You will need to purchase the books.
As I think I said upthread, I think you will see themes emerges. The texts talk to one another....
I deal a lot with writer's block—both as a novelist and as a teacher. Most of the time it is merely a writer's Internal Editor telling the writer that what they are writing is not good enough.
I am here to tell you that what you are writing—will write in this class—is good enough.
The trick is to find a way to believe that and integrate it into your writing/studying practice.
We can discuss this in more detail going forward.
One of the best classes I had as an undergrad was "Art and Photographic History of the American West." It was great! And then I got a nice summer gig as a research assistant for the prof, Dr William Goetzmann. Here's his book: The West of the Imagination
My fave visual art—painting, probably. Though photography is great, too.
In class I just run some slides past you....
It's pretty basic—environment, violence, race, family, gender. How do these elements work in the texts we cover...?
The region we're looking at was once part of Mexico, and there are plenty of Latinx people living in it and telling stories....
So, sure--
You can get by just using the class readings, sure. But you might want to dig a little deeper and use other sources....
Sure. I won't offer a detailed written critique (there is not enough time!), but I can give you some ideas in office hours.
Sure, if someone gets close I usually bump them up....
I got interested in SW Lit back when I was the Dobie Fellow—I got stranded out there for five weeks—the low-water crossing was flooded, so I read a pile of books by Dobie and his friends....
Books that speak to me. Books that speak to the diversity of the Southwest. Those are the main criteria....
Grading is the least favorite part of this job! It's WORK!
What makes grading difficult is knowing that so many students place a high priority on their grades....
Basically, go north on I-35 until you hit Wichita, KS. Then hang a left and keep going west until you hit the Pacific Ocean. Everything to your West and South is the...Southwest.....
We might look at some maps on Thursday.....
Yep—at one time Tennessee was the Southwest. (Ohio was the Northwest!)
But you can see how this was formed, right? By someone standing in Boston or New York and looking...West....
How did the people who lived out here conceive of where they were when they looked...east? Or anywhere?
Write a (good) short story. I
And you definitely want to pay close attention to the Christine Granados book--she is a fine short story writer.
This is a tough question! Every writer we read will have an individual style....The style that works best is one that has an encompassing vision of wherever the writer is located in space or time….
You can be several things: I'm an Appalachian Writer, I’m a Texas Writer, I’m a Southwestern Writer....and I'm an academic who is interested in Regional Literatures....
Don't be a perfectionist. Nothing is more deadly to a writer than perfectionism.
Know that whatever you write will be flawed because ALL TEXTS ARE FLAWED.
Accept that, and work to make your text(s) better.
And, most of all: KEEP—MOVING—FORWARD
They are all available at the library. You can also find cheap used copies.
Believe it or not, they are all faves in different ways—they all speak to different aspects of my personality and writerly being....
"Write what you know" is a convention that privileges experience. It's not totally wrong! But it’s definitely not totally right!
Here are two ways to look at it:
There are different ways of knowing. (Physical, emotional, etc).
You can write what you learn. Creative writers do research!

"Is this your text? Do you know it's flawed?"

I Answer Some Questions about Writing 14

3/19/2021

"Your words are FIRE."

As always, BYOQ....

I like them.
They demonstrate something about writing that students need to know.
Addonizio just does a terrific and generous job of showing how to write a poem....
Your poetry assignment is usually six poems. You can write as many as you want in the writing assignments, etc....
I do.
But—not necessarily autobiographical. Just something you see/hear/touch transformed into a—story.
Flannery O'Connor once said that by the time a person is 17 years old, they have experienced everything there is to experience in life. (Think about if that is true...).
Go read some writers from @ 120 or so years ago—someone walks into a room and there's page after page of room description.
Yeah. No. We don't see the world like that anymore.
Your protagonist walks into a room. What do they see? What do they see that's important?
Focus on what's important.
Where? There's no "One World" literature.....
What is success, anyway? As far as the US goes....Gatsby was out of print when Scott Fitzgerald died. Moby-Dick was forgotten when Melville died. They both died thinking they were failures.
Me, History can look after itself. I try to live in the near-future....
Some cases of Writer's Block are a form of depression and can be treated with SSRIs. Most (way the most) cases of writer's block are merely the voice of the writer's internal editor telling the writer that they are not good enough. We all have that voice. The trick is--to slip past it and get work done....
We can discuss "how-to" as the semester progresses.
For anyone interested in this subject (and I get questions about writer's block all the time), I highly recommend The Midnight Disease, by Alice Flaherty. The best book on writing....
You don't. At all.
Once a story (book, poem, whatever) leaves your hands it's not yours anymore. It belongs to whomever reads it.
And—they might not like it. You have no control over this.
What you have control on—total control—is the text itself.
Write for yourself.
Nope, no prescribed topic.
The cw teacher and novelist John Gardener once said that there are only three basic stories: the romance or relationship story / stranger rides into town / hero sets off to find their fortune
So...you'll end up writing one of those stories. You'll be fine!
Nope. In fact, I wish more students would write horror.
Me, I'd just read the whole thing. It's short....
Yep, you do the readings and writing assignments outside, on your own. For Thursday meetings we'll be talking things over—the readings, these questions, stories, poems, weather, whatever....
There are indeed reasons for this—very good reasons, to my mind. But it's easier to explain orally than in writing—we'll go over this Thursday.
Thanks for asking this question!
The revised edition is fine!
I usually ask for six poems as part of the poetry assignment....
But you can write as many as you want (and probably should...).
Yes—our class is a little literary community. And we Venn Diagram out into the larger Literary Community....
You sure can! Start a conversation! Express yourself---
That's a good thing!
My office hours will be on Tuesdays. Shoot me an email saying that you want to meet up, and we can decide on a time that suits both of us....
Then—we get on zoom--
I'm pushing you more towards free verse. But if you want to write a sonnet or a villanelle, that's fine....
It's always good to see other people when you talk to them, and see the occasional cat or dog wandering by....
But if you have a problem with it, that's fine. Put yourself first.
(Last semester a young man zoomed in from a hot tub. He won the semester).
Sure—every text has multiple audiences. Here are some that you will have:
Me
The other people in this class
An ideal audience that you would like to write for
Keep all of them in mind. At the same time, write something that reflects your own heart.
It's tricky!
In our zoom meetings, I'll go over these questions and answer some of them at length, and maybe I'll go over a story or two or we'll look at some slides or whatever....
Basically, we'll talk about writing. That's my teaching method....
It might be nice to read it before class, but not required....
I sure hope so! But people are individuals, and will react individually to different things.
Maybe an appreciation for the complexity of this beautiful and fascinating and tragic world...?
My fave part changes every semester. My favorite film in this class is "The Big Lebowski," which we'll close the semester with....
Nope. We will press on relentlessly.
The pandemic teaches us to be flexible and resilient. If we have to cancel a class meeting...we'll find a way to get around it....
Usually a work set in the Southwest. Or maybe about characters from the Southwest doing things elsewhere....
But usually—almost always—setting....
Where we live affects how we live. A story set in the gloomy rainy forests of the Northwest will have a different feel from a story set in the arid Southwest...And the characters will be doing different things and have different priorities....
Just do the work.
I often get this question in my creative writing classes. My usual response is, "You don't have to 'like' something to learn from it."
(That said—it's more fun when you "like" something. Try pretending to "like" something).
You can also make the class into a game, to keep yourself amused. (This is how I got through grad school).
One of the cool things about teaching a class is that I get to choose books/movies I like....
But as the course proceeds you will see, I think, that there are thematic connections between them....
Oh, yes. For one thing, we're online instead of face-to-face. That makes a big difference in how we relate to one another.
And this has caused some changes in material. For example, I use far less visual art than I would ftf. Less emphasis on music and food....
I teach Texas Lit occasionally. There is some overlap between the two courses, since Texas is partially in the Southwest. But part of Texas is also in the South. And while the Panhandle is part of the Southwest, it is also part of the Great Plains....
So—in Texas Lit, I try to represent all regions of the state....
We are going to cover the books faster than I would like (or you would like, probably)....
But the readings slack up toward the end of the semester....
There are a lot of places that have used copies of these books—so, shop around.
As I think I said upthread, I think you will see themes emerges. The texts talk to one another....
I deal a lot with writer's block—both as a novelist and as a teacher. Most of the time it is merely a writer's Internal Editor telling the writer that what they are writing is not good enough.
I am here to tell you that what you are writing—will write in this class—is good enough.
The trick is to find a way to believe that and integrate it into your writing/studying practice.
We can discuss in more detail going forward.
One of the best classes I had as an undergrad was "Art and Photographic History of the American West." It was great! And then I got a nice summer gig as a research assistant for the prof, Dr WIlliam Goetzmann. (Here's his book, The West of the Imagination (Links to an external site.)).
My fave form—painting, probably. Though photography is great, too.
In class I just run some slides past you....
It's pretty basic—environment, violence, race, family, gender. How do these elements work in the texts we cover...?
The region we're looking at was once part of Mexico, and there are plenty of Latinx people living in it and telling stories....
So, sure--
The University Writing Center helps everyone. They are really good.
I got interested in SWLit back when I was the Dobie Fellow—I got stranded out there for five weeks—the low-water crossing was flooded, so I read a pile of books by Dobie and his friends....
Books that speak to me. Books that speak to the diversity of the Southwest. Those are the main criteria....
Grading is the least favorite part of teaching! It's WORK!
What makes grading difficult is knowing that so many students place a high priority on their grades....
Basically, go north on I-35 until you hit Wichita, Ks. Then hang a left and keep going west until you hit the Pacific Ocean. Everything to your West and South is the...Southwest.....
At one time Tennessee was the Southwest. (Ohio was the Northwest!)
But you can see how this was formed, right? By someone standing in Boston or New York and looking...West....
How did the people who lived here conceive of where they were....?
Write a (good) short story.
And you definitely want to pay close attention to the Christine Granados book….
This is a tough question! Every writer we read will have an individual style....
I'm a Southwestern Writer....and I'm an academic who is interested in Regional Literatures....
Don't be a perfectionist.
Nothing is more deadly to a writer than perfectionism.
Know that whatever you write will be flawed because ALL TEXTS ARE FLAWED.
Accept that, and work to making your text better.
And, most of all: KEEP—MOVING—FORWARD
They are all available at the library. You can also find cheap used copies.
Believe it or not, they are all faves in different ways—they all speak to different aspects of my personality and writerly being....
"Write what you know" is a convention that privileges experience. It's not totally wrong! (Or wholly right).
There are different ways of knowing. (Physical, emotional, etc).
You can write what you learn. Creative writers do research!

I Answer Some Questions About Writing 13

3/5/2021

The struggle.

As always, BYOQ...

Keeping notes is a really good idea! Most poets I know have overflowing notebooks with all sorts of ideas and inspirations....
Prose or poetry, I write to come to a better understanding of the world I live in....it's an absurd & ridiculous & mysterious place! Writing helps me sort it all out....
I didn't write my first poem until I was 42 or so years old. I was in grad school, and I was working at a really fine literary journal, Callaloo.
The editor was a poet, the managing editor was a poet, and the young woman I shared a workstation with was a poet. And so I started writing poems, just to keep up with them all. And I was so lucky, because the managing editor, Adrian Matejka, is a really really fine poet, and he was around the critique my work. And I got a few poems published right away....
But! My first poems were all narrative poems. They were short stories that didn't work as short stories, and so I stripped them down layer by layer until there was only 12 or 14 lines left. You can do this too!
I don't know. But a lot, I hope, because you deserve a lot!
(All of you deserve a lot!)
We learn from Alice Flaherty's Midnight Disease, my favorite book about writing, that "writer's block" is a real thing, related to depression, and can be treated with SSRIs like Prozac.
But--
—most people do not have true writer's block. They have an interior editor that tells them that their work isn't any good and will not be any good.
All writers have an internal editor. I sure do! As writers we have to find a way to shut up that voice, dodge around it, suppress it.
A trick that works for me: timed writing sessions. Set the timer on your phone for 20 or 25 minutes (no more than 25). Then just—write—until the timer beeps. Do not stop to think! Do not pause at all! DO not take your hands from the keyboard or pen! And when the timer beeps and you're done, go do something else.
This works. I've written several books this way.
You'll have to experiment around and find the best time for you. Me, I write at night, and I'm most productive from @1100pm to @100am.
I'm a huge procrastinator, too. The easiest thing in the world is to not write—this is true for everyone.
I hate getting started. But once I start, I'm fine.
Most of the time we'll never know the relationship of poet and poem. (Or writer/writing of any kind). Once you get to grad school you'll have theory dealing with the "implied author" but until then just assume that the narrator is the narrator, unless the author tells you differently.
Poems tend to be more personal than stories--there are fewer places to hide in a poem.
Poems seem best drawn from any sort of concrete (not abstract) human experience--for experience that is physical and involved with the world....
I would always prefer that students analyze a text rather than talk about their feelings about the text—analysis over autobiography. (I’m thinking this is somewhat of a pandemic problem, since if we met three times a week ftf, I’d be bugging people about this constantly). When a person says that they “like” or “don’t like” a story, they’re not really talking about the story—they’re talking about their own feelings.
(Liking or not liking a text is of course fun when you’re reading like a civilian, but a university class is not a book club).
The discussion of likeability in female characters is something that has been floating around the literary world for the past ten years or so. We can all see that the patriarchy puts constraints on “acceptable” standards of women’s behavior. Many readers carry those constraints over into their reading, and negatively judge female characters in a story or novel or film. Male characters are usually judged far less harshly than women characters, even when they are doing much the same thing.
As writers we might strive to be perceptive, rather than judgmental. To wildly paraphrase Anton Chekhov, ‘I don’t need to say that stealing horses is evil. Everyone knows stealing horses is evil. I want to write about why people steal horses.’
(So…why does Monica behave the way she does? (Hint—whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s not really hypocrisy)).
Roxane Gay has written a terrific essay on this topic. A quote: “In many ways, likability is a very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct dictating the proper way to be. Characters who don't follow this code become unlikable. Critics who fault a character's unlikability cannot necessarily be faulted. They are merely expressing a wider cultural malaise with all things unpleasant, all things that dare to breach the norm of social acceptability… Why is likability even a question? Why are we so concerned with, whether in fact or fiction, someone is likable? Unlikable is a fluid designation that can be applied to any character who doesn't behave in a way the reader finds palatable.”
In short—as a reader, it’s (mostly, probably) perfectly okay to find the behavior of a fictional character repellent! But as a writer you should be analyzing how and why the author created this character the way they are and how they used language to get the character across….
Having a super-badass character kind of removes any tension to the action/plot or opportunity for character “growth” if you’re interested in that. The character becomes—flat.
The super-badass character is also aspirational for many readers….
The discomfort perhaps comes as we recognize the limits of our empathy and the difficulty of truly imagining the experience of another human. But it can be done! My advice: make your character an individual first, and a social construct second.
Factual aspects of a story can always be researched, and research is always important to a creative writer. You don’t just go around making things up. The emotional aspects of a story…that’s another job for writerly empathy. We can learn this by watching how people behave in different situations, by imagining how we would behave in a similar situations.
Also: Flannery O’Connor argues that by the time you’re 17, you’ve experienced everything there is to experience in the world—love, hate, anger, joy, fear, etc.
Take your knowledge of these emotions and give them to your characters.
Good question!
I would like it if students would “read like a writer.” What's reading like a writer?
It means reading for HOW a text means, not what a text means.
How the writer used language, sentence by sentence, to construct the story under analysis.
How language is used, not necessarily whether it is successful or unsuccessful.
It's reading as perception, not judgement.
dialogue
point of view
tense
setting
punctuation
action
exposition
Every student in this class can learn about these aspects of fiction from the stories we’re reading this semester.
It's maybe like when dreams fade once you wake up. it's probably important to strike while the iron is hot, before the forgetting mind takes over!
I like much of the King book (I like King in general), but I have a few reservations. He doesn't seem to understand that his success gives him a level of privilege that less successful writers do not have. But--many students have gotten a lot from it. Read it and make up your own mind.
Here are two craft books I like a lot:
From Where You Dream, by Robert Olen Butler.
Making a Literary Life, by Carolyn See. (We're going to read her chapter on revision in a few weeks).
When you're bored with what you're doing. When you've accomplished one thing and want another challenge.
When your vision of the world changes. When you learn something new.....
I think this would all have to depend on the writer and where they are at that moment in their lives....
I would strongly advise you to stick with SAID and ASKED all the time. They are inoffensive little words that become invisible. When they are invisible, readers can actually focus on your character's brilliant talk.
Please don't distract your reader.
(For a similar reason, it's a good idea to avoid connecting action to dialogue).
Try skipping the things you're having trouble with. Add those things later as part of the revision process...?
Also—is this writer's block or is it the voice of your internal editor?
Not necessarily. The stranger can certainly be the focal character—the protagonist's first day on a new job, the first day at a new school, a traveler stopping to get gas in a new town....
(All the same story, rebooted over and over again...).
(Also—the focal character doesn't have to be a guy!) (Or a gunslinger/samurai)....
In a short story, you can get by with only one "round" character. You can distinguish between secondary characters by giving them distinguishing physical characteristics. (I learned this from my boy Tolstoy, in War & Peace).
For a long work like a novel, you want to keep character notes just so you don't suddenly change their educational background or eye color or whatever.
You can improvise as much as you like, but keep notes on your improvisation.
I feel pretty confident starting when I know more or less how I want the book to end, and I have an outline that will get me 40 pages or so into the first draft. I will work on and expand the outline almost every day, so that it keeps that 40-page buffer always ahead of me. It's like driving at night with your headlights on....
I use both. I love my little notebooks, and I love my phone.
An advantage of the notebooks: when you're at a meeting (in pre-pandemic times) it's considered impolite to mess with your phone while someone is speaking. But you can write in your notebook and say whatever you feel like saying, even if you're slagging the speaker! It's fun.
Getting any book out is a big deal. After that, you can't control how many people read it, and you really can't control who likes it.
So much of what is considered success is luck. But--you have to work hard to put yourself in a position to have luck.
Research! Creative writers do research! Really, they don't go around making things up....
So—say you're writing a novel set in New Mexico at the time the atomic bomb is being built. You want to stay pretty close to facts, but you could have your (fictional) characters interacting with real people. Or you could have an alt timeline where everything goes off in a different direction. Or....
But still—base your story around research....
Show their character through action. Just like everyday real people show who they are by how they act....
Yes, I think all of us should be writing in response to the pandemic.
This historical crisis we're going through right now is complicated and exhausting—it calls for writers to pay attention to it.
But—you don't have to write about the big picture, and maybe probably shouldn't. Focus on the personal and the small.
Don't make it the last six months--make it 15 minutes out of the last six months....
A student wrote a FANTASTIC story about pandemic roommate conflict....it can be done!
That's what fiction does best—focus on how people live their lives.

People are mysteries....

I Answer Some Questions about Writing XII

2/6/2021

The usual sage-on-a-page wisdoms and revelations. BYOQ....

I don't think they have to, but I like it when they do....
I really like, say, Oscar Casares's Brownsville. Stories connected by setting.
Sometimes you can get a novel-in-stories, where there is a connecting arc throughout the individual stories. (The kleptomaniac story we read a few weeks ago is the first "chapter" in Jennifer Egan's wonderful novel-in-stories A Visit from the Goon Squad).
But even when there is no overt connection, a story collection is still usually connected as a representation of whatever is going on in the writer's head at that given time....
Dictionaries and character listings would be a part of the text, and the writer would have control.
Maps? How good an artist is the author? if the map is important and the author is a good artist, they will use the author's map. If the map is important and the author is a lame artist (like me, say) the publisher will use a map and hire an artist to make it (and find a way to make the author pay for it).
(I love maps—I wish more students would use them!)
Authors have very little input on covers. Almost none. The books I edit, I discuss ideas with the writers, but the final decision is by me and the press.
For a previously unpublished writer? Complete. Done. Done and revised until it is as close to perfect as possible. (Close—all texts are flawed).
In the meantime, while you are completing and revising, try to get your shorter work published in journals. Maybe start sharing your work online....
I wrote my first book while working as a cab driver (I actually wrote it in the cab, between passengers). Cab driving is a hard way to make a meager living. I thought—Oh! I'll go to grad school and get an MA and maybe a teaching certificate and teach at a community college or a private school or wherever. And then on the first day of grad school I fell in love with it and decided that first week that I needed a PhD.
I'm very lucky.
I'm seeing these as three different things—needs, theme, life lesson.
Needs. Your character's needs are the holes in the character's heart. How is your character damaged? (Just about everyone in this world is damaged). What do they need to be happy? What are they doing to fill that hole? Look back at Monica in "Fight Like a Man"--what is she doing to fill the hole in her heart? You will learn about your character as you write, but you should be at least familiar with them when you start.
Theme. As you know by now, I am a big believer in outlines. But I also kind of think that you should, at the beginning, remain open and uncommitted on the theme of your story. A general idea is good, but you don't need more than that.
Let the theme emerge organically from the text.
How does that work?
Let’s say you’ve written a successful children’s book, and you want to write an adult story in the same world. You want to write—oh, a quest story. There’s this hobbit that has a magic ring and has to destroy it. The hobbit has to travel a long way—it’s going to be a big book! Okay. You make an outline hitting the important action/plot points along the way. And then you start writing. And as you write along, your themes emerge. You find that your story is about—friendship, and honor, and love, and loyalty, and duty. (And about your unacknowledged colonialist beliefs). And you keep writing. And the plot takes some turns you hadn’t expected. (You update your outline). And the friendships go deeper, and the love comes through, and there’s a layer of intense aching sadness over everything. And then—after four years of writing—you find what you’ve actually written a reflection of your own experience in World War One.
Life lesson. I would caution you a little about "life lessons." Many readers really really really resent heavy-handed "teaching" on the part of writers.
(I’m one of them).
Yep, I sure do. Tom Wolfe, especially, bears down on me. But he's sadly dead now and won't have any new books, so I guess I'm safe.
It's actually pretty common.
Some writers I know will only read things way outside their genre while working on a book—pulp detective stories or pulp science fiction. That seems like a lot of extra work, unless you like reading those things.
Better just to smooth it over when you do revision, like spackle.
(I've actually had students tell me that they don't read ANYTHING, for fear that they will be influenced. Please don't tell me this—I will be disappointed in you).
(Being influenced is good thing).
I guess it depends on what you mean by "success."
But the basic answer is—sure.
Example: My acquaintance XXX XXX is a critically acclaimed novelist and, sadly, their books don't sell enough for to make a living, so they work for the government.
And many, many writers teach.
And--day jobs are a good thing! Think—HEALTH INSURANCE.
The point of the story list we went over a few weeks ago is that any plot/theme can make for a good story—if it's written well.
So perhaps instead of focusing on a good idea, focus on a good character, an interesting setting, and strong beginnings and endings....?
Here are some "plots" from some of my stories:
woman fed up with her boyfriend
man returns home to find wife on drugs
man fired from his job
woman fired from her job
there’s a fish stuck in the toilet
man takes drugs, plays softball
man ignores wife’s (valid) complaints
Kind of boring, right? There is nothing at all exceptional about these "plots." Yet the stories are at least competent because of character and setting and language and they were published....
All your ideas have potential. You just have to find a way to use language to realize that potential....
Well, it's not just like you can just decide to do trad publishing—you have to sort of earn it. Get your name out there, publish in journals, etc.
Anyone can publish through Amazon. But are their books any good? Not just as a text—is the book as an object any good? Covers are especially hard for beginners/amateurs.
This is why I tell students (here I am telling you)—learn some skills. Learn at least the rudiments of Photoshop and InDesign. Get a website up, and a blog. Use twitter. Research book design. Etc.
And then learn some PR—even with trad publishing, you'll have to do much of your own promotion....
There's a lot to this book writing thing—but it's all things you can learn....
I'd have to see some examples, but—very generally--
A lot of the excessive telling I see comes in backstory info dumps. Solution—get rid of backstory. Most stories don't need it.
A lot of excessive telling comes in 3rd person interior dialogue. Solution—switch to 1st person, and the narrator can talk directly to the reader.
Very very generally: try staying in the story-present, focusing on action. (Dialogue is an action).
But, like everything else in life—it depends.
What are your goals as a writer? How much are you willing to work? Will you have to make sacrifices in your personal & professional life?
(I sort of answered this upthread...).
Yes, and I love it. I can disappear down a research tunnel like you wouldn't believe—especially photo archives.
I'm curious—I like knowing things!
Everything I learn has an impact on what I'm writing and on what I've already written. This is one of the purposes of revision....
(One of the purposed of education, too).
I'll repeat here something y'all are probably tired of me repeating—creative writers do research.
So, for mysteries. There is a series called Best American Mystery Stories. Comes out every year. Read the past 10 or so volumes and see what contemporary mystery writers are doing.
While you're reading those mysteries, start going through some newspaper archives and look for obscure, forgotten, and odd crime stories. Small and mid-sized towns are the best. I think Evans Library has a subscription to newspapers.com -- it is very helpful (a place, as per the previous thread, that I can get totally lost in).
And then start thinking about your characters and your setting. Even though plot is more important in mystery than in literary fiction, character and setting are still crucial....
Research research re-research.....
In the next section of the class we will be focusing on sharing your work....
So—social media, blogs. And then start submitting stories to journals.....
Research...general or specific....
I want to see what other people have done. (How can I improve on what they've done? How will my person experience make what they've done different?)....
Then I sit down and start visualizing my outline—and then I write the outline....
I think that just depends on what your personal values are. There's no wrong here—it's just a way of looking at language and looking at a career....
And you will almost surely think differently and writing as you age....
My advice: get good at something now. You can always try something new later....
Go around the wall.
Seriously.
Ideas are very hard to write, which is why I tell students to focus on characters. A character can always do something different and unexpected. They are not hemmed in by a concept.
Your story will succeed or fail based on the quality of the writing, not on the underlying idea or concept....
I'm always looking for new books, poems, stories. That said, I've been using Ordinary Genius and Brownsville for several years now--they're really good and get across the important writing things I want to get across. The stories in the first part of the semester get rotated around....
I grew up in a family of storytellers. It just seemed—natural—to try and take it another step and write....
The process is pretty basic—you send stuff out, and get rejected, and send it out again and again and again....until you hit.
It takes only one person to like your work--but it might take some time to find that person. You have to be persistent.
Right of passage? Sure. Validation is a good thing!
I think it's important to somehow make time to read. Even if it's only fifteen or twenty minutes before you go to sleep....
Yep. I have lots of journals and notebooks and I use them!
I have a daily planner, a daily diary—both of those are hardcopy—and my Pandemic Diary (on my computer)—I update those every day.
I have an evening diary and a dream diary—both hardcopy—I update those several times a week.
I have prose notebooks and a poetry notebook—all hardcopy—I update those as needed.
I have a pocket journal I use when I go out in the world, but it's been unused since the pandemic started....
I can write just about any place that doesn't cause me back pain. Right now—my recliner. I wrote my first novel, That Demon Life, in a taxicab...I wrote Normal School and Burnt House in bed...I wrote most of Professed in a coffee shop....
So—I'm flexible. Except for the back pain part.
In bed.
I came to poetry very late, as I think I said a couple of weeks ago. I was in my 40s...But I already knew how to write—how to make good sentences. So that part came quickly. And I had the great Adrian Matejka coaching me....
Authors that have a unique writing style...? Cormac McCarthy—go read The Road...Tom Wolfe—go read The Right Stuff...Megan Abbot—go read Dare Me.....
Contemporary writers? Megan Abbot (Dare Me) and Elizabeth Hand (Generation Loss) are terrific and I love their work...!!!!!!!!
Good ol Hemingway was the writer who changed my life....
Oh, yes—screenplays operate from a totally different paradigm than prose or poetry. And there are a lot of books on screenwriting.
And—indeed—you can be inspired by movies! I sure am. Go watch Sunset Blvd.....
ABSOLUTELY A SKILL THAT CAN BE LEARNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
None.
Because it's not the plot or the theme or the action that makes a story "original."
It's what's in my heart that makes a story original. It's the way I see the world that makes a story original. It's the way I render the world through language that makes the world original.
That's the whole point of this class. I want you—all of you—to encounter the world through the personal lens of your understanding.
You heart is original. Use it.

I Answer Some Questions About Writing XI

1/22/2021

Outlines...?
Make a list of 30 things you want to have happen in the novel. Bullet points are fine.
Each bullet point is a day's writing. Then double it--number it 1a, 1b...15a, 15b, or whatever.
Does your bullet point take up less than 800 words to tell? Well, no it doesn't—there is always something more to say about anything.
Don't let your internal editor worry you about continuity and/or "quality"—just keep moving forward.
Eating is a profound rhetorical connection between writer and reader. So—do it. Use eating.
Remember that eating is about memory as much as it is about nutrition. (Watch some shows on Food Network and see how chefs and cooks present their food—very often they start with a memory).
Making coffee becomes an anchor for a memory.
Meals eaten with two or more people are about how the people relate to one another.
Go back to Food Network again and see how Guy Fieri describes food. He's kind of annoying but he's good at what he does. Watch almost any episode of The Sopranos. Read writers to see how they do it. Research is fun!
I always look for new things to try—these Participation Questions are a pandemic adaptation....
I would rather not be confused.
People have lives—they are very busy!
Most writers pay—or at least buy dinner for—their beta readers.
This might sound glib, but—pretend to be confident?
The people reading your work do not and will not know you. So if you pretend to be confident, they will think you're confident.
Writing is about acting as much as it is about putting words on a screen or a page....
Also, I sense a writer's confidence by how the scenes unfold early in a story. The beginning works, then the next scene takes the story another step, then another. The writer shows that they know what they are doing structurally.....
So....maybe pretend to be confident while you learn structure...??
For a long time I subscribed to several word-of-the-day email lists, and any work I found interesting would go into my writing. I particularly liked the one with archaic words. ("carking" made it into my novel). But imagery can be constructed with basic words, too....
I read Lord of the Rings when I was in the 6th grade and I wanted to do what Tolkien was doing. A year later I read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and it changed everything in my life....
I've had a few poems published, though not many. I tend toward narrative poems—stories that have been stripped down to 14 or so lines....
Here's a poem....

The writer should always interrogate themselves about how they are using the character who is unlike them. Is the writer appropriating a story? Is the writer stereotyping or exploiting?
The first step is always empathy. And empathy doesn't come naturally, you have to work for it and learn it.
This is something I do not know! I've had students who are game writers--I assume there are books written about game-writing....
When I started I was in a class like you all, and I just wrote the story as it came out. I did a LOT of reading outside of the classes—I went to the Best American Story shelf in the library and worked through about 40 years or so, and I subscribed to multiple literary magazines. And I wrote a lot, which is also a way of learning. And as I learned more I became more methodical--planning the story with—yes—outlines, and focusing on revision rather than generation.....
I started calling myself a writer fairly late--probably about the time I got the Dobie Paisano Fellowship. Even though I'd been writing for a long time, that was a big external validation....
Keep them simple--only describe what the focal character is seeing/experiencing....
Also keep in mind that fighting is really hard. And exhausting. And most fights are settled swiftly....
I've had students totally turned off by Christine Granados or Oscar Casares because their characters code-switch. But I look at those writers and see that the dialogue is totally in context and understandable. So—make sure the context works....
I love Tolkien and I would BURN those stupid fucking LOTR movies if I could! ha!
But—the Godfather, Parts 1 & 2, is/are the best adaptation ever. The Godfather novel, by Mario Puzo, is very mediocre. But Francis Ford Coppola, in his adaptation, found the inner story and elevated it to greatness. You can buy a book, The Godfather Notebook, by Coppola, which contains his annotated copy of the novel and the shooting script. It's a revelatory insight into the creative process....
Oh, yes! Absolutely! You can learn a whole lot about the structure of narrative by watching film. Film structure is different from literary structure in its details, but the scene-to-scene structure can be really helpful....
Start by knowing that your revision will take multiple passes.
Each pass you will focus exclusively on a different aspect:
character (a pass for each character)
setting
scene transitions
beginning
ending
plot holes
widows & orphans
weasel words
Then read it aloud!
Then read it aloud—backwards!
This is the fun part of writing....
Pre-pandemic I would take a week to 10 days to grade, now with the pandemic friction, it's 10 days to two weeks....
All assignments are good—some are terrific!
I wouldn't worry about plot holes until until you begin revising. As you consider (and reconsider, and re-reconsider) your work, the holes will become more and more apparent....
Maybe...something political and topical? The protagonist's significant other (or father or mother) becomes enveloped in conspiracy theories or fascism or white supremacy. What then to do...?
This is a problem that many, many people are facing right now.
Don't look at your story as a whole. As an entire story. As a plot.
Look instead at the writing.
At each sentence, ask—Is this the best sentence I can write?
Seriously interrogate your work and your writerly self.
You'll find things to fix!
Every semester someone does something truly terrific!
Too many students focus on plot. A story is much more than a plot.
Any plot can make for a good story if it's written well.
If you focus on character and setting and language you'll be successful....
I come up with a character, then find an idea to put them in, then a setting. Then I figure out what will happen (the plot)....
Sometimes that's simple—my current work is a sequel to my last book, so the character and setting are done.
A lot of my stories are set in Austin, so there's a setting I know well. I'm able to visualize my characters doing stuff in the setting....
That's part of the outline. I make an outline and then update it every couple of days—motifs, themes, maps, are all part of it....
Thanksgiving’s my favorite holiday! Because I get turkey and beer! Especially now that I'm an adult (an adult for many years) and can organize things however I want and get all the turkey!
I think I'm going to zoom happy hour with a friend. And then sleep.
What are you going to do?
Well, stories are about characters. They can have objects, or they can interact with objects.
Oh my gosh yes!
Several students have won awards for work they've done in my classes, and several others have been published.
In fact, two stories from this semester are very close to publishable....
Still—personally, I would not feel safe teaching a face-to-face class. And I'm very happy I'll be teaching online next semester.
My guess...is that nationally the pandemic will get worse before it gets better. Cases are going up all over the country right now.
Please keep wearing your masks and doing your social distancing
Yes! In fact, you're going to read one of them a couple of weeks from now.
It's a story that was published and, yes, I was dissatisfied with it, so I revised it while teaching a class of Advanced Fiction Writing, to show students methods of revision....
You'll read the original and the revised version, and you are not under any obligation to like either one!
By looking at the photos, perhaps we become more absorbed into the memory/story...?
I call it a memoir. Or a work of creative non-fiction....
Collapse.
I can get TOTALLY lost in old photos! Sure—I could go on and on.
Women tend to be judged harshly—harsher than men—for marital infidelities.
There are a lot of different thoughts about how to arrange a story collection. I tend to go strongest story first, next-strongest last, weakest in the middle.
A writer writing about a murder in Texas would frame things differently....
This was scanned in—the scanner made errors. Sorry about that! Typos are distracting--
Sure—we can look at the photo, read the text, look back at the photo, contemplate the person as someone who once lived....
Guilty.
Yes—I sure do. They really help to bring it to life....
People often feel trapped. Very often. Trapped by economics, church, gender, family....
So, sure—to a trapped person it might seem easier and quicker to murder your husband than to get a divorce.
Mental health needs to be addressed everywhere!
It’s a tawdry illusion with a rotten core...
No.
To make money.
I'm thinking she was guilty....
Memory is a construct—it's always changing. Incidents get compressed and expanded and rearranged....
There's legal trouble? You need a lawyer. Also in this case, a comfort factor....
I don't think Didion likes this place—she finds it cheap and gaudy and shallow.
That's an interesting question!
My answer is...maybe?
Family cohesion can help people stay strong in a crisis. On the other hand, some families might be lax in social distancing and have a get-together that turns into a superspreader event!
Maybe, sort of...? The Hunter Thompson novel is about the sixties, but it's about drug-induced madness, and not so much about tawdriness and shallowness....
This might make for a good essay question...!!!
Collapse.
The Granados book is set in the right now. But I hadn't considered the time-perspective in the other books....
No, they were just sinners. They believed and fell short....
It's popular across all of literature. Stories need conflict—marital discord is conflict!
Almost all prisoners in state prisons get parole at some point—that's the (theoretical) goal of incarceration—get people ready to reenter society. (Maybe).
Murdering someone for the insurance money is not a good thing.

I Answer Some Questions about Writing X

1/8/2021

Reading out loud works for me. You can feel the rhythm of the words....
Make your poems literal. Nothing wrong with that! Close observation of the world makes for excellent poetry!
You can impose a type of exterior order on your poems by making each line the same length. (Counting syllables is a good way to do this--make each line 11 or 14 or whatever syllables long)....
Nope. Little narrative poems generally work best for an assignment like this—but any theme you want....
Well, what do you care about?
If you don't care about what you're writing, your lack of care will come through.
That said, "feelings" are usually kind of abstract and hard to write about. Personal experiences are good beginnings for a story, but they need to be better—that is, more story-like—than "real life."
Social topics can work if you don't preach at people—put your character in a situation that illustrates something (like roommate tension during pandemic quarantine, for a very good example).
Like my fave TV series. The Wire is the best show in tv history. (It streams on Amazon and HBO). It's cops chasing drug dealers, but it's really about people and the problems they have—funny, exciting, suspenseful, heartbreaking—and the society they live in. Covers social topics and doesn’t preach.
Most of my poems are short stories that didn't work as short stories—I just keep whittling them down to about 14 lines or so....
And—observations of the world. Something that catches my eye. It doesn't need to be much....
I try very very hard not to get all philosophical.....
Don’t overthink it. Poetry's not (necessarily) about making grand pronouncements on the Meaning of Life. It's about observing the world.
Go look out your window. What do you see? That's your living poem.
That's enough. That's plenty.
As I said upthread, most of my poems are stories that didn't work as stories. They're narrative poems.
Some of my poet friends write their poems in paragraphs—descriptions or stories. They get the sentences right, the punctuation right, and then they break it into a poem with line breaks.
Try writing four or five sentences about something concrete you know about. (How to drive a car. How to tie your shoe. How to pour milk on cereal).
Break it into lines—make each line more or less the same length by syllables.
Elevate the language.
Boom—a poem.
Don't overthink it. Don' try and be profound.
Just look to the world for inspiration and you'll be fine.
Poems are usually written in sentences—so, just put the commas and periods and em-dashes where they would usually go in any sentence….
(Maybe avoid semi-colons, which I’ve always seen as elitist punctuation).
(That’s just a personal maybe, though).
And, that said—punctuation is really important in poems. Poems are so short that the punctuation really draws attention to itself.
(Unless, on occasion, you don’t use any punctuation at all).
I write about the world I observe or remember....I stay as concrete and real as possible. (I hope you do, too!)
Just describe it as it is. Later, when you revise, you can search for the right metaphor (and maybe you don't need one!)
Obviousness can be the right thing!
I might add on a technical issue that your secondary characters could become very important as they interact with the protagonist....
Sure! Read a lot. That's part of the research. You want to see what's been done before, so that you can do it better!
One of the odd things I noticed when I first started teaching creative writing was that student stories often went on just a bit too long. That the endings were over-explained. And that the easiest way to fix a story like this is to lop off the last sentence or paragraph or whatever. It's like a miracle!
That said, happy endings have to be earned....
And that said—it could and might well be that the problem in the ending lies earlier in the story.
One of my fave writing quotes is by movie writer/director Billy Wilder: "If you have a problem in the third act, that means you have a problem in the first act."
Keeping in mind that you're always writing a story about people, not about magic or science. People who engage in magic or science. (If your protagonist is a robot, it's an essential person).
Why is a lot of dialogue a problem? Who says it's too much dialogue?
Hemingway was the writer who changed my life, and he was big on dialogue. So, guess what? I've always been big on dialogue! Who's gonna stop me?
That said—if you're a dialogue-heavy writer, your dialogue should be sharp and well-punctuated....
Now I'm scared. Did I not warn everyone not to be literal about "hero sets off"? Like--it's a protagonist, a focal character. They don't have to be Achilles....unless you want them to be Achilles or whoever....
But, anyway...Me? I don't worry about category when I'm pondering a story. Character first, then setting, then action. The category will emerge organically from the action as it develops.
(Obviously, I'm not writing for a class where I have a cranky professor who's trying to nudge me into trying New Things).
I've been reading a lot of detective/crime/noir fiction the past few years. And—Elizabeth Hand has a new Cass Neary novel out! And Tana French has a new novel out too! They're great--highly recommended....
That's the function of the outline.
I truly see the outline as the First Draft. I spend a lot of time on it before I start writing and update it often as I write.
And—outlines for short stories don't have to be detailed--just a handful of bullet points will work. But it's good to have the from-here-to-there thought out, even if you change it as you write....
Most published stories are about 12-20 pages--3000 to 5000 words. The trend is shorter and shorter. There's just not enough space for longer stories.
We go six to eight pages in class because grading. But—don't stress! Make the story as long as you need it to be....
(That said--if everyone in both classes went three pages over, I'd have an extra 108 pages to read. It adds up).
I'm fond of all my characters. Even the villains.
Tom Holt has been in three books--Professed, Normal School, and my current work in progress. So I apparently have lots to say about him.
I'm very fond of Linda Smallwood in That Demon Life....
I think this might happen more with freelance journalism than with fiction....
But I think it would depend on how you approach it, what kind of limits you set between internal deadlines and external deadlines, and the pressures and stresses of whatever else is going on in your life....
I think about my character a bit--who they are, how they got to be the way they are. Then play around with an outline. Then I get serious about the outline, etc.....
Great idea!
Novel or story? You probably don't need too many characters in a short story, so introducing new round characters late might be a problem. (A flat character might be easier, since they don't have to be People We Care About).
Adding new characters late in a novel is usually not a problem unless they totally take over the narrative.
(I'm looking at you, Alexander Solzhenitsyn).
If you're with a major press and if the company is making lots of money off of you, they will take care of your publicity. If not—especially if you're an unknown writer—PR is up to you. Be on social media, send out review copies, hustle for interviews and bookstore appearances, etc.
Okay, triggering incidents. Where do story ideas come from? Example—my story collection, The Messes We Make of Our Lives.
Maybe three of these stories came from dreams—not the whole story, just an image or idea.
(Do you keep a dream diary? You might want to).
Most of the others have a triggering incident that more or less happened in "real life," something that I then applied imagination to and made better than real life.
(Imagination is simple--it's merely looking at something an asking "What if?)
The story "Quiet Sport," for example. I was once fishing the Shoshone River in Wyoming, sort of near a campground just outside Yellowstone. And I was doing my thing, and this kid, maybe 13 or 14, starts throwing rocks right by me! I was PISSED! And I thought—I'd like to throw that kid in the river. And so I wrote a story where the protagonist throws the kid in the river! Ha! Victory! The End.
The story "It May Be a Day..." is also sort of based on something I saw. Back when I was your age, I was witness to a murder. But—when I wrote the story, I wrote it not from my puny witness POV, but from the POV of the murderer. Some months after the murder, a cop told me that the murderer got turned in by his sister. That was my "what if?" moment—I wondered what happened between them. (My first published story...).
And so forth. Moral of this post: make your stories better than real life.
Also a moral—your life is your most precious resource.

Life gets in the way sometimes but don't stop!

I Answer Some Questions about Writing IX

12/25/2020

Writing, studying, thinking

Once again...The Answers. BYOQ!

The hardest part might be figuring out what I really want to say. That takes effort and thought but it’s part of the process!
Then—I have to figure out the BEST way to say what I want to say, the most expressive language to say what I want to say.
How do I turn up the power of my language....?
The most useful writing class I had as an undergraduate was an art history class—we had to write about art! I learned so much!
Try it right now—go find a painting and just describe it. (Trad narrative art is easier at first).
Then write an ekphrasis….
(I’ll wait…).
Other history classes are good, too. (I was a history major, ha).
Knowledge is good.
We're in the 21st century, so you will also need to know some basic Photoshop and InDesign. These are very valuable skills!
I always wanted to tell stories. When I started college I wanted to be a journalist (I wanted to write the A-heds for the Wall Street Journal!).
But I'm too shy to talk on the phone, so that didn't work out at all....
Once I set foot in grad school I wanted to be a professor....
But, basically, I'm a linear word-type guy....
No, not too much. I just move onto something else....
Titles...
When I’m grading or editing, I look at the formatting—it’s something that just jumps off the page. Sloppy formatting is a bad sign.
If your reader can’t read what you’ve written, you have a problem.
Be generous—both with other people and with yourself. (Writing is an act of generosity).
Perhaps practice writing longer sentences, and embedding your ideas in those sentences....?
Walt Whitman.
I'm not in college anymore, so I don’t have to read things I don't like. Or finish everything I start.
It's nice!
In grad school I was reading a lot of memoirs as I researched my dissertation, and I read The Dead Girl, by Melanie Thernstrom. Dreadful. It was the last book I hated that I finished....
In my downtime I work on my own books. Also: I drink beer and watch tv.....
What a great question! And—there is no definitive answer.
Generally, punctuation is more important in a poem than a story, since there are fewer words in a poem, and every word has to be in the correct context and carry a lot of weight.
But! Sometimes you can remove punctuation from a poem and speed it up!!!!!
Read your poem closely, and experiment. How do you want it to sound?
I go through phases, though I always like reading histories about American stuff in the 19th century....
The ending should be a big part of your outline. Maybe even the starting point!
What I've found a couple of times is that the novel stops the scene or two before the projected ending in the outline. Just—there is nothing more to say about this story or this character.
So: The End.
But the overall tone of the ending itself is dependent on what has transpired in the novel. Triumphant, elegiac, whatever.
And—whatever happens—maybe turn up the volume in writing the ending? It's the second-most important part of your book. It's what will stay in your reader's memory.
Also—who gets the last line? This is really important.
I guess some writers do the name symbolism thing. But I'm feeling that character names should just be names.
That said—the name should be appropriate for the characters. Who are they? What year were they born? Where were they born?
All these factor into the naming conventions....
Yes...but--
It will vary from poem to poem!
George Martin is kind of an outlier, but at the same time his big novels are still under focal control. (Maybe). (Sort of).
Also—it’s a long long series!
(Martin needs to get busy and finish those last two books!)
(Robert Caro needs to finish his LBJ biography, too!)
I would still advise you to limit the number of important characters in your short stories. Do you really have enough space really make them into individuals?
Or will they just be names on a page? What is your available narrative space?
Okay—titles. In ye olde face-to-face class days, I would often send students out to walk about the halls for 10 minutes and come back with 10 titles. (Everyday objects can make great titles!)
Or—maybe a song lyric that represents something in your story. Or a line from a poem. Or something odd your overhear while walking around....
We are surrounded by titles.
And—I usually start stories with a title. The title is sort of where I get the inspiration from.
(I have a notebook which is nothing but titles. I'll never get them all written!)
Character names? I really really good resource is the Social Security Administration's baby name listing. The most popular baby names, decade by decade.
So—figure out more or less when your character was born, and go from there....
Or—use phone books. (Do phone books still exist?)
For Burnt House, I had an old WV phonebook and chose many names from there, mixed up by first and last names....
Outlining! (Outlines are my answer to every writing problem!)
So I outline, of course. But, yep, I start writing the book or story at the beginning. It's the most important part of your story/novel/memoir/whatever.
I worry most about beginnings and endings....The middle, generally, can take care of itself.
I think it's a pretty good idea to have multiple projects going. You can switch from one to another as your get stuck.
But my experience has been that at some point, one of the projects will catch fire and take over all your time. If that happens, just go with it—you can get back to project B later...
I'm writing a sequel to Normal School. It takes place in 2020 and features the pandemic and Trumpism and ghosts.
I haven't generated any new material on it in about six weeks. I'm just too tired. But I have @45000 words, so I work on revisions every day.
And—last weekend I pulled out an old project and worked on it for a couple of days.
There's always something to do. As busy as I get, there's always 15 or 20 minutes a day for writing....
And 15 or 20 minutes a day is enough.
A page a day is a book a year.
You can republish a story in a book, no problem. In fact, I'd say that's encouraged! Some journals will take previously published work—always check their listings in Novel & Short Story Writers Market.....
I read a lot of student stories, and I see the army of characters as a real problem.
When there are too many people in a six-to-eight-page story, there’s not enough space for the secondary characters to be even flat characters. They're just names on the page.
And the fact that they stake up valuable narrative space means that the protagonist is given less to do....
Well, both. Sort of. But you need good work for your buddy to promote.
Good writers come out of the slush pile all the time. But you have to put yourself in a position to benefit from any publication.
Hence my encouragement of Literary Citizenship.
Be active on social media, and support other writers. Let people get to know you.
Try pushing ahead. The work that is forced is just as good as the work that flows. Can't tell the difference.
But—you can always skip the tough spots (make sure to update your outline) or bypass a stuck place for something easier.
(Me—I usually force my way through the tough spots).
I'm a total oddball and outlier—I look at genres as mostly marketing. (Which has its place, of course). On my level of pen-to-paper, I just write words....
No—you're fine!
And—a lot of people do this. I'm thinking right now of the Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The book opens with the protag laying on pine needles in a forest watching people, and the last scene...there he is again.
(His life has changed a lot in the previous three days!)
So—a form of circularity.
You can easily do this in a short story or novel. When you're dreamstorming your outline, just work the circularity into it....
I have a list of seven books I need to write before I die. So—I'm racing the clock.
I'm 62—will I get them all done? Will my physical and mental health hold out?
We'll see!

Revision advice from the great Megan Abbot, from her Twitter feed....

I Answer Some Questions about Writing VIII

12/11/2020

One word at a time....

Fan fiction can be very good practice.
And of course stories from the Bible, Shakespeare, mythology, fairy tales are all continually rebooted and re-imagined.
Remember—there are only (maybe) three basic stories!
A difficult and important question! And—I don't know the answer.
I remember when I was finishing up Burnt House—I was totally mentally exhausted, and the semester was beginning and it was very difficult.
My reading indicates that hating what you do is a big part of burn out, and I really do love what I do. So—was I just tired?
I guess.
Maybe here's some advice. I haven't worked on my work-in-progress for four days. Just sort of tired of it. And I'm feeling the guilts about being sort of tired of it and slacking off.
But something reminded me of an old abandoned project sitting on my hard drive, and so I opened that up and loved it and worked happily for a couple of hours.
So...maybe try working on a different project to get around burn out?
(If it is burn out?)
I didn't write much from 1984 to 1990 or so. I was doing stuff, but not writing. Depressed and angry. But I took a class like this and ending up publishing all three of the stories I wrote in it, and I was off....
You can do this, too....
Well, I'm pretty much always thinking about my writing (I have writing dreams), so when I finally sit down I'm ready to go....
But I always have a hard time starting!
I do not write in the mornings.
I don't mean to abuse you if you're a morning person. At all times be your best self!
But my peak efficiency time is from @1100pm to @100am. That's my writing time.
Robert Olen Butler, a very fine writer, in his craft book, From Where You Dream, advocates for early morning writing because the writer will be close to their dream state.
Bob, you can sit down and shut up. While you're writing, I'm sleeping....
How long to let a project sit? Maybe 20 years? (Sort of serious—look at next week's reading!)
But 20 years is extreme. Sure, let it sit for a while and write something else—maybe a couple of something elses. When you come back to it, you'll be a better, more experienced writer than you were when you wrote it....
Graphic novels are terrific! I couldn't do one—I can't draw and I also don't have enough knowledge to theorize one....
I like stories that are physical and sensual, not stories that are abstract....
Humor is always totally subjective. A lot of my friends, for example, love David Sedaris, and I just don't get him (I love his sister, comic actor Amy Sedaris!). I think America's greatest comic novel is A Confederacy of Dunces (it was a big influence on my first novel), and a good friend of mine thinks it's tragic and depressing.
I find a lot of dark humor in Hemingway, and few other people do.
Here's a recommendation: Tom Wolfe. His nonfiction book on the space program and the first astronauts, The Right Stuff, is a hoot. And his big novel about greed, Bonfire of the Vanities, is full of fun unlikable people doing outrageous things.
But what I think is funny you might not....
I think you should share your writing. But not big chunks like whole chapters. Try what Austin Kleon suggests in Show Your Work....
Plagiarism shouldn't be a worry. But publishers want first exclusive crack at what you've written, and if half the book is on some lame amateur website they will be discouraged.
Why not start sending your work out to reputable publications? Why not get published for real?
Do writing practice. Maybe try three pages a day (handwritten, in a notebook). Do it for a month and you will be a better writer.
What to write about in writing practice? Anything! Everything! Since no one will ever read it, you shouldn't feel pressure from your internal editor.
Just put down words one after another after another.
And read—two or three books a week. Read like a writer--always be looking for how the author did what they are doing....
Do this and at the end of a year you'll be the smartest person you know.
Go for it!
I went to grad school and fell in love with it....
I try to force myself. Just open the file or the notebook and at least LOOK at the work. And when I look, and I'll usually see something to fiddle with, or more....
When you think about grad school, look at the professors—look at their websites—find people you want to work with.
And then—also, REALLY—look at what kinds of financial support they offer....and then compare all the schools and then compare them again.
Do research.
I'm going to try to write every day this month, but I'm not trying to write a whole book this month....
Try doing timed writing sprints and see how much work you get done....
Hemingway (allegedly) said, "Write drunk, revise sober." But I think he was speaking metaphorically!
No, nothing special for me...
Every writer has to find what works for them....
Experimenting is part of the process, and it’s a fun part.
I read a lot of history, and quite a few biographies....
For fiction—recently I've been reading mostly horror and noirish crime....
Sure—travel changes your perspective. It de-familiarizes your base location. You see it new—and this will often emerge in your writing.
And the more observations you make, the richer your writing might be....
Discouraged?
Nobody tells me what to read.
Again: it's never the book in your head. It will never be as good as what you envision. Just get used to that and do the best you can.
Also—don't judge your first draft. Really. AT ALL. The first draft only needs to exist for it to be fine.
In the seventh grade I read The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. Changed everything!
Some very few people can make a living as writers. Most writers have day jobs. (Or inherited wealth).
Sometimes I get asked to write a book or music review. I have a really hard time—the critical hat does not fit well on my ginormous head.
Also I have a hard time with academic writing. I usually have to imagine LOVE or HATE for my subject to get going....
No! No! NO!!!!!!
Why would you want to delete your writing?
Even if those words are not the right words, you might want them later!
Probably The Lord of the Rings when I was in the sixth grade....
I was always reading as a kid. I went with my mom on weekly trips to the library and loaded up on books. And my parents bought me any book I wanted. I started reading adult literature when I was in about the fourth grade or so...
Every character is me, or an aspect of me. Heroes, villains, men, women, whatever. I always try to see the world through the eyes of my characters....
That said—I'm not an autobiographical writer, I'm an experiential writer. I use the experienced observations I make of people and places and things to inform my writing, though my writing is not based directly on my lived events....
The racial divide in America as a whole has been wide throughout our history....
The antagonism and hatred of the Texans toward the Comanche was a real thing—and perhaps even more extreme than shown in The Searchers....
Big themes told through the actions and lives of individual characters can make for compelling narrative in either literature or film....
Yes! I think the context is--let's untie ourselves from the past and create a new and free life/society/world....
There's also a line very early in the film..."You live in a place, you should know something about it” —which I think implies that if you truly know something about a place, you can then understand it and deal with it. Whitewashing the past or embracing a false past leads to ongoing problems....
(Like, look around…),
Assimilation—the old "melting pot' theory of Americanization, where you give up your past and blended into a new life....
Change is a constant. Young people are always growing up in a New America, where the past is being simultaneously forgotten, rediscovered, and reinterpreted. This can certainly cause misunderstandings and strife!
There is also an inherent conservatism in the way so many people hold onto what they were taught when they were young and how they are resistant to new interpretations of the world....
Yes! I hadn't even considered that! But--yes!
Maybe sort of...no? I'm seeing it more about using time as a setting...
(In my cw classes I'm always or at least often haranguing students about time as a place...).
Most westerns made back in old Hollywood days were low-budget shoot-em-ups. But there were always higher-budget prestige westerns, too. So—critical acclaim and awards were not uncommon for westerns throughout movie history....
It's absolutely important.
It doesn't totally match up but there is something going on there.
Go big or go home?
Thematic ambition, in the right hands, can make for a powerful story or film....
It would be nice! But there is always a resistance to change and new views on old topics....
It sort of seems that corruption is more or less everywhere, and seems to go in waves. Our second Gilded Age—the Right Now—is sadly quite corrupt....
Maybe because it's a form of conflict, and all stories need conflict. And because it's pretty common....
Generations. Borders. History.
The guy who write the script for Chinatown was inspired by a line he read in an article about the history of Los Angeles: "…at least part of the personality of a city devolves from the crime we perceive to be committed there…."
The crimes will differ from location to location and throughout different eras.
But there is a lot of dark history out there in America, if you look for it.

I Answer Some Questions About Writing VII

11/27/2020

Giving thanks for the defeat of the traitorous slaver armies in 1863....

All the exciting answers, none of the boring questions...Thanksgiving Edition!

Turkey legs & turkey leg pie!
I've written a Holiday/Christmas story—it's in my book Burnt House. It's pretty grim!
I didn't want to drive a cab any more....
People have appetites; how do they sate those appetites?
When people dine together, they talk. Food gives them something to do. (A lot of dialogue I read seems to take place in a vacuum).
Also, food is itself intrinsically interesting for most people. (Always be looking for ways to connect with an audience).
Be humble.
Big picture hope: I'd like to see America healed. It's going to take some time!
Personal hope: I hope I live long enough to get all my books written. (Which might take a long long time and that’s fine!)
But there will always be a demand and desire for stories.
I miss hanging around the Teacher's Bar and bragging about my students!
Basically, what I said upthread—cultivate Humility and Patience.
Writing doesn't happen overnight. Many young writers find this discouraging.
Humility will win the day.
And I would encourage all of you to follow Lev Nikolayevich's example—be excited about your next project!
I've learned to adapt and survive (so far).
Horror.
Everything is equally easy or difficult, depending on the writer's state of mind....
But here's some advice: don't wait to tell your stories!
So I sat on it, and waited until I was "good enough."
And I never wrote it.
I should have written it immediately! It would have sucked, but who would have cared? (Other than my ego).
Moral of the story: don't wait! Write—now.
Everyone needs to read more.
Those of you who already read a lot need to read more.
Those of you who don't read a whole lot need to read more.
Every book you read helps build your Writer's Toolbox. You'll be able to see all the options you have as a writer.
I think just about everything is important enough to write about—if the writer takes their writing seriously.
Understanding what a story is, and making it happen....
Go with what's in your heart. That's vague—but true.
What poems do you feel strongest about?
Activities: keep a journal. It doesn't have to be complicated and sound like the all-knowing voice of whatever. Just write down your observations about what you see and experience. It can be a list. Or photos!
(Actually, if you use social media, you are in fact keeping a journal).
The world is always changing and slipping away. Notice the changes! (It takes practice).
Develop HUMILITY and PATIENCE.
It takes a long time to get really good at writing fiction. A writer's ego and perfectionism can in the way.
And also be PERSISTENT.
Pretend to care.
Make it a game. In the end, everything you write is just words.
Watch how one scene flows into another. Look at how the dialogue is edited and cuts from one character to another. Look for how setting is used. Look for how it is lit and filmed. Read the movie like a writer....
I don’t buy it.
I’m seeing the Stranger as an idealized romanticized personification of America itself. The Cowboy! Honest, straightforward, kind, respectful. How America sees itself reflected through media/Hollywood....
That may not be factual, but it's True enough to be a starting point for a novel or a film....
Though I wouldn't want to hang around with him....
The drugs are definitely making him irrational.
There are easy-going, good-hearted stoners everywhere.
I see him as the innocent victim of capitalism….
Nihilism is the denial of the value of reality, so here the nihilists are the cats-paw of capitalism, which believes in nothing outside of profit/greed/gain....
I liked it. Dark and funny.
We've had some grim readings and viewings this semester—I thought it might be nice to close with a comedy....
The War on Drugs has been a catastrophe for our country.
Food.
This job is easy when you have a lot of great students!