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There’s a quote from Traeger barbecue: “Good barbecue comes from experience and experience comes from bad barbecue.”
I think this can be true about good writing so here are some things we learned from our writer’s group. These things got changed and we all learned how to be better writers.
#1. Most reveals are cheap shots. Only do them if the reveal has been in plain sight the whole time, running a parallel story so that you can re-interpret the whole story by knowing this reveal. When you do reveal it should mean something. Otherwise we readers probably are not at the edge of our seats wondering what a character’s name is, for instance.
#2. Readers are there for the ride. We don’t expect to be told every detail and we aren’t thinking that there might be hidden meaning or a back story to every character we meet. If the reader is supposed to be questioning something then the author needs to plant the question into our minds deliberately. For example, magic sword fights are supposed to take a minute or so, right? We as an audience don’t really have a sense of how long a “normal”magic swordfight should take. My author friend assumed that we were all on the edge of our seats wondering about the backstory of a brand new bit character because the Mary Sue MC was taking an extra minute killing him. The following chapter about the character’s tormented childhood was the most interesting in the book, but why did the backstory come after the character had been introduced and killed without me even realizing there was anything out of the ordinary? Because the author was so sure that we would have huge questions about the extra abilities of this character and how hard the character was to fight, but we didn’t know they were extra. It was all magical. But since the fight was boring and meaningless when it came first, just changing the positions of the chapters and made me care about this character before the fight. If you want me to think a certain way, put it in the book. Have the MC thinking “I can’t believe it, this is taking longer than ever before to kill someone. What black magic is this?” Then the question is planted.
#3. Don’t make me hyper aware that basically you’ve done 0 research with something like: “The physicist developed an equation that solved world hunger and ended socialism.” ? ? ?
# A play that is 90% voice-over while sitting in a library and 10% a twist needing animation in order to execute probably shouldn’t be a play.
#5. Maybe most writers who write sex scenes or about flirtation who are wishing they were in that scene might want to consider that their readers might not like that scene one bit. A 40 year old male protagonist gets his groove on with a 20 year old single mom who is in the story only for her body’s sake. The author assumed every man there would love it, and meanwhile it was becoming obvious that he couldn’t quite grasp that women in the room had opinions at all. Part of the fantasy included the 40 year old impressing the 20 year old by offering to change baby’s diaper. The lesson I took home is that what might seem like money in the bank to one writer might be the moment many readers turn away. Writers need feedback to improve.
Okay, really specific lessons, but also really valuable lessons for me and our group. It’s tough to get your reader to care and that is the science I’m interested in.
I hope you share what you’ve learned from dumpster fires and bad barbecue in whatever way you’d like to… and I hope I learn a lot from this thread.
I think this can be true about good writing so here are some things we learned from our writer’s group. These things got changed and we all learned how to be better writers.
#1. Most reveals are cheap shots. Only do them if the reveal has been in plain sight the whole time, running a parallel story so that you can re-interpret the whole story by knowing this reveal. When you do reveal it should mean something. Otherwise we readers probably are not at the edge of our seats wondering what a character’s name is, for instance.
#2. Readers are there for the ride. We don’t expect to be told every detail and we aren’t thinking that there might be hidden meaning or a back story to every character we meet. If the reader is supposed to be questioning something then the author needs to plant the question into our minds deliberately. For example, magic sword fights are supposed to take a minute or so, right? We as an audience don’t really have a sense of how long a “normal”magic swordfight should take. My author friend assumed that we were all on the edge of our seats wondering about the backstory of a brand new bit character because the Mary Sue MC was taking an extra minute killing him. The following chapter about the character’s tormented childhood was the most interesting in the book, but why did the backstory come after the character had been introduced and killed without me even realizing there was anything out of the ordinary? Because the author was so sure that we would have huge questions about the extra abilities of this character and how hard the character was to fight, but we didn’t know they were extra. It was all magical. But since the fight was boring and meaningless when it came first, just changing the positions of the chapters and made me care about this character before the fight. If you want me to think a certain way, put it in the book. Have the MC thinking “I can’t believe it, this is taking longer than ever before to kill someone. What black magic is this?” Then the question is planted.
#3. Don’t make me hyper aware that basically you’ve done 0 research with something like: “The physicist developed an equation that solved world hunger and ended socialism.” ? ? ?
# A play that is 90% voice-over while sitting in a library and 10% a twist needing animation in order to execute probably shouldn’t be a play.
#5. Maybe most writers who write sex scenes or about flirtation who are wishing they were in that scene might want to consider that their readers might not like that scene one bit. A 40 year old male protagonist gets his groove on with a 20 year old single mom who is in the story only for her body’s sake. The author assumed every man there would love it, and meanwhile it was becoming obvious that he couldn’t quite grasp that women in the room had opinions at all. Part of the fantasy included the 40 year old impressing the 20 year old by offering to change baby’s diaper. The lesson I took home is that what might seem like money in the bank to one writer might be the moment many readers turn away. Writers need feedback to improve.
Okay, really specific lessons, but also really valuable lessons for me and our group. It’s tough to get your reader to care and that is the science I’m interested in.
I hope you share what you’ve learned from dumpster fires and bad barbecue in whatever way you’d like to… and I hope I learn a lot from this thread.
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