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Questioning Your Writing

September 9, 2014

So a piece of work has been finished, or at least laid out to reasonable comprehension. There’s a sense of relief. Then anxiety. Then out-and-out despair. Because so much of it seems wrong, wrong, wrong. Or, on the other end of the scale, it’s a full and complete piece that’s been rejected on multiple occasions, and you just can’t work out what to do with it anymore – what else can be done to make it commercially viable.

You get the idea – we always second-guess our own work. We should. That’s how we evolve as writers. I think the worst thing is when we look at something we’ve written, we know it needs to be improved, but we don’t know how to improve it. We don’t know what questions to ask when we place the storylines, characters and themes under scrutiny.

So let’s go over a couple of the common questions and maybe a couple more that aren’t asked often enough. This quick list isn’t necessarily the definitive list of questions to be asked; every piece of writing comes with its own set of virtues and potential problem points. But this might act as a decent enough launch pad.

What’s it about?

Easy, right? Not always. Because it can be about several different things. But the trick is to be able to identify what the crux of the story is and lean against that as your main infrastructure – your support post. The components that define the entire story.

A more exact way of asking this question might be: What can’t be taken out? Sometimes characters and themes can be removed, and it may affect the storyline and destroy certain scenes. But the work itself can be repaired and still be essentially the same. Sometimes the ‘main character’ can be removed and events still play out in a similar fashion. Nick Carraway was mostly irrelevant in The Great Gatsby, despite being the sole narrator – the one thing that held the book together was the story and character of Gatsby. Everything else could have been changed or removed, but to remove Gatsby would have been to tear the roots out from the story.

Once you identify the components that can’t be deleted, you know what the story is about and how to arrange everything around it to service that lynchpin.

Who’s/What’s the main character?

Often it’s a no-brainer. Sometimes it might be a grey area as to who benefits the most from having the spotlight.

It’s tricky in ensemble pieces. Most characters will undergo their own arc in a collective span of time – or they have no arc or road to change at all, which in itself might be part of the story. If we take a scenario of a family gathering for a holiday, a la The Corrections, there could be an enormous bundle of stories, themes and character arcs to focus on here. So who needs to hold the narrator’s lens? Who is the most important character – if it’s not the narrator? Who deserves the attention?

Every story takes a perspective, regardless of whether the core lynchpin is a character or theme or story element. Every piece of writing has a lens – and every character you could potentially use as the reader’s avatar will have a different-coloured lens. Review the options and be sure you’re choosing the right lens.

Where should it begin and end?

Most emerging and experienced writers have heard the diatribe at some point about how in a first draft of any piece of prose, the first page is the most expendable. This is where the exposition is most commonly dumped to allow the writer to gain a sense of the story’s direction and to pick up momentum. This is where material can be most efficiently cut. Obviously it’s not a hard and fast rule, but it illustrates how important a meaningful starting point is to the effectiveness of a piece of writing.

The start should set the tone. Both by the emotion, and the opening event. Sometimes it’s not necessarily the first event in the sequence of storyline events – maybe it’s just the most important of those events. The one that embodies the conflict taking place. The moment in time that’s going to echo through to the closing sentence.

So the ending is important too. The best endings carry that echo from the beginning, and give the impression that there is little more to tell that is relevant. In many ways the ending is a stylistic fingerprint of a writer – every writer has their own way of ending something. It might be neat and final. It might be mostly resolved with a couple of threads to indicate continuity beyond the final words. It might be totally open with ongoing conflicts and issues, as long as the main focal point of the story has been brought to a relatively satisfying dénouement.

The beginning and end are, in many ways, more important than the middle. You might have complains about a sagging middle or juggling too many (or too few) events, but that’s because the beginning and end need to be redefined, and in turn will wash over everything that happens in between.

What’s unique about it?

Maybe I’m getting a little heavy-handed here. But this is an important one for me, as a short story writer – being able to identify what stands out for each piece as being just a little different from anything else I’ve written before. It might be the theme I’ve chosen; it might be the types of characters I’m writing about. It might be a certain genre, style or tone. But something is unique.

By constantly asking this question you’re pushing your boundaries, expanding your skill set and, most importantly, keeping it interesting and challenging for yourself. Any writer can fall into a rut. Making a conscious effort to avoid that rut can make any new piece of writing an exciting new challenge, a new focus. It doesn’t have to deviate too far from your standard pathways, and you can still write about what interests you and what you’re comfortable with.

And finally, keeping a mentality that favours new possibilities and options means that you’re more able to see the ways in which the above questions can be applied. How the lens of the narrator can be changed, and how the end can be redefined the better serve some of the central ideas of that particular piece.

What about you? What questions do you commonly ask when you’re placing your work under the magnifying glass?

Beau Hillier | Editor, page seventeen

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Finding the Words

September 4, 2014

Never take the easy option when writing.

We all do, on occasion, through our own inexperience (not realising that something better may be required), through laziness (whizzing along, and taking the first option that comes to mind), or because we don’t understand that, with a bit of thought, we can do better (and that one explains itself).

Here’s an exercise to try: imagine stepping out of your house and into a cold winter’s day. Go ahead, write a paragraph – see what you come up with. Try and write this paragraph as you normally would, (understanding that the existence of the exercise in this blog is going to automatically change the way you think about it).

Well? How’d you go?

Potentially, some of you may have written something like this:

It was freezing when I stepped out of the house …

This is the easiest solution. The existence of the word ‘freezing’ (or any synonym you might’ve used) does all the work for us. We all know what ‘freezing’ is, right? But what does it tell us? – And it does just that: it tells us (the reader) exactly what we’re meant to know.

Try this same exercise again, but avoid using the word ‘freezing’ or any of its synonyms (cold, icy, bitter, etc.). Think about it. How do you write this same premise and convey that it’s freezing to the reader?

Give it a try.

How did you go?

Some ways you might’ve communicated the cold:

• misting breath
• rubbing hands together/putting hands in pockets
• wrapping arms around oneself
• zip up/button up jacket
• you shiver/gasp
• teeth chatter
• have goose bumps

This is just a small sampling of things we might feel when walking out into the cold. It’s also descriptive writing that both paints the scene and also puts the reader directly in the head and body of the character, which is much more evocative than simply saying, ‘It’s cold.’

There are always different ways to say things – ways that aren’t our fallbacks or tried and true methods. Something else this applies to is to the delivery of information as it relates to characterisation or the plot.

Try this example: a character comes home. Their partner left them a fortnight ago after ten years of a relationship. In fact, the partner ran off with their best friend. Now your character is hurt and embittered. How would you write this scene?

Give it a go.

Well?

How did you go?

A lot of people fall into the trap of writing something like this:

Pat came home. The house seemed so empty after Mary had run off with George. Pat and Mary had been together ten years and, like that, it was over. Pat didn’t know what he’d done wrong. Sure, there’d been some fights, but which couples didn’t fight?

We get all the information in exposition, and we get it all at once. Some writers can wield exposition both engagingly and fluently, but often it feels as if the narrative is put on hold whilst the author arms the reader with all the information they require to go on. Some authors offer exposition and then, within the exposition, digress and offer more exposition about some facet of the original exposition. Some writers do this repeatedly, like a reflection inside a reflection inside a reflection. Most times, it’s an off-switch – at least for myself as a reader.

Think about how else you could write the previous exercise without straight out telling the reader what they need to know. As with the cold, there are symptoms for this premise. They might not be as obvious as they are with the cold, but they do exist.

Give this exercise one more try.

Now. Go ahead.

Well?

Here’s some ways we could’ve conveyed the circumstances of this situation:

• empty house/oppressive silence
• calls out to partner out of habit
• photos
• a closet may be half empty
• answering machine message that hasn’t been changed

And the emotional resonance:

• character drinks
• character cries/fights back tears
• character struggles entering quiet of house
• character lies on bed facing empty side

These are just basic examples but, again, they’re descriptive. They paint the scene for us and put us in the head and body of the character and we get to experience what they’re experiencing.

As far as exposition goes, you won’t always be able to escape using it, but if you’re going to, think about whether that’s the only way to convey the information you need to convey. Also, think about how much information the reader actually needs at any one time. Often, it’s much more engaging to seed the information gradually, building a premise around the reader, rather than just dumping everything on them at once.

Think about what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it.

LZ.

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The Toxic Idea

September 2, 2014

We’ve talked about the prospects of the evolving idea. We’ve identified the intimidating idea. Let’s also spare a moment for the revelation that all writers dread – that the idea or story they’ve invested time and energy in is a dead end.

Or, at least, it feels like a dead end. It’s been tinkered with for as long as anyone can remember. It’s been redrafted multiple times. Every piece of feedback has been taken on board. And it’s still in the grind. It’s gotten rejected. And rejected, and rejected. Or, it just still has a league of problems you can’t see your way to fixing before submitting is even considered. And you just can’t see what you can do with it anymore.

This happens a lot with novels and larger bodies of work, where the minor issues can pile up across a larger word count – but short stories and poetry can suffer from the same grind. On the surface, the general advice is that every idea has a grain of potential, and it just needs the right implementation in order to be a potentially successful piece. It can take a lot of work to get to that point. But maybe there’s a new thought that stands in the way – the creeping realisation that maybe, just maybe, this specific idea simply isn’t worth putting that much work into it.

That’s a tough conclusion to come to. And it’s also an immensely difficult judgement call to make – what’s stopping one more draft from making this idea one of the success stories of your writing? As with anything else in writing, it’s a subjective decision. One that can be agony to come to if it’s a project you’re so heavily invested in, but so burnt out on that any more revision seems futile.

I call this scenario the ‘toxic idea’ in that it sometimes feels like a specific project can be unhealthy for you as a writer. It’s taking away from you more than it’s giving back. Whether it’s in the redrafting or the pile of rejections it’s already accrued. You just don’t know what to do about it anymore. Does this sound familiar?

The obvious recourse is to step back and allow some time for a new solution to present itself. But that, of course, will have diminishing returns the more often you have to shelf a piece of writing for a lengthy period of time. What if you never have the nerve to get back to it? What if it’s easier to just call it quits and save the trouble later on?

All compelling questions. The trouble with being a writer is that it’s often a very emotional gig – and we get attached to our works in a parental fashion. We want to see them succeed, no matter how much we have to bleed for it.

But let’s look at the picture we’re presented with. A short story, novel or poem that seems endlessly problematic and exhausting to even think about, let alone continue to work with. What are your options? (Assuming you’ve already gotten a variety of feedback during the long process.)

• Endure. Keep hacking away at the project until something gives and you see some yield from it. The least desirable option, in a lot of ways – some will call it being steadfast, others will say it’s a waste of time. You’re the only one who can provide a personal answer to that question.
• Flee. Take what’s left of your sanity and run. It’s the most attractive option if you just can’t look at it anymore. But of course, it’s the least satisfying. But never destroy your writing, even the aborted projects. Just keep it in a folder marked ‘Abandoned’ or ‘Unfinished’. One day, there might be some use for it – even if just as a cautionary tale.
• Cannibalise. Tearing the idea apart into components that could be used in other ways. As a personal example, one of my ill-fated attempts at a full-length manuscript ended up being boiled down into material for a couple of unrelated short stories – one of which was published in an anthology a couple of years ago. It’s often a way to extract some value from an otherwise bogged-down project – but opens up new challenges in itself.

Whatever you choose, there’s one thing that’s always the same. You need to decontaminate yourself. All that frustration will stay with you and irradiate other stories if you’re not careful. Have something on hand that can give you a sense of accomplishment – preferably not related to writing. Maybe it’s your day job, but one bad day can make that dangerously frustrating as well. Physical exercise is probably one of the best recommendations I can give, but you might find something else that works for you. But when you know that you’re working with a toxic idea, you need to quickly act in two ways: figure out how to deal with the hazardous material, and then decontaminate yourself.

It’s tough to work with material that you just can’t seem to get right. Sometimes all the feedback in the world doesn’t provide a clear path – and investing yourself in your writing is a two-edged sword. The stronger your connection to your writing, the more dynamic it can be, but also the more frustrating when it’s just not working properly. Know when you’re working with toxic ideas – the ideas that can sap you of your resolve. And have your preconceived safety measures in place that allows you to keep your general momentum and your sanity.

Beau Hillier | Editor, page seventeen

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Writing Self-Help

August 28, 2014

A popular field of writing is self-help. So many people apparently have the solution for what ails us, and whilst many might scoff at the credentials of whoever the latest guru might be, everybody deserves their chance to get their message out there.

Our experiences, the choices we make in our lives, and the way our lives evolve from those choices, make us unique. No matter how alike we might be when compared to somebody, we are not alike. Even identical twins aren’t alike. Thus we all have something unique to say.

It may just be that our lives have equipped us to speak with authority about self-empowerment. For example, somebody who’s suffered from depression all their life, and then built a successful and happy life, may be perfectly qualified to write a self-help book about depression. An abused spouse who leaves their partner and rebuilds their life personally and professionally may be perfectly qualified to talk about surviving spousal abuse. A life coach who’s turned their life into a success and done the same for plenty of others could write a book about getting your life on track. There’s a genuine likelihood that anybody can draw on their life to produce a self-help book.

But the question is should we?

The market is saturated with people hoping to be the next Tony Robbins or Louise Hay. Read many of these books and what you’ll discover is nothing you couldn’t have worked out for yourself, given the time and inclination. So if this is a field you want to enter, where you want to make a name for yourself, you need to stand out.

How does one accomplish that, though?

Arguably the most important thing that an author needs to do is be original. Originality isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for fiction. If you think about bestsellers, they’re usually focused on a relationship (romantic or just a friendship), an action template, or a genre. The setting or some other aspect (or aspects) of the book might be original in themselves, but you can usually classify the type of story they’re going to be.

Look at The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. A young girl, Liesel, lives with foster parents during World War II. The family harbour a young Jewish man, and the girl discovers a love of reading at a time the Nazis are burning books. The story itself is narrated by Death, who touches upon the girl’s life early by claiming her brother’s life. Lots of great ideas there which haven’t necessarily been mixed before but, effectively, this is a coming of age story. You’ll find fiction, in general, is classifiable. The Book Thief sat on the New York Times Bestseller List for 230 weeks.

Self-help books, though, are either original or derivative. Now if a self-help book is going to be derivative, then readers might as well go to the source they’re deriving. Why bother with a copy? It might provide a different slant on the same message, but that’s all it’s going to be – a slant. It’s important if you’re aiming to deliver a message, it’s a message only you can deliver.

And whilst you might use other gurus as validation, your arguments, ideas, and exercises do need to be wholly your own. There’s little point writing something like, ‘Tony Robbins has a great exercise which I like to use, and it goes like this …’ Excuse me? Whilst you might be well-intentioned in why you’re citing this passage, you’re unlikely to get permission from Tony Robbins (or whoever the quoted author might be) to use their material. In this case, you’re impinging on their intellectual property. Most importantly, if I want to read an exercise that Tony Robbins is proposing, I’ll go read a Tony Robbins’ book or watch one of his DVDs. I’ve picked up your book because I want to know what you have to tell me.

This might seem to curtail you in your writing, but if all you have to offer is a composition of other peoples’ material, then either you don’t have anything original to say, or the only way you can articulate your ideas is through being derivative. You need to challenge yourself. Don’t articulate what you have to say as others have said it. Find what you have to say and discover how you want to say it. Consider avenues that are new and original and, most importantly, you. This doesn’t mean rephrasing those passages, but producing your own material.

Before you begin, sit down and map out what you want to say, produce exercises you want to use (and that are uniquely yours), outline the structure of how you’re going to deliver your message, and think about how all this is going to sit in your book. This isn’t something you can put together slapdash. You need to seriously think about it, delve within yourself, and if you find you’re being derivative, delve further.

There’s no formula on how to write any type of book. If somebody tells you there is, they’re trying to sell you something. There’s no ideal length to a book. You may be given guidelines that you can adhere to, a template you can wield into something manageable for you, but ultimately you have to find what’s right for what you want to say, and then work towards it.

If this is a field you’re planning on entering, don’t aim to become just one of the pack. You may have one shot at getting whatever message you have out there, so make sure it’s your message and your message alone.

Tony Robbins, Louise Hay, and all those self-help gurus didn’t get to where they are by peddling somebody else’s messages. They are who they are because they dared to be themselves, to find in themselves the message that was uniquely their own, and deliver that message to world.

If you do want to follow in their footsteps, make sure you do the same.

LZ.

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Being a Writer

August 26, 2014

writer / ˈrʌɪtə / n. [1.] A person who has written something or who writes in a particular way: the writer of the letter. [1.1] A person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or occupation: Dickens was a prolific writer.

Yup, I’ve finally done it. I’ve started a piece of writing with a dictionary definition. But I’ll request that you don’t let fly your rotten fruit in my direction for just a second, even if I perhaps deserve it.

Being a writer, and identifying oneself as a writer, is the result of an individual journey. Some writers carry the self-knowledge with them for as long as they can remember, like an indispensible piece of baggage. Other writers may have the realisation hit them like an epiphany.

Being a writer is great, in its own way. It’s fun, it’s engaging and it quickly teaches you how to avoid wasting food in your fridge due to that whole no-money-in-writing shtick. But it’s also an occupation that can feel a little murky around the edges – and ill-defined as a career, line of work or even a hobby. You’ll never hear of an accountant or lawyer having the same internal conversation – the hours and duties of most lines of work are, more often than not, strongly defined. Unless you’re a content writer for a company you’re not going to have the same sense of existential security all the time. Some writers might become offended if their writing is referred to as a hobby or pastime, even though it might be an activity wrapped around their primary job. Sometimes ‘being a writer’ – the duties and responsibilities, the requirements, the ‘job description’ – becomes an area of investigation in itself.

The typecast view of writers being introspective worriers wouldn’t be such a stringent stereotype if there wasn’t at least a grain of truth in it. And the identity crisis of ‘being a writer’ is a common zone for many writers – especially if there’s been a long dry season of writing little or no content.

The problem is that the nature of the conversations that spring up around this topic, both publicly and internally, is often … well, what might the right word be …

overkill / ˈəʊvəkɪl / n. Excessive use, treatment, or action: animators now face a dilemma of technology overkill.

Perhaps because the occupation of ‘writing’ can be a loosely-defined one, it’s far too easy to start worrying unduly about what ‘makes’ a writer. The more one pours into ‘being a writer’, the more this question can completely derail the whole thing.

The obvious answer to the question is that a writer writes. Most writers know this. And yet the nagging feeling doesn’t always go away. Many who seek to start off as a writer – in the professional, industrious sense – can often feel lost and disoriented by the prospects of putting together a short story, poem or novel. Can I be a writer without a diploma in Professional Writing and Editing? How many words per day/week/month need to be written? Am I a writer if I’ve never been published? Why do I write?

The result is a lot of white noise on becoming a writer. Being a writer. Fulfilling the criteria and checking off the list of what once needs to be in order to be a writer. Everyone has something to add and it’s not always helpful. I mean, this one article alone lists 201 tips on becoming a writer. Over two hundred tips. One of them recommends marijuana to foster creativity. That sounds like a great idea.

sarcasm / ˈsɑːkaz(ə)m / n. The use of irony to mock or convey contempt: she didn’t like the note of sarcasm in his voice.

If we were to accept that some writers may need more of a comforter than ‘writers write’, then where is the line drawn? Well, probably with another w question. Why be a writer. To publish a certain story; to indulge oneself in active escapism; to just let something out. The reason defines the way you approach the profession.

If you can’t answer why you want to be a writer, then maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that means it’s a standard function, a natural outlet for you – and being a writer is just an extension of your creative state of mind. That’s awesome. Keep doing it.

And everyone else – if you’re worrying unduly about ‘being a writer’ then you’re focusing on the wrong things. It may seem important to define the parameters of being a writer, especially if approaching the gig professionally. But you’ll already have some sense of why, even if not consciously. It’s an intimate and private motivator that keeps you on track. That’s what matters.

Beau Hillier | Editor, page seventeen

All dictionary definitions are from www.oxforddictionaries.com.

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