Thou Shalt Hoard Notebooks

 By Thomas Kies

Starting today, I’ll be teaching my Creative Writing Class again for the next six weeks.  I always start the first class with introductions.  Then I ask each participant what they hope to get out of the class, what they enjoy reading, and if they have a work in progress. 

Then I spend some time talking about the basics that we’ll be exploring more in detail as the class moves forward.  I always start with some of Stephen King’s rules for writing.  Whether you like him or not, the man is prolific and successful and knows a thing or two about writing. 

First write for yourself and then worry about the audience—I like this advice a lot.  If I think too much about somebody reading what I’m writing, I’d never get a first draft done. 

Don’t use a passive voice--Using the passive voice distances the subject from the action of the sentence, which leads to less clarity and urgency. It can also add unnecessary words to your manuscript, since the passive voice generally requires more auxiliary verbs than the active voice does. You need a lot more space to say :The ball had been kicked by me" than to say "I kicked the ball."

Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said”—It’s not that I personally NEVER use them, I just use them sparingly.  

Don’t obsess over perfect grammar—hell, sometimes I’ve made up words.  Not using perfect grammar can drive a copy editor nuts, but as King says, “The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then to tell a story.”

The magic is in you—I’m not sure what he means by this, but I like it a lot

Read, read, read— I know what he means by this.  It’s really surprising to me that when I ask my students what they enjoy reading, there are some of them who simply don’t read anything. 

Turn off the TV—I’d like to add to that, turn off the internet.  They are both black holes of time. 

Don’t worry about making other people happy—I want to make my publisher, my agent, my readers, and my wife happy when I write.  However, I don’t obsess over the subject matter or how it’s written.  My fourth book comes out in July and there’s lot in there about Climate Change.  I know some people who simply aren’t going to like it. Oh, and spoiler alert, climate change is real. 

You have three months—King suggests that a first draft shouldn’t take more than three months.  Of course, his day job is writing books.  I have a day job that’s not.  I’m not going to take this one to heart. 

Stick to your own style—I read a lot, mostly mysteries.  Sometimes I have to go back and reread some of my own work so that I don’t subconsciously try to mimic someone else’s style of writing.  

Dig—According to King, “Stories are like relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.”  My read on that is digging deep into your own emotions and memories to get to something that connects with your readers.  

Take a break—I like to do this when the book is finished.  Walk away from it.  Don’t think about it.  But come back and look at it again with fresh eyes.  King says, “You’ll find reading your book over a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience.”

Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings—no matter how clever you think a turn of phrase might be if it doesn’t move the story forward, throw the little bugger off a cliff.

The research shouldn’t overshadow the story—Not always as easy as it sounds.  I did a ton of research on climate science and the oil industry.  I kept wanting to show my work, but honestly, it’s best if it’s kept in the background. 

You become a writer simply by reading and writing— King said, “You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”  There’s nothing I can add to that. 

I like teaching the Creative Writing class because it forces me to go back and look at the basics.  I like to use the NBA as an example.  Even the best players in the world are continually running drills and practicing their layups. Everything comes down to knowing and practicing the basics.

That being said, my wife set up new bookshelves in the hallway and I gave her carte blanche to come into my office and take the books with which she’d like to populate the new shelves.  Along the way, she found about seven notebooks in which I’d started a project, then set it aside.

I recall a saying that goes, “The first rule of writing is thou shalt hoard notebooks.”

A character worth caring about

Rick's post about the universal appeal of stories got me thinking – what makes a good story? One clue could be found in Tom's excellent post of last week and in the words of one person in the comments section:  emotion is "the beating heart of writing".

It's a timely reminder to all writers that no matter how beautiful our words or how thrilling our tale, readers are unlikely to keep reading if they are not emotionally invested. Stories are about characters, even if that character is a dog or horse. Not cardboard cut-out characters, not two-dimensional superheroes, not people who are defined only by an unusual talent or quirk, but characters with all the hopes and dreams and struggles and flaws that people can relate to.

Everyone can relate to this!

Somerset Maugham is credited with the famous saying; "There are three rules to writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are." I usually begin my writing workshops by giving this quote, because I believe everyone writes a novel differently and has to discover what works for them. There are far too many "how to" books out there which claim to lay out the secret steps to a perfect novel, and in my opinion, that way lies formulaic, derivative writing that fails to allow your truly creative self to blossom.

That's not to say there are no skills and tools of the craft to be mastered; a writer should be constantly learning and improving, not only from books and workshops but also by reading great novels. And over time, they will discover the rules that work for them and guide them in the creation of their best work.   In that spirit, having started my workshop with Somerset Maugham's quote, I then tell attendees that for me, there are four key elements to a good story. I am talking about crime novels, but I think the same applies to other genres. These elements are linked together, but over the next four blogs, I am going to try to tease them apart to discuss each in turn.

In keeping with Tom's post, the first element is a character worth caring about. There can be more than one character worth caring about, of course, but at the very least there should be one. It can be the protagonist, the victim, or even the "villain". Worth caring about is not synonymous with likeable. It represents a deeper level of identification and engagement. Something about the character should touch you in a way that makes you care about what happens to them and makes you want to spend three hundred pages with them to find out how they end up. If you have ever watched a TV show or read a book that has no character you cared about, you probably didn't finish the book or watch the next episode.

I've wrestled with how to define what makes a character worth caring about. Although positive traits are part of it – few readers want to spend time with a despicable character– I think caring comes not from being likeable, charming, funny, or brave, but from layers, flaws, conflicting desires, and a personal issue they are struggling with. Readers care about different things and identify with different struggles, but generally the more your character wrestles with a universal challenge like love, loss, loneliness, fear, or anger, the more likely the reader will identify and care about them.

The word worth is an essential part of my phrase. Is the character worthy of the reader's investment? Characters who are shallow, frivolous, silly, boring, or facing a superficial challenge are usually not worth our time (nor do they pique our interest), unless the frivolity is in itself a challenge they recognize and wrestle with as they seek a deeper meaning or commitment. But often when writers try to give their characters a meaningful challenge, they fall into cliches or superficiality themselves. The burnt-out cop, the loser in search of redemption, and the brave young widow(er) in search of a new start have all been done to death, so the writer has to work hard to make that character and their situation unique. Similarly giving a character a quirk like second sight, illness, autism, OCD, or disability is no substitute for making that character real, unique, and full rounded.

These are some of my thoughts about what makes a character intriguing enough to draw us in. It doesn't have to be complex or heavy-handed. I'm sure my dogs in the simple photo have already tugged at a few heartstrings and everyone wants to know what happens to them.

Then She Said...

Since mid-September, I, Donis, have been facilitating a creative writing workshop for emeritus professors at Arizona State University. This is the second time I’ve done this workshop, and it’s been an eye-opener for me. Professors know all about the rules of grammar and spelling and the like, but people who have spent their lives writing scientific treatises and keeping a professional, unbiased distance from the reader have a hard time letting go and putting action and emotion into their writing. Not to say that they don’t have some clever story ideas! Wrangling students for thirty years will give you plenty of material.

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been discussing effective ways to write dialog. Hemingway said that dialog is not real speech, it’s the illusion of real speech. I’m sure, Dear Reader, that you’ve read Elmore Leonard’s admonitions that one should try to never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue, or that one should never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”.

On his website, Tim Hallinan suggests that instead, the writer “use body language: Dialogue broken up by description of what characters are doing provides context and also projects an image. When someone other than our protagonist is speaking in a scene, what is our protagonist doing? Are her hands at rest? Does she listen intently? Does she squirm in the chair. Drum her fingers? Twist her hair? We convey a lot without saying a word.”

I like that idea.

For instance:
"Nonsense," Martha interjected, is a perfectly acceptable sentence, but if I were a fly on the wall, I might see what Martha is doing when she says this. One might try something like, Martha straightened, indignant. “Nonsense."

Rather than "Question?" Beth offered, try, Beth held up a finger (or leaned forward, or tapped the table). “Question?"

And rather than "Okay, Beth. Ask it," Joel replied, consider having Joe sigh, roll his eyes, flop back in his chair, then, "Okay, Beth. Ask it."

You can come up with better examples, but you get the picture.

Of course the "rules" are really only suggestions.

As far as the current popular idea in publishing of only using "said"...I use "noted" and "agreed" and "asked" and the like plenty of times myself. But I do think that the take-away points are: 1) don't use descriptors that draw attention to themselves, like, "he asservated", because that puts the author in the picture, and 2) if you can describe the situation, body language, etc., in lieu of a dialog tag, that's the best way to let the reader see what's going on and draw her own conclusions rather than having the author tell her.

The rules for writing

Hi everybody, this is Mario Acevedo. Welcome to my inaugural post to Type M for Murder. I’m honored by the invitation.



Since I am published, as I have five novels from a major NY house (don’t be too impressed, this means I have boxes of remaindered books), when I teach writing I get the impression from my students that I have in my possession THE SPECIAL KEY that will unlock the vault of the “How do I get published?” secret. Sadly, I have to disappoint them by admitting there is no key. I wish I did because I’d use it for my personal gain—lucre and the adoration of millions.

Which brings me to the rules of writing, which are summed up by this wonderful quote by Somerset Maugham:

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately knows what they are.

Most people chuckle at the quote, as I did at first. But the more I write, the more I appreciate Maugham’s wisdom.

Truth is, no one knows what’s going to hit. Not all the time. It’s a pretty sure bet that the next novels by Robert Crais and Suzanne Collins will be blockbusters. But even the consistent NYT bestsellers falter. There is no literary sausage machine where you dump in words and ideas, flip the switch, and out plops an international bestseller. If that device did exist, then every book would make bank. Even the most savvy agent or editor can tell anecdotes about a particular manuscript they passed on eventually stuffed money in someone else’s pocket.

I’ve learned to caution myself about the advice I give my students. There is a tangible quality to writing, and every work needs a level of competence to make it readable. But to judge writing above that level is where I can get into trouble. It’s easier to critique newer writers as their work is full of craft mistakes. Stories from a more experienced writer leave me wondering if I can tell where the problems lie in the work because it’s just not my style.

In fairness to myself, I have judged books in major contests and my finalists correlated to those picked by the other judges. So my judgment isn’t that far off base...usually.

But when teaching, for every suggestion I might tell students, there’s a mega-seller showing them the opposite. Cut the exposition, but then there’s the work by Stieg Larsson. Add dialog tags to keep the reader oriented, unlike Elmore Leonard with pages of dialog with no attributions. Stay in one POV per scene when Jennifer Egan (A Visit From The Goon Squad) keeps the story plunging forward with her kinetic head-hopping. Plus, I’ve noticed that the more rigid an instructor is in following THE RULES, the less likely that instructor has serious publishing cred.

And we circle back to the how do I get published question?

Nothing new to tell. Keep practicing, keep improving, and don’t give up on yourself. And take writing classes; we impoverished novelists need the money.