Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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SRHowen

Well---

If that's an outline, then my first drafts are outlines. I write a mess the first draft that maybe only me an my agent can see the potential in--but it is filled with things like DESCRIBE ROOM, RESEARCH, or what color where this guys eyes in chapter 3?

I write a 70,000 word mad dash through and in many places have the scene told in different ways many times, or offer info in many places through out the book trying for the best fit--to me it's not an outline just a brain storm first draft.

Shrug, and yup I have always said each person must find their own way and while you are trying to find what works it's best to try other's ways just in case they work for you.

and then--just kidding, I also do not like that particular phrasing.

Shawn
 

reph

"And then"

Why "and then"? Because "then" is not a conjunction.

"At 5:00 A.M., the writer settled her butt in the chair. She typed 'Chapter One' and then stared out the window."

If you say "She typed 'Chapter One' and stared out the window," she could have done those things simultaneously. If you say "She typed 'Chapter One,' then stared out the window," it's ungrammatical, much like "She brushed her teeth, later took a shower."
 

James D Macdonald

Re: "And then"

Then is an adverb. In "Joe walked to the door, then turned," then modifies turned.

"She typed 'Chapter One,' then stared out the window," is perfectly grammatical; then modifies stared.


"She brushed her teeth, later took a shower," is ungrammatical since it leaves out the word "she." "She brushed her teeth, later she took a shower," while hardly graceful, is grammatically correct.
 

Note On

And then

"She brushed her teeth, later she took a shower," while hardly graceful, is grammatically correct.

Actually, that's a comma splice. English teachers hate 'em.

I just finished MORALITY PLAY by Barry Unsworth, and he uses them constantly, to great effect.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: And then

Right. Better would be "She brushed her teeth; later she took a shower."

A comma splice is infinitely preferable to "and then."
 

qatz

Re: Planning a killing

Oh, On, you're so right about "quite." I used to ask my Anglophile friends, what exactly does this word mean? And they'd look at me like I was crazy. "What do you mean, what does it mean?" So I'd press the point, and they'd say "Well, it means 'quite.' That's all. A sufficiency. No, that's not quite it. But you see -- it means itself. It's quite enough." And I'd say, "I see." And they'd say, "quite."

I am an advocate for using words where they're due poetically even if the grammar's not "quite" right. There may be a use for "And then" in repetition for dramatic effect ... as in "Harold looked up, and saw the mushroom cloud. And then the wind blew furiously. And then the clouds dropped down; the clouds fell from the sky."

On's comment about writing selfinto a corner is interesting.

Well, On, I do think you have a good point, as well as many bad ones, about violence. And as for the good one, it is this.

One of my violent scenes normally starts with one of my characters getting violent. That is, the character itself does that, and then I say whoah! Looks like a violent moment coming up! And the run of the mill piece of violence is short and soon over.

In fact, you may be talking about the run-of-the-mill violent scene, which is pretty minor, as opposed to the signature kind of violence which defines a story.

But any significant moment of violence, if it's important to the story, must be well thought out. Also, just because you've hit a guy or two, or know the way one piece of equipment or another works, from the Navy ship to night-vision binos, doesn't mean you know anything about either the technique or art of writing violence. Maybe so, maybe no.

For that matter, your assumption that I was not giving LJ advice on technical as well as artistic aspects of using deadly force was just wrong. You should have heard me going on and on about a certain kind of knife! I love that knife, even if I can't remember how to spell its name! And "shoot this guy ... shoot that guy ... but stab this guy"! Very important to have your syntax right when you're killing.

My main advice to LJ was that when you have a scene where your protagonist kills an important bad guy as well as two or three guards on the way in, what you are doing is composing the dance of death. This is a real dance with a terrible beauty and must be, as Jim says, sketched in, even hinted at in just the right way, but not more, so that the reader's own imagination can fill in the details. The violence is not taking place on the paper, it's in the reader's imagination.

It's also not "I slugged him, and his eyes popped out." -- Oh, really? (Yawn)

I think we're all adults here and we all presumably know how to have intimate relations with significant other people, to put it delicately, but most of us don't just describe it. If it's salacious, it's pornography, and if it's not, it's clinical, but either way it's boring. There is also a pornographic kind of violence, and it's boring. Boring, boring, boring. I am sure you can write that very well without planning, I know I can.

Just as dancing, though, is made to portray the most beautiful of human things, the beauty of a fine body in motion, making a gorgeous thing of the rising lure of sex, so the dance of death portrays the mystery and horrible beauty of life's end, the opposite of sex you could say, or the distillation of the essence of sex my weird vampiric friends in London would argue. This is, in particular, the destruction of one life by another living being contrary to every moral code. It is life in its extremity all right. It is deciding an issue with, as LJ says, extreme prejudice. It is terrifying, but it is beautiful if done in balance with the rhythms of the world. Tigers do that.

That act, to be shown at its most beautiful, must be most sparing in detail. Economy in action. Watch any beautiful dancer. Oh sure, describe the knife, enthuse about it; but the act of death itself must stand for itself as a work of art. It will have its own meaning. As the beauty of a stone is revealed by its carving, the beauty of a body is displayed by its dancing, the beauty inherent in a noble death should be shown by the killing.

And you say that needs no planning! Hah!

In fact, my conversation with LJ about his killing scene made me suggest he re-think the whole structure of the novel, and clarify aspects of theme, character, & plot, for they all are reflected in those few moments when the death takes place.
So On's seeing no need in planning because he "knows" the subject -- maybe so, but what does that mean? What does any of us really know? I have done 12 years of karate, been shot at, had friends killed, seen men die, and defeated angry trained killers just by staring them down. That doesn't mean I know anything, or On does, compared to another fellow or two I could name, but won't, in Special Ops. So On's not needing planning makes me think of our recently departed friend Ill, who is writing a 900,000 word novel, he says, with no particular planning. On seems much more professional and astute than that, but he does make what are known technically in my day job (where I performed the "role" of an assassin for two decades) as "violent" assumptions!

My particular favorite when it comes to violence, and I think the hardest part to do credibly, is ... hand to hand or, in my tiger's case, fang to neck. The world is a violent and even tragic place these days, but most humans make a botch of it. A finger to the neck can immobilize, a touch to the right pressure point causes death. And most humans do not keep their balance when doing this, so it becomes an ugly thing. Here, as elsewhere, we could learn a lot from animals. Violent death in struggles between adversaries should have a dignity borne of balance; killing should be done beautifully if it is to be done at all.

Now I really am going to be gone.

I may post one or two of my letters to LJ, just things dealing with general killer topics not the specifics of his stuff, before I get out of here. Or not. But peace be unto you.
 

rtilryarms

Christmas

Off topic,

quatz, it sounds like you had a slightly more interesting Christmas than I

Mike
 

qatz

Re: Planning a killing

More for On before I go. That quote from PG Wodehouse is brilliant. And I was thinking, along those lines, of a particular friend when Jim made his dictum about the Pathetic Fallacy ... which is, BTW, the way I learned it too. This friend, on the contrary, would anthropomorphize nearly everything, from her dog down to her cute little car ... her explanation being,

"Well where I come from (Nepal) everyone's an animist, and if all things actually do have feelings, which we probably won't find out until the fulness of time, won't I have been rude all this time in ignoring that, just to follow a rule of English?" "And besides," she said with a flounce, "it's just a more pleasant way to talk." The woman is actually a very good writer, with a book or two up her sleeves, but probably won't get around to publishing them for a while, because she is otherwise occupied -- and having had an unpleasant experience getting a technical article published (you guessed it, I was the co-author), we has no inclination to re-join our dismal trade soon. Too bad -- she really is terrific.
 

Note On

Planning

Qatz, that was a lovely rant. You didn't really read what I wrote, but that didn't make the rant any less lovely.

However, its loveliness doesn't make it any more universally accurate than any other prescription for writing. Some things, you have to plan; others, the more you plan, the worse it gets. The amazing thing, to me, is how rarely we can predict which it's going to be, for any given scene. Sometimes the easy ones don't get there through winging it, and the important, critical, pivotal, crucial, earthshaking ones can't get there through planning. Sometimes it's the other way around.

Writing is not merely a conscious act. If it were, then yes, planning would always be of primary importance. And then everyone could be a genius, because all they'd have to do is learn project management and work their way through the PERT charts, check off the milestones, and recalculate the man-hours based on what's left in the buffer until the goal is achieved.

But this isn't project management. It's art. It's chaos and calm, Apollonian and Dionysian, fine typography and carved flesh. It's whatever works, and sometimes it's what doesn't. If planning everything works for you, then it works for you. Sometimes it works for me, too. But I do believe, for myself, that any plan that always works just means the goal is too modest.

Published fiction writers owe aspiring fiction writers better than easily definable guidelines--and we most especially owe them better than the utterly defensible ones we come up with because we sincerely want to help. Let's tell them the truth instead. The truth is, we don't know either. All we know is keep sitting your ass in the chair and keep looking at what's really in front of you; keep learning to see it better and get better at working it. All else is hubris.
 

Note On

And it was such a nice rant, too.

Damn. I left out "Trust yourself" and "Aim for where you're uncertain."
 

reph

Adverbs

Sorry, "She typed 'Chapter One,' then stared out the window" is not grammatical, no matter how many people say it is.

Try substituting any other adverb for "then."

She typed "Chapter One," finally stared out the window.

She typed "Chapter One," soon stared out the window.

She typed "Chapter One," sleepily stared out the window.

There isn't anything special about "then" that makes it do what other adverbs can't.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Adverbs

Not to be unpleasant about it, Reph, but you're wrong.

If I draw a single line through the word "and" every time I see "and then," the sentences work better. Every time.

Unless the actions are happening simultaneously -- then I draw the line through "then." That too improves the sentence.

The word cluster "and then" is meaningless. It's an oxymoron. There's no excuse for using it.

Yes, you'll find "and then" in some of our published works. These were added by copyeditors who were, universally, wrong.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Planning a killing

...of a particular friend when Jim made his dictum about the Pathetic Fallacy...

If you'd read the piece of slush I'd read just before I typed that, you'd have said the same thing.

In your friend's case, assigning emotions to inanimate objects is part of her character and upbringing. Further, it's happening in dialog, not in narration.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Planning

You'll notice that I'm not saying that outlines are everything, Note On. I've also mentioned how a book is like a chess game. Later on I'm going to tell folks how a short story is like a lime pie. And how a novel is like a house. How it's like the bottom of a stream. How it's like a box. How it's like a vase.

Don't get hung up on outlines. I use 'em, sometimes, for the things that outlines are good for. Other times I use positional play. When I think about a novel in progress, I see it as a shape, with volume, angles, corners and edges.

I also have a hole open up in the screen, with pictures behind it that I describe. I guess I'm in an alpha state then.

Sometimes I turn off the monitor and type, because the shapes of the words are a distraction from the writing.

All I can do to teach how to write is use analogies. Writing is the thing itself. That's why I've been stressing the BIC method.

As writers we are are defined by the act of writing. Thinking about writing, planning to write, researching, outlining, revising ... those things are not writing. Only writing is writing.
 

qatz

Re: Planning

Hey, thanks Mike, about the story! I keep meaning to revise it more, but don't. It's one of the best short stories I've ever written, I think, or will be if I ever finish it up ... I don't write short fiction too good, so it doesn't have much competition ... and I did it all on "inspiration" and random-comments-as-they-came-up. "Today in Karnok ..."

I hate outlines. My outlines usually don't make much more sense than the story does. I have three outlines for the tiger book. The main one is 2 pages long. The tiger book is a big book. I doubt it will get to 900,000 pages though. The last book I did, actually was meant to be half a book (abt. 40,000 words), had no outlines. I just selected a theme for each chapter and wrote the chapter. Not so much rants as ravings!

Now back to On and his delightful response.

First, On, thanks for appreciating my rant! I love to rant! If they just paid the big bucks for a rant I'd be in clover. But, sadly, they arrest me for vagrancy instead.

Now as far as me reading what you wrote. I have to admit that I actually did read what you wrote. The reason this is an admission is there's always the question about whether I understood what I read, and with me you've always got to add that second question! Sadly, I may not have.

As far as I can tell, you're saying outlines are not the be all and the end all ... And that writing must have magic in it or else it's just formula. And that "heck if I know" is about the most honest answer a so-called expert can really say when asked the question about how writing really gets done. Well, I think you are absolutely true, no truer rightness has ever been spoked. And I just couldn't get outta here without saying that. Jim said, and will say again if he wants to, that he's just teaching HIS way of writing which is heavy on outlines. I agree with that approach in the context of his course, after all it's his course and he can assign its meaning, especially since he knows what he's doing and I don't, but I'm always throwing in impertinent passages that go more toward substance than structure, perhaps more than I should but I do anyway.

The truth is that Jim is being helpful to a wide spectrum of people, many of whom need to know just how a story is constructed. Like me, for example. I know all about bad writing. It's the good writing I've kind of forgotten how to do. And in order to dwell in magic, you have to know how to get there. I talk a lot about bad writing (mine). The best technical writing I did, and there's been a lot of good stuff, used a bound-in-hide formal outline (hand-done). The best piece of fiction I wrote, a 315 pp. novel, started from crazy inspiration on the first day of BIC but, as it developed, needed intricate outlining to keep the course. But those, finally just crumbled into the plot and the thing was finished as it begun -- crazily.

The way I actually plan my story, and please don't beat me up when I say this, speaking of violence, but it's true -- is I dream about it. When I either get tired of working on the story or it just isn't working for some reason, or sometimes before I've gathered up the strength to face another day of dismal failure at the keyboard, I lie back in bed and daydream about the story. I'm thinking about what the characters are going through and kind of trekking along with them. Maybe I become them. They start moving and going down the river. Aha! I say. Llahsa is upstream of the river at that point! It makes a difference to the plot. Or, aha! you have to use the guns before the knife. Or, and so on.

Without things like that happening, the scene with the official in Qinghai might never have made sense. And so on.

These things are not inspiration. They are merely going through the doors (heavy, jade-green doors, normally) that lead to inspiration. And when I get there then the writing can be beautiful, and sweet, and wise.

But that said, I can't just rant like this or I'll just produce mush for the slush. My story needs people (or animals) going places, doing things, like real life or no one's gonna read it, every. Which is my way of saying, eh, you have a point, he has a point. Everyone needs something to believe; I believe I'll have another beer.

I'm outta here. :hat
 

qatz

Re: Planning

only one ps., reph. paying too close attention to grammar is the best way to avoid writing something meaningful. oddly, illandur thought he was a grammar whiz. i know grammar cold, and jim's got the hang of it. i might quibble with something he said, but i won't, and i don't quibble about grammar here anyway. the general rule is, jim's not wrong. if you want to pay me the big bucks to instruct you on grammar, you may. but in the meantime just listen to jim. life's too short. take it easy.
 

reph

Wrong?

"Not to be unpleasant about it, Reph, but you're wrong."

It seems to me that saying, flat out, "You're wrong," IS a way of being unpleasant about it.

Mr. MacDonald, you've built up so much credibility here by giving sound advice that I felt compelled to provide a second opinion on the "and then" question, for the benefit of those who might assume that "and then" must be avoided because it's among your pet peeves.

Using "then" as a conjunction happens to be one of MY pet peeves. Readers may decide for themselves after thinking about the uses of parts of speech.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Wrong?

I recognize that "and then" may be an idiomatic expression, and thus acceptable in dialog.

(Unlike "over and out" in radio comms, which is never acceptable anywhere.)

Reph, early on, back at the beginning of this thread, I quoted McIntyre's Law: "Under the right circumstances, anything I tell you may be wrong." I also said that my mutant talent was making my opinions sound like facts.

If your writer's ear tells you to use "and then," you're perfectly free to do so.
 

Note On

And bears, oh my!

One of the problems with being

(1) a newcomer to an online group, and;

(2) me

is that there are group dynamics in place before I get there, and I don't bother finding out what they are (or who anybody is) before jumping in and posting opinionated stuff. So it's often not clear that I'm just going off on my own tangent, not necessarily pointing at anybody. I haven't disagreed with anything James D. has posted--but obviously something I wrote looked that way.

I assume BIC is Butt In Chair?
 

Duane

Good Suff

I'm finding a great deal of good advice here. Some slight differences...but expected.

I have had a good concept for a novel for some time now. However, my lack of experience keeps me from approaching the task. This forum is starting to give me enough information to get started.

Thanks to Jim and all the others for the "Good Suff"
I'll keep reading and learning!
 

Note On

Then

> Sorry, "She typed 'Chapter One,' then stared out
> the window" is not grammatical, no matter how
> many people say it is.

I see nothing wrong with it.

On a tangent, "grammar" isn't always as clear-cut as we wish it were. For instance, this sentence:

It's raining.

What part of speech is "it?"
 

reph

Bears and betes noirs

The preexisting group dynamics needn't be so limiting. Every person who enters a group changes it.

Just to clarify a bit on "and then": My writer's ear isn't rooting for the phrase. Neither is my editor's mouth. I'm only cautioning against replacing it with something that makes the sentence malformed. I guess that's my grammarian's brain speaking up.

So "and then" is wordy and graceless? Fine. There's always another way. "Gloria settled her butt in the chair and typed 'Chapter One.' She stared out the window. Next, she sipped peppermint tea from a chipped blue cup. At length she changed 'One' to a numeral. She paused, changed it back, sighed, consulted a style manual, pressed Delete." A series of events, and not one "then" in the lot.

Incidentally (or not), speakers don't say "I walked to the door, then opened it." Only writers do that.
 
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