Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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qatz

Re: well

I'm not so sure when I do violence how credible it is ... think I might farm it out to a really tough sort like you ... :lol
 

HapiSofi

Re: Further

JDM said: Many years ago, when I was first becoming a professional writer, I had a day job. And people would say to me (word was out that I was writing), "I've always wanted to write a book, but I never had the time." And I'd think "You son of a [bleep!]. I set my alarm clock two hours early to make time to write."

I can vouch for this secondhand. I've talked to people who were at a writing workshop held at a Cape Cod B&B where JDM was one of the instructors. The sound of typing started coming out of his room before six o'clock in the morning.
 

Salve Ghostwalker

Re: Further

Hapi said:

>>>I've talked to people who were at a writing workshop held at a Cape Cod B&B where JDM was one of the instructors. The sound of typing started coming out of his room before six o'clock in the morning. <<<

Morning writing isn't for everyone, but it's definitely something worth trying out. As Lawrence Block says in Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print, "It's better strategy to write after the morning coffee than after the post rat-race martini."

I'm not very creative much before noon, and I find that sometimes my mind is too tired if I try to write too late at night, so I write mostly just before lunch or just after dinner. It's natural to procrastinate, unless you build a strong habit of working at about the same time every day, so Jim's method is a good one to follow if you're a morning person. For many people, there is work during the day and distractions or family obligations in the evening.

I've tried setting writing time goals, but I don't feel any sense of accomplishment when I meet them. I'd rather say, I wrote 500 words, or 1,000 words than "I sat in front of a blank word processor screen for two hours."
 

James D Macdonald

Re: well

I'm not so sure when I do violence how credible it is ...

First: become a keen observer of the world.

Second: Ask yourself if the violence advances the plot, reveals character, or supports theme. If it does none of those things then it doesn't belong in your book. If it does any of those things, the barest sketch will allow your readers to fill in the parts that they find necessary for their own reading experience, drawn from their own needs and memories.


You are providing folks with a blueprint for a story that they are building for themselves.
 

johnbaern

Hmm.

I like Jim's last tidbit about violence in a story. Much the same applies to sexual content, no?

John
 

HapiSofi

Re: Hmm.

It does, yes.

Sex and violence should both be written with great care and advance planning. Choreograph it. Get all the movements and their logic straight in your head. Visualize every bit of it. Go for clarity in the writing, and avoid figurative language unless you've planned for it and there's a good reason for it.
 

qatz

Re: well

Thank you Jim, hello Hapi, and pleasure as always AJ. My short short story for Christmas regarding last week's fictional journey to East Africa has at last been blogged; please click here.
www.livejournal.com/users/joebrowntdog
I hope you enjoy it. It has two instances of violence, one essential to character and the other important to plot and atmospherics, or something. Would appreciate it if you could review it in the context of our discussion and give your reactions.
And then the ubiquitous sex scene, which is absent here; more mystery! Extrapolating from what Jim and Hapi said, and using my own rather uneven experience, I would guess hints are better than explicitness. But one could even argue that the London vampire-ponography website, which I mentioned much earlier, could have been following that rule! :hat
 

James D Macdonald

Slush Reading

Today I found myself reading a bit of slush. Here's some advice I want to pass along:

* Spelling counts.
* Agreement of number is important.
* Keep the tense consistent.
* You're allowed to have more than one sentence per paragraph. In fact, you're encouraged to do so.
* Dialog is one of your basic tools. Learn how to use quote marks.
* Don't make your readers guess about the antecedents of your pronouns.
* You've heard of Point of View? Pick one. Then use it.
* Not all nouns need adjectives; not all verbs need adverbs.
* Assigning emotions to inanimate objects is called the Pathetic Fallacy. First, because it's a fallacy. Second, because it's pathetic.

* SHOW, DON'T TELL!
 

Lori Basiewicz

Re: Slush Reading

Uncle Jim, it is funny that you posted this list. Way back when I was in a college-level Creative Writing class, one of my regular homework assignments was to critique my classmates' stories. It became routine for a group of friends to gather round while I read them aloud. Many of them were really bad and were treated with much derision. Not nice of us, I know, but human.

I have maintained contact with some of these friends throughout the years. Recently, one of them mentioned this old past-time and, knowing I'm now a professional writer, asked, "Does anyone really submit stories like those?"
 

SRHowen

YES--

I think I will use your list(with your permission) to put at the bottom of my rejection letters from the WCP--man, I get so many subs that break every one of those rules and then I get scathing e-mails about what a crock and f'd up editor I am because I don't recognize their greatness.

I'll add one more--never ever e-mail an editor and say that they owe you a response in whatever amount of time, never ever follow up a rejection with a nasty threatening e-mail--what do you think--that this will make the editor say, "Hey, I am so scared, I better publish this guy?" :ack Wrong answer.

There is enough editing that goes into anything sent to a publisher--even those subs you think are perfection personified will most likely require editing--so why be sloppy? No idea.

Shawn (Confession--I spelled my agent's name wrong in my first query letter to him--but my query was strong enough that he overlooked it--not many would)
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Slush Reading

"Does anyone really submit stories like those?"

As I keep telling people, "If you can write two consecutive pages of grammatical English with all the words spelled right, you're already in the top ten percent of the slush pile."

Short answer: Yes, they do.

Even shorter answer: Arrrrgh!

Notice: Publishing isn't a lottery. Yes, major publishers get thousands of manuscripts. The way they select their manuscripts for publication isn't by going into the Slush Room and pulling out three at random then sending the rest back. This is a game of skill, not a game of luck. If you send in a good (or at least competent) manuscript, odds are good that you'll get published. If you send in bad manuscripts, you won't get published no matter how many times you submit.

Now ... if in addition to having the bare bones mechanics of English prose down pat you can tell a story ... you're in the top two percent of the slush heap where the sales come from.

Trust me on this: I promise you that publishers do not have rejection slips that say "Sorry! Too well-written and original for us!" no matter how many times you hear unpublished writers say that their manuscripts were rejected for having exactly those two qualities.

The mass of unpublishable slush is:

a) Badly written,
b) Trite,
or
c) Badly written and trite.

<HR>

Addendum: For Shawn. Sure, use the list. If even one writer Takes the F'ing Hint it'll be worth it.
 

Salve Ghostwalker

Re: Slush Reading

>>> * You're allowed to have more than one sentence per paragraph. In fact, you're encouraged to do so. <<<

The popularity of ezines is exacerbating this problem. Shorter paragraphs are easier to read online, but writers are going overboard with single-sentence paragraphs. This writing style is propagated by declaring it as gospel.

How can a writer tell a good story if he denies himself the use of paragraphs, one of the basic building blocks of writing?
 

James D Macdonald

Bizarre

Next bizarre bit of writing advice:

Memorize this speech. Be able to recite it any time, anywhere, no matter what you're doing. (There will be a quiz.) Practice frequently, and aloud.

I promise you that your writing will improve if you have this bit by heart:

<blockquote>
<hr>

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?


<HR>
</Blockquote>

That's from Richard II, Act 3, scene ii, by William Shakespeare
 

godlikegreg

Re: Learn Writing with Uncle Jim

i've done it, i have now put down creative writing down as one of my majors when i start uni next year. now it gets serious :tongue
 

Note On

Sex and violence

For what it's worth, I've never found "advance planning" necessary for scenes that include sex or violence.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Sex and violence

Fascinating!

How do you decide where they'll go in your story, and what they'll accomplish in your plot?
 

Note On

Planned parenthood

"How do you decide where they'll go in your story, and what they'll accomplish in your plot? "

Three answers:

1. The context was how to write credible violence, not how to determine scene function. In that case, planning is, I think, of very limited value. Credibility comes mostly from a writer knowing what he or she is talking about; if you don't know much about how submarines work, you can't write a good submarine book, and if you don't know much about sex or violence, you can't write those, either. That's half of it; the other half is whether you can express things evocatively.

2. I think advance planning is overtaught--which is understandable, since it's the most plausible thing to teach. You can't go wrong telling people to measure twice and cut once. But in my case, anyway, it doesn't work. I find out where I'm going by going there--so when I see "Plan ahead!" presented on writing boards as though there's no alternative...well, there is. Advance planning (or "outlining," or whatever) is just one approach, and:

3. Different approaches work for different people. For me, too much planning (which sometimes means ANY planning) before I start a book kills my interest in it. I start with a few vague images and maybe a couple of half-baked ideas. It's worked so far.

None of this is to say that careful advance planning is wrongheaded. I just see it presented very often as though it's the only good way to work. It's not.
 

Note On

Slush

Oh, and BTW, your take on slush pile reading agrees with mine. I once believed that slush piles were only "good" or "bad" in a subjective sense--that it mostly had to do with the editor's taste. Then I read a slush pile.

Jesus Christ. There's nothing subjective about it. Most of it is barely English; issues of storytelling don't arise because we simply don't get that far. You've heard that an editor can tell within two pages, and maybe objected to the idea? That's a liberal estimate: Try one paragraph.

The one thing I'd...well, not disagree with, but expand upon, is the pathetic fallacy. As with any "don't," someone talented can make it a strength:

"I pronged a moody forkful of the fragrant eggs and b."

--P.G. Wodehouse
 

qatz

Re: violence as such

all i can say to note on, is an ex-marine sought me ought for advice on how to write the violence in the scene he was working on, and we spent much of the weekend doing that, and i humbly think i'm being helpful to him in a grisly way, and i'm an ex-hippie peacenik with Buddhist tendencies. In fact, you should see my tiger! :hat

I'll be away form the site for awhile. thanks jim.
 

Note On

Violence

Gatz, I don't think that contradicts anything I wrote, since one of you apparently knew something about violence and the other apparently knew how to express things. Sounds like a potentially productive team to me.
 

LiamJackson

Re: violence as such

"Doing violence" and "writing violence" are two different things.:grin

My own perceptions are perhaps a bit jaded and soliciting input from people like gatz, (someone who sees the world from a slightly different perspective) is one of the ways I can "adjust fire." That type of assistance, along with "honest"
critiques should, and will make me a better writer.

(provided I can control my like for commas, gerunds and passive phrases)


Thanks, Gatz. And a major thanks to Jim D.
 

SRHowen

NoteOn

well, I also fly by the seat of my pants when writing fiction. I don't plan--and those who are my wise readers will tell you, I hit hard when I get to a "Shawn moment" chapter. (violence or sex) Do I say OK, this guy is going to capture this guy and cut him to ribbons slowly--no, as NoteOn said, if I plan even a small amount my mind rolls over and plays dead--why oh why it says are we going through this again?

Now that is not to say I can't write with an outline (ghost writing I have done) but I prefer the no plan, let the character's take me where they will way.

Shawn
 

Note On

Planning

I sort of leapfrog through a book, writing myself into a corner, then analyzing my way out of it until I hit another corner. So I don't think I'd really call it "seat of the pants." But if I lose my spark and interest, so does the writing.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Planning

But if I lose my spark and interest, so does the writing.

Oh, absolutely. The readers can always tell when the writer is bored, too.

I never said (or at least, I hope I didn't) that this is the only way to write. All I can promise is that those who are following along will learn how I write, which may or may not be useful to them.

I have lots of little idiosyncracies; for example, I dislike the word cluster "and then." "And" means two events happened at the same time, "then" means they happened sequentially. "And then" means ... what? I'll change that group to "and" or "then."

As those who've been reading along know, I'm a very heavy outliner. My outlines are perhaps 3/4 the length of the finished novel. (They're very rough, they tell rather than show, they sketch out people, places, and dialog, they have things like "An exciting battle scene goes here" or "Time to tie up the Second Girlfriend Plot-thread" -- they're darn-near unreadable by anyone but me and my coauthor.) Bits of business are only suggested, and frequently change many times before the first draft. But that's just me.

Every writer has his or her own way of writing, and the more honestly and accurately he or she presents it the weirder it sounds.
 

Note On

One way

> I never said (or at least, I hope I didn't) that this is
> the only way to write

No, not at all. I was actually responding to something HapiSofi wrote.

I don't mind "and then" on the occasions when it benefits rhythm. When it doesn't, I don't see a reason for it to exist.

"Rather" and "quite" bug me, though. They almost never mean enough to justify their existences.
 
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