Talking to the Reader

On August 30th, I will be speaking at the Park Forest Library at the Local Authors' Fair. I love getting a chance to talk with people who have read my works, but I really love getting a chance to talk with potential writers. My talk, "So You Want To Be A Writer...," will be all about the journey to being a writer, but deep inside, I will be quietly thrilled that I am also talking to my readers. And that got me thinking - what are the best ways for a writer to talk to the reader in their stories?

I am sure that more than a few of you are familiar with the Marvel character Deadpool of comic and movie fame. With no offense intended to Ryan Reynolds, for this particular piece I will mostly focus on the Deadpool of the comics, even though the movie version has the same mannerisms. The point is, Deadpool has this habit of talking directly to the reader, either with comments about our world, some reminder that he exists within a graphic novel, etc. This is called, "breaking the fourth wall," and it is what the character is known for - along with abundant gratuitous violence. Deadpool's habit of breaking the fourth wall was pretty unique when he was first introduced, but this quirk is far from new.

While I don't know the origin, breaking the fourth wall goes way back before my time - even Shakespeare used it with a device known as an aside. This is when a character on the stage would turn to the audience and make a deliberate, informative quip about the scene that was unspoken but brought something new for the audience to appreciate. Sometimes it was the character's insight, sometimes a statement about the hidden implications of an action. In any case, this device gives additional detail to the audience, be they reading the play or watching it performed on stage.

Now, for us writers, how can we talk directly to the reader? Well, we can write a story in the second-person, which is written like the main character is telling the story to the reader - a one-sided discussion of a series of events, perhaps even with the reader assumed to be part of the story. The Edgar Allen Poe classic, The Tell-Tale Heart, is also a way to do this, where the narrator is telling the story directly to the reader, trying to convince the reader of his own sanity. These stories speak directly to the reader, but are difficult to fit into a longer-form story.

Probably the most common, and the simplest way to talk to the reader is to get the reader involved with a character, then explore the character's thoughts, motivations, and most importantly, their doubts. This can create a form of engagement that lets a story remain in the first- or third-person, but quietly prompt the reader to think about a particular situation and consider their feelings about it.

Consider this piece of writing about a person trying to consider someone else's motives:

"I thought about the way Steve acted at the bar last night and different thoughts went through my mind. Perhaps Steve had too much to drink last night and let things get carried away. Maybe Steve just needed to blow off some steam and took it too far. I thought Steve had his act together, but now I  more to consider."

This gives us the inside view of our character's thought process, and informs us about the issues at hand, but does it really talk to the reader? It discusses issues but the reader remains emotionally at arm's-length. Now consider this rewrite:

"I thought about the way Steve acted at the bar last night and different thoughts went through my mind. Did Steve let things get carried away because he was drunk? Was Steve blowing off some steam and let it go too far? I thought Steve was cool - have I been wrong about Steve all this time?"

When these observations and considerations get turned into questions, the reader gets challenged as well. The reader now feels prompted to find an answer for themselves, even as the story goes on. In the reader's mind, they are thinking about just how they feel about Steve, and they allow this to affect their feelings as they read on.

Setting Steve aside, this is how we can talk to the reader without actually breaking the fourth wall. Questions that interrogate the character from inside also target the reader, and bring them closer to the story. The reader and the character might not even come up with the same answers, but now the reader has an opinion about the whole Steve situation, and they are further invested in the story. At that point, the writer has accomplished a big part of their mission - engaging the reader on another level. So, if there's a need to get the audience closer, tricks like that are subtle ways of deepening the engagement.

And so you know, Steve was clearly being a dick that night. No doubt about it.  

   

What A Writer Does

 I have said it on several occasions, and I will say it again: The main thing you need to do to be a writer is simply write. Write down things and stuff. Write down poems, describe people and items around the house. Write up a bunch of things that you want to do, see, touch, and why these are important. The Being a writer is about communicating through use of words the world around you. It's not that difficult, and once you get into the habit of doing it, you can call yourself a writer.

Now, I usually know the next statement. "Yes, technically, that makes me a writer - a person who writes. But how do I move up from being a writer to being... you know... a writer-writer. When is it more than just the act of writing? That's the real question - people want to know when they will be a person who takes words and creates something meaningful and moving with them. When can a person be the one who can give someone the gift of a story, and when the recipient receives it, they will treasure it? When does the magic start?

To find that, let's start with the different tiers of write. The first levels involve being basically a reporter. No, I am not implying or suggesting that news reporters and their ilk are low-level writers. I am merely saying that when we first start writing about things, we start writing about its basics: What is it? Where is it? We go through the basic who-what-where-when-why-how of identifying whatever we are writing about. This gives the reader a good feel for the subject at hand, but it is sterile, distant and unfeeling. Even a wild thing like a vivid, surrealistic dream will seem less-than-fantastic at this level. That kind of reporting identifies the subject or topic, but little else.

The next steps for the writer-in-the-making are about having an opinion or specific feeling about whatever they are writing about. In this regard, they install an emotion into the subject. For someone writing about an old car, the next step is to attach something to it that is beyond form and function. Is the car ugly or clunky? Does it chug annoyingly down the road or does the rasping of the tailpipe against the road grate on every nerve? Is it painted in a tired, lifeless gray or a loud, offensive orange? What makes that car stand out from the rest of the world? What makes it worth writing about versus every and any other item you see?

The biggest step is now engagement. This is where the writer finds the tone in themselves they want to use to communicate their feelings about the object. The first tier is writing about the item, the next tier is feeling something for the item, and finally the big step involves finding a voice that expressed those feelings. A voice is a broad brush, and can express both love and anger in the same tone. Finding one's voice requires bringing all of that writing through your emotional mind like an dirty, old Chevy going through a car wash. Voice turns writing into expression, not just about the subject but about the author as well. At this point, it's beyond communication because it appeals to the audience on more than one level. At this point, you are a writer-writer.

How long does it take? Well, how long you got? Or, more to the point, how much can you write? There are a lot of voices to discover, ways to express your interests and passions, and different kinds of cars to wash - so to speak. The main part is that it's an ongoing journey where you only stop progressing when you stop moving forward. So start writing, and really throw yourself into it if you want to get there faster.

Oh - and feedback helps. Get into workshops, have friends read your stuff, get critiques from outside sources. They can be harsh, but they provide you with growth and they help you be vulnerable, which is a priceless strategy in opening yourself toward the higher tiers. But most importantly, keep on writing.     

Radical Writing Still Needs a Few Rules

Rules. They're everywhere. Governments make them, parents make them, societies and cultures make them, and we make our own rules as well. And, as I have endlessly mentioned on this blog, there are rules for writing. Of course, just like all those other categories of rules, there also comes a time and place to break them (Disclaimer: I do not recommend breaking government rules). Sometimes we step out of those social and cultural norms, we go against our own best beliefs, and so on. We do the same thing in writing - we learn the rules, then figure out how to break them for full effect. This is the radical writing that can make reading interesting. However, it's not just breaking the law for entertainment's sake, and - believe it or not - you still need to follow other rules.

Proper adjective order

I've edited five manuscripts this year, each one a different length, style, and genre, and I guarantee you that none of them followed the same rules of style (Ultimately, they all answered to my editing rules, but the author has control after that). Depending on which editing conventions you prefer, you can choose the style pallet of MLA, AP, or any other that you stumble upon. They have different rules for the Oxford Comma, how to punctuate, and what gets capitalized or hyphenated. This is good to know and follow for consistency's sake.

(At my previous job, the company had its customized, time-honored gospel of style, which still, oddly, contradicted itself in various things such as the proper spelling of the word, "Euro-zone" - the hyphen was not always there, and sometimes it was two words, sometimes one.)

I bring up the company example to showcase the primary rule about breaking rules: If you go against convention, go against it consistently. If you capitalize titles, do it consistently and not just when you remember that's how you want to do things. when you list your adjectives, give them a marching order and follow it. And so help me, if you decide to go against colloquial references and be brutally detailed in your editing, then do it proudly, without shame. Example: Most people who love The Beatles would say, "The Beatles are my favorite group!" Grammatically, this is wrong. The Beatles is one group - singular - and it should be, "The Beatles is my favorite group!" Say that aloud a few times and it sounds just wrong. However, it is very much grammatically correct. Local convention, however, would use the plural incorrectly and everyone (present company excepted) would be cool with it. This is where you have to be consistent - either resort to what sounds right or go with grammatical purity (either is fine), but stick to it afterward.

Other opportunities to break the rules will come up, and you will have a choice to make. All I ask, from the desk of a humble editor, is to please be consistent with it. I am prepping for another manuscript review soon, and another set of rules to follow or break, and I hope they take this wisdom to heart.

    

A Few Comments About the Old Days

One of the many things I enjoy about the writing workshops I attend is the wide and varied observations I receive about whatever I bring for review. Whether it's a poem, an excerpt from a novel, an essay, short story, whatever - I get the advantage of a bunch of readers seeing it as something new and (hopefully) fresh, and providing insights I might otherwise overlook. This is even more helpful when I write stories from the deep, dark past that I call my life.

Now, you might ask yourself, "How can someone else help you write stories about yourself? You know the story far better than them, right? Maybe they should just take a seat and listen." Well, that first part is true, but while I know the story better than them, they need to be able to understand the story just from what I write. This is a difficult trick, and even more so when my job is not just to tell a story but to recall a particular era in my life and communicate it to them as vividly as possible.

Case in point: My current work in progress (WIP) involves a character going through life's challenges back in the 1990s, with flashbacks to the 1980s. Well, the storytelling is its own task. However, along with telling the story, I also need to give the reader the feeling of the 1990s in whatever way is best communicated. Do I need to talk about the Clinton presidency? Act out the Macarena? Have the characters argue about the movie, Pulp Fiction? Well, these things wouldn't hurt as long as they are properly incorporated into my WIP and don't stand out awkwardly as little timestamps for the reader. However, that's not the only complication.

With any dated reference, there also has to be a context explaining them in a way where people unfamiliar with the reference would still get the gist of what I was talking about. If, say, I made reference to the Macarena, I would have to do it in a way that tells any and every reader that this was a dance-craze in the US in the late 1990s that was a common reference even if not everyone knew how to do it. Readers who weren't even born in the 20th century would be able to understand this point well enough to incorporate the information into their understanding of the story, even if they still can't do the elaborate series of moves the dance requires.

I received this advice at a writing workshop when someone suggested I make reference in my WIP to a minor celebrity of the 1990s that everyone my age would know about (I'll leave the name out for reasons that would be obvious if I included it). Other people agreed, but some people pointed out that they had no idea who we were referring to. This was the teachable moment: If I were to include this celebrity's name, it would have to be in a way that included their claim to fame, thus informing younger readers about the salience of that reference. At that point, it gets a little tricky, and risks diverging from the story.

The reason I bring this up is as a reminder that stories in a particular era are far more rewarding when that era comes with all the trimmings and all the references of the time. When the reader not only reads about events in the late 1990s but feels the presence of that time, they engage with the writing on another level, and appreciate learning about minor celebrities who they might never have heard about in their regular life. And as I've said before, when a writer engages the reader on an additional level, they've done their job and they've won over the reader.

Okay, it was Lorena Bobbitt. The reference was about Lorena Bobbitt. Happy now? 

  

What Kind of Story Is It?

"How do I know if my story is just a short story, or if it might be a novel?" I get that question every now and then at my writing workshop, and it's valid to a point. Sometimes, we all get ideas about some project we want to take on, but a part of us wonders just what the final product will be like. Will a drawing be just a sketch, or a full painting? Will a poem just be a limerick or ten pages of beautiful prose? All creatives might go through a stage where they prepare to create something, but are not sure what the finished product will ultimately be. This uncertainty is common, and often can get in our way of actually taking on the task. Therefore, there is only one way to find out.

Start writing.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am, amongst other things, an avid bicyclist. I cycle mostly for distance and pleasure, rarely for speed. When I head out on a ride, I usually have a destination picked out, I know how much time it will take for a round trip, and how much water and rest I might need along the way. However, sometimes I just feel like getting outside. I don't necessarily know where I want to go or what I want to see, I just need to ride. This is similar to the hang-up of the writer wondering about the size of their story. The more they wonder, they less they actually create. So when I feel the urge to get out and ride, I don't concern myself with the destination. I just grab a water bottle and go.

Along that same vein, if my creative nerve gets tickled, I don't always know what that is going to become. Will it be a poem, a painting, a story, a song? What I do know, however, is that some idea has gotten under my skin and planted itself firmly in my awareness, and I need to act upon it to feel like I am doing it justice. It doesn't have to be a full concept or an outlined frame for a story. It can be boiled down to something very simple: "A monkey's favorite color," "happy lampposts," or "full-contact checkers." Do any of those have potential to be a full-fledged novel? Who knows? I don't know, but if I start writing about one of those, I might just discover some creative thread that turns the idea into something big.

Now, it's always worth noting that creations that emerge from wild ideas such as those can often grow into big piles of nothing. We write about a monkey and its favorite color, and nothing really catches fire in our minds. This is fine. This answers the question of, "What is this?" It's nothing - move on. Keep the writing in a file to perhaps revisit later, and go back to being a creative type. There's nothing wrong with this. The big mistake is not doing anything with it. Letting an idea wither on the vine does not do justice to the idea, and definitely does not do justice to the creative process.

And, as a side note, you should also know when to stop. If some little idea triggers you to write 300-400,000 words, you might actually have a few books on your hands. Or, perhaps, you have a real good idea to work with. In either case, keep on writing.      

The Secret Lives of Characters

While digging through a few boxes of family heirlooms and miscellany, I came across a few secret artifacts that surprised me. The first was a Little Black Book. Not just a little black book, but my father's Little Black Book containing the names, numbers, and pertinent information of various friends and contacts from his days right after leaving the Army. And, indeed, there were the names of at least a few girlfriends - including a listing under my mother's name (her maiden name). And amongst my mother's stuff, I found the class picture of her and her friends from second grade, including a friend she remained close to for the rest of her 86 years. I also discovered that my mother's nickname was "Giggles." Alas, why didn't I find this out sooner so I could hold that one over her head for a while?

All this is the introduction to a very simple point: in my life, my mother and father each held a very important role in my life: Parent. I knew them primarily through that lens - they were the couple that bore and raised me, taught me the things and stuff in life, and readied me to look down both barrels of being a grown-up. Most traits and aspects I attached to them were channeled through that conduit - something relating to being my parent. Therefore, sometimes it can feel a little odd to come to the cold, hard realization that my father dated women before even meeting my mother, and my mother was once a little girl that answered to Giggles. 

At the point when I made these discoveries, a strange thing happened. My parents transformed from these beings whose sole purpose in life was to raise me, and they became actual people. They became deep and real, Not just Mom and Dad but Carolyn and Jerry. I saw them outside of that pipeline of parents, and even conceived of how they lived lives very much like my own at one point. They horsed around, they had friends and got into trouble, they did odd jobs and had funny stories from them. They were full-fledged people.

When we write, we often know our characters through the filter of how they relate to the story. For our mystery, we might know our main lead is a detective who is a two-fisted drinker, good with a gun, great with the ladies, and short on temper. Or maybe for our horror story, the lead is a first-grade teacher with a dark secret that now threatens every child in the class. This is a great start, but out of respect for the story, we should ask more from our characters. We should explore who they are when they are not the protagonist. Do they have their own Little Black Books? Nicknames from second grade? 

Everyone who I have ever met has a favorite color, food, book, and song, and they can tell you exactly what it is and why they chose that one. If your characters are to be that real, at the very least you should know and understand their inner workings, their details, before you go too far with them. Play around with their thoughts, ideas, and motivations, and discover them as real people. Real people are so much more fun to write about.

But hopefully you will never see your mother's name in your father's Little Black Book.     

How Important is Genre?

We all have our preferences when it comes to reading, and we can all be picky at times. Even the more open-minded readers might hesitate if there's a story before them that is in a style they just don't click with. I will read most anything Stephen King writes, and I will hesitate at the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's nothing about them personally, it's just that I prefer reading certain a genre more than others. (Though I literally could not finish The House of the Seven Gables. Sorry, Nate.) However, genre often comes with bias, and sometimes, as writers, we need to consider whether we want to steer our writing to fit into that genre.

To broaden this idea out, let's look at action movies. This category is fairly well-known, and comes with a lot of packaged assumptions. We know that character depth will be limited, fights will be extended to inhuman lengths, the first option will be to swing, shoot, or destroy, and when we get to an elaborate set-piece, there's a very good chance it will blow up by the end of the scene. Now, going into an action movie, these assumptions are kind of baked in and we adjust our expectations accordingly when we buy our ticket. Things will happen a certain way, if the main character seems a little transparent and one-dimensional, well, you really came to see things blow up, and the bad guy gets bumped off in a big showcase way at the end. Anything more is really above the bar.

As readers, we act the same way with our stories. If we are reading a paranormal thriller, we find ourselves believing that there's some kind of spirit world seeping into our lives and everyone just kind of goes with it (except for the naysayer who gets bumped off early in the book to reinforce the point). A mystery novel brings us a Rogue's Gallery of mischievous characters with marginal scruples amidst the stand-out character who figures everything out while everyone else either watches or dies. And when reading the horror genre, well, we let our darker angels judge humanity harshly, allowing for the worst of the worst to be played out before us. And if we are not ready to do those things, we don't read that piece.

But how would we approach a piece if we didn't know the genre?

Putting a book into a genre draws it to a particular audience, giving it the best shot of finding people who will connect with the style. Any book cover should immediately tell you if it's romance, fantasy, horror, etc., despite what they say about judging a book. However, most stories at their core are about people, conflict, and hopefully growth. When you write, does it matter whether that personal struggle to grow is done on a Kansas farm or on an Arcturan battle cruiser? The story can be any genre you want, mostly because at its root, there is no genre to the main story. It's like a nice, lean, chicken breast - you can't say if it's Jamaican or stir-fry or baked because it's just the core ingredient. The rest is prepping it how you want.

If you specialize in a particular genre, that's great - write everything you can in that way and really hone your craft. However, if you come across the idea for a story, find out what it is at its roots before you try and put it into the "appropriate" genre. Let the story inform you what serves it best, then write it that way. That's the genre of writing that's called "good writing," and everyone enjoys that.          

Old Habits Are Hard to Start

"Welcome back!" is what I hear the most now that I have officially returned from my vacation away from everything. And yes, it was time away from everything. Aside from listening to some local (Chicago) news and keeping up on my sports scores, I mostly tuned out all my creature habits. No television, no consulting work, and surprisingly, no writing. The environment was indeed inspiring and quite peaceful, but this was about disconnecting from things for a while, and I did exactly that. And I needed to.

Now that everyone has said, "Welcome back!" they have followed it quickly with, "Are you ready to get back to everything?" The answer is no. I have actually needed to rediscover my habits, reset my little priorities, and try and figure out just how I functioned prior to my vacation. Having been away from regular doses of friends, news, writing, complaining about the world, and so on, getting back into the routine has been difficult. However, this is also an opportunity.

I readily admit that not all my habits have been good ones. Back in my misspent youth, one of my habits was cigarettes - a blatantly bad habit but one that I insisted upon because it took the edge off a very jagged world at the time (and later because I was simply addicted). It started off with purpose and reason, but gradually interfered with my existence rather than contributed to it. Do you know how uncomfortable it is to go cross-country cycling with a cigarette in your mouth? Not easy at all. The habit had served its purpose and it was time to change.

Along a similar vein, my writing habits had taken different shapes, and this little time-out has given me time to re-assess. As I often recommend, a writer should have dedicated routines and places for writing, for editing, or for just being creative. These defined zones contribute to being in the right frame of mind for doing these processes, and the more familiar they become, the more conducive they are to those processes. Over the past few years, my boundaries have kind of drifted, and it was time to rewrite the rules. So, when I got home from this recent vacation, I formally established my literary zones - for serious writing, for creative writing, for editing, and for reading. This does require a mental reset, and there will be adjustment, but in the end it will all be worth it.

Another thing writers should drift toward is regular writing. This I am having some difficulty with given the chaotic nature of my schedule, but it is very important. Keeping the creative juices percolating is essential to being creative in general, so I am re-establishing my creative time (along with my intellectual time, my thought-free time, and other important times). Unless the world interferes, I give myself a half hour to think about things in a creative manner - ponder the "what if" of the world, or think about a story and ask myself how I would've written it. 

When you get the chance, look at the structure of your creative world, and see if it still fits. More importantly, see where it can be changed for the better, then go through the arduous process of actually doing it. And then, of course, make the changes and stick to them.

But maybe go on vacation first. I recommend SW Colorado - it's beautiful this time of year.      

On Vacation

All writers need it. All people need it. I need it. I am taking a vacation where I hang up my official writing duties until my next post, which will be July 11th. Until then. enjoy your holidays.

But don't be alarmed - I will still be creating stuff and thinking writing thoughts - just not on an official capacity. (And no, I won't actually be fishing.)

 

Piling On

Wow! I can honestly say without doubt that this is the worst Friday I have had all year, and possibly for several years. I mean, yesterday was kind of sketchy - my health was doing some stuff that it shouldn't have, but I made it past that and actually ended up feeling a sense of gratitude. Well, that was probably my first mistake because Friday must've got wind of it and decided to put me square in my place. I got to drive from place to place where I would then walk a total of five miles in the really humid air this morning, only to have my car break down just before the end of this trip. Of course, this means I had to walk home, finish my route on my bicycle, get a jump for the car (failed), get it towed (expensive), get it diagnosed (another nightmare), get a rental, and all in the equatorial heat. Add to this, I actually had things to do today - so much for that. Yep, this Friday is the worst. Or as the joke goes, it's only the worst Friday so far.

Now, did I choose to make my Friday post a piece demonstrating how to rant about a bad day? There's a hint of that, but it's more elaborate than that. When we write about a character and their adventure (at least in fiction), we have to remember that elements such as drama, suspense, tension, etc. are more than just things we need to include because they're required. We do our readers a horrible injustice if we don't really make the readers feel what the character is going through. And we do this by the simple route of making things worse.

I offer this simple, though somewhat gross, example of a character faced with a terrible choice. For whatever reason, the character accidentally drops a quarter in the toilet. Immediately this creates a dilemma - pursue the quarter and deal with the uncomfortable repercussions, or let it go and be one quarter poorer? Interesting discussion, but most of us would've walked away, high and dry. So let's pile on the costs of the lost money. What if it wasn't a quarter, but a dollar bill? A five-dollar bill? A twenty? The character's last bit of pocket money - the twenty he kept in his wallet for emergencies? Now it isn't as easy. What if the toilet is really dirty? I mean, post-apocalyptic bus-stop restroom dirty. Now what? Recover that twenty, wash your hands vigorously afterward, and try to put that nasty twenty back in your wallet and pretend you never knew where it had been? Dropping a quarter in the toilet is nothing now. Your last twenty bucks... and let's say you're twenty miles from home without a cell phone. Now what?

Piling on the problems is definitely a mean thing to do to a person, but fortunately, a written character can handle it so go ahead. And of course, it doesn't have to be the obviously gross outcome that's the challenge - just something the character does not want to face. Maybe it's a starving person living in Chicago who is given a hot dog WITH KETCHUP ON IT! People will have their opinions about that, but the conflict the writer gets to play with is the individual character's dilemma. 

The long and short of it is simple: when you give a character a challenge, make it worth something. Make it hurt. Pile on the grief. Maybe that ketchup thing was an out-of-bounds move, but you get the idea. Piling on quandaries and consequences wakes the reader to the character's challenge, and invests them in the result. So go ahead and pile on when you want - the character can take it.

And check your car battery in the summer - they can burn out just as easily.        

The Truth About Consequences

I can't even begin to thing about how many books I've read. I've gone through fiendish binges where I would read a book or two a week along with going to school, but there would be other stretches where I would go book-free for a while. I know that one year I read at least 75, but probably less than 100 books, but I also know a few years that were free of recreational book-reading (research books don't count in this case). The point is, I've read a whole bunch of books in my many years.

Now, I can't tell you how many of those books were bad. I can list some of the great ones - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Humboldt's Gift, The Stand, Foucault's Pendulum, The Great Santini, Liar's Poker and so on - but the bad ones, boring ones just kind of fade away. Some were just poorly written, or too formulaic, some had a writing style I didn't care for, others just never really paid off. However, I can tell you the most common factor in the long list of books that never really stuck with me, and it's surprisingly simple: at certain points, I just thought, "Who cares?" More importantly, I asked myself why the main character cared about what they were doing. Ultimately, it boiled down to a sense of there being no consequences. 

Here's a question I ask about the main character: What happens if they throw their hands up and say, "Nope. No more. I'm done with this." Or what if they never take the hero's journey in the first place. The answer, in any situation, should be the consequence of giving up, and in a good story, the consequences should be severe. Look at Frodo in The Lord of the Rings - a little hobbit with an overwhelming task that he often felt was far too much for him to handle. We are told, in no uncertain terms, if he fails in his mission, or gives up, or just lets someone else do it, all the people of Middle-Earth are doomed. Those are some pretty big consequences, and it takes a while for our hero to realize just how important he is and how critical he is to the story.

Now I will offer up a story (a movie, but still), that while it's full of action and fun characters, it really lacks the satisfaction that one might get from thinking about the consequences. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones goes on the quest to claim the legendary Ark of the Covenant, leaving a trail of dead soldiers and a poisoned Nazi monkey in his wake. His mission is to keep this holy artifact from falling into Nazi hands and becoming their weapon, so we know the consequences of his failure. Or do we? As we find out, not so much. The Ark falls into Nazi hands and, upon its usage, the Ark promptly wipes out an island-full of bad guys. Now we ask what would've happened if Indiana Jones just stayed at the university? What would the real consequences be? Well, nothing different. The Ark is found, goes into Nazi hands, wipes out every bad guy in sight. No unstoppable weapon, no undefeatable army. Life goes on, Indy teaches his classes and gets hit on by students. The end.

In the end, our story needs consequences, we need the characters to be motivated not just to do something but be driven by the possible dark result of their failure, and we need meaning to their mission. And I assure you that if your story isn't driven by a clear set of consequences that legitimately drive the character, your book will probably end up on that list of bad stories that nobody remembers. (And full confession: I only remember Raiders for the action sequences and Karen Allen. The story is incidental in the long and short of it).          

The Other Side of Writing

A lot of space on this blog has been dedicated to writing the Great American Novel, to perfecting your poetry, or to making your writing as appealing as possible for your reading audience. I do this because, in my experience, a lot of people want to take their writing up a few notches, preferably to a level where they can get it published or at least read by a larger audience. They want to know all the tricks of the trade for bringing something out to the public; writing a story that plenty of people will want to read and will enjoy reading. This is an admirable goal and one worth pursuing. However, now and then I recognize that a lot of people want to develop their writing for more personal reasons. They are not as interested in the New York Times Bestseller List as they are in making their story real. This requires some special tools indeed.

Now, what actually is, "making their story real"? Well, I have seen plenty of people get into writing as a form of self-help. They write their stories as a therapeutic process, putting their stories onto the page as a way of interpreting past events, relationships, traumas, and any point in between. I have known more than a few recovering addicts who turned to writing as a way of identifying and dissecting the pathology of their own compulsions and internal drives to better understand themselves and what they must confront. And indeed, there are a number of prison programs that get inmates to write about their past to better understand why they ended up on the wrong side of the bars. This requires a different kind of writing than all the talk about narrative and subtext. While in these cases, grammar and such aren't very important, in some ways it is much more difficult.

To "make a story real" requires a willingness to to write things down that you might not dare say out loud because hearing such things makes them real. Putting terrible experiences onto paper is a very effective way of purging pain from the system, but it's only the first step. Real creation requires more than just listing the events that occurred - that's the reporting side of writing. A story becomes real when we write about our feelings of the event. If we did something terrible, what drove us down that road? If we fell victim to someone else, what feelings swirled through us in that moment? After that moment? The next day? Events happen all the time, but they become real when we discuss how we, as humans, participated in them. Even if we existed in a state of shock, understanding that moment is just as important as any other.

Of late, I've done some writing about an accident I was in as a teenager. I've written about it before, but looking back on those earlier works, I defused the feelings by stepping around the trauma of it all. Just the fact that I wrote about it at all was a great first step, but the more I felt secure enough to let my mind swim deeper into the trauma of that moment, the more I discovered about my unresolved feelings from that moment nearly 40 years ago. 

Now I write about it, and I can feel the numbness, the shock going through my mind as I tried to figure out whether I was alive. It's easier now to express what it felt like to go stumbling into the foggy night, bloody and sore, trying to find another person, a house, a phone. How my eyes transfixed on a porchlight and I staggered toward it like a beacon of sanctuary, all my pain subsiding as I placed my energy toward reaching that one porchlight. I buried all my feelings in the name of survival and forced myself to reach that porch and get help - there was no other way to do things. And having written that, I now recognize how I often bury my feelings during stressful times in order to survive, and all that trauma is something I can identify now.

Will it be a novel? A bestseller? An epic poem? Not a chance. But I dug into those feelings, piece by piece, writing about each one until I understood it. It required patience, a little bit of pain, and a good amount of faith, but writing about my feelings and asking myself constantly, "How did I feel about this?" got me somewhere special. Maybe someone will read the final product, maybe not. But It is, by far, the most important writing I ever did - so who cares if anyone reads it?     

Character versus caricature

In most stories, we know enough about the main character to portray them in a way the reader can understand. We should know what they basically look like, their basic height and weight, and any stand-out features they might have - a limp, freakishly large hands, eyes of different colors, etc. Once I lay out these details, I have the basic character - the 5'11", 220-pound, brown-haired, blue-eyed, balding guy with a shuffle to his step and evidence of a history of broken noses. He is drawn-out. He exists. He is real.

And frankly, he is boring.

Boring? Not the best way to describe a main character (and since this is also a bang-on description of me, it's definitely an unusual choice). I mean, there's nothing wrong with that description, and it is something the reader can immediately understand. However, the description is little more than a report about the character's appearance. None of that description really does anything, and in this regard, it's boring - not the best main character to have.

Now, am I suggesting that a main character, therefore, has to be 6'9", a svelte 310 pounds, freakishly blond hair with black streaks, red eyes and a brutal scar across his cheeks? Well, you would remember that visual, but that character might not fit the story very well, especially if the story was about a middle-aged writer contending with his mortality. Rather, you need to take the elements of the character and make them stand out in a memorable way, so that the 5'10" person has a more engaging description. One way to do this is to think of the old art of the caricature.

We think of the usual caricature as something we get from some guy with an easel out on Navy Pier. For $10 he draws a real exaggerated sketch of you, making a few features stand out dramatically. The portrait of you usually includes having your head's proportion to your body similar to Charlie Brown, your expression expanded to utter joy, merriment, or something else incredibly positive, and usually posed with some dramatic gesture or with a prop as oversized as your now-humongous head. It works; it makes a statement and you get a chuckle out of it. However, the important part is that you remember those key exaggerated points.

A character should be no different in their description, even if they retain normal human body proportions. Look at our writer example. Describing him as 5'11" is accurate but clinical; making him "a boringly average height" loses the detail but adds to the dimension of the character. Instead of citing his weight, suggest he "could afford to miss a few meals" and now the reader starts painting his own picture. Is he balding, or are the last few proud follicles of a once-proud head of thick brown hair stuck on his broadening scalp in a desperate comb-over? Do we need to state he has a limp, or is it better to mention this as a part of his actions? "He walked to the deli, his left leg slow to keep up" gives description as an action, keeping the story moving while offering the reader details along the way. 

These tricks take a boring -looking character and make them interesting in the sense that they have depth and dimension. If you want to make your character stand out with freakish height or other aspects, well, that's your call. However, even with a stand-out character, they become recognizable when their description is emphasized and engaged with, even exaggerated, to make the point stand out. They don't need to be fully-misshapen caricatures, but emphasizing their key points will connect the reader to even the most boring middle-aged writer.      

Should Heroes Fail?

If there's one common theme of the human experience, it is that people love the success story. Whether it is someone rising up from nothing to take on the world, or overcoming the seemingly unconquerable and achieving their goal, people eat that up. We hear those stories, read about them, watch them on the screen, and a part of us lives out that dream. It gives us a rush, knowing that anything is possible, and everything under the sun can occur if we just press on. We don't get that rush from stories of failure, we get it from victory.

However, if this is the way to go, why do people write stories where the protagonist falls short? Fails to reach their goal? Loses the girl? Dies? What's up with that? I'm not sure if this is breaking news, but most everyone has had a romantic relationship fail - why would they want to read about it? Sorry, but been there, done that, wrote a book on it (literally). And yet for some reason, there we are, talking about plenty of books that end tragically. Also worth noting - plenty of them are actually pretty good. So how does that work out, and what's the catch?

The first thing I like to bring up is defining what a hero actually is, at least in a literary sense. The hero - preferably a good or admirable person but this is not mandatory - is someone who steps up to adventure beyond their known world and into the risk of the unknown. This could be the dashing knight setting off to slay a terrible dragon, or a young country bumpkin seeking their fame in New York City - whichever the case, it is someone taking on the so-called "Hero's Journey" and ultimately driving the plot of any story. Whether they are willing or reluctant, their cause noble or selfish, they go into the unknown and face the many obstacles awaiting. 

Now, why did I go on about the whole hero definition? The hero is the reader's anchor to this story, and that connection is what makes the hero's experience important - because the reader is living out that adventure as well. However, a very important thing happens along this way - the hero changes. The events and obstacles along the way give that hero the opportunity to learn and even grow, and as this progresses, there's every chance they start seeing the world differently - perhaps even realizing their beliefs at the beginning were misguided. The dashing knight might discover the terrible dragon is not terrible at all, but is being manipulated by a far greater danger. Perhaps our young bumpkin sees how the big city might not be the place of dreams anymore. Now there's a real problem - the conflict between pursuing a goal and learning about something greater.

In this regard, plenty of heroes fail at their initial mission. The knight leaves the dragon alone to vanquish the greater evil, and maybe dies in the process but does so having first spread this truth to other people. The bumpkin goes back to home in the country, putting up with everyone's taunts of failure but knowing the simple is the most genuine way to live. Did they fail? Technically, yes. Did they grow? Definitely. And in plenty of ways, the satisfaction of knowing our hero ultimately did the right thing in the end, perhaps even costing them their life, is just as good as a story about someone's success.

Of course, growth and success is even better as far as stories go. If the hero lives on for the sequel, that's great (and potentially a franchise). However, never be afraid to explore the possibility of failure, and what it can offer the reader in terms of telling a genuine story.       

The Between-Draft Lessons

Yes, I talk quite a bit about how writers should, above everything else, write things. This is what they do, so do it - worry about the edits later. In my last post, I really went on about how easy it is to get distracted by editing, revising, perfecting, etc., and how it really takes us out of the actual creative mind. Therefore, I felt it was important to offer a few notes on when we should be doing the non-writing stuff, and how we should commit to it. It's not as difficult as it may sound, but it's an important part of developing the personal process.

Most of us know the different stages of our writing drafts. Starting with notes, we create a rough draft, a second draft, then an endless series of further drafts, followed by a final product (in theory). Each one of these drafts holds a special role: the first one is solely to create - the committing of an idea to paper. The second draft is hammering out broad problems - PoV changes, weak characters, missing/necessary scenes, and plugging up plot holes. By the end of the second draft, we know what characters we need, their purpose, how they interact, and the main plot arc. Subsequent drafts become waves of clean-up - fixing contradictions, filling in weak descriptions, and side-plots. Any draft after that should be polish - making the characters stand out, tweaking dialogue, putting in jokes or other asides, and fine-tuning the critical turns in the plot. At that point, you do the grammar/spelling/punctuation check-up, weed out unnecessary words, then put a bow on it. This is how it should be done - but this doesn't discuss the space between.

In my experience, both as a writer and as a person who has talked with writers, when creating the first draft and even when working the second draft, something happens other than typing; learning. By the end of a draft, plenty of writers discover more about their story and their characters that might never have occurred when they started writing. It is as if the events and personalities evolve as that draft is being created, all while the story unfolds. This is great, but this demands that after the draft is finished, the writer would serve their work best by taking an interim step between drafts and think about what happened.

Just as every story is a journey and a character should grow in the process, the author should go through the same metamorphosis. Once a draft is completed, the writer should take some time to contemplate what they learned about the characters through the act of creation, and whether they discovered something fascinating about them. After the first draft, take some time to think about that journey, and whether it feels genuine. If you don't understand the character's growth, you might be missing some important aspects of the story. After the second draft, you should know the character well enough to understand the journey and their changes, so now you need to think about anything that can really emphasize that transition. This is where sub-plots and so forth become important - they define aspects of the character's growth that the main arc does not imply.

After I finish a draft, I shelve it for a bit so I can really process what has happened. I think about those people I wrote about, and what I learned about them in the process of converting them from thoughts to words. At this point, it's perfectly acceptable to not write - you are preparing yourself for the next draft, and making it something special.

After that, get back to writing.         

Bad Writing Habits

For the past nine years, I have raised two cats that were rescues at just a few weeks old. As abandoned kittens, they weren't weaned properly, they didn't quite know about cleaning themselves, and they were oddly scared of the dark. Fortunately, they grew out of these things, but that doesn't mean they are perfect. Over the years, they developed their own idiosyncrasies, and I honestly can't explain them. The little boy kitty enjoys sitting on my papers when I edit (much to my chagrin), and the little girl will run off with straws. Oh - they are also both hooked on Q-Tips. If I use a Q-Tip for anything, I have to take special measures to dispose of it, because those little beasts will somehow track the scent, chase it down, and drag it out of the garbage so they can eat the cotton, chew on the rest, swallow some parts of it, then throw up in the hallway. Seriously - these cats have gone into garbage cans and dug through trash if they figure out a Q-Tip is in there. It's like owning pet raccoons in that regard, but I don't know what formed their compulsion.

Writers, however, are a little more manageable than cats, and their habits can be explored, explained, and more easily changed than by saying, "Bad! Bad writer!" and going after them with a spray bottle. And, of course, the first part of correcting any bad habit is identifying the habit to the writer themselves. The things they do may not seem like bad habits to them, but with a little discussion and exploration, they can see the problems in their habits and find some proper workarounds.

One of the main problems is "The Perfect Chapter (or paragraph, sentence, whatever)." Maybe you've seen this writer, maybe you once were this writer, maybe you are this writer, but we can all fall for it. We have an idea for a piece of work and we begin the process of creation. Whether it's a poem or an epic novel, we start on it, get a bit into it, then decide we want to make sure that beginning is flawless. We hear about how important the first chapter, sentence, whatever is supposed to be, so we turn our obsession toward perfecting it. The rest of the project is nowhere near complete, but there we sit, obsessing on the first part of it, trying to paint the perfect smile on a portrait we haven't even sketched out.

I cannot say this enough - when we do this, we prevent ourselves from creating, which is the most important part of the process. Usually we decide to polish the first paragraph or the first line because, subconsciously, we feel stuck with creating the rest of the project. Either we're a little burned out, or something doesn't feel right, or it's just not going where it's supposed to. In any case, we turn away from that problem and focus on some editing challenge that really doesn't make a difference in the larger sense because the rest of the project could change that sentence's meaning anyway. If you find yourself pursuing The Perfect Chapter, ask yourself why you aren't creating anything new. If you think deeply about it, you will figure out the problem isn't the need for The Perfect Chapter, but the fact that you've hit an obstacle, and that's where you should apply your efforts. Create first, edit later.

One other very bad writing habit involves falling in love with a phrase, a verb, a descriptor - anything you can think of that can become a part of your content. A prime example is demonstrating conflict with two phrases, and joining them with the word, "but." Example: "He had to finish the race but his legs started cramping." Now, there's nothing wrong with the word, "but." However, if it becomes your go-to move in contrasting two points, it will wear on the reader after a while. (Oh - starting a sentence with "But" can be a mood-killer as well.) Throwing in the occasional "however" or other contrasting conjunctions can offer some variety and keep the reader engaged, particularly when they are used to strengthen a sentence. What if our example sentence becomes, "He had to finish the race even as his legs started cramping." or, "He had to finish the race despite cramping in his legs." Each one gives a different feel and a sense of urgency that a simple "but" leaves out. 

If you feel you are falling victim to word usage repetition, do a word count to demonstrate how much a word shows up. Let that figure inspire you to think about other ways you can say things. And, as opposed to certain cats, learn to change your bad habits.          

Repetitive Redundancy and Repeating Things

We are told this early on in our writing experience: Word repetition should be avoided whenever possible. Be it nouns, verbs, descriptors, pronouns, whatever, nothing is more boring than finding the same word more than once in a sentence. It feels clumsy, basic, and uninspired, and out loud it creates an unmistakable grating sound. We learn to mix up our word choices, vary our verbs, and sometimes rewrite entire paragraphs to avoid ugly duplication. Eventually, our writing has all the variety of a Midwestern dinner buffet. At that point, we start learning when repetition might be a good thing.

Consider this sentence: "He ran out of his house, through the backyard, into the fields, away from every bad thing that ever happened to him, until he could no longer breathe." Pretty good as far as keeping the word blend in there. But what happens if we actually put some word repetition into this? "He ran out of his house, running through the backyard, running into the fields, running away from every bad thing that ever happened to him, running until he could no longer breathe." Repeating the word "running" is exhausting, but that actually serves a purpose by emphasizing just how important it is for this character to run away from whatever bothers him so much. In this case, repetition works to the writer's advantage because it takes its toll on the reader, which is exactly what this sentence should do.

Here's another example, this time through poetry. In one of the writer groups I attend, a fellow writer, poet, and all around good egg introduced us to a poem called a triolet. I had never known about such a thing, but once I heard about it, I became a little bit obsessed. A triolet can come in many forms, but one of the standard forms is an eight-line poem where the 1st, 4th, and 7th lines are the same line, the 2nd and 8th lines are the same line (different from the 1st, 4th, and 7th), and the rhyme scheme is ABAAABAB (the 3rd and 5th lines can be whatever you want as long as they fit the rhyme scheme. If this sounds complicated, well, it is at first, or at least until you see one. I would use my fellow writer's example but I do not know it offhand and didn't get permission anyway. Therefore, here is a simple triolet:

Untitled

Love lingers in the morning light,
A gentle touch, a whispered name.
It holds us close through darkest night—
Love lingers in the morning light.
Though time may blur our keenest sight,
The heart remains a steady flame.
Love lingers in the morning light, 
A gentle touch, a whispered name.

This kind of poem lives for repetition, using if specifically to reinforce a point. Now, this being poetry, there are allowances for repeating one's self and such, and many grammatical rules are optional. However, this emphasizes that using the same words or phrases can be a positive, even moving experience. You just need to know when to do it, and have a good sense of why it matters. In short, learn the rules so you know the best ways to break them.

As Monday will be Memorial Day (and my brother's birthday, my next post will not be until May 30th.       

  

Celebrating Writing

I'll admit it - my past few writing entries have not been the most upbeat pieces I've ever composed. Fear, frustration, loss - these kind of themes have been prevalent lately, and not just because that's what writers experience in their existence as creatives. Don't get me wrong - writing can be a very emotional process, and a lot of those emotions have some heavy weights attached. However, that's kind of the point of this piece. When we write about feelings, our emotional selves, or basically about any topic we choose, don't be afraid to explore the joy of things as well. It's out there, and it deserves its day in the sun.

Yesterday, I had the honor of attending my oldest niece's wedding (names/images omitted because I forgot to get permission). A very lovely service held at a church the family has attended for some time, then a reception at quite an enjoyable hall, this was a day replete with experiences to write about. Of course, like any event, this comes with some emotional gravity as well. You can't have a big family gathering without thinking about those who did not live to see that day. The mind can wander around a lot in that space, but for certain occasions, it's important to focus on the parts you want to remember. Mostly, my niece and my new nephew tying the proverbial knot.

Events such as this fill us with plenty of emotions, so sometimes our writing can be scattered or unfocused if we try to write about everything going through us at that time. Writing just one piece would not do anyone justice, so I am writing several pieces about this day, each one pulling out a different emotion, each one playing its own note instead of trying to find a chord that covered the entire event. (Yes, I am treating this beautiful day as a writing workshop, but it is the kind of perfect example that really brings home the point.)

The first thing that came to mind was the concept of perfection within the moment. I experienced this as a feeling of harmony, a sense that sometimes the world flows as we predicted and nothing goes wrong because it was meant to be. The weather was ideal, the church absolutely immaculate. If there were any last-minute emergencies, errors to be corrected or fires to be extinguished, I saw none of them. It was just two people who are really meant to be together, and everything went as it should - not even a crying baby or equipment malfunction. Maybe I am overlooking a lot of things, but this is what I write when I am dictating from a place of harmony. From another perspective, maybe I would feel differently about the music, my manners, or whatever. However, from the pleasant place in my mind, the day could not have gone any better.

Now, once I talk to the married couple again, I am sure there will be plenty of funny stories about behind-the-scene antics, some near-disasters with drunken guests, and other things that would be worthy of less-harmonious stories (I know there are definitely other angles to write about). However, for now, while writing from such a pleasant place, I literally do not care about those things. Those will be for later stories, if there's a need for them. For now, this is just about writing from a peaceful place, and letting that mood translate the events. 

      

Fear of Writing

There is a condition that some people are afflicted by - a fear of writing, which for some odd reason is called "graphophobia." (Yes, my gut instinct is to think of an irrational fear of graphs, algebra, or Excel sheets, but no on all counts.) Indeed, graphophobia is an actual thing that hangs people up and makes them resist putting words to the page. What causes this? It's not easy to say, but in most cases it has nothing to do with actually writing/typing words and everything to do with fear of something else. 

As we know, fear is a terrible monster that can make us act irrationally when it takes over. We all understand general fear, which simply paralyzes us from doing that thing we want, but in the case of graphophobia, it's a very specific action that triggers this response. And sometimes, we need to take a very rational approach to try and figure out what is setting off this irrational fear before we can do a thing about it.

Think about this. Have you ever gone to sleep while being genuinely afraid? Probably not, and if you did fall asleep just out of total fatigue, it was probably not the most pleasant sleep you've ever had. Chances are your mind ran about, wildly careening between different thoughts and outcomes that the fear-based action could bring about. Fear of tornadoes? In your mind, you are absolutely positive that your house will be leveled by a tornado (welcome to my childhood). Fear of abandonment? Yep, you will wake up alone. Fear of writing? That's a whole bunch of horrible outcomes, right? Right?

Actually, what is the worst thing that can come from writing something down? Perhaps some magical thinking might have people believe that what they write becomes the truth, but that's venturing into a very irrational thought process. No, writing things down doesn't really have repercussions. Writing things down puts words on a page - that's it. Now, it might be personally challenging to see certain words written before you. People who deal with trauma by writing down their experiences often fear reading what they wrote, but that's an issue of confrontation rather than the writing process itself.

When someone says they have a fear of writing their stories, I often make a simple suggestion. I ask them to think about the worst possible scenario that can come from them writing something down - just from the writing process - and ask if that, in itself, is scary. Usually they admit that the writing part isn't the hang-up, and the real issue is what might happen if people read their works, judge them, etcetera. Those are valid issues in their own right, but for now, this gives them the freedom to write things down with a personal liberty. They get over their "fear of writing" and actually explore their creative world, while addressing those issues that might be the real hang-ups in their lives.

In general, I try to follow this premise regarding any fear: If you can get comfortable with the worst realistically possible outcome of an action, you free yourself of the fear and can focus on committing to that action. To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, "Don't fear death, fear not living." And once you no longer fear something, please start writing about it.

    

The Culture of Language

I hope everyone here knows the word, "Schadenfreude." It's one of those great words that gets thrown around a lot, and people out here kind of know what it implies but might not know the exact definition. Then there are those sophomore German students who know that it is a combination of two words - damage and joy - but don't quite know how that links together. Then there's everyone who knows the definition goes along the lines of, "pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune."

Easy, right?

In a way, we learn a lot about cultures from what they deem worthy of requiring its own word, and the same goes for understanding our own language, and in doing so, our own culture. Following the stereotype of the very sober, intellectual Germans, we are not surprised that they turned such an odd, unique feeling into one word. For the more adventurous languages, we have words like, "tsundoku," which is, "the collecting of books you intend to read but never get around to." Does our culture need a word for that act? Probably not (though I know several writers who will read this and jot that word down for further usage). However, English has a wealth of words that represent all the kinds of joy in the world, an entire spectrum going from pleasant to ebullient and beyond. Some things just matter more than others.

Have you ever talked to someone who is thinking about repainting a room, and when you ask what color they are considering, they go into an entire spiel about that one color? If they say, "I want to go with a cocoa-like feel, with more of a warmth and coziness but maybe just a little lighter than a typical chocolate bar," they have told you more than just a color. They showed they are very invested in this idea of the perfect living room color and the emotions they want to evoke. If they answered, "Brown," chances are they are not interested in the color as much as they are about just slapping some new paint on the walls. Each description is basically the same color, but exploring it through word choice imparts a significance upon the act itself. 

When we write, let's keep this in mind. If I describe a room (not my friend's brown living room) as having red walls, well, that's a description but it doesn't invite the reader to investigate. It communicates a color, but not a significance. If I want the reader to start adventuring in a particular direction, picking up a certain mood, I need to go beyond the confines of just, "red." What comes to mind if the walls are lipstick red, or like deep, rich rose petals? What about blood red - what mind does that put the reader into? There are tons of versions of the color red, each one indicating a slightly different hue but more importantly, they all can set off a different importance in their meaning.

Often, ten words aren't necessary to describe what one word can tell a reader. However, depending on the importance of the message, you should use whatever words you have to guide the reader along and impose a feeling that comes with the color. I'm sure some language has one nice, conveniently-packaged word for describing that effect, but for now, let's just call it "good writing."  

   

Not the Easiest Thing to Write

For me, this year has been a bunch of firsts that have been quite difficult to process, and there's a big one coming up. Sunday is Mother's Day, and it will be the first time recognizing this day since my mother passed away. Anyone who follows this site will know that she spent her last several years with severe dementia, virtually unable to interact with the world around her. Every time I visited her, I would leave thinking, "Is there anything of her left in there?" but there was no conclusive answer. The best I could come up with is, "Maybe, but probably not." Incredibly uncertain but enough to leave open possibility that maybe she knew I was there. This year, however, I will ask that question and the answer will be, "No." For here and evermore, that's it.

Now that I have killed the mood sufficiently, let me explain why I went here. I always attribute the creative side of me to my father and that side of the family's weirdly elaborate brains. When it comes to words, however, both in creating things with them and discovering the world created by them, that's all the property of my mother and her side of the family. And the merger of those two concepts - the creative mind and the power of the word - are a perfect description of me. So, let me point out a few amazing things about how my mother showed my the world of words.

It would be fair to say that books were always a part of my life - our house had plenty of them. However, most of them were antiques, or a showpiece encyclopedia set from 1920 (I am not exaggerating), or something that was meant to be seen and not touched. As far as the "real" books went, that was my mother's real estate. I know my father read on occasion, but I do not actually remember the act of him reading a book. Mom, however, had a book around her somewhere, be it one of the more recent important pieces - The Women's Room by Marilyn French, and I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can by Barbara Gordon are etched in my brain even at a young age - or some book about politics, politicians, or life in general. The way I delineated it, my father had books; my mother knew books. 

And, of course, my mother was the writer in the family. My father was creative, but writing was not his specialty. Mom wrote for a living, and likely wrote more than I will ever truly know. I can't say if she ever tried her hand at narrative, essay, or poetry - journalism was her jam for the most part - but I know that it imprinted upon me how words had their own leverage. When they say, "A lever moves objects, leverage moves people," this demonstrates just how words can bring causes to life and move people to act. When my mother wrote her news stories, like about the teacher's strike in the early 1970s, people responded to that. More to the point, when I went to high school in the early 1980s, a few teachers recognized my last name and brought me aside to tell me they remembered being interviewed by my mother all those years ago. This was all the purpose, the creation, of the journey that is words.

Sadly, I have very few actual written pieces of my mother's work. She was not a packrat like my father was, so her first drafts and clip stories are mostly relegated to history. However, I do have the legacy of words to remember her by, and the knowledge that living in that world of words can be a very special feeling. Whenever I read my older writings (and after I go through a wave of self-criticism), I remind myself that this all goes back to the debt I owe my mother.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!            

The Finished Product

I have talked quite a bit about knowing what  you want to write, how you want to present it, and what constitutes a completed project. There is no definitive way to know when a work is completed - especially a written piece - because there are plenty of stages that go beyond the actual writing. Editing, redrafting, incorporating different ideas - these are all considerations that come with the process of  making a creative work come to life, and it doesn't matter if it's an epic saga or a haiku. They all require hard work, a lot of thought, often some second-guessing, and knowing when it's finally done.

And as I said, nobody will be able to tell you when it's done except for you. A book doesn't have a fixed length, an essay is however long it takes to make a solid point, a short story can be as short as you want (though if it's too long, it wanders into novella territory). The proper length of a story is exactly one story in length, no more and no less. The responsibility you hold is knowing when you've reached that point.

Surprisingly, however, that's not what I want to discuss in this piece. There's a gap between when you finally say, "Done! That's it! Finished!" and when you are able to appreciate your final product. It's a mental debriefing, a post-mortem of sorts where you shift from the position of creator and you get into the space of consumer. At some point, you should be able to look at something you made and simply appreciate the work in front of you for exactly what it is. At that point, you will feel the appreciation of "The Finished Product."

I say this because I recently closed the files on two big projects, and incidentally, I didn't write a word for either of them. I had the privilege of offering advice to Ciara Ward with her new book, Cliché Your Way Through Life: Remix, and just received an inscribed copy of the hardcover. I got to hold in my hands something that I had viewed through the eyes of a copy editor, as a beta reader, and as an objective critic. However, now I see the finished work and all the work she placed into it, and I can appreciate what she created from the position of being a consumer of the written word. In theory, I could look through the book, pick out a chapter, and recall us sitting down to discuss some structural detail. However, those moments are in the past. I can look at this book strictly with a sense of quiet awe about what she created. It's humbling indeed.

The other book is, Our House At The Lake by Sylvester "Lenny" Kapocius. I have mentioned Lenny before - he didn't start writing until the age of ninety, yet still published the story of his life in the Pacific Theater during World War Two. This is his second book, more of a personal memoir, and I just put the wraps on the final edits. Now I can look at this book, and I no longer think about the red ink I smeared over countless pages of copy (along with his son, who also read through it and gave it the red-pen treatment). I think about Lenny's accomplishment of writing a book, completing such a large task to pass on through the generations. I don't see my editing contribution, I see the work of this writer now in my hands. (Incidentally, Lenny turned 100 in January. Age isn't a reason to say you can't start writing.)

I bring all this up because that moment, that time of holding the final copy in your hands, is unlike anything you will be able to perceive while you are creating something. As you build something, you may have a vision of what it will look like after all is said and done, but the real goal should be seeing that moment when you can hold that product in your hands, no longer worry about the editing, rewriting, and so on. It should be a special moment to you, and one you always want to reach.

That's when you know it's done.          

The Word Warehouse

You've likely heard it before. It's the question that a "real" writer is supposed to be able to answer quickly, and that ever-feared question is, "What are you reading right now?" For a lot of people who are legitimate writers, this is a daunting question because reading takes up a lot of time in a very busy day, and our 24/7 lives rarely have room to slide a book in there now and then. However, that doesn't take away anyone's writing credentials. The only thing it really does is creates a backlog of things they need to catch up on in their writing journey.

Now, often after I ask this question to people, they respond with, "Why is it important that I should be reading something?" Early in my writing story I asked the very same thing - I couldn't grasp why other people's writing should affect how I write. I didn't want to be the next Pirsig or King, I wanted to be the first Pressler of literature. Reading how other people did it seemed to waste precious time when I could be writing instead. Then the whole "word warehouse" idea was brought to my attention. 

They say, amongst other things, that the average English-speaking person has a vocabulary of about 25,000 functional or recognizable words. Unfortunately, the average person only uses a tiny fraction of that - not out of some deficit in their knowledge but a general belief that, "I went to the store" is just as good as, "I dashed to the store," "I booked over to the store," "I popped over to the store" or many other alternatives. They don't play with their language, they just use it as a means to an end. As creatives, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. And in doing so, we need to build up a lot of words to do this. That's where the word warehouse comes into play. 

Take for example the sentence, "I booked over to the store." Odd phrasing, but it comes with a lot of character because it takes a word and plays around with it. In a simple vocabulary, "Book" is a noun and little else. But as we build the warehouse, we have a lot on the shelves under the category of "Book." We would know that "book" gets used as a verb, like to record an entry - to book an expense, or to book a trip. If you book a bet, it can evolve to "bookie," the guy who takes your bet - often outside of the formal legal world - and now the word gets a feeling, something more casual, perhaps seedy. Another angle as a verb is to hurry - to book over to the store before it closes. Now we are in a more casual, lingo-style usage that makes conversations more interesting and multidimensional. As we read, we see these words used in many different contexts, and we start filling up our warehouse - not with a bunch of different words, but with a bunch of different uses. 

The more you read, the more you take in the wild, playful variability of language and how it can be used as a tool not just of explanation but of entertainment. Your writing appeals to more people on different levels, and it gains a new depth - same words, but so much more meaning. So when you get a chance, brush up on your writing skills by doing some reading. (And I am currently reading Wall Street by Richard Roberts along with Gamemasters by Flint Dille.)

      

Can Anyone Write A Story?

I hear it all the time. A conversation turns toward me being a writer, and someone says, "Man, I wish I was a writer like you. I really have some good stories to tell." When I ask why they don't write them down, they almost always come back with, "I'm just not a good writer." If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, well, I would have several dollars. However, none of those dollars would really help that person start on the journey to becoming a writer. I used to tell these people, "Well, why don't you try writing down a story and see what happens?" They never did, which is a shame, because that's literally all it takes to be a writer. Now I try a different approach.

When people have a bunch of good stories to tell but don't think they can be a writer, I now keep a different response in my pocket. If time permits, I say, "Well, tell me one. Whichever one you want." This kind of prompting gets them talking, and they tell me a story about their neighbor with the ferrets, or that time they accidentally set a garbage truck on fire, or the chili fight during sophomore year in high school. Nine times out of ten, they tell a complete story. At that point I thank them for sharing then say, "See? If you had written all that down, it would make you a writer. It's literally that easy." That doesn't always get those people writing, but it's good inspiration.

Now here's the tricky part. Notice how I didn't say, "See? That's how you write a story." It is you who tells a story, and writing it down makes you a writer, but marrying those two into the combo platter of someone writing a story does have a few tricks to it that you only discover once you write down what you say and realize there is a little daylight between saying something and reading what someone says. Fill that gap between the two, and you can write a story.

That gap between telling and writing may seem like a technicality, but there's a lot of verbal storytelling that actually doesn't involve the words themselves. Inflections of tone can make a huge difference. Pacing yourself. The volume of your voice. Accents, dialect, shifting between characters - all critical parts of the verbal storytelling process that can get lost writing things down. And let's not forget that telling a friend a story comes with an array of facial expressions, gestures, raised eyebrow and confused glares that bring a lot to the show. I once saw Marina Franklin do a hilarious bit of stand-up where the closing two minutes was exclusively expression and gesture - not one spoken word - and the piece killed. Writing something like that is what turns a writer into a real wordsmith.

The truths of this piece are relatively simple. First, most people can tell a story, and some can do it well. Second, barring any literacy obstacles, most anyone can be a writer. And the big takeaway is this: fusing those two skills together might take some work and practice, but that's true of most any talent. In the end, you end up being able to write a story. And when someone says, "Man, I wish I was a writer like you," you will realize that you are, in fact, the writer they're taking about.