Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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stefpub

Re: Working At It

Tell me, Stefpub, have you run through the example games in Logical Chess Move by Move yet?
I confess I haven't. I will, I honestly want to.
But understand that I live in such a remote country - I have to crank up the steam engine to get one hour of internet a day - that Amazon takes weeks to deliver its books to me.

Could you give me some hints before the helpful guide arrive?
I'm not sure I can keep my characters talking that long.
 

MyrandaWrites

Re: question on paragraphs

Oh I know, and I thank you for taking the time to answer what seems like an elementary school question.

I did read your description of paragraphs and understand what you mean in general.

My refined question then is this; how fine does the distinction between paragraphs have to be, and is the division always black and white? Can two separate authors take the same chapter of a book and divide it into paragraphs differently and both still be correct?

If you say yes, my question will be answered to my great satisfaction, because I’ll know it’s not just me.

For example, I might write a chapter about my Seeing Eye dog, and I’m not sure whether to start a new paragraph when I am finished describing his physical characteristics and begin discussing his personality. What if the book is entirely about how this dog has given my life meaning? It wouldn’t be all one paragraph, of course, but I mean there must be degrees of “new thoughts”.

What about my entire post here, for another example? Did I divide it properly into paragraphs, should it be only one, or does it depend on something else?
 

James D Macdonald

Several Things

First ... Fame!

This thread is mentioned here: <a href="http://www.sillybean.net/archives//001460.html" target="_new">Writing and Publishing 101</a> (Excellent list of links.)

We've been <a href="http://boingboing.net/2004_02_01_archive.html#107716444588285115" target="_new">Boing-Boinged</a>!

<hr>

Now, another useful link: Gene Wolfe's <a href="http://subnet.pinder.net/onwriting/index.asp?name=./References/19970101wolfe.htm" target="_new">rules for writers</a>. (Mr. Wolfe, aside from his virtues as a writer, is best known as the inventor of the Pringle potato chip.)

<hr>

To other topics:

A hero, to my mind, is someone in your story who has died and returned from the land of the dead. This may be partly or entirely symbolic.

A protagonist, to my mind, is the person driving the plot, the one whose action or inaction causes the larger action of the book.

<hr>

How to get characters in motion, how to move them to useful positions:

This is easy: Get them moving! Get your pieces off the back rank. You will learn through experience that the best place for a knight is KB3 or QB3. While gaining that experience, just move them. You'll see what works and what doesn't.

Here's another hint: Put your characters through one-way doors. When you've moved a pawn you can't move it back.

And one more hint: If the positions of all the pieces and pawns repeats thrice the game ends. In a stalemate. Do different stuff.

And recall that all the maneuvering, all the knight-forks, all the pins, have one goal: Checkmate the other king. If you don't have the climax, you don't have diddly.

<hr>

Now paragraphing: There can be disagreements between authors on breaking the same text into paragraphs. There frequently are disagreements between authors and copyeditors on paragraphing.

Paragraphing can be for rhythm as well as for pure grammar. You are the artist. You are conveying thoughts. How you convey thoughts is part of your artistry.

<hr>

Last: The best way to learn to write a novel is by writing a novel. Has everyone done their two hours today?
 

James D Macdonald

On Plots

From another thread:

<blockquote>
<hr>
You want to see a plot with juice? Try <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375411259/ref=nosim/madhousemanor" target="_new">Red Harvest</a> by Dashiell Hammett. (I highly recommend this book -- it's got real page-turning power, and Hammett is a major American stylist.)

That plot has since resurfaced in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0780022513/madhousemanor" target="_new">Yojimbo</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6304698747/madhousemanor" target="_new">Last Man Standing</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008RH3L/madhousemanor" target="_new">Miller's Crossing</a> to name just three movies. I'm certain that some or all of that plot has appeared in other novels, in short stories, in movies, and TV dramas.

When you have written the book, you have made the plot your own. The plot is the framework that holds up the tent of your novel, but it is not the novel.
<hr>
</blockquote>
 

Beaver

Credibility

I don't know if i missed it earlier in the thread (i don't think i did), but here's my question.

What is the best way to establish credibility and make the reader believe that you are telling them the truth? Especially when writing about science and sf?

Oh i also have a post under the share your work... its my first chapter to my new undertaking. Any criticism would be welcome.<a href="http://pub43.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm31.showMessage?topicID=206.topic" target="_new">first chapter of my new story</a>
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Credibility

Hi, Beaver --

Best way to establish credibility and get the readers to trust you is to tell them the truth. Don't make up anything you can look up. Do the math.

On your chapter... do you Really Really want me to do a full edit on it?
 

qatz

Re: Heck yes!

I have no idea what Beaver wants, but to see you do a full edit on anyone's work would be Incredibly Educational, and I'm all for it!
 

Beaver

Hmmm...

Im actually scared about you doing an edit on my chapter. But if you ever get the time im sure it will help. Worst case senario is that it sucks and i need to start over...

Beaver
 

ChunkyC

Re: Hmmm...

Better Uncle Jim performs literary CSI on it than a generic rejection letter that tells you nothing other than 'no thanks'.

If Uncle Jim is willing, and you are willing, Beaver, I echo qatz's assessment of the educational merit of the exercise for all of us.
 

Beaver

Im all for it...

Im ok with it... i wouldn't have posted it if I didnt want feedback.

I've been cooking dinner for the past hour (Fish and green beans, yum!) I keep checking back, I was wondering if Uncle Jim would or not. That would be very valuable feedback. I'd be honored!

Beaver
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Im all for it...

Right.

Drop on down to <a href="http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm31.showMessage?topicID=206.topic" target="_new">p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm31.showMessage?topicID=206.topic</a>.

I'm going to take this thing one paragraph at a time, which means a series of ... 23 posts. At least.
 

James D Macdonald

Aphorism

"Style" is what you can't help doing.

Every word should advance the plot, support the theme, or reveal character. Better words do two of these things. The best do all three.
 

envygreen

Re: question?

any interest in working over a <a href=http://pub43.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm31.showMessage?topicID=210.topic>'finished' short story</a>? or are we focusing on chapters/novels for critique?

i'd like to see a side by side of a pro looking at both, especially a pro such as yourself who has stated that they are two different animals.

whoa! gene wolfe! (he's on my 'hero' list too. <a href=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312890176/qid=1078425065//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/102-1536396-7579330?v=glance&n=507846>the book of the new sun</a> series is awesome)

finally, my random question of the week. what non writing activities are important for a writer? skip the obvious, such as reading about current science for a sci fi writer, but are there any MUST PERFORM activities besides B.I.C.? (and yes, i got my two hours in yesterday, but please don't ask about last week, Teach! I swear the dog ate it!)

-rob

[edit] just noticed that this is under the 'Writing Novels' section. sorry, i'm blind to the obvious. also, for the record, EZboard hates me, and i've edited this post a good 15 times unsucessfully. then i noticed the 'formatting' radio buttons, switched to pure html, got it first try. wish they would fix the 'page not found' when you click submit or edit.
 

MyrandaWrites

Re: just wanted to say...

I've been getting so much out of the "Learning to Write with Uncle Jim" area (and elsewhere in the water cooler). I guess the best things in life really can be free. (not enough of them, unfortunately). I tried posting this before but my "request to send" just stood there, is there a waiting list? Sorry if it posts twice.
 

qatz

Re: just wanted to say...

It's called the "pathetic fallacy" because ascribing human characteristics to animals or forces of nature is fallacious, and it's pathetic. Personification works well in cartoons, but does not really belong in more serious writing. This is the one part of Jim's edits to Beaver's story that Beaver seemed to reject out of hand. Pride of authorship can be a terrible burden. In my case, I struggled with a conversation between my tiger and a Buddhist monk, one that I dearly loved, so much that I asked the assembled brethren and sistren what to do about it in a thread on this board. There were good suggestions, but only Jim came out and said, maybe you'll end up cutting it. In the long run, it might not belong; thus your present difficulty. Well, that was anathema to me. I'm just here to report that the tiger, disgusted with the way that talk turned out on paper, convinced me to dispense with it just the other night. The author is often the last one to know the truth.
 

reph

Pathetic fallacy

It's called the pathetic fallacy because ascribing feelings to things is fallacious; from Greek pathos, "passion" or "suffering."
 

James D Macdonald

Re: pathique

Recall that some time back <a href="http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm3.showMessageRange?topicID=257.topic&start=285&stop=285" target="_new">I mentioned the Pathetic Fallacy</a>, and the way it keeps turning up in <a href="http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html#004641" target="_new">slush</a>.

This is true. An awful lot of slush starts out with personification of inanimate objects. If you can make it work this is okay. But be brutally honest with yourself about whether you've made it work.
 

HapiSofi

Re: How to write sex scenes

A writer in another conference asked how to write sex scenes. I answered it as well as I could, and Jim asked if I'd re-post the message here.

History and theory:

1. Explicit sex scenes and serious literature have always had an on-again off-again relationship; for instance, they spent the nineteenth century pretending they'd never met each other. The upshot of this has never been that people stopped writing and reading about sex. What it meant was that they did it in books and magazines whose existence was taken note of far more often by the legal system than by the literary canon.

Low pay, anonymous publication, effectively no copyright protection, and the threat of arrest, don't make for good professional writing; but since attempts to suppress its publication didn't suppress the public's desire to read it, the censorship era's artificial scarcity of erotica simply meant that people took whatever they could get, bad or good. It was very much like the situation that produced the the rotgut whisky and bathtub gin of the Prohibition era, which were saleable only because better hootch and normal distribution channels had been suppressed.

Since there was no percentage in making erotic writing any better than it had to be, the marginal characters who published and distributed it didn't particularly care about its quality. It just had to do the job. A lot of appallingly bad books got into print (as well as a few that were better than almost anyone noticed). This further emphasized the division between literature and erotica.

Thing was, both forms might well be written by the same writers. In the days before tie-in novels, some authors made ends meet by cranking out smut, and in the process picked up its diction and conventions. Then, when censorship loosened up and it became possible to have sex scenes in real books (and what a bacchanalia there was for a few years!), that writing style was the one in their repertoire labeled "how to write about sex."

Most of the sex scenes you've ever read will have been influenced by that commercial porn writing style. Think of it as a nightmare from which we're still trying to awaken.

2. One more useful principle is that there are three subjects almost everyone thinks they know enough about: politics, pop music, and sex. You already know how you rate your fellow citizens' political beliefs and musical tastes, so you can probably infer the rest. What this means to you as a writer is that if you actually study this subject, and put some work into learning how to write it well, you'll be ahead of the game.

Practical issues:

Most people have their attention in the wrong place when they're writing sex scenes. They may be metaphorically looking away from their work because the subject makes them uncomfortable, or they may be too deep into the fantasy experience to get it out properly onto the page. In their different ways, both approaches make for bad prose.

What follows is the full-scale overdocumented first-timer method for writing a sex scene. As you become more familiar with the form, you won't have to do quite so much advance work. Incidentally, the advice that follows is also good for writing battle scenes, fast-moving violent action, complex magical transformations, and other set pieces.

1. Plan the action like Eisenhower planning D-Day. Why are you including this scene? What is its emotional tone? What is it intended to establish? Does the action in the scene actually establish that? Is the action consistent with the characters? (Nothing kills a characterization deader faster than a misconceived sex scene.)

Construct a timeline. Draw a diagram of the setting. Work out a list of things that are going to happen and things that are going to get said. If you don't have a good visual imagination, wait for an afternoon when everyone's out of the house, then rehearse the actions. Make sure they all make sense and are physically possible. Be doubly careful about exotic and/or outdoor settings.

Make sure you're not trying to make the scene do too much. If it's intended to do too little, either cut it out, or figure out something useful for it to do. This is fiction. Anything that doesn't contribute is a drag on the whole.

A few evocative actions, gestures, and details will work better than too many. Your readers will fill in the rest. If you want to see an illustration of this, watch the scene at the end of episode 109 in the sixth season of Buffy. There's just barely enough physical detail shown for you to tell what they're doing with the plumbing, so to speak. Most of the focus is on how it's happening, as these two characters interact with each other and with their physical environment. What the whole scene is about is this extremely intense moment of interaction between them, and its implications for the storyline. It's part of the overall ongoing story, only this part of it is being told in a series of succinct, concrete images of physical action.

2. Now that you know what they're going to be doing, you have to figure out how you're going to explain it.

This is going to sound counterintuitive, but you want to keep the descriptive language as plain, simple, and lucid as possible. Seriously. Sex scenes are emphatically not the place to get fancy with the purple prose. You're writing about sex for an audience of primates. You don't have to dress it up to get them to pay attention to what's going on, and fancied-up language will just get you into trouble.

a. You're allowed one metaphor and one simile per scene. It's best if you never use them.

Watch out for buried metaphors: figures of speech that have become so standardized that we don't think of them as figurative language: Mark leaned over and whispered a suggestion. Marcia initially looked intrigued, then worried and distressed. "I'm sorry," she said; "I just can't swallow that."

Watch out for common words that have strong sexual connotations: hard, come, ejaculate, etc. And don't name your character Dick.

b. Don't use that horrible coy figurative language you see in bodice-ripper novels, where his hardness and/or maleness hovers in the vicinity of her softness and/or wetness and/or openness and both parties hyperventilate like crazy while docking procedures are being negotiated, whereupon !!! *IT* !!! happens in some hypothetical subjunctive null-space, and then both parties come in a burst of metaphors.

If you can't stand saying what you're saying, don't say it. It's possible to do a perfectly good sex scene without mentioning the mechanics, if you prefer, and it's far better not to mention them at all than to put see-through lace-ruffled sex cozies on all the naughty bits.

c. Don't use that dreadful flattened-out cliche-ridden language you get in hacked-out naughty books (see earlier remarks on the history of the form), where (among other sins) they came up with endless stupid synonyms to disguise the fact that they were essentially using the same nouns and verbs over and over and over again.

As a rule of thumb, if the language you're using starts sounding like any other sex scene you've ever read, you probably need to rewrite that passage, because almost all sex scenes are dreadful. John D. Macdonald has written some decent ones.

Breasts are not like melons; neither are they like billiard balls. Breasts are tauter and nipples are harder in a state of arousal, but that's relative; they still feel like a baggie full of cooked oatmeal. Nipples do not go spung! Female genitalia are not naturally mossy. Nobody has a penis like a braunschweiger, though they may have a schlong like a braunschweiger. Furthermore, a penis may be a c ock, and for humorous effect it may even be a throbbing waga, but it is never a turgid, engorged, or empurpled member. The word "raging" is deeply suspect, as is "sword". Burning loins are Right Out.

Never write a scene in which a female character admires her own breasts in the mirror -- or, worse, thinks, "Gee, it's great having breasts; it means that any time I want to cop a feel, I've got one with me, instead of having to go find someone else who has one." (I actually saw that one in a published book.) Your female readers will at minimum be snickering at you, and you may never recover your credibility with them.

If body parts appear to be conducting operations entirely on their own, you have gone wrong.

d. Listen closely while you and your sweetie are having sex. Write dialogue that sounds like that.

e. Don't attempt to invent amusingly wicked perversions if you've never participated in same. I'm serious. Straight vanilla types never get this stuff right. Usually they wind up writing dumb scenes where people make lubricious faces at each other while playing unconvincing games with food. This is one of the many aspects of writing that's improved by doing a little experimentation at home. If you're writing scenes where people are messing around with champagne or chocolate sauce or popsicles, talk your sweetie into helping you stage these scenes in real life. See if they're actually erotic, not to mention feasible. If they aren't, don't write them.

(Popsicles. Such a bad idea. Remember how you put ice on an injury to help numb it? Same effect, and the high sugar content leads to yeast infections.)

(And the gerbil story? Don't believe it. Don't pass it on, either.)

f. If you're thinking of writing about the kinkier stuff, there are two big reasons to avoid areas where you don't actually know what you're talking about. One is that some of your readers will know, and you'll lose credibility with them at a catastrophic rate. The idea is not to have your readers muttering "Uh huh. Tell me again where they're supposed to have placed that attachment point?" or "Not without an extension cord, you don't," or "Turn it around and use the handle instead," or "That will only work in zero gee."

The other reason to not mess around with stuff you don't understand is that some poor fool could get the impression that you know what you're doing, try to imitate it, and do themselves or their partner an injury. This issue comes up for debate amongst writers of erotica. Some argue for the legitimacy of having weird, unrealistic, or impossible sex in works of fiction. Others argue that in a society where reliable information about this stuff is not always available, and so much misinformation is floating around loose, it's irresponsible to lead your readers into potential error.

You'll choose as you will. I'm strongly in favor of caution. I'd just as soon we never again saw a story in which characters are strung up by their hands or feet, or held by ropes that are under tension, for more than a minute or two; and I'd just as soon we didn't give readers stupid ideas involving bullwhips, vacuum cleaner hoses, long-necked glass bottles, autoasphyxiation, sex play while driving, or sticking untested objects up one's bottom. The story you're trying to tell here should not be the kind EMTs, paramedics, and ER personnel swap over an after-hours beer.

g. Cultivate a dirty-minded friend who spent a good chunk of his or her youth in dissolute pursuits, and have them beta-read your manuscripts.

This is good advice for everyone, not just authors who are trying to write sex scenes. There's a very early Georgette Heyer historical novel wherein Simon Coldheart, owner of the local castle, is indifferent to the charms of women, but has a record number of young pageboys in his service. They hero-worship him, sleep in his bedchamber, share his meals, etc., and he's visibly fond of them. In the book, Simon's neighbors keep saying "He's so good with children; what a pity he hasn't found the right woman yet! What a wonderful father he'll be someday." And as I read it, all I could think was, "Nope, unh-uh; that's not what his neighbors are saying about him." What young Georgette Heyer needed was a formerly dissolute friend to tell her what Simon's neighbors were really saying.

h. You know how reading someone's novel will tell you a lot about how they view the world, what they believe, etc., even if they don't mean to tell you that about themselves? Double and redouble that if you're writing sex scenes.

And that's enough for now.
 

MacAl Stone

protagonists

Okay, I tried, but I can't just leave it alone...
James MacDonald said:
A hero, to my mind, is someone in your story who has died and returned from the land of the dead. This may be partly or entirely symbolic.
This seems like we could play a bit fast and loose with it. I love that. Also hearkens to the classic notion of Epic Hero, and Odysseus as a template for "hero." Okay.

Uncle Jim also said:
A protagonist, to my mind, is the person driving the plot, the one whose action or inaction causes the larger action of the book.
Not to beat a dead horse...Sue Snell is the protag of Carrie because her actions drive the whole novel. Sue takes part in the mock-stoning with tampons in the opening shower scene, then feels bad, browbeats poor Tommy into asking Carrie to the Spring Ball, thinking to atone for her actions. She does this with clear knowledge that she is tampering with Carrie's life. Tommy asks her what good she thinks it will do, and Sue tells him, "Why . . . It'll bring her out of her shell, of course. Make her . . . " (page 82, 1975 Signet ed.) Tommy calls Sue on her hubris, but Sue won't back down.

This sets up the whole chain of events that culminates in the pig's blood episode, which sets Carrie off on her final rampage, the climax of the novel.

King does a nice thing here, by the way, and returns to the opening shower scene, and gives the reader a quick snapshot of Sue, in that scene, from Carrie's perspective.

Interestingly enough, Sue then experiences Carrie's death:
"Sue tried to pull away, to disengage her mind, to allow Carrie at least the privacy of her dying, and was unable to. She felt she was dying herself and did not want to see this preview of her own eventual end. . . .
(she's dying o my god i'm feeling her die)
And then the light was gone. . ."

Thus catapulting Sue to the lofty ranks of "hero" and indeed she has undergone a transformation. No longer the same girl who just went aolng with the horrible pranks that plagued Carrie, Sue tells off the State Investigatory Board, when she feels demeaned by their repeated questions.

So now I promise to let it be. Thanks for your indulgence everyone. We should all just be grateful Uncle Jim didn't use an example from Pet Sematary
. . . I wrote my master's thesis on that one :rolleyes
 

MacAl Stone

oops

forgot to cite those last couple of references...the return to the shower scene happens on page 230 (1975 Signet edition) . . . and Sue's experience of Carrie's death occurs on page 232.

And for what it's worth, I thought the novel should've ended on page 233, without the subsequent "Wreckage" chapter.

BTW, been faithfully putting in BIC time, have reached some 50ish pages. My personal purgatory. This is the point where I can't resist the temptation to reread. Then I have to change stuff. Then three years later, I am still re-reading and changing stuff on those same 50 pages. Three years after that, I find the original 50 pages in hard copy, realize that they were MUCH better than what I have rewritten them into. So the whole thing goes into a drawer and I write a new 50 pages to agonize over.

So I'm not gonna reread. Just gonna plow onward.

Sorry, had a little "true confessions" moment...
 

James D Macdonald

Stuff

Thanks, Hapi. That was truly useful.

<hr>

MacAlStone, you're moving from opening to mid-book. Keep going!
 

ChunkyC

Re: writing sex scenes

I too would like to thank Hapi for that superb post. I have ventured into that territory in the book I'm currently working on and Hapi's advice will be front and centre as I revise.
 
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