How Much Smut for Your story?

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Dealing with Creative DOUBT

Dealing with Creative DOUBT

 ----- Original Message -----
...I'm at the point where nothing seems right. Everything I write down is cliche, badly written, and has bad pacing. Yet when I was younger I would turn out stories one right after the other like a non-stop machine. But now...thanks to all those instructors and classes, the creative edge is now limping along like a dog with only one leg.

...I don't have an agent or anything published in the first place. So that does paint an extra layer of doubt upon the situation. 

...when I discuss this, usually I'm berated with people saying, "Stop being so emo." As if depression were something that one can simply switch on and off.

...I guess what I'm doing here is ... trying to find some kind of sign, revelation or clue that I'm not a bad writer or that I'm just another writing loser.

You're not a bad writer or a loser of any kind.
-- You're NORMAL.

The truth is all artists of every kind have to deal with Doubt, from the rank beginner to the professional. All of us, without exception.

The dividing line between an artist and a loser is actually simple; sheer, mule-headed, Stubbornness. Losers give up. Artists won't.

Those of us writers (and artists) that actually make it to publication are monumentally stubborn. We write / create in spite of being less than perfect, in spite of being depressed, or angry, or tired, or blind, or crippled...

The best of us, like Niel Gaimen, Stephen King, and Nora Roberts USE that doubt and stubbornness to improve our skills by refusing to settle for 'good enough'. We dig up every trick we can find and scribble our discoveries into notebooks, on notepads, (or into writing tips,) and Practice them in little stories (or fan-fiction,) until we can actually make use of them.

NO ONE is perfect, but that doesn't mean we can't tell a good story -- that we're not Artists.

Be stubborn. Seriously. It will carry you far further than anything else will -- even skill.

Think I'm kidding? Well then, how about hearing it from one of the pros?

A Pep Talk from Neil Gaiman  

from: NaNoWriMo.Org

Dear Author,

By now you're probably ready to give up. You're past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You're not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper. You're in the middle, a little past the half-way point. The glamour has faded, the magic has gone, your back hurts from all the typing, your family, friends and random email acquaintances have gone from being encouraging or at least accepting to now complaining that they never see you any more--and that even when they do you're preoccupied and no fun.

You don't know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you're pretty sure that even if you finish it it won't have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began---a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read---it falls so painfully short that you're pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

Welcome to the club.

That's how novels get written.

You write. That's the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

A dry-stone wall is a lovely thing when you see it bordering a field in the middle of nowhere but becomes more impressive when you realise that it was built without mortar, that the builder needed to choose each interlocking stone and fit it in. Writing is like building a wall. It's a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words. The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field. If she doesn't build it it won't be there. So she looks down at her pile of rocks, picks the one that looks like it will best suit her purpose, and puts it in.

The search for the word gets no easier, but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering,) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist.

And instead of sympathizing or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm--or even arguing with me--she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, "Oh, you're at that part of the book, are you?"

I was shocked. "You mean I've done this before?"

"You don't remember?"

"Not really."

"Oh yes," she said. "You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients."

I didn't even get to feel unique in my despair.

So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.

One word after another.

That's the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it's the only way to do it.

So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

Pretty soon you'll be on the downward slide, and it's not impossible that soon you'll be at the end. Good luck...

Neil Gaiman
www.neilgaiman.com

Feel better now? I know I do.

SMUT Does Not = POPULARITY

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Stuck on a SHORT Story?

10 Second Tip:
Stuck on a SHORT Story?

Stuck on what to put in your story?
-- This is the list of things I check off when I create a story:

Do you have a Setting in mind?

• - Sci-fi
• - Historical
• - Modern day

Do you have ONE big Main Event for the story to focus on?

• - A battle
• - An escape
• - A love scene
• - An act of revenge
• - A sacrifice
• - A treasure to claim

Do you know what you want to SAY with your story?

• - Love sucks.
• - Friendship is forever.
• - No good deed goes unpunished.
• - A snake can only ever be a snake.
• - Sometimes you have to take chances.

Do you know where you want to END your story?

• - A wedding?
• - A funeral?
• - A bloody battlefield?
• - An empty street?
• - The bottom of an ocean?

Do you have your three central Characters ready?

Just to make things interesting, any one of these three could be the Hero, the Villain, or the Ally.

• - A main character that personifies what your story is trying to say?
• - A main character that personifies an opposing opinion of the same topic?
• - A buddy / friend/ love interest of one or both to personify Joe Normal stuck in the Middle?

Why did I mention Characters Last?

Instead of making a story for my characters, I do the opposite. I make characters for my story.

Some people can come up with a cool character and then build a story around them. Sadly, I am not one of those. I can build a back-story just fine, but my back-stories are never good enough to be the Main Story. A back-story is how a character GOT his Issues. The main story is how they FIXED those Issues. See the difference?

Anyway...
-- When I'm stuck on a story, I try thinking on these questions and often, they'll jog something loose.

Enjoy! 

Choosing a Story's Title

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Plot Device: Foreshadowing...!

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What KIND of story are you telling?

10 Second Tip:

What KIND of story are you telling?

EVERY story is in fact a tale about the relationship of an individual (your main character) to society -- symbolized by their workplace, school, their immediate or extended family, the gang they belong to, a best friend, a lover...

• A comic story (one with a happy ending,) describes an isolated individual achieving social integration either by being accepted into an existing society or by forming his own. This integration is often symbolized by a wedding or party. 

• A tragic story (one with a sad ending) describes an integrated individual who becomes isolated. Death is simply a symbol of this isolation.

Keep in mind...! 

 -- The plot should keep us in suspense about what kind of story we're reading. 

• Even if we already know it's a comedy, the precise nature of the comic climax (the punchline that carries us to the happy ending) should come as a surprise.

• If we already know the hero is doomed, his downfall should be caused by a factor we've been told, but didn't realize was significant.

Don't give everything away by the fourth chapter! A story we can guess the ending to before we're done is NOT a story worth finishing.

Enjoy! 

Morgan Hawke

www.DarkErotica.Net

You Don't ALWAYS have to Show. Sometimes you Can TELL!

You Don't ALWAYS have to Show.

Sometimes you Can TELL!

Plot Pacing and Narrative Summary
By Randy Ingerman

Featuring: Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If there's one thing that any writer is guaranteed to hear too many times, it's the dictum, "Show, Don't Tell."

There is a lot of truth to this rule of thumb. The purpose of fiction is to give the reader a Powerful Emotional Experience. And the best way to give the reader that Powerful Emotional Experience is by "showing" the good parts, rather than "telling" them.

In short, at the points of highest action in the story, you ramp up the pace by spending more words, "showing" everything in brilliant, Technicolor, slow-motion detail.

But, um, what about the boring parts? Should you "show" those too?

Some of my agent and editor friends have complained to me in recent years that the manuscripts they are seeing these days "show" too much. Sometimes, it just plain makes sense to "tell," rather than "show."

The technical term for "telling" is Narrative Summary.

In Narrative Summary, you summarize what happens, moving rapidly over time and sometimes distance. However, it isn't a good way to give your reader those emotional hits that every reader wants.

In other words, Narrative Summary can be either a good choice or a bad choice. The key question to ask:

"What is the purpose of this passage?"

If the purpose of the passage is to give the reader some particular Powerful Emotional Experience, then showing" is probably your best option.

But if the purpose of the passage is to set the stage or to give the reader some essential facts or to get a character across town or across a country, then "telling" might be the better bet.

One of my favorite examples of "telling" is the opening of Book 1 in the Harry Potter series. The entire first page is all "telling." And it works.

Why does it work? Let's analyze it to see.

As I said before, the key question to ask is:  

 -- What is the purpose of this passage?

In my view, the central problem early in the Harry Potter series is to get the reader to buy in to the concept that in this ordinary world of ours, there are people who are genetically capable of magic.

The natural question for the reader to ask is why nobody knows about these magical people. The reader needs to be led, step by step, to the conclusion that these magical folk are hiding out.

That is the premise for the entire series. If you can't buy into this premise, then the story just won't work for you.

There is a second problem that needs to be solved.

The reader is going to wonder whether these genetically magical people might be the "bad guys." How can the reader be led to the conclusion that the magical folk are the "good guys?"

The solution is to introduce some exceptionally unsympathetic characters, the Dursley family, who are antagonistic to anything weird or magical. In the first chapter, Mr. Dursley sees a number of strange people ("weirdos") and some strange occurrences (owls in broad daylight). One of the weirdos even hugs Mr. Dursley and calls him a Muggle.

The Dursleys respond to this evidence by ignoring it.

The tactical problem is to present all this to the reader as quickly as possible, and then get on to the story.

How to do that?

The solution is Narrative Summary, which is very efficient.

Let's look at paragraph 1 of the story:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Randy sez: In two sentences, we have a broad portrait of the Dursleys.

• They are "proud," which instantly makes them a bit unlikable.
• They are "perfectly normal" -- which is pretty unnatural. Most people are abnormal in some way or another.

Most importantly, the Dursleys have no sense of mystery. That is their big failing. Part of being human is to be curious, to be capable of awe, to be inspired by the mysterious. The Dursleys might just as well be robots.

Let's move on to paragraph 2:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Randy sez:

• Mr. Dursley sounds quintessentially boring.
• Mrs. Dursley sounds like a gossip.
• Dudley sounds like a brat.

Notice that we aren't "told" these things. We deduce them.

• We are "told" that Mr. Dursley is director of a drill company, and we deduce that he has a boring job.
• We are "told" that Mrs. Dursley cranes her neck over fences, spying, and we deduce that she's a gossip.
• We are told that Dudley is considered the finest boy anywhere, and we deduce that he's as spoiled as last year's milk.

This is a key point in making Narrative Summary interesting -- tell the facts and let the reader make the value judgments. Readers prefer to make value judgments for themselves, rather than being told what to feel about the characters.

Now we come to paragraph 3, and this is the key to making this chapter succeed.

Here are the first three sentences:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This sets the hook for the reader. Every reader is interested in secrets. Every reader is interested in fears.

When we learn that these wretched Dursleys have a secret fear, we must know it. When we learn that the Dursleys are ashamed of the Potters, we must hear more. When we learn that the Potters are the exact opposite of the Dursleys, we instantly like them, because we already dislike the Dursleys.

So there you have it. In just two and a half paragraphs of Narrative Summary, we are prepared to meet the "weirdo" Potters and to like them. We are prepared for them to be mysterious and different. We are even prepared to understand why they might conceal some of their oddities -- because of people like the Dursleys who hate anything mysterious or strange.

This sets the stage for solving the two problems I discussed above. As the first chapter unfolds, we learn that the Potters have been murdered, but their son Harry has mysteriously survived. And we see a number of "weirdos" who use magic as if it were perfectly natural.

By the end of the chapter, most readers have bought the premise of the story -- there is a hidden society of people with genetically magical abilities. One of those people, young Harry Potter, is extraordinary, even among these magical people. He ought to be dead, but he isn't. Harry is "the boy who lived." Therein lies something deep and mysterious. Why did Harry live?

And the story is launched.

If that isn't an effective use of Narrative Summary, then I don't know what is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine every month.

MEMORY Training

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Writing HORROR

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