I love paperback books. Hardbacks look pretty on the shelf, and their larger size makes their covers more interesting to look at, but they're nearly impossible to read. The dust jacket is the first obstacle; either you expend half your attention keeping it on the book, or you set it aside and inevitably end up tearing it or creasing it so it never quite fits again.
Hardbacks are much too heavy to read clasped between upheld arms while lying back in bed, let alone held one-handed while lying on your side. If your arms tire and you let the book settle into your chest or stomach, you have to lift it to turn a page, or risk tearing them every time you drag them across your body. Even if you read at a desk (which is plainly ridiculous) you have to deal with their unyielding spines, which won't allow you to remove your hand from the page for even a second, or you'll lose your place as the book automatically flips back to a more comfortable posture.
Paperbacks, on the other hand, are light, flexible, and cheap enough that you won't feel bad about creasing their spines to force them to stay open. You can read them in all sorts of ridiculous positions; curled up in a fetal ball, hunkered sideways on a daybed, even lying upside down on a couch with your feet in the air--and your arms will take MUCH longer to tire.
But the benefits don't stop there. Whenever I finish a chapter, before I put down the book, I take a moment to bend it in my hands and watch the way the pages move. Often, I'll buzz through them like a flip book, holding the edge close to my nose so I can draw in that dusty, woodsy smell that isn't quite "good", but is too familiar to be unpleasant.
With a hardback, I feel guilty for dog-earing the pages, but I'm too scatterbrained to keep from losing a bookmark. Paperbacks, I fold with gusto, always making sure to line up the corner of the page with the exact line I stopped on. When I resume my reading, I fold them the opposite way so they'll lay flat, but the pages never lose the telltale crease of a book that has been thoroughly and hungrily enjoyed.
Hardbacks stand stolidly on the shelf, admonishing you not to treat them carelessly, not to get too greedy for the secrets and adventures within. Every marring is a sad event, a loss of value, a reason to lecture yourself.
Paperbacks can take the abuse, heck, they revel in it. Some of the cheaper ones might start losing pages after too many reads, but a good paperback wears its scars with pride, like a soft, wrinkled baseball glove or a faded pair of jeans. They don't wear out so much as break in; they adjust to fit your hands. And just as a favorite pair of jeans might require some fancy footwork to avoid widening the knee holes while putting them on, a favorite paperback might need you to prop up those first pages that have been turned so many times the glue has lost its grip.
And if the inevitable happens, and a paperback is worn past the point of readability, you can lay it to rest and replace it without guilt or great expense. A well-read paperback goes to its grave without fuss or grief. It has done everything it was meant to do. It has fulfilled it's purpose, lived a full life, and can go to the trash heap satisfied and free of regrets.
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I love paperbacks. But as a science fiction writer, I'm predisposed to like technology. I love ebooks too. As an author, I love how easy they are to publish. As a reader, I love how easy it is to keep them in limitless supply, right in my pocket.
I love that I can read at night without keeping my wife awake with my lamp. I love that no matter what I'm reading, I always have it with me, so no waiting room or bathroom trip ever leaves me bored. I love finishing one book and having the next literally already in my hand.
But I will never stop buying print books. And I will never be able to part with the ones I have. Even if there is no chance I'll ever read them again, I can't let them go. Even though I bemoan their immense weight every time I move, I simply cannot imagine my life without them. And no matter how many I have, I will always want more.
Even if I've already read a book in digital form, I sometimes buy a paperback copy anyway. I have several that I've never even opened. Perhaps that's wasteful, but I like the idea that I have them, should the need or desire to read them ever arise. For one thing, it's easy to lend print books. For all their benefits, that's one thing ebooks have yet to really capture.
Every time I lend a book, I say goodbye to it. If I get it back, it's a happy surprise. If not, I don't get mad. It's a bittersweet ritual I've come to savor after losing many, many books to friends and relatives.
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I read an article recently that argued that a connection to the past is an essential ingredient in human happiness. Our psychology demands we feel as if we are part of something bigger and older than ourselves. But hope for the future is just as essential. To be happy, we need to feel as if things are getting better and easier as we soldier on in time.
Paperbacks are my connection to the past; some quite literally. There are a few that have a misty-eyes emotional connection for me. Books have been some of my favorite gifts, and I've inherited a few from friends that will always conjure up specific memories.
Ebooks are my hope for the future. When I browse my Kindle library, I always think of more books I'd like to own. With the ease of a few taps, I can put them in my Amazon wish list for future purchase. No matter where I go, I always have a full library with me, and that comforts me.
Books and ebooks have come to fill different, equally important roles in my life. I could never choose one or the other. What about you? Do you have a massive, heavy collection of books? Or is your library tucked away on a server somewhere? Let me know in the comments!
There's a lot to think about when it comes to revision and self-editing. It's thought well spent, but sometimes the sheer enormity of the task can intimidate you into inaction. The following is a list of the top five self-editing situations that I struggle with, and how I combat them.
1. Bad Timing
Writing is addictive, and finishing a piece is a major victory. Sometimes in the heat of celebration, I want to stay in my newly-created world, and keep honing my language to ensure that readers see that world exactly the way I want them to. And that's when I have to stop myself.
When a piece of writing is still fresh, there are two things that keep you from doing a good job of editing it:
You're still emotionally attached to what you wrote. The high you get when the ideas are flowing is, as I said, addictive. It makes you feel like a God. And therefore, the fruits of your labor are like your children. You love them too much to make sober judgements about them. You're biased in their favor.
When you look at a particular passage, you can still remember what you meant when you wrote it, and that makes it harder to see what you actually said. When we write, our ideas form in nebulous, wordless blobs. We see scenes in our heads, and we feel characters' emotions. Sometimes it's hard to translate that experience into words, and sometimes the words we use to capture it fall short. When your writing is still fresh, all the thoughts you had while creating it are recent memories. While the memory of that experience is still with you, anything you wrote will remind you of it. Therefore, even if the words you wrote are legitimately confusing, they won't be confusing to you, because they simply remind you of the dream you witnessed inside your head. You have to take time to let that dream wither before you are able to see what you actually put on the page. It sounds awful, but it's true.
Waiting too long to edit is just as bad. As a writer, you cultivate the habit of observing the world around you. You look for inspiration everywhere. And that means that the ideas never really stop flowing. Even if writer's block keeps you from acting on them, the ideas never really stop.
Therefore, if you wait too long to edit, you run the risk of moving on in your heart. Your imagination is too preoccupied with shiny new ideas to submit to the drudgery of returning to the old ones. When you wait too long, self-editing becomes a chore.
When you time it right, self-editing--tough as it can be--is a joy. Witnessing your writing improve gives you confidence. Polishing the window into your imagination, giving readers a clearer view of the dreams beyond, is an edifying experience (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)
But how do you know when the time is right?
That depends on what kind of writer you are. Some writers work slow--I should know, I'm one of them. Others work relatively fast. Some people balk at challenges like NaNoWriMo; they think it's crazy to try and write a novel that fast. Others seem incredulous that not every writer writes that fast.
In his memoir On Writing, Uncle Stevie recommends about a month to six weeks before you begin editing your new piece. That's a pretty good estimate for most people, but I wouldn't be so unilateral. I'd say you should wait about 50-75% as long as it took you to write the book. If it took you a month, two weeks might be plenty, but once you're pushing three, it's time to get back to it. If it took you a year to write, you might want to wait as much as nine months before you take another look.
Even that ratio might sound ludicrous to you, but hey, there's no universal formula for what works. That's the rule of thumb I try to follow with my own work, and it feels pretty good to me.
2. Laziness
Here's a phrase that makes me cringe every time I hear it:
"The editor will fix it."
An editor is not a car mechanic. Your manuscript is not a black box, whose inner workings are "somebody else's job". That kind of thinking is just lazy.
As a writer, every burden is on you. You're the one who is asking for a piece of the limited, shrinking attention span of mankind. People are busy. Committing time and effort to read your story is a big ask. The burden is on you to make it worth their while. The burden is on you to make it comprehensible.
Editing is your job. An editor is just your sensei. She cannot--and will not--fight your battles for you. She can only train you to fight them better.
Yes, editing is a lot of work. Yes, it's hard to drive yourself, especially if you don't know what you're doing (for help defining the task, check out my editing resources). But if you can't even be bothered to do it, what are your ideas really worth? Laziness in a writer basically advertises that the ideas in their stories aren't worth a second look, even from the author. That's not a very good sales pitch to prospective readers.
Sometimes, laziness works on a smaller scale. Say you have a particular scene that just isn't working out the way you wanted it to. You can't cut it because something important happens. But you just don't like the way the action proceeds. Rewriting it from the ground up seems like a daunting task. Plus, you don't even have any alternative ideas for how the scene could go. Why not just polish up the language and let good enough be good enough?
That's lazy. Don't sell yourself short like that. Don't be a quitter! Is that the kind of author you want to be? Good enough? I doubt it. They don't have a Good Enough Sellers List. If you want to be the best, you're going to have to put in the hard work. If you don't, that's just a sign to readers that you aren't worth their precious time.
3. Perfectionism
This is the one I struggle with most. As you make pass after pass through your manuscript, you tinker with language on the sentence level. Then when you finally read through the whole thing again, you find that some of the micro-changes you made don't make sense on a macro scale. When you edit, you start general and work to the specific, but then when you take a step back, you find you need to dive in again.
It can be maddening. And because I struggle with this, I'm not sure I know how to avoid perfectionism. I sincerely believe in being a tough, intense editor. But at some point you have to move from editing to publishing, or you don't deserve to call yourself an author.
Imagine, if you will, the perfect hamburger. For me, it's a half pound of high-quality beef, cooked charred-rare on a flat-top grill, warm red on the inside, crispy and caramelized on the outside. The bun is a soft brioche roll. It's topped with cheddar, bacon, an over-easy fried egg, lettuce, tomato, and raw red onion. A spread of mayo on the bottom, and a dash of brown mustard on the top, and my perfect hamburger is complete.
The only thing wrong with it is that it doesn't exist. As I write this, the hamburger has failed to materialize in front of me. I'm betting it didn't materialize in front of you either.
What good is a hamburger that is perfect in every way--except that it doesn't exist. There's only one thing wrong with it, but that one thing makes everything else about it moot. If it isn't real, I can't eat it (looking down at my belly, maybe it's better that way...).
That's what your story is if you let perfectionism get the better of you: a perfect burger that doesn't exist. If your story remains unpublished, it doesn't exist, as far as anyone but you knows. So at some point, you're going to have to put it out there. It will not be perfect, no matter how hard you work. The only thing you can hope for is that it's as good as you can make it.
Sometimes I'll tinker with the same sentence over and over, and still be unsatisfied. The moment I realize I've gone back and forth between two possibilities, that's when I drop it and let it be. Da Vinci said it best: works of art are never finished, only abandoned. My only advice for overcoming perfectionism is to look for your signal that it's time to abandon your work. Examine your emotions, and try to find the point where you're just torturing yourself. It's good to torture yourself a little, but know your breaking point, and stop just short of it.
4. Arrogance
As I said above, every burden is on the writer. If a reader can't understand you, or can't enjoy what you've written, the burden is on you to change.
I'm not saying you should change your story every time someone doesn't like it. You can't please everyone. But if you're a smart writer, you know your target audience. Even if it's just one person, you know who you want to please. If you write something and it doesn't please your target audience, nothing is wrong with them. Something is wrong with you.
When I first started writing fiction, I gave my drafts to my wife to read. On several occasions, she would come across a bit of sci-fi terminology she didn't understand, or a scene she couldn't visualize. In my unconscious incompetence, I got angry and told her that she didn't get it because she wasn't a sci-fi nerd. I was expecting her to change to suit me. But that's just not the way the world works.
Don't be arrogant and assume you can persuade readers to enjoy and understand you. Readers know what they like, or at least they know what they're willing to consider. No matter what you want to write, someone out there wants to read it. Figure out who they are, and find a way to get your writing to them. If you're selling your work to the wrong audience, they won't change to accept you. The burden is on you.
In self-editing, that means taking a close look at the language you use to communicate your imagination. You have to focus on what you actually wrote, not on the images that inspired you to write it. If the words do not cause a reader to imagine what you want them to, then the words must change. You can't get mad when someone can't visualize a scene. You have to write that scene better. If you refuse to put the reader first, they'll simply take the path of least resistance and not read your work.
As an editor, this issue usually comes up when I tell a client a passage they wrote is unclear, and they refuse to change it because "it's a matter of voice." By telling me "oh, that's just my voice", they create an impassable roadblock. Thou shalt not tinker with my voice, they say.
In my opinion, "voice" a cop-out arrogant writers use when they can't explain why they've chosen to word something a certain way. If their wording doesn't get in the way of my understanding, I have no problem with it. But when you use "voice" to fend off harsh realities, you're only hurting yourself.
Remember, it's not the editor's name on the book. Even if it's in the front matter somewhere, most people won't see it. Think of your favorite book. Do you know the editor's name? Unless it's an anthology, you probably don't. Editing is a thankless job. If an editor tells you something, it's for your benefit, not theirs. Ignoring it only hurts you and your readers.
5. Negativity
I would love to meet the writer that has never struggled with self-doubt. Actually, scratch that, I'd hate to meet them, because they'd have to be a self-deluding ass.
Doubt is natural. A lack of doubt is a sign of naivety or arrogance. Writing is hard, and even if you write well the odds are never in your favor. Even content factories like James Patterson and Nora Roberts probably worry whether their next book will sell.
Every writer has had that moment where they take a step back from their manuscript and think, "This is shit. I'm shit." If you've never felt that way, you probably don't care enough.
The only trouble with listening to your inner editor is that sometimes you listen too well. Drafting is the time to go easy on yourself, and let those ideas flow freely, but when it's time to revise you have to be tough on yourself. You have to let your inner editor loose, and actually listen to the voice that says your writing is bad, because that's the only way your writing can get better.
But listening to your inner editor doesn't mean you have to take everything he says to heart. It's important to be hard on yourself, but it's also important to maintain a balanced perspective on your writing. If you go too hard, you stop. If you go too easy, you write below your potential.
Your manuscript is not shit. You're not shit. It's a draft. Even the worst draft can be fixed.
Now go do it.
If you're ever feeling down about yourself, just remember that this joker once boasted the top-selling hip hop album of all time:
The first time I set out to write a novel I was fifteen. I was taking a writer's workshop class in high school, and I had asked my teacher permission to submit chapters of a single work each month instead of short stories and poems, like most of the other kids.
But like, if I miss this concert, my life is like, over! You'll
never understand my sophomoric, middle-class problems!
As you might imagine, I didn't get very far. If memory serves, I turned in two chapters of a Dirk Gently-inspired paranormal detective story, another two chapters of a Final Fantasy-inspired sci-fi/fantasy epic, and by the end of the class I broke down and wrote a bunch of angsty teenage poetry, some of which might have made good emo lyrics.
Part of my problem was that I was fifteen. Part of it was that I didn't know the distinction between Plotting and Pantsing. I figured I could just wing my way through an entire novel, as if a novel is something you just sit down and write, and when you're done it's done.
Buta subtler problem was I hadno idea howlonga novel shouldbe.
This problem stayed with me through college, through my mid-twenties, when I didn't write anything, all the way until the early years of my career. Until about three years ago, I was still thinking of novels in terms of page numbers. But the truth is, that's like measuring your tire pressure by calculating the volume of the tire. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)
A novel's page count isuptothe publisher. I mean, they can print the entire bible (approx. 750,000 words) in a book about the size of a box of matches. True, you have to read it with a magnifying glass, but it can be done. On the other end of the spectrum, 3 Futures was barely 35,000 words, but Catharsis Fiction fudged it up to 200 pages.
So how long should your story be? That depends onwhat you wanttodowith it. If you're trying the traditional publishing route, thoroughly read the publisher's website, contracts, and any other documentation they provide. Chances are, their word-count expectations are in there somewhere. For short story writers, I've found that most markets favor stuff in the 4,000-7,000 range, but that's not a hard-and-fast number. Whatever you're writing, wherever you're trying to sell it, check the market's guidelines first. If all else fails, email the editor and straight-up ask them.
But if you're self-publishing, or if you're not writing for a specific market, it's good to have some idea of what separates a novel from a novella, from a short story, etc. Before I launch into this list, I should note that different genres carry different expectations. Fantasy and sci-fi readers expect and want longer books, and literary fiction is all over the map. But the following list is the general guideline I use to categorize my own writing, no matter what I plan to do with it.
Flash Fiction/Vignette: 1,000 words or less
Flash fiction is intended to highlight a particular moment, idea or emotion. It's intended to be read in just a few minutes, so anything longer than a thousand words is pushing it. There are lots of markets for flash fiction because it's as easy to present as a blog post (and even a troglodyte like me can throw together a halfway readable blog).
Short Story: 1,000 - 10,000 words
Short stories can be anything from an extended vignette that really delves into a particular theme, to a fully structured story that happens over a relatively compact timeline. There are dozens of ways to structure stories in this length range, which is part of what makes them so fun to write. Generally, a short story is meant to be read in a single sitting, two at the most. I find that a meaty short story takes about as long to read as it does to watch an average movie, and I'm a pretty slow reader.
Novella/Novelette: 10,000 - 50,000 words
In my ownwork, I makeno distinction between a novella anda novelette, butsome genres do. A novelette is shorter, about 10,000 to 25,000 words. Anything below 50,000 is generally considered a novella. While a publisher might find this distinction important for marketing purposes, I find readers aren't hip to the difference, so for me, the distinction is splitting hairs. I figure anything under 50,000 words can be read in one to three sittings, and will present a short, cohesive series of events without subplots, multiple POV changes, and all the complexities of a full novel.
Novel: 50,000 words or more
Here is where you start seeing major differences between genres. A lot of lit-fic sits down at the low end of this range. Slaughterhouse-Five and Fahrenheit-451 are just a smidge under 50,000. Then again, Alan Moore wrote a draft of a novel that was over A MILLION words long, and he refused to cut it (the self-indulgent bastard). Most sci-fi and fantasy rests between 80,000 and 120,000. Mysteries and pulp novels tend to be shorter. When I set out to write a novel, my default goal length is around 80,000. In other words, I try to make sure there's at least 80,000 words of actual story. For me, this usually means I have to fully develop two, three, or even four POV characters, and include a handful of subplots. As of the time I'm writing this, I have yet to come up with 80,000 words of story centered on a single character. It can certainly be done, but my brain just doesn't work that way.
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Whatver you're writing, whatever you plan to do with it, it's a good idea to set a goal length, and track your progress toward it. That's the main reason I came up with my Process Breakdown template, which you can download if you wish. However you choose to count words, it's an essential part of being a professional writer. Readers and publishers have certain expectations, and the people who meet them sell more books. Even if you don't give a hoot about expectations, it's good to be specific about your goals, so you know what you have when you achieve them.
As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.
In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.
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Commandment Nine: Thou shalt edit thyself, and allow thyself to be edited
This one shouldn't come as a surprise coming from me. But I firmly believe that all writing deserves to be subjected to brutal, merciless editing.
And not just polishing as you re-read. No. I mean tough editing from someone who knows grammar, punctuation, and the principles of fiction. Someone who won't pull any punches. Someone who will tell you flat out that your story sucks, if that is, in fact, the case.
I've met writers and editors that believe that editing should be done with a light touch, in order to preserve the writer's voice. But I don't agree.
For one thing, if a writer's voice is so fragile that it can be undone by suggesting some more sentence variety, or asking them to avoid over-abundant alliteration, then that writer needs to accept that their voice may not be fully developed yet. If you're afraid an editor will strip your voice out of your work, you must not trust your voice. If it's there at all, it will survive even the harshest edits.
The deeper issue is that too often (arguably most of the time) authors use this amorphous, ineffable thing we call "Voice" as an excuse to avoid editing. Once you invoke the divine mystery of Voice, all meaningful analysis comes to a screeching halt. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!) After all, Voice is nearly synonymous with a writer's taste in words, and as the old maxim says, "in matters of taste, there can be no disputes." (If I encounter this argument an editor, it usually signifies to me that the writer is in the First Stage of competence, and will not benefit from my participation)
Appealing to voice is the same logical fallacy that occurs when someone invokes the divine to avoid being proven wrong. It's a cop-out. I'm a believer myself, but if you ever catch me saying "because God says so" when you're critiquing my opinions, you have my permission to slap me. Gimme a good rap on the beak, set me straight.
When a good editor critiques a piece of writing, they should be prepared to defend each note with logic (I'd say the same for any time anyone tells another person to change in any way). Every change the editor suggests requires a reason, and I will be the first to admit that if their only reasoning is personal preference, you should feel free to disregard that particular note. That's not to say you should dismiss it out of hand, though. If you respect the editor at all, you should at least consider their opinion, because it's likely based on experience. And if you still disagree, no good editor will insist you take their suggestion anyway.
The thing to remember is that editing is a mostly thankless job. Editors don't get royalties. You don't see famous editors walking red carpets. Nobody gets rich editing books. In the majority of situations, editors don't even get credit. Pick a novel off your bookshelf, and scan the front matter for the editor's name. Unless the author thanks them in a dedication, I'm betting it's not there.
Editors exist to serve writers. Unless the editor is an idiot, every decision they make has the same goal: to make the book easier to read. Any editor who tries to take over another person's story is an idiot, because they're not going to get credit for it. And remember what I say about the path of least resistance. Readers, by and large, only read books that are easy to read.
One final point: writers must learn to self-edit, at least to some extent. You can't just vomit all over your computer screen and expect some superhero to swoop in and make it a bestseller. If you put that much of the burden on your editor, you don't really deserve the credit, do you?
Expecting your editor to just fix everything is the same as a musician who can't sing expecting the recording engineer to just autotune all the wrong notes. The end result feels fake. Cognitive dissonance is built into the final product, and the audience can sense that something is off, even if they can't quite say what. Some of them won't care, but do you really want to bank your whole career and reputation on people not caring that your work is shoddy?
Writing is a creative endeavor, to be sure, but the writers who attain sales and recognition do so by working hard. You can't expect to dance around like a woodland nymph, surviving on inspirational Pinterest quotes, and then suddenly have Peter Pan the literary agent sweep you off your feet and carry you to the land of success.
As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.
In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.
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Commandment Eight: Thou shalt not meddle with point of view
I've also talked a lot about the fictive dream. The fictive dream is the joy of reading fiction, and anything that meddles with it threatens that joy. And POV is the portal through which we enter the fictive dream (like this quote? Click here to tweet it!).
POV is a delicate thing. In the hands of a master, it can produce startling effects. In the hands of a careless amateur, it can make a story totally opaque.
When you supply too much information, you clog the portal with facts, and the fictive dream disappears. When you shift unexpectedly from one POV to another, you close one portal, and force the reader to search for the new one. When you use a first person narrator to tell a story whose scope goes beyond that character's experiences, you build the portal too narrow. When you use an omniscient narrator to show and tell everything, you build the portal too wide, and the reader is unable to focus.
If you have doubts about your ability to wield POV, err on the side of caution. Don't try to pull any tricks just for the sake of being tricky (as I've said before in this series).
And most importantly, think about what you can and cannot know, given a certain point of view. If your detective story is written in first person, your detective can't know what the murderer is doing while he's walking the beat. If you're writing in an intimate third person, you can't see what's going on behind walls or across vast distances. If your narrator is retelling stories from her past, remember that she is going to have a different perspective on those events than she did at the time.
In short, don't fiddle. POV is a tool, not a toy. Pick the right tool for the job, and don't mess around with it, or you'll hurt yourself.
As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.
In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.
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Commandment Seven: Thou shalt know thy characters and settings as thyself
We've all been told to write what we know (and if you keep reading this series, you'll be told again), but that axiom works in reverse too: know what you write.
Part of my problem with pantsing is that when you begin with a blank page, you begin with flat, undeveloped characters (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!). You might put them into a dramatic situation, but you don't really know how they'll act, and without some kind of plan for character development, you're bound to miss a few opportunities. They might surprise you, which is good, but chances are they won't start surprising you right off the bat.
Characters are the core of your story, and they are the part that readers are most likely to remember. When I read Foxfire as a lonely teenage boy, I fell in love with Maddy and Legs. I missed them when the book ended. I missed them so badly that I actually wasted the time to see the god-awful 1996 adaptation. I don't know if Joyce Carol Oates is a plotter or a pantser, but she damn sure spent some time on the characters in Foxfire. They felt more alive and real than a lot of actual people I've met.
The issue is the same for settings. If you create a setting on the fly, chances are it's going to be pretty drab on the first pass. If you describe anything, it'll probably be the most obvious stuff, and that isn't what brings settings to life. Readers are savvy enough to fill in the obvious details on their own. The key is to provide the details that aren't obvious, and just enough of them to get the reader's imagination going. To do that, you have to get your imagination going.
Settings aren't always the most important element of a story, but they can be powerful if you develop them well. Anyone who's read Lord of the Rings probably wanted to live in Middle Earth, orcs and all. I remember reading those books and vividly imagining all the food, drink, and pipe-weed the characters consumed--heck, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't part of the reason I'm a pipe smoker to this day. Little details like that made the world so real that a part of me never left. Tolkien definitely overdid it when it came to exposition, there's no question, but his setting became part of his reader's lives forever.
While I strongly advise restraint when it comes to including details about characters and settings, it never hurts to generate those details. The only way you can know too much about your characters and setting is if taking notes becomes an addiction, and keeps you from actually writing. And as a borderline OCD case, I can see where that would happen. But when you're plotting, it's worthwhile to research or create as much detail as you can. You never know when you'll see an opportunity for intrigue. It's the Pantry Method again; gather all the information you can, and only show readers the really interesting bits. The rest will be there if you need it, and if you don't so what?
For me, a well-defined task is essential. That's why I took the time to build templates to help me in this process. I've tried to ask myself every possible question, and when I'm plotting a story, I answer as many as I can. If that sounds helpful to you, Check out my Plotting Resources page, where you can download all of my plotting templates.
Even if you're not a plotter, you need to find a way to get into your characters and explore your settings. Without them, your book is a synopsis at best.
As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.
In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.
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Commandment Six: Words are sacred, thou shalt not abuse them
We've already touched on this, but it's one of the most important things to realize when you become a writer: Words are powerful. Like anything powerful, they must be wielded responsibly.
Take a moment and try to imagine the world before written language. Try to imagine how much harder everything would be. These days, our thoughts exist almost exclusively in written language, much to the chagrin of previous generations. We text and email more than we talk. We post on Facebook instead of calling to catch up with friends. (Some people bemoan this state of affairs. I, on the other hand, am a huge fan of it, for reasons I won't go into now)
Try to imagine your typical day without writing. I'll give you a hint: it's impossible. You can't even wake up on time, because there's no such thing as numerals to put on a clock. You can't order breakfast off a drive-through menu. You can't do any work, because there are no computers, and no books from which to learn skills.
Writing is the foundation of all knowledge. It is the beginning of progress. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!) Speech predates writing, possibly by millennia, but without the ability to transmit ideas beyond one's immediate space and time, progress was effectively nonexistent. The ability to cast ideas in a lasting medium makes the transmission and growth of knowledge possible.
Even when we write to entertain, we wield this awesome power. Anything that blasphemes against or abuses the power of words is at odds with the choice to write. If you deny the power of written words, why on Earth would you want to be a writer?
So what does this mean in practical terms? On the most basic level, it means you owe it to yourself and your potential readers to learn everything you can about words. Learn your parts of speech. Learn grammar. Learn linguistics, if you can. LEARN. Don't assume that just because you write a mean memo, or occasionally say something eloquent over cocktails, you know everything you need to know about words. You can never know too much.
One of the most overlooked crimes against words is the careless use of punctuation. Don't get me wrong, nobody is perfect, least of all myself. But readers can tell the difference between a small misstep like an unnecessary comma and a writer who just doesn't care. Punctuation marks are the accessories that ornament your words. They are the boundaries that divide them. Their use or misuse supplies meaning and subtlety. At least try to use them right.
Part of the reason I feel entitled to speak as forcefully as I do is because I'm guilty of every crime I condemn. When I started out as a writer, I couldn't tell you the difference between a preposition and a pronoun. I didn't know what a parallelism was. Worst of all, I didn't think I needed to learn these things; I thought I could get by on my innate facilities.
I still have plenty to learn. I'm still a little shaky on semicolons; I tend to use them when I probably shouldn't. But learning is a part of my regular routine now, and my knowledge base is always expanding.
Another part of revering words is not using them cavalierly. Purple prose is among the worst crimes an author can commit, because it saps words of their power.
If you are alive in the twenty-first century, you probably come across words that have lost their meaning every day. "Free" doesn't mean what it used to. Neither do words like "vintage", "sale", or "literally".
How about profanity? When you were little, the word "fuck" probably seemed like the gravest transgression you could ever commit. Unless you're a sheltered little lamb who doesn't use the internet, you probably don't even bat an eye at the word "fuck" anymore. I sure as shit don't. I fucking use it all day long.
Or how about exaggeration? Was that really the best hamburger you've ever eaten? Did that slice of cheesecake really change your life? Of course not. In speech, these kind of exaggerations are acceptable, because they disappear the moment they're spoken, or at least the moment they're forgotten by whoever hears them. And if they're being used for comic effect, exaggerations are fine in speech or writing. Megadeth's new album didn't literally shred my face off, but it's amusing to talk that way about heavy metal.
Purple prose is what happens when writers strain for effect. It's what happens when writers become too self-assured, too impressed with their ability to wield complex words. Words may not cost you anything to use, but when you write overwrought, flowery sentences like "The sun hid behind ivory clouds that gave its light the texture of a rippled curtain draped over the infinite window of the sky" when you could have said "It was cloudy", you harm those words. Every unnecessary over-extension is another step in a word's gradual descent into meaninglessness. You might get away with disrespecting words. People do. But you can't expect to. And even though you can, that doesn't mean you should.
As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.
In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.
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Commandment Five: Thou shalt not bear false witness unto the reader
This one is bound to stir up some controversy, but I'm pretty convinced of this rule. In short, you should never mislead the reader.
The operative word there is "you". You, the author, have a responsibility to the reader. Whether you want them to or not, they assume whatever you say is true, within the context of the story. Assuming you've written it clearly, they imagine things just the way you say them. If you then pull a switch on them, you break that trust. For the remainder of your story (and possibly your career) readers will be eyeing every word with suspicion, and that knocks them out of the story. Instead of focusing on your plot and characters, they're focused on figuring out what sort of tricks you're playing.
One of the most cited examples of this mistake is the technique of beginning with a false awakening. On one hand, false awakenings are a real part of human experience, so writing about them is justified in that sense. But on the other hand, they break a story's momentum right at the beginning. It's not fair to open on a dramatic situation, get readers into it, and suddenly tell them it's not real. (That said, I have been guilty of the false awakening beginning. But I had a reason: my story centered on a character who suffered from nightmares, which in turn fueled his chronic hypnophobia. Without a glimpse of his nightmares, I felt the hypnophobia would have been less believable.)
Similarly, the "twist-for-twist's-sake" ending (employed most famously in the works of M. Night Shyamalan) is almost always a poor choice. In most situations, a gigantic twist at the end of a story simply negates everything that came before it. It signifies that everything we've just read or watched didn't really matter. Who wouldn't feel betrayed by that?
If you're writing a mystery, misdirection can be good. In fact, some degree of it is expected. Mystery as a genre challenges the reader to figure out the truth before the protagonist does. But really, that's not the type of misleading I'm talking about here. In a mystery, a clue is presentedas possibly true. The detective eyes every piece of information with suspicion, and so does the reader. And more importantly, the detective and the reader are aware of the same things. The detective does not hide anything from the reader.
What I'm against is unreliable narrators--unless they are a character in their own right. Let me explain. (If you've read my articles about Narrative Mood and Point of View, you might be able to guess where I'm going with this.)
If your narrator is going to lie to the reader, they have to have a motive. If the narrator is simply you, the author, then your only possible motive is to seem clever to the reader. True, readers do like surprises, but not when they arise out of an effort to be cute. It's the literary equivalent of a pun. Readers get it, but it makes them groan internally.
Readers expect a disembodied, non-character narrator to be impartial. Whether that narrator is omniscient or not, they exist merely to recount events as they happen. When they disregard that task, their reason for existing is called into question, and the fourth wall breaks down.
However, if your narrator is a character in their own right, they might have any number of motives to lie. As a character--even if they're not directly involved in the story--they are behind the fourth wall, and thus their disingenuous narration does not break the fictive dream.
As with so many of these commandments, this boils down to avoiding any practice which makes the reader aware of you instead of the story. The joy of reading fiction is that you become immersed in another world, and anything that threatens that threatens the joy of reading.
So don't lie to your readers. By all means, have your characters lie to them, but don't do it yourself. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)
As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.
In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.
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Commandment Four: Thou shalt honor the reader as thyself
We've already touched on this issue in Commandments One and Three, but in case it's not obvious, all these commandments are connected. In fact, I could probably have boiled them down to fewer than ten, but then I wouldn't be able to use all these dank Ten Commandments memes I made.
In any case, there's still plenty to say about respecting the reader. It's essential to be the path of least resistance and give your readers what they want--a story. And it's important to assume the reader is intelligent, and able to pick up nuances on their own. But that's not all there is to it.
Whether to write for one's self or for potential readers is a question many authors ask themselves. And unfortunately, the debate usually takes the shape of artistic integrity (writing to please yourself), versus commercialism (writing to please audiences). Of course, it isn't that simple, and like many things, you can and must have it both ways.
Yes, write for yourself. Write what you know, and what you like. Write something you would like to read. If you don't like what you're writing, it's going to turn out bad, period. Readers sense disdain for the material, even if they can't put their finger on it.
But you can't just write for yourself, at least not if you're trying to make a living off your art. Heck, even if writing is something you do in your spare time, you surely do it because you aspire to have your work read by someone who other than yourself. If you write for yourself only, chances are you don't spend much time on writing advice websites like this one.
If you want the attention of readers, you have to create something worth paying attention to, and you have to make it easy to pay attention to, or nobody will. That means writing simply and clearly. That means being as original as you can. That means not intruding on your story, or doing any of a dozen other things that drive readers away. Remember, people are looking for reasons to put your book down. Don't give them any (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)
Writing for the reader does not mean pandering to trends. It does not mean aping whatever is on the best-sellers list that week. It does not mean trying to copy the style of an already successful author. These things might get you a few sales from readers who are so addicted to a particular genre, style, or author that they'll buy anything that fits the mold. But they won't get you the recognition you're really after. And they'll brand you for life as a copycat. Even if you go on to create something startling and worthy, people's low expectations of you will be a big hurdle to get over.
So when I say "honor the reader", I don't just mean you should write clearly and avoid intrusions. I mean you should remember what you're doing when you write a story. You're creating something that has the power to induce lifelike experiences in others. Make sure you're giving them an experience worth having. And remember that writing lasts more or less forever. That's the sacred power of the written word. A thing said is gone the minute it escapes your lips. A thing written can withstand the test of time. Make sure you want it to.
As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.
In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.
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Commandment Three: Thou shalt not intrude upon the story
Author intrusion is one of the most common and irritating mistakes made by writers. And it's not limited to amateurs, or even to writing; if you've ever watched a movie and been annoyed by an incessant voice over explaining every little nuance of what's going on, you've been a victim of author (filmmaker?) intrusion.
Dave King and Renni Browne deal with this issue in Self-Editing, when they give the editor's maxim R.U.E - "Resist the Urge to Explain!" When an author intrudes on her story to explain something, she commits three crimes: a) she underestimates her own ability to show what's going on, b) she assumes her readers aren't attentive or intelligent enough to get what's going, and c) she assumes that the readers need or want to know every little nuance of what's going on. Let's look at each crime in turn.
First, if you're over-explaining because you lack confidence, either you aren't a very good writer, and you should take some time to hone your craft, or what you're writing is too complex. If you're falling all over yourself trying to explain it, maybe you should pull back and look at what that event's job is in your story. Can that job be done by a simpler event? If several things are happening at once, can you find a way to spread them out so you can write them more simply? Don't go beyond what's absolutely necessary unless you have a very good reason. And if you must, it's worth taking the time to break scenes down into their essential parts, and figure out the most direct way of putting them across.
If you're over-explaining because you're afraid readers can't figure it out on their own, complexity may still be an issue. But it might just be that you're not giving the average reader enough credit. Remember, readers are smart. Reading makes you smart. Writing down to your audience is a sure way to alienate them. To paraphrase Browne and King, resisting the urge to explain pays readers the compliment of assuming they're intelligent.
If you're over-explaining because you assume the reader wants all this information, I've got some news for you: they don't. By and large, readers (and movie audiences) prefer to have just what they need to understand what's going on. Deeper understanding usually comes only with repeated readings, which is a sign of commitment to a particular story. You can't expect everyone who picks up your book to commit to it in this way. Not everyone is going to turn into a fanboy of your work. By force-feeding the reader more detail than they want or need, you force them to become a fanboy just to understand the basics. It's like asking someone to marry you on a first date. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)
Over-explanation is just one form that author intrusion takes. Purple prose, tangential narrative, excessive description, and ham-handed characterization and exposition can all be forms of author intrusion. In fact, anything that distracts from the story in order to serve the author's whims is intrusion. Any time you get in the way of your story, you are unwelcome.
So don't write fancier than you have to, just write clearly. Don't take detours just to show us some neat idea you cooked up; make the idea matter, or don't include it. When describing things, provide just enough detail to get the reader's imagination going, then get out of the way (my Inverse Coco Chanel Principle will help you achieve this). Don't dump mounds of backstory on your readers, let them get to know your characters and settings gradually, they way they do with real people and places. It isn't just easier to read, it makes your world seem more realistic. And for God's sake, don't base a character on yourself and then expend huge amounts of time on that character, it makes you look desperate.
That's what it all comes down to: author intrusion makes you look desperate. Which is understandable, to some degree. We write because we want to be known. If we didn't want attention, we wouldn't write. But overdoing it will drive readers away just like overdoing it in social situations drives potential friends away. Remember that you are part of everything in your story, and everything in your story is part of you (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!). There's no need to put on a silly costume and dance for your readers. If they are reading your book, they are reading you.
