- 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.
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