Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 2

The Care and Feeding of Fiction Writing

I’ve been reading two books, one called Great at Work and the other The Good Enough Job. Both business books, but they highlight the toxic nature of our work culture. And I don’t mean just the day job culture, but how it also filters into fiction writing.

This is all with the caveat that if one of your strengths needs to something specific to help it with writing, then that’s what you need.

When I was growing up, my father worked for the aerospace industry. In those days, you worked for a single company and they paid for your retirement (clearly the cost of living was quite different). But there was a change in the industry, and my father was laid off. He went to work for another company for several years. Eventually, they also laid him off, and he considered working for the federal government—a huge salary cut—because they paid and had health insurance. He also considered a job in Colorado, a big move, and expensive. Then the company hired him back, laid him off again and went out of business. He eventually went into business for himself.

His comment I heard growing up: You can’t let your job define you. What if you get laid off or fired? Your whole identity is gone. (It’s not an exact quote, but the gist of what he said).

Curiously, despite all the changes in the work industry, this piece of your job as an identity hangs around like a cat digging her claws in. The passion stuff showed up possibly because of the book What Color is Your Parachute? (I haven’t read it; I may have to). It’s become this thing where you’re “supposed” to find passion and fulfillment in your job.

Usually, that translates into working more hours. Everyone repeats the mantra of “more is better” without realizing that they’re giving up their agency to serve the god of productivity.

The work part has infiltrated writing fiction everywhere. I’m finding it hard to find workshops that aren’t focused on productivity or how to market. Dean Wesley Smith considered, briefly, creating a beginner course, though I wasn’t sure if it would have been craft or in the direction his workshops have gone more recently. People posted alternative classes online, including a free  course I visited—production and publishing.

Not about actual writing.

Production goals come straight out of the work culture. A boss type can see that you’ve physically produced words and say you’ve done your job. And we absorb this thinking into how we write.

It’s especially troublesome when there are other aspects of writing that don’t involve the counting of groups of black marks on the page:

Revision: I don’t revise, but other writers need to. A writer struggled with the idea she couldn’t count words doing revision.  

Copy editing: Most of this is going through changes your copy editor suggests. It’s not all accepting all changes, but looking at each one. Most of the time when I do this, I’m using accepting all the changes. But I always run into a suggested change where I have to think about the comment and make the decision.

Cycling: I hated doing this in Scrivener, especially when something was coming out. Then, I was more messy with my process—a lot more messy—so cycling often involved taking things out and shuffling chapters around to get the right flow. If you take anything out of Scrivener, it deducts it from your day’s word count. You can end up in negative words. That’s demoralizing if you’re counting words and trying to make a daily goal.

Thinking: This is the most problematic of the bunch; the others have aspects of being work you can see. If you sit back in your chair, prop your feet up, and think about your story, anyone who sees you will be convinced you’re loafing (and maybe try to put you to work). A writer sneered at me and said that I was not doing writing correctly because I needed to think about it first.

Learning: Learning something new can’t be measured. You have to practice doing it. Businesses doing a lot of talking about continual learning, and it sometimes feels like they’re simply throwing classes at employees. It certainly isn’t enough to learn how to write by reading an article or a book. You have to do something with it. I’m currently working at adding the season to every scene. How would you measure that? I suppose you could count and track the number you do…but why?

The business world has a love-hate relationship with creativity itself. They want new shiny ideas that will make them a lot of money, but they also give creativity the side eye. You can’t measure it, and it doesn’t look like actual work. Years ago, a major business magazine blog posted an article from a manager on working with creatives. It was the equivalent of “Give them a cookie and they’ll be happy.” The blog still had comments then, and it lit up with outraged creatives. (The post has been taken down, along with the comments).  

Psychology Today offers reasons companies crush creativity, including this:

The Focus Mindset: Establishing rigid time, place, and setting parameters for “creative work” seldom works. Creative thinkers oscillate between periods of focus and un-focus. Creativity seldom happens in confining circumstances.

This hits on some of the areas that both books above discussed. Production goals—the visual aspect of working at writing—neglect the creative side. It’s not enough to simply sit down at a computer and start making black marks on the page.

I did that in the days when I was trying to write for Hollywood. Someone well-meaning told me I needed to write a script a week, so I did. The scripts ranged from sitcoms to moves. As soon as I finished a story, I launched on the next story. By the time I reached ten, I’d burned out.

Because I never fed the creativity.

Too much productivity is not good for us, and the tools have made it possible for us to push to do even more. To the point where every writer is assumed that they must write full time. Psychology Today comments that the pandemic increased toxic productivity.

But there’s also been an anti-productivity movement. You might not have seen it called that, but you’ll recognize all these terms:

Self-careResilienceMindfulnessGratitude JournalsBoundariesHabits

All of them are disturbing because we shouldn’t need someone else explaining that we need to do self-care or be resilient. This trend has risen because of all the focus on working harder, doing more, and not spending time on ourselves.

When I wrote all those scripts, it was like being on a never-ending hamster wheel. In a day job, especially if you’re sharing your writing with one on your off time, you finish work fast, you get praised for it and then get more work. And another hamster wheel that burns up energy pennies like crazy.

How do writers step back from all this? The emerging trend of productivity now is that you must be a well-rounded person with interests outside of work. Even with writers who write outside of a day job, you also have to take time to have other interests.

Consider:

Visiting friends and family—you know, people things.

Taking your dog to a water park (we have such a thing). And since I mentioned it, a video.

Taking a walk at a nearby park among nature.

Birdwatching.

Knitting.

Attending a lecture.

Learning ball room dancing.

Watching a documentary.

Watching the dolphins. I did this for a trip to Virginia Beach. I did not take any pictures because my goal was to actually watch the dolphins.

Going to the beach.

Pretty much, something you enjoy that is not about writing.

These do not include doing these things while buried in a cell phone. I watched a woman walking her poor dog. She walked briskly, probably multitasking to get her 10K of steps in. But she couldn’t just walk the dog and get her steps; she was scrolling through her cell phone (email?). She towed the dog like he was a cart of groceries (dogs lose their ability to see the world through their nose when owners do this: How the Dog Became the Dog).

I used to choose places to go on the weekend based on if I could apply it to a future writing project. I’d got to a Civil War site and take notes. The trips rapidly became tedious and unpleasant because they became “work.” I did the same thing with learning; everything I learned had to be about writing fiction. My input was most unhappy with me, and I burned out on learning about writing for a while.

It’s easy to fall into this because it’s embedded everywhere in our culture.  So much so that influencers sell us apps and systems to make up the difference. There’s a whole note taking culture that proposes that you can follow a system and creative connections will magically appear. The problem is that if your creative brain is already starved from too much work, you won’t make creative connections with anything.

Dean Wesley Smith has talked about the creative side being like a two year old. It wants to have fun. Keep the two year entertained by doing fun things that might not seem all that productive.

Microsoft Word for Fiction Writers: Fixing all that $#*()#) Auto-formatting

This post was inspired because I considered doing a 15 minute talk for a writing conference on Microsoft Word for Fiction Writers. The process of submission was too arduous, so I passed on it. But waste not, want not since I’d already spent the thinking time on it.

What makes me qualified:

I’m high input (#3). I collect information. At one point, I thought about getting certified in Microsoft Word, so I collected a lot of knowledge. If I use a program, I learn everything I can about how to use it.I also instruct people in my day job. I often write my own instructions because a lot of instructions are too detailed and not detailed enough. Someone might refer to the mystery word “progress bar”; whereas, I’ll say “left menu” because that makes it easy to find.I’m a fiction writer.

The biggest problem with Microsoft Word is that it’s designed for business use. The default formatting assumes that you will use it to create reports and other documents for your boss. Of course, that creates problems with fiction writing. Manuscript format requires those default settings to be turned off or changed.

That creates the second problem. Even the help sites assume business use, so it’s hard to find exactly the information you’re looking for. Many also assume that you just need to know how to do this task, not that you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. Last time I checked, it’s hard to find what you’re looking for if you can’t ask the right questions. Which is hard in itself if you’re using the tool for business standard.

Problem number three is that Word is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). The WYSIWYG assumes you’re doing a business standard, so if you try to do something different, it becomes a frustrating experience. Add that with not knowing what you’re looking for…ugh.

People complain about the program not doing “X” and find other tools. Each tool has its own problems. The conference submission was in Google Docs. I’m a tech nerd and it was frustrating for me to work with it. Granted, I wasn’t familiar with Google Docs, but it wasn’t friendly for a first-time user working with a document formatted by someone else.

Plus, most publishers want Word documents. Just extra administrative overhead to switch it from one program to another. Nothing ever converts exactly or cleanly. I’m always about doing less work.

So, the first tip is how to turn off the Auto-formatting. That’s when you type an asterisk for a scene break and Word converts it to a bullet point. Businesses use a lot of bullet points; fiction writers do not (at least not unless you’re doing an epistolary story where it might be a feature. But that can be manually added easily enough).

1. Open Word to a document. Can be a blank document, can be your manuscript.

2. Select FILE from the top menu bar and then OPTIONS (down near the bottom of the list that pops up).

3. The options dialog box opens. Click PROOFING on the left menu.

4. Click on the AUTOCORRECT button near the top of the dialog box. That opens yet another dialog box.

5. Click on the AUTOFORMAT AS YOU TYPE tab.

6. Go down to the APPLY AS YOU TYPE section in the middle and uncheck everything. Whee! Whacking of those Auto-formatting!

7. Click on the AUTOFORMAT tab (yeah, I’m not sure why there are two of these).

8. In the APPLY section, uncheck the AUTOMATIC BULLETED LISTS.

9. Click OK to save the changes and you’re done!

The Word system updates will sometimes change your settings back to default, unannounced. When I wrote this up, I discovered #8 had turned back on. So just save this link or copy the instructions into your note-taking system so you can refer to them later.

A Discussion on Suspense

Sometimes it’s hard finding any articles on fiction writing that go beyond explanations and techniques at the beginner level, almost step-by-step (and terribly unsatisfying for intellection types).

The New Yorker published an article called The Secrets of Suspense by  Kathryn Schulz (there may be a paywall). I started reading The New Yorker because Cal Newport talked about how to think in a world where everything is measured in seconds, and we’re encouraged not to think.

The article is not a writing instruction article like you might find in Writer’s Digest. It’s a long read, thought-provoking (Intellection alert), and blends both life and fiction writing. It uses an example of Jaws, which celebrates it’s 50th anniversary this month.

The most telling me:

Suspense is all around us: Anticipation and dread.

Suspense is something we know instinctively, so as writers we have to take that up another level for a story.

A Curriculum of Writing Craft: Description

This week, I ended things with my second fitness coach. The official reason was money, but it was clear the coach wasn’t listening to me. Nor did the coach understand exercise for someone who hadn’t seen 20 in a long time.

When I dug around, I ran across this You Tube stream and discovered that nearly every exercise the coach gave me I shouldn’t be doing. Which seems to be the standard in the fitness industry. It treats women like we should strive to be forever twenty.

So I ended up making up my workout curriculum—exercise bands rather than weights. Weights are more for if you want to look like Jack La Lanne.

Writing craft also is prone to bad advice, writers putting their own spin on something they think isn’t important or that you shouldn’t bother with. Nearly everything taught is solidly stuck at the beginner level, so if a writer wants to advance their skills, there isn’t any way to find out what the means. Enter the writing curriculum. This just covers one section of writing, but it’s the foundation to get to some of the other skills.

Onward!

All about the character

Put yourself in the POV character’s head. Everything listed below is done from their opinion or judgment. For example, one person likes the heat of summer and another can do without. Adding all these elements framed from this opinion takes you to an advanced level.

Now start with the first of these on the list. You might need a cycling pass to verify you’ve gotten them into the scenes. You’ll find all of them are connected, so even doing one is going to stretch skills.

Establish the setting.

Every scene should establish the setting. Your character exists a location in the story. This also should be mentioned in the first or second paragraph of the scene, not three pages later. If you don’t give the reader an image, they’re likely to form a different one—then are rudely kicked out of the story when you present conflicting information.

Once you decide on the setting, add two or three sentences describing it. Remember, add the character’s opinion of the setting. Have something else happen, a line of dialogue, then do some more setting.

Many writers fear description and leave it out as boring. Description is boring when you disconnect the character from it. Which, unfortunately, is what most writing exercises do. Description must be firmly anchored in your character. Walter S. Campbell in The Writer, October 1939, defines it as “The purpose of description is to make the reader believe in the story.”

Bonus tip: If you’re having trouble with creating a setting (because it is challenging), use your home location as a basis. Makes creating it a lot easier when you can research it daily.

Decide on the season

Human beings are anchored in time. We look forward to taking summer vacation, or going to a Halloween party. We complain when two feet of snow shuts down our city.

Many books don’t have any sense of season. So, by doing this, you’re already ahead of a lot of other writers.

In every scene, bring up something that involves the season:

Your character decides what to wearYour character attends a Christmas partyYour character gripes about bathing suits for sale while there’s still snow on the groundColor can be sunflower yellow; Arctic blue; or Christmas greenFood can set a season, such as cranberries in the fall or strawberries in the spring

Can you believe how much writers miss in rich characterization by ignoring what time of the year it is?!

Bonus tip: If you need help with adding the seasons, use the one you’re in now.

Pay attention to the weather

I remember one of those top ten writing rules was “Don’t start with the weather.” This rule showed up because the weather became too many writers added it as a throwaway line. Who cares if “It was raining”?

When you add weather, give us the character’s opinion on the weather. Some examples:

Characters choosing clothing to wear because of the weatherCharacters expressing concern about the weatherCharacters enjoying the weatherCharacters having conversations about the weather

If it’s raining, describe the rain. Is it a thunderstorm hurling sheets of rain? Or is it a steady, soaking rain? Or is a light, prickling rain? Of course, if the weather can interfere with the character succeeding, add that, too.

Add a sense of light/time of day

Writer Dave Farland noted the problem of “unappeals.” That is, when the writer leaves out something that should be there. Like if it’s night or day outside, or what time of day.

So, in every scene, early on (that scene beginning does a lot of heavy lifting), add a reference to the time of day, including:

The sun rising/settingCharacters eating breakfast or dinner (and you sneak taste in)Characters saying “Good morning.”Character noting that the morning was already hot and humid (seasons!)Character eying the setting sun and worrying about what’s going to happen when it gets dark

I read a book by an author where it was obvious she’d lost control of her timeline. The events in one section all happened in one day, and yet there wasn’t enough time for all of them. Readers will notice!

Bonus Tip: I like to put a placeholder (bracketed, all caps) at the top of each scene to make sure my brain anchors later in the scene as to when it’s happening. I sometimes forget, especially since author time is not the same as story time. I was writing a scene in Superhero Vs. Superhero and suddenly realized that it should be dark outside in the scene; I’d had a different mental picture of the time in the previous scene, which led to a continuity problem in the following scene.

Establish day of the week

Most writers don’t think about this…at all. I read a lot of books and can’t tell what day of the week it is.  On a con panel, a developmental editor said it was common in YA for the characters to attend school every day (no weekends. That’s terrible! Weekends were the best part of school.).

It’s understandable if the main character loses track (a common problem with Eve Dallas when she bumps up against a holiday and wants to plow forward on the investigation. But everyone else reminds her of it (and she forgets and has to be reminded again).

This goes back to human beings needing the boundaries of the days of the week. We all know what’s it’s like to hit Friday and be done for work for two days. There are also everyday events associated with days…going to church on Sunday, getting back to the grind on Monday, humpday, and so on.

Even in a fantasy novel, a day of the week might be associated with events in the world, such as market day.

You don’t have to state that it’s Wednesday in the scene, though you need to be aware of where you are in the week so you don’t have a never ending week. I always put the day of the week in my placeholder.

Whew! This is a lot of information. And we haven’t gotten to the bigger skills yet!

Add the five senses

This one’s tricker. You’ll have seen writers lecturing on it everywhere, but not a lot of detail on it. I searched for five senses in the old The Writer Magazine. Many writers mentioned it but didn’t explain beyond a general level (like a blog post today). The explanations were maddeningly vague. Is it any wonder that no one knows how to do this?

Dean Wesley Smith says to use all five senses every 500 words (he goes into a lot of good detail in his Depth class. Well worth taking). When I took the class, I was horrified at the amount I had to write. How do you get taste into a story when your characters aren’t eating? How do you describe smell when we don’t have words for smell? (The words are from other senses; smell is a complicated sense).

So …

You already have the backbone of what you need with all the steps above. You couldn’t have done some steps without venturing into the five senses. Now cycle back and add more. At Superstars, Michael LaRonn said to look for places where you can add adjectives that do double duty—convey more than one sense:

Snow-crusted mountains: Conveys texture, and sound, in addition to sight.Coffee-colored hair: Conveys taste and smell, in addition to sight.

This is where diving deep into your characterization and pulling out their opinions. In one of Michael Connelly’s books, Harry Bosch was headed for a building and didn’t know his fate. He described the building as looking like a tombstone.

Make the description work, using the five senses. Make the description show us who your characters are.

And the last one…

Telling Details

This is one that vexed me. I always heard it out of context of all the above. It’s hard to do details if you don’t have setting, description, or five senses.

Vince Flynn said at the first Thrillerfest this means to be specific. A dog (his example) shouldn’t just be a dog. It’s a good example because a Bichon Frise is significantly different than a Great Dane.

Dean Wesley Smith calls the non-specific references (i.e., trees, instead of hemlocks) “fake details.” Like a character walking into a bar, and no details on if the place is a seedy bar or a high end bar.

An easy place to start is with birds (inspired by the book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy). Birds are specific to a location, and it’s something that every reader experiences. Look up common birds in the setting and pick two. Then look up those birds to see what they look like and also what they sound like. Not all birds chirp (fake detail alert!), and not all birds are melodic (fake detail alert!).

Birds also have an additional advantage: they are a double duty detail. You can describe the trill of a red cardinal. While trees often are listed as describing the setting, you can only say they are oaks and maples. Plus, your cardinal can fly into the branches of an oak.

So look for details you can add that do double-duty and pack more punch in fewer words.

Whew! This is a lot of work. But it’ll take you to the next level.

Input strikes: Links to interesting things

Cal Newport’s podcast below inspired a post on A Craft Curriculum, but intellection needs more thinking time on it. So, some links!

Our Love/Hate Relationship with Productivity. Cal Newport spends an hour talking about the history of productivity. It’s a fascinating look, especially since productivity has also bled into fiction writing. However…check out the question on research also. Scott Young, who has a blog on learning in college, mentions that writing has become about word count, not craft.

A quote from Cal: “Do less. Do Better. Know why”

Information Flow: This has been a topic I’m interested in because it’s about hiding information in plain sight. I’ve read many mysteries where the author hid the murderer by having him in only one scene in the story. The reader should not get to the reveal and go, “Who is that?” The article is called Mind Your P’s.

Time Limit: Time is another topic I’ve been interested in, though I didn’t understand why. It seems like it should be straightforward, and it isn’t. The article, called Tine Limit,” notes that time is an additional–and hidden character–and is used to create suspense. The author describes several times of time limits that area worth a look.

Get Bad News: This is a fun online game that shows you how someone can spread disinformation and create conspiracy theories. You’ll be able to tell better when someone is giving you disinformation…and maybe use it in a story. Might be a form of information flow to hide something.

The Problem with AI and Fiction Writing

I’ve been able to write again. I finished a short story, and I’ve been going over Superhero Vs. Superhero to refresh my memory. I’m finding little things that need correcting, like having the character enter a restaurant and then a few paragraphs down enter the restaurant. Oops. I also took out something that may have been causing me to be stuck. If something is in the story that shouldn’t be, it’s like the river gets dammed up by an evil beaver.

This post was inspired by a survey ProWritingAid sent for their future changes. The questions were quite alarming; it felt trending towards giving the AI more control over your writing. One question was on AI giving you sensory detail, and another on motivation to write.

The problem with AI, as the book The AI Dilemma notes, is that it encroaches on human agency.

For writers, that’s our agency to create stories.

Writers have always had a problem with that. When you’re new, you don’t get feedback on what you’re doing wrong from a magazine or agent. They send you a form rejection. If you’re lucky, you get a short comment like an editor’s pithy comment on one of my stories: “No wonder.”

Usually we’re looking for something actionable, and often we don’t have enough knowledge to ask intelligent questions.

So writers landed in critique groups. Critiques are challenging because you’re often critiqued by people at the same level, and possibly with no knowledge of your genre. You also get hit by the feeling of “Wow. I had no idea there was so much wrong in my story.” So you see everything as a call for action, even something as ridiculous as cutting out all the description in your fantasy or removing all the dialogue (yes! Actual critiques!). Instead of improving the story, it jettisons the writer’s voice.

This is AI, except it’s on extra strength steroids. It can pull from all over the internet to assemble a suggestion for a description. But it cannot create.

For curiosity, I ran ProWritingAid’s Inspiration reports on the short story I’d written. I picked Atmosphere and Emotional Resonance Reports.

For context, the story started with a to-do list to meet with the requirement of epistolary. The last item on the list hung a lantern on the theme and would have been obvious to the reader why there was a problem. The bolded portion is what AI pulled out to change.

My sentence: I glowered at the last entry on my to-do list, scrubbing my hands through my tangled morning hair. (The last part was to establish time of day, which many writers forget to do.)

AI recommendation for emotional resonance: I scowled with frustration at the final entry of my never-ending to-do list. (Ironically, when I ran a check for typos, the same tool wanted to correct “final” to the word I used.)

Obviously, it mined the internet, since that’s a productivity cliché. But AI sure couldn’t tell that it had nothing to do with the story. The sentence is also surprisingly dull and lacking personality.

Prior to this next example, I described some setting with specific details. Following the sentence below were more details. The story is set in Washington State. Bolded portion is what AI pulled out.

My sentence: Our house had a generous backyard set against a slope of Douglas firs and yews.

AI recommendation for emotional resonance: Our house boasted a sprawling backyard, stretching out like a secret oasis.

AI recommendation from Atmosphere: The backyard was a lush oasis, with vibrant green grass stretching out towards the hill of towering telephone pole trees.

“Lush oasis” probably came from real estate descriptions. Again, AI ignored the other sentences around it that pulled in the mood.

Curiously, the AI took my first person and flipped it to third. It was smart enough to find the two places I mentioned the character’s name, but not smart enough to figure out first person. I wonder what it would have done if the character’s name hadn’t been mentioned.

I also researched names of common birds in Washington State, including listening to one. The bird’s voice wasn’t particularly pleasing, so I had to find a word to describe what the character thought of it (clamant).

This is what AI gave me instead: The melodic songs of finches and sparrows filled the air, creating a symphony of nature’s music.

Finches and sparrows were not on the common bird list for Washington State. So AI changed a significant detail that would kick the reader out of the story if they were familiar with Washington State.

Also, AI doesn’t appear to have an actual sense of mood like a human wood. First, it talks about the frustration of never-ending to-do lists, then an oasis and cheery birds. Rather discordant. But read on. There’s more.

From Superhero Vs. Superhero:

In Scene 1 (in a hotel lobby): I penguin-stepped through, emerging into a gold and white lobby scented with bergamot and rose. A massive chandelier dripped golden lights and a verdant waterfall burbled into a pond of koi. (Scene 2 is in a bathroom following the same color and smells.)

In Scene 3 (in a restaurant): The cavern in my stomach opened up at the smell of steak cooking.

AI version: The aroma of sizzling steaks filled the air, mingling with the scent of bergamot and rose, creating a tantalizing olfactory experience.

AI merged two settings into one for the description. Clearly, it can’t figure out that the only smell in a restaurant should be the food. Dice’s suit also gives her a never-ending appetite, so food is not a “tantalizing olfactory experience” to her. It’s “I smell food. I’m starving. I ate five minutes ago.”—no matter the food. All in context in the paragraphs around. Which AI ignored.

AI also does some telling, rather than showing: The restaurant, adorned with lush greenery and elegant drapes, exuded an atmosphere of sophistication and luxury.

Mine: My sandals whispered on the carpet as I followed Joule’s brisk walk. Deeper golds, with luxurious seating and a lush forest of plants draped artistically in boxes behind the seats. More peacock oils in ornate frames bedecked the walls. If I didn’t have an irritated alien waiting for me, I’d have cruised the room to sightsee.

Dean Wesley Smith uses the term “fake details.” I think the AI version is filled with them. What is sophistication? What is luxury? What is elegant? They don’t tell us anything.

This is the heart of Depth, which AI doesn’t comprehend. It just puts together words based on whatever it runs across the internet. This includes marketing phrases to sell people stuff, which is often studied so it offends no one, resulting in blandness.

AI can mechanically pick senses, but it can’t determine if smells should go together. AI also can’t give opinions about the setting because opinions are a very human thing.

So why are the tools trying to take on more and more of writing?

Because writers are demanding it.

Why are they demanding it?

I’m thinking it’s for several reasons:

The biggest culprit is short-term thinking. Humans default to short-term thinking, likely because of the days when they foraged food. They would have lived day to day, not knowing if they would catch their next meal. Technology has made this default even shorter.

We see that with companies focused on short-term profits, jumping on trends to make money. Then they run into trouble when the trend fizzles out. Training courses now come in thirty minute online classes with videos of 5 minutes each. That’s pretty superficial.

Writers, even before AI, would jump on the internet and say things like “Tell me what’s wrong with this so I can be a best seller.” They wanted to get rich quick, with an unrealistic expectation effort.

Tying into that is the problem of most of the teaching of writing is beginner level. Anything beginner level is very basic. When a writer looks around to figure out how to show a character being angry (beyond waving a fist), they’ve run head on into the problem of this skill not being taught. Other writers say to add the five senses, but often give little detail or—horrors—“don’t add too much.”

It hit me as I was reading through old issues of The Writer Magazine. No one really explained Depth well, anywhere. I grew into writing reading The Writer Magazine and Writer’s Digest. Writers mentioned doing the five senses. They didn’t explain that it’s the backbone of characterization and emotion. They didn’t explain how much you need to put into a story. Most of the references I’ve found have been mentioned in passing. Dean Wesley Smith’s Depth class was the first place I saw a good explanation of it, and how important it was. I got my first personal rejection from a professional paying magazine after getting better at it.

But it took me two years just to get comfortable putting setting into the story. Two years is a long time in a world focused on short term. So the writers are headed to AI to add the five senses, something they should be learning, but don’t have the patience to and aren’t being taught. I’ve read indie authors with multiple book series—but no depth.

Word count and production goals further reinforce the use of AI to take shortcuts. I think the insane level of word counts might have started with one writer who used to blog his daily word count. He was a full-time writer and a writing machine. Seeing his word count, it was inspiring. We all thought we could do it. Except everyone ignored the fact that writing a certain number of words takes a certain amount of time. You might be able to touch type 80 words a minute, but you can’t create any faster than you can create. Add an intellection strength, and it may slow down further.

Compounding this is the Apex predator aspect, also discussed in AI Dilemma. Businesses self-regulate AI, but when finance is included, they are more likely to follow minimal rules and treat it like a checkbox. Smaller companies following the rules see what the others are doing and see there’s no consequence and this rule thing is takes longer/costs more… We see that with writers talking with other writers online. They might be pantsers, and they convert to outlining because they see other writers (apparently) getting more done because they outline. How many people read 2K to 10K: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love? to find out how to do it? Hand up. If memory serves, it started with outlining your scenes.

So if we change our basic writing process, what’s stopping someone from taking the next step to produce more words?

John Coon says, “Creative writing requires a soul to live.”

AI has no soul. It’s a program that puts random words together, hopefully coherently. Description, using depth, is where ours comes out in the words.

How I Write

Everyone’s an expert these days; it’s marketing 101. We all want that certainty; an explanation of how to do something so we can follow it step by step.

So we have writers explaining how to outline, or how not to outline. There are prescribed steps (even for not outlining) that you must follow. If you don’t, then, according to the expert, you must be wrong.

The problem is that they’re selling to people who will likely fade from writing over the long term. There are a lot of writers looking for the easy steps to become a best seller, or to write full time so they can quit the day job (read: kick back and not work).

The others, like me, like you…we might hear the same advice and get messed up by it. I spent years struggling with my writing because it seemed like every writer declared, “You must outline.” Now the pendulum has swung the other way, presumably because so many pantsers were told to outline. Now you hear you must start writing from a blank page. So if you’re in between, a plantser like some writers bill themselves, you’re informed that you’re doing pantsing wrong.

It’s like there’s a battle out there for control of how you write.

It also astounds me because it shouldn’t matter.

After hearing writers mansplaining that I was completely wrong about writing, I always felt like saying, “I wish you could see inside me head.”

So…this is how I write…

I’m not saying anyone else should do it my way. Part of it may not be replicable. I can only be the expert of me.

First, I can’t outline. At all. If I try to map out my story, or even just figure out the ending like Michael Connelly does, the story’s done.

That’s my Strategic side. I have six Strategic strengths in my top ten. Strategic needs to work out the story as it goes along. If I figure out the story in advance, I lose interest in it because, essentially, it’s already done. And I’ve been told, “No, no. Outlines don’t work that way.” For that person. Everyone forgets that.

Doesn’t matter what format of outline. Plot points, Marshall Plan, you name it. Same across the board. How do I know? I have tried outlining. Haven’t finished a single story by doing it.

Also means I can’t figure out character arcs or do character worksheets (which is like outlining a character).

I also can’t do Writing in the Dark. That’s the brainchild of Dean Wesley Smith. Works for a lot of writers and for a while I thought it was the answer to all the nonsense against pantsers. It’s hard when you hear only one thing from everyone else and glorious when you find out you’re not alone.

But I can’t do most of what Writing in the Dark prescribes, mainly because it’s a method that works for Dean Wesley Smith and whatever his strengths are. I can’t just type the next word until I finish the story. Nor can I cycle by moving back 500 words. Nor can I create a reverse outline (done after you write the scenes). I am glad WITD is out there. Pantsers needed a voice because the outliners were stifling people who couldn’t outline. Every time I saw a blog post labeled “Reformed pantser,” I wondered if that person was writing anymore.

Chances are the way you started writing is probably how you write, though it may alter. One of the things I discovered in the last few years was that I need to think about the story. The thinking can occur multiple ways: while taking a walk, or thinking on paper.

The outliners would say I was outlining in my head and just not calling it an outline (what is with trying to label everything as outlining anyway?). The pantser crowd says I’m immersing myself in myths and letting the inner critic in because I’m not doing pantsing correctly. Seems like they both think I’m doing outlining.

And it’s neither. I’m just running through in my head different ideas of how to open the story. It’s all fleeting, and I may use none of it. Just the thought process to get to being able to open the story. I remember asking how to open a story—something that had been broken for me with bad writing advice—and he just said, vaguely, “Just start the story.”

My typical process prior to learning I needed to think about the story first was to create redraft after redraft of the opening before I moved on. In hindsight, I was thinking my way into the story. When I started Superhero Vs. Superhero, I spent about a week walking around and running through different scenarios in my head. Suddenly, I felt settled, and I could start the story.

As I write, my brain fires off like a pinball machine. It makes connections at different points in the story. If it hit Chapter 6 and realize I need to change a line early, I know exactly where it is and I jump back to fix it. No matter where I am in the story, I can do this.

This is how I cycle, or moving around, as I’ve called it (for lack of a name). I don’t fix the last 500 words, which makes no sense to me. I fix issues in the section my brain connects back to.

This is also why I can’t reverse outline. I remember everything in the story because of those connections. I don’t need to write it down on a piece of paper to keep track. It also explains why other random things like character lists don’t work for me.

So I write, I think, then I write some more. And I bounce all over the story. The actual writing does need to be in the correct sequence. If I try to jump ahead and write a later scene, I always toss it. The pinball machine firing off never includes that scene, for whatever reason. It only goes backwards. Research is done on the spot. Trying to do it before the story implies I know what I’m going to need, which isn’t true because I haven’t outlined. Depending on where I am in the story, I may write notes to research later. That may include things I need to think about. Sometimes a bit of description doesn’t come to me right away (this has been something I’ve needed to learn to accept. Unfortunately, on the pantser side of writing, it’s common to see writers talking about letting your subconscious put everything down. The result was that I got stuck more often because I had to stop and figure out something that I might fix easily in a day or two).

World building is also on the spot. I don’t build it before I write the story because I don’t know what I need until I need it. I pay a continuity editor to build a story bible. Otherwise, I just hop back into the story to see what a particular fact is. For years, I stayed away from speculative fiction because too many writers said that you had to build the world before you wrote the story. Ugh.

When I reach the climax of the story, I do a cycle of the entire book. Mostly just clean up of orphaned stuff. Those are things that my brain put in, thinking I might do something with it, and then the story went in a different direction. Some writers would say that my subconscious put that in for a reason, so I should leave it in. But I pinball so much in the story that those pieces stand out because they don’t fit anywhere.

Yeah, it’s kind of an out there process, but it’s what works for me.

We all need to be able to say “This is how I write” without others lecturing us that we’re doing it wrong.

The groundhog lied and an update

The groundhog lied!

Winter hasn’t surrendered in the Washington, DC area. The temperatures drop into the thirties overnight and sometimes barely hit fifties. Then it pops up into the 70s for a few days, followed by high winds and more cold weather. Fortunately, it was gloriously nice on Sunday, though hard to believe after the last two days.

Pondering my thoughts from the last post…

Spending some time connecting to my Intellection side first thing in the morning made a difference. Microsoft OneNote makes a great tool for that. I’d tried this before, some years ago, but it hadn’t worked because I thought I should track everything. This is standard productivity advice, and you hear it everywhere. But Focus, the Clifton Strength that plays well with tracking and goals, is down near the bottom of my list. There isn’t anything I can do to shore that strength up. (I know some people would say I could do it if I applied more discipline. Nope. Does not work.)

So, like my many word count tracking spreadsheets and planners, I stumbled across the entries months later, having done five or ten, and those sporadically.

I sometimes jump into work first, then steer myself to spending the thinking time. Still a work in progress, but I’m not feeling too mentally exhausted to do anything once I get off work.

So I’ve been able to do some writing. Not as much as I want to, but it’s better than it has been. Considering I have a deadline at the end of the month, I’m hoping it will improve more (especially since it’s a fun story). What I can’t do is power through as I’ve done in the past.

I’m engaging myself by tackling a small skill that I can have fun with. I’m adding words that evoke multiple senses to description:

Snow crusted mountains (touch and sight)A sweater the color of crushed strawberries (taste, smell, and sight)A screaming red dress (sound and sight)

I’m finding this works best on a cycling pass. It doesn’t come out of my brain during the initial creation. Sometimes I use placeholder brackets to give myself thinking time.

Meanwhile, some fun links:

Immersive writing: These are two-hour videos to aid with writing. I’m working through them, but the train has been the best so far.

Catharine Barrett: When Study Isn’t Fun, Don’t Study! Few writers talk about how to study writing, so writers default to critique. This article inspired me to focus on the small task—playing—by coming up with multiple senses for descriptive words. She also discusses how to improve your vocabulary. She notes traditional methods such as a word-a-day don’t work that well.

Why we prefer doing something to nothing? Action Bias. I’ve been filling my RSS feed with different sites for input. This link came from a Live Science article on vitamins. Action Bias is when we do something because it appears to be better than nothing—even when isn’t helpful. This Action Fallacy shows up in productivity circles in subtle ways, and even in writing fiction. Not selling enough books? More marketing, when marketing may not be the answer. Before taking action, the solution is to think first and decide if this is the best thing to do.

The Conspiracy Test–a site from a university on stretching your critical thinking skills, not necessarily debunking all conspiracies. In fact, they note that there are some conspiracies. The site has a fun interface if you’re a spec fiction fan, and thinking about the logic of conspiracies will help in writing them in fiction. Win-win!

Respecting the Writing

This wasn’t the topic I started out writing (that was on editing—trimming the story). But it kept calling me because the world around us, and even the technology, doesn’t always respect the writing.

I’m not talking about reviews, which is where some people immediately went. Reviews are not an audit for the writer; they’re for the reader.

Rather, it’s often other writers.

Before I go on, please check out the Free Spring Reads Book Giveaway. While it’s for paranormal romance and urban fantasy, it’s mostly romance. Onward!

This topic popped up because of the timing of several blog posts (links below), and also that I’ve been struggling with my writing. To the latter, I thought initially Adaptability was at fault.

In fact, if I’d gone to a writing message board and asked other writers, they would have likely responded with any of these:

You need to outline; pantsing is at fault.You must be letting the critical voice/inner critic get involved.Just write the first word; butt in chair.“There’s no such thing as writer’s block.”

I could probably come up with more, but those are the top four. Everyone is so certain they know exactly the solution to everyone’s else problem.

It’s not respectful to the writing.

As it turns out, my struggle isn’t about the writing. But if I’d asked other writers, I’d be chasing an answer in the wrong place. I did that with writing advice to solve problems—and no one was right.

The last two entries (4 &5) in Navigating the Terrain: Where Opinions Clash with Fact brings up the problems of writing message boards. Though it’s more of “Opinions Clash with Less Popular Opinions.” But it’s the same effect. As a pantser, I found myself biting my tongue at rampant misinformation about pantsers. When I brought up a different view, my comments were dismissed, or deleted. One person, when I discussed my process—not a generic “This is the way it should work for everyone”—told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. Two writers self-congratulated themselves on pointing out their perceived errors in how I wrote because it didn’t fit their “map.” Becca Syme talks about this in her post On Maps. I love the treasure map analogy.

Nora Roberts also had a dust-up this week with her Facebook group over her In Death series. In the first post, some readers demanded that the two lead characters have a baby. In the second post, Nora Roberts took to task writers offering “helpful” advice on writing process to her, a writer with over 200 books published. Yikes.

But we all need to question advice coming from other writers. Always.

Yes, we can use some—if it fits. But we shouldn’t assume that’s the way we should do something. Nor should we assume it fits us.

Circling back to why I’ve been struggling with writing: The day job.

I had to run some numbers and discovered—quite horrifyingly—that one aspect increased a staggering 1,630%. Add deadline crunches in the mix and my brain is short-circuited.

I’m much smarter about what’s going on than the last time this turned into an avalanche. I read Cal Newport’s new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, looking for ideas. What I like about the book: He doesn’t tell us “This is the treasure map.” Instead, he describes possible solutions and hopes that others will come up with more. He also uses a lot of fiction writers—names you’d recognize.

What I don’t like…

The first problem is that all the fiction writers are long-term writers who now write full time. Some writers from this era noted they took a day job that wouldn’t tax them so they could write. That worked in the 1970s. Probably in the 1980s. Not sure that would work as well today, especially with the high cost of living.

The second problem is the assumption that all this is for the day job, or that if you’re writing outside the day job, it will eventually be full time. It leaves an entire group of people out.

Unfortunately, he’s right about one thing: People will have to find their own treasure maps to solving this thorny problem.

So I have some things I must do:

Make sure I take time off. I forget that in the glut of too much.Do more than simply be off. I went to Carlyle House this weekend. Discovered the reason beds had curtains was to keep the warmth in. I also walked around a local park and watched an eagle dive bomb the stream.But not make it like what I had in the military, “mandatory fun.” The last time I went through this, I did a lot of that.Planning a vacation. Something fun, but not too expensive. I’m looking at Virginia Beach, because, well, beaches.Watching documentaries and taking notes. This is nothing special…just whatever appeals to me at the moment.Pushing on walking around more, swimming later when the pool opens.

I’m also going to leverage my strengths:

Intellection: It can get overwhelmed fairly easily, so I’m planning on bringing my noise canceling headsets when I’m in the office. The first thing in the morning is thinking about what I’m going to do. Not planning, but working out a game plan. Sometimes that means finding the fastest way possible, which may not be the first thing I come up with. Thinking time is often the first thing to go when things get crazy. I think that with work bubbling up in my brain in off work hours.Input: Light feeding of it to keep it happy. Topics should be diverse. This one’s tough when so many things are coming at me. It gets to share, a lot, but time keeps it from gathering more information. I keep a master list at work for questions. Copy and paste (which goes to the next one as well).Adaptability: Automate as much as possible, both in the day job and outside it. The strength does best with going with the flow, which is also a problem if things aren’t automated. This is why habits don’t work well for me. If something disrupts it—a vacation—I’m off it and can’t get back on it.

There’s probably more that I’ll have to think about. The challenge is that no one’s talking about this anywhere. We seem to have gotten locked into the culture of doing everything for the day job and forgetting we have a life outside the job. Should be an interesting journey.

Start with Action…or Not

This topic surfaced for me while looking at The Writer article by Roberta Fleming Roesch called Guideposts to the First Two Pages (pp. 182-184). “Start with action” is common writing advice. As commonly, it’s also misinterpreted.

Hollywood’s influence creates this interpretation. Many movies open with a physical action scene. A character jumps from a plane, a gunfight, a monster chases a girl.

That’s where movies shouldn’t influence book writing. Movies open with an action scene to hook the men. This was from a newspaper article I read many years ago, when movies were actively courting young men. Men are more visually oriented, so actions scenes are designed to engage them immediately.

Not all movies start with a big action scene, but it’s where everyone’s head goes. The problem? A novel’s not a movie.

A movie can only appeal to sight and sound. That visual aspect also makes the viewer absorb what they’re seeing in an instant. A book is read at the reader’s pace, which can vary. Yet, in the Guideposts article, there’s a lot required in the first pages. All without bogging everything down!

Writing the beginning is hard.

Character must be established first. A viewer will enjoy a movie action hero falling out of a plane because it goes by so fast. The visual is also designed to over the top because that’s part of the fun. We also instantly know he’s the main character because of the movie credits with the star’s name.

A book? A physical action scene is disconnected from the reader. This character has not been established; no handy top billing movie star. This makes it hard for the reader to care about this character.

And how do you establish the setting needed for the physical action? It can’t exist in a white room. White room action is worse than talking heads because the writer doesn’t give the reader anything to invest in.

So what does “start with the action” mean?

Depends on the source. And they’re all correct. It’s about “movement.”

When I took Dean Wesley Smith’s Depth class, I started writing a lot more setting into my opening scenes (up from none). My first personal rejection from a professional magazine told me I was missing a hint of the story to come. (They didn’t say that specifically. Instead, they provided a comment that helped me discover that.)

Many writers would interpret this as plot (story events). Nope. Not plot. This is a very small movement, one sentence, or a few words. In a mystery showing a prologue with the murder victim, the writer might say, “George Smith didn’t know this was his final hour.” The reader instantly knows this a mystery.

Another type of movement is the character doing something. Not laying on a bed, contemplating a ceiling fan for five pages (actual book). Again, it needs the hint of the story to come. Janice Hardy has descriptions of when you haven’t done enough movement.

Description is essential in an opening. However, it’s easy to overbalance the description into stagnant because it’s slower paced. In Descriptions They Won’t Skip by Eloise Jarvis (pp. 411-414 and 430), the author suggests adding movement to the descriptions. These aren’t particularly big changes; it might be changing a word or rewording a sentence. A character can have “cascading blonde hair.” Clouds can “skitter” across the sky.

Dialogue also adds movement.  In Basic Forms of Writing by Walter S. Campbell (pp. 300-304), he notes that dialogue is about immediacy. Immediacy is another sense of movement. 

One of the challenges of advice like “start with the action” is that we want the surety of simplicity.  With writing, we don’t get simplicity. The more we learn, the more complexities we find.