Writing vs. Journalism

Every now and then I feel obliged to point out a few little points about what writing is and isn't - and by "writing," I mean of the primarily creative sort. Most every type of quality writing requires some degree of creativity, but I think we can all agree that the different areas of writing - research/academia, analytical, explanatory, etc. - each have different amounts of latitude compared to fiction or poetry, where creativity is the primary focus. And then, of course, there's one area that some creatives tend to avoid, and that it the art of journalism. But not so fast, I would warn you. The hard rules of fact-based journalism have a lot to teach even us creatives and poets.

Let's look at some basic journalism rules. First, your primary objective is to convey the five W's of any situation - Who, What, Where, When, and Why. This is the mandatory conveyance of information necessary for any good news story, and good fiction writers have to recognize these as well in their storytelling. However, writers have the right to be biased, so they can, in turn, determined which W they want to prioritize, minimize, or leave as the big question. If I am writing some fiction-fantasy, I really need to look at Where first, recognizing how different my world is from the reader's reality. Mysteries and legal thrillers usually focus on the Who and/or Why, while historical novels (fiction or otherwise) target the When of it all. And all of them need to have an eye toward What - the actual purpose of the piece being written.

Now, another part of journalism is regarding questions. A good journalistic piece provides answers to the five W's, but the better writing knows how to present the deeper questions in a way that asks the reader these questions before addressing them. A story might present a situation and highlight particular aspects of the story in order to make the reader say, "What?" or "Why?" then immediately address those issues. Creative writing does the same thing - it gets the reader thinking about the characters, motives, scene changes, and plot wrinkles just before offering the answers. The result for both writing schools is the same - the reader gets their answer from a special "a-ha!" moment, and there's some satisfaction in the accomplishment... so they read further.

Unfortunately, I do not know where the common space is between journalism and poetry. If those two circles on the Venn diagram overlapp, that intersection is smaller than anything I can perceive. If any poets or journalists wish to chime in on this, please do. Otherwise, I will just leave it by saying I have never seen a serious news story rhyme.

    

The Law of Writing

I am guessing that today, everyone is taking some time off of work to commemorate the holiday. I am guessing many citizens are gathering around in parks (weather allowing) or in public areas to chime in this very important holiday that has been recognized since before I was born. It actually became an official day in 1958, and has been a part of our country's culture ever since. Now to be clear, I am not talking about May Day - your confusion is understandable. No, I am talking about Law Day, the day commemorated by President Eisenhower to recognize the importance of the legal framework of our country or of any functioning governed body.

Upon further reflection, I am guessing all the hype today is actually about May Day and not Law Day. After all, working is quite popular in this country, but following the law comes with a lot of squishiness. Just one drive down I-294 will demonstrate with terrifying clarity how people disregard certain laws if it gets in the way of their preferred NASCAR-like habits. We still do have laws in this country, and a number of them sometimes get enforced (I actually once saw someone on I-294 receiving a ticket). The thing about those laws, however, is that plenty of them look good in theory but don't translate to the real world.

Moving this to writing, you've probably heard that you are not supposed to end a sentence with a pronoun. It's a rule, right? Well, regardless of whether it is or isn't, like most people, it's something I don't put up with (because if I did, that sentence would read, "...it's something I don't up with put."). There are plenty of rules that get neglected just as much as Law Day, but this is a part of the writing process. First, we learn the rules. Second, we discover their purpose and intention. Third, we look at what can happen if we bend or break those rules. Lastly, we put those results to use. In the case of the symbolic speed limit on I-294, I know what it is, I recognize it's there as a traffic regulator and as a means to reduce the severity of accidents, I know that if I bend it a bit, I get to my destination a few minutes earlier, and so I respond by keeping up with the flow of traffic zooming along at about mach 3.

If you know your rules of writing, then play with them and find out how they bend. Technically, rules of grammar are less flexible and more confusing when they are twisted about, but as a stylistic measure it can be effective - you just have to brace yourself for the consequences. If you opt to consistently use pronouns for representing characters, you should expect there the be some confusion during crowded sequences. If what you want is to give the reader a sense of confusion and disorientation, well, mission accomplished. Just be prepared for some people to set aside the book entirely. Just like if you're driving 80 down I-294 -  there is a chance you end up with a ticket for your efforts or an epic accident that will likely make the local news.

During this holiday - whether it's Law Day or May Day or Worker's Day or the Feast of Julian of Bale (a real thing), I hope you get to put in a little time for writing, and maybe even get a chance to break a rule or two. Just not on I-294.    

A Writer's Warning

If my calendar is correct (and it usually has a better accuracy rate than I do), my next post will be in May, and National Poetry Month will be over. Of course, this will be a bittersweet moment for me, mostly because April gives me a formal reason to lobby for poetry - for reading, for writing, for thinking about, and for exploring the many different poetic forms. Now, I do not claim to be a poet in the deeper sense. I have written poems but I don't feel I have built up those skills enough to deserve the title - yet. However, I have written enough verse to offer fair warning about something I think is a big threat to poetry, and that is AI.

To be clear, I am no Luddite. I use AI for various functions. I let different AIs examine my writing, search for themes in my longer works, and map out plot arcs when I feel they might be wandering. However, some people fall into the habit of letting some bot take the next step and start creating things, and poetry is, unfortunately, the easiest target. Since many forms of poetry work within a format and structure, they become easy prey for people to create through even simple AI use. And having seen a number of specimens of AI-generated poetry, they have the look, shape, and even a surface feel of a legitimate poem. However, don't be fooled. Poetry is something more than just finning in the blanks of some formula. It's not a Mad-Lib, it's an art form.

I am reluctant to suggest this, but it might get the point across. Go to the AI platform of your choice and ask it to write a sonnet about unrequited love. Within seconds, you will likely get a 14-line poem, probably in iambic pentameter, discussing that very subject. The rhyme scheme will work, the words will flow nicely - mission accomplished. You will, in fact, have a sonnet. However, dig into it. Search for the underlying heart of the poetic AI slop you just created, and see if you feel a pulse. Do you see the subject the poem discusses? Do you connect to the underlying meaning? Or do you just find some words triggering emotions, like a verbal ink-blot test where you see what you want to? That's where the difference lies. Ten people can read an AI sonnet and come to the same conclusion about it. A human-generated sonnet will get a variety of reactions, and often disagreement. There's a pulse with the handwritten poem. The AI piece is lifeless.

So, if and when you write a poem - sonnet or otherwise - remember that you are performing a very human task, and your humanity is a part of your creation. Pour in whatever it is that makes you a human being, and let that do the speaking. Make mistakes, have fun with it, and remember you are creating something very personal that some AI cannot match with depth of feeling.

On that note, I close with this untitled piece of freeverse:

Words.
Building blocks of communication.
Description.
Capturing what we perceive with those words.
Narrative.
Explaining the world to each other.
Stories.
The events of our world, as we see them.
Writing.
A tool for filling the space between us.

Surrounding this galaxy of words lies the interstellar force of poetry and everything it encompasses.
Poetry is the language of the soul, the quantum forces explaining life beyond just living.
We describe things outside the tactile, capturing feelings, concepts, states of being.
Poetry bridges the gaps between our worlds, connecting you and me, making us.

The abstract becomes concrete, the breeze captured, the sunlight embraced.
Writing shares our worlds, poetry unites us into something greater than our little selves.
For all of the things writing can accomplish, poetry alone makes us whole; makes us complete.
With poetry, we are one. 

(No AI here)

The Wide World of Poems

As the end of National Poetry Month fast approaches, I wanted to throw one last piece about poetry to my many readers. As my regular readers know all too well, I am an advocate of writing poetry as one of the many exercises people should perform to be a better writer. This does not mean you will be an awesome poet - no guarantees in life - but the art of poetry helps us distill our thoughts and feelings into more concise ideas. We lose a lot of the wandering thoughts and bothersome distractions that make writing feel flabby and loose, and instead sharpen our focus on a simple thought or theme.

With that in mind, I felt the best way to get the poetry inspiration going was to offer a wide variety of poem styles and formats, and give you, the writer, the opportunity to try them out and see what fits best. Poems come in many shapes and sizes, so I won't go into the little details like writing in meter and so forth (although it is worth knowing). Rather, I will just lay out some options and you can choose your own.

• Monostich: As I discussed in my last post, this is a one-line poem, without commas or pauses, to convey one idea
• Haiku: a three-line poem where the first and third lines are five syllables long, with the middle line being seven syllabes. Often these are about nature and the last line sums up the other two, but that's optional
• Tanka: Similar to a Haiku, but instead of the 5-7-5 syllable structure, it closes with two extra seven-syllable lines
• Limerick: A five-line poem where the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme with each other, and the third and fourth lines rhyme (known as the AABBA structure)
• Triolet: An eight-line poem where the first line is repeated and in the fourth and seventh lines
• Pirouette: A ten-line poem made up of two five-line stanzas, where the last line of the first stanza is the first like of the second stanza
• Trimeric: A four stanza poem, with the first stanza being four lines and the subsequent three being three lines. In this format, the second, third, and fourth lines of the first stanza become the lead lines of the second, third, and fourth stanza, respectively
• Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem with a matching rhyme scheme (AABBCC...). The traditional sonnet presents a question in the first six lines, a realization in the seventh and eighth lines, and the last six lines present a resolution
• Villanelle: A 19-line poem composed of five three-line stanzas, followed by a closing quatrain. These usually have two recurring ideas that are repeated intermittenyly throughout the work.

Okay, that shouls give you plenty to work with. However, if none of them appeal to you, I offer one last form that can offer some artistic freedom: Freestyle. Also known as Free Verse, this is just expression in its pure form. It can be anything - it is open style. If you've never seen this style, hunt down the various clips from "Louder than a Bomb" on YouTube. It's not that hard.

Happy Naional Poetry Month!

    

One-Liners

"Nature serves as the eternal artist of life's portraits lost to time."
- An actual poem

I haven't done a poetry post in a while, and since this is National Poetry Month, well, here it is. However, because so many people are uncomfortable with the concept of writing poetry and the many demands that come with it, I am playing this one a little fast and loose. It will be a shorter post, and it will be about one of the shortest forms of poetry around: Monostich.

I wish I could say I was an expert on the monostich poem, but I can't make that statement. Rather, I was introduced to this form by a fellow writer in the Wednesday workshop I attend. He brought up the subject as a question of, "What's that term for a poem that's only one line?" Sarcastically, I responded, "Slogan." Well, after he took a quick trip to the internet, it turns out that it was, in fact, the monostich - a one-line poem, preferably without pauses, additional clauses or phrases, or diversions. This form is the epitome of the short, sharp usae of words to explain some concept or quickly make a statement about the world. It is usually painfully brief and to the point, boiling out all but the significant bits.

Now, you might think to yourself, "This sounds like a sideways approach to a haiku but without the syllable rules." In some ways you would be correct. Any number of haiku are actually just one idea spread across three lines with a syllable pattern. In fact, if you reread the poem above, you can rewrite it as such:

"Nature serves as the
eternal artist of life's
portraits lost to time."

Voila! It's a haiku (sort of)! Put it back into one continuous line and you are back to a monostich. Same message, same words, different categorization all because of line breaks. It's a simple way to write a poem, with the only real challenge being the demand of distilling it down to the core meaning, without any distractions.

So, my request on this day as a commemoration to National Poetry Month, write one profound sentence. Let it be something that interprets the world in some special way - writing "I am hungry" might be true, but it's not as profound as you might think, even if you are profoundly hungry. Give it a shot, see what happens, and if you are feeling particularly bold, leave it in the comments section (anonymously if you prefer).

Happy National Poetry Month!  

The Personal Experience

There's a common hurdle writers will come across, time and again, where they have the temptation to get themselves immersed head-to-toe in a scene, poring through the details, describing every feature, and really giving the reader the full and complete experience they deserve. Any scene with a magnitude of intensity - action scenes, love scenes, death scenes - present the writer with this opportunity, but it's a temptation that comes at a price. Getting too far into a scene can actually weaken it as an experience if the writer leaves out one key part - the character's participation in the event.

Sometimes, in life, we experience things so intense that our memories of the event overwhelm our capacity to process everything that happens. In particularly extreme cases we detach ourselves from the experience - disassociation takes over, and while we might still remember the event, we disconnect our own place within it, sometimes not even fully realizing we were a part of the experience we remember. This occurs in writing as well, but at least we, as authors, have control of how we discuss the character's participation.

Action sequences are very easy to lose the characters. Let's look at a car chase - not as fun in writing as it is in the movies, but for now let's overlook that. One car is being chased by several others through the city streets, dodging traffic, swerving around pedestrians while the horn honks away trying to clear a path. There might even be gunfire - bullets fly around the lead car, shattering the windows, ricocheting off the trunk - all during a 100-mile-per-hour chase down a one-way road. This can be several pages worth of action, but I can guarantee you it will get boring, or at the very least it misses a great opportunity to actually be interesting, because it lacks any reference to the characters involved.

It was no coincidence that in the brief example above, I made no mention of the characters. The action was the cars, the guns, the bullets, but no actual people. This is where scenes lose their punch - the cars drive through the scene, but it's just action, not tension. Now, what if you describe that car chase from the personal space of one of the drivers - pursuer or the pursued, your choice. If they are being chased, how are they deciding where to go? When the light up ahead turns red and crossing traffic fills the intersection, how does that character respond? We get very used to the movies where the car just magically flies through the crowded intersection with precision timing, but in writing, that's our opportunity to show how the driver responds. Does the driver see an opening that just might work and rushes toward it, or just lean on the horn and pray for daylight? Do they have a deathwish and no concern for the drivers ahead? Is their desperation so extreme that they will do anything to evade the cars behind them?

Of course, this doesn't mean the story has to be a cerebral exploration of a character's driving habits. However, it should be going on with a critical awareness that the character's actions and decisions are a part of the scene, and how it unfolds needs to fit the character. A driver who holds every life to be sacred might have a real problem taking a detour through a public park, but this can be a great source of tension for the character if they are just that desperate to escape.

Writing is a great form of escapism from the real world, which can frankly be very boring at times. However, good writing brings the real world into that space just enough to make anything interesting and make everything personal.   

Conflict and Story Openings

After doing a little review of my last post, I did a little more thinking about the importance of the opening line and just what it needs to bring to the table. My thesis in Friday's entry was that it was the hook that brings in the reader, and I will stick by that one. However, I think it's only fair to discuss what a good hook really is. Yes, it should provide a great mix between information and presentation of the unknown. It should also be worded quickly and sharply to bring that point to the fore. However, there's one problem to address with all these routes, and that is... the problem.

Courtesy of Battlefield 2

What do I mean by a problem? Well, let's put it this way: Presenting a question in your opening line or paragraph creates a natural urge for the reader to seek an answer - that part is great. However, a technique that can be even stronger is bringing up not just a question, but a conflict. Not necessarily a fight or an argument, but a clear, discernible issue that is creating some sort of friction with our main character. They can be in whatever starting pose you want, but bringing out the problem they face in the immediate first sentence or so creates a tension. It's no longer a question about what's happening, but whether or not the character can overcome it. 

This about this opening: The story begins with a sniper lining up his target in the crosshairs, his trigger finger trembling as he hesitates to take the shot. This creates questions immediately - is our main character the sniper or the target? Is the sniper a good or bad character? What is the situation around shooting someone? Good questions to put out there for the reader to ponder. However, we create a larger issue with the sniper hesitant to take the shot. After all, that's what snipers do, right? They shoot people from a distance. So why the trembling hand, the reluctance? This is a question, but it is conflict - the situation is going against the character's intended action, and needs to be overcome. At this point, the stakes are higher for the sniper, not just to take out the target but to overcome some personal resistance to this particular mission. The interest builds.

At this point, the writer now has a game to play, which is offering a little bit of information to suggest possible reasons for the inaction, but still leaving some ambiguity as to what the best answer is. We can inform the reader that the target is a friend of the sniper, making the conflict even sharper. We can also point out that the friend is a double-agent, now creating a conflict between duty to the mission and believing the friend is somehow innocent. We build the conflict without resolving it, merely giving it more shape and texture without giving the reader an easy out. If we establish this early, we can carry this conflict throughout the story, piling layer upon layer of challenging beliefs onto the poor main character, giving the reader so much to think about that it might cause an argument at the book club. (The goal of any author should be to cause arguments at book clubs.)

As a last note, don't throw too much conflict on the reader at once. If, in our sniper scenario, we introduce the sniper with the shaking hand, the target, then point out the target is the sniper's friend, then challenge the friend's loyalty, and oh-by-the-way the friend is married to the sniper's sister, and the sniper's hands are shaking from a progressive nerve disorder, and taking out the target could save thousands of lives, but it might be the wrong person... well, there's such a thing as too much information at once. The slow build of our sniper's situation should be savored by the author because the reader will enjoy it that much more.