Brian Yansky's Blog, page 11

A little Writing Advice 101

You need to learn some things. Live, read, watch, think, feel and more.

 Then you need to learn writing skills--fiction writing skills. How to use language. How to create and develop characters. Create real emotion. Create conflict. Setting. Dialogue. Storytelling. There are so many skills that need to be learned that are particular to writing fiction.

And then you need to be able to execute these skills--which takes practice and time. A lot of time. A lot of failure and learning from that failure. At least it takes most of us a lot of time. There are exceptions.

You need to be able to communicate your own unique way of seeing into your writing. So important. When I pick up a book and something about it feels different and I'm attracted to that difference, I'm in heaven as a reader. I'm excited to read on, and I don't want to stop.

You need to develop your imagination.

You need to be bold and take chances.

And the rest is up to the gods-- but if you do all these things you at least put yourself in a place where you might find success--whatever that might mean to you.

Or so I think today.

My One Rule for Writing a Novel

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." --Somerset Maugham.
Unfortunately.
But today I think that there is only one rule for writing a novel. Fortunately, I know what it is.
In your face, Somerset.
Easy. Like looking at a mountain from a distance and imagining yourself climbing right up to the top, looking down on the world.
And hard as actually climbing up to the very top. 
Because once you get to the base of the mountain, the entrance to its wilderness,  in other words once you get up close, the landscape changes into something very different. And then the real effort sets in like cold weather, and the imagined stroll becomes a marathon in a maze on a mountain, a long-distance climb through all kinds of terrain, at least half of it in the dark.
Fucking hard, in other words. Sorry.
So here is the one rule. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
Each specific work will take a specific struggle to get to the top. Keep learning as much as you can about how you write and what you want to write and the many aspects of craft that can sometimes teach you short-cuts on your long climb.
And most likely you won't be entirely satisfied with your climb even once you're done. You'll have reservations; you'll wonder if you might have done better going left when you went right way back near the beginning of your ascent. Alas, it's the nature of writing fiction. We can never be perfect. 
But it's a lot of fun. The struggle gives me great satisfaction.
So you have to keep going and you have to finish and you have to rewrite and when you've rewritten and rewritten you have to start again on something new and it doesn't get easier and that's what is both good and bad about it. Keeps it interesting anyway. 
One rule.
Keep going.

Love me a two-word sentence

I like spare writing. I try to write spare. I love to read spare. For a while now, writers have been loading their sentences with clauses and long descriptions. That's the fashion. There seems to be this swing in fashion between minimalists and maximalists, so I suppose my preference will come back.

In celebration of the two word sentence--

Clowns scream.
Dogs shine.
Moon howls
Birds fall.
Shit happens.

Sharks come.
Diana watches.
Sharks come.
Robert swimming.
They fought
He admitted
Made mistake.
Night passed
He drank
Made foolish
Admitted fucking
Diana's sister.
Diana cried.
She screamed.
She howled.
He said
Shit happens.
She watches
Stone silent
Sharks come.
Sharks here.
Robert screams.
Red sea.
Shit happens.

OK--just playing--and some of these aren't true sentences, I know, I know;  but I'm serious about my love of sentences without the clutter of many clauses, lengthy diversions, and the twenty word descriptions where three might do. I prefer my sentences clear as a  mountain stream or the starry sky of a country night. I'm trying.

How do you start a story?

There are many ways to start a story, of course. There are many ways to do all the things you have to do to write good fiction. But my way is I start with a character and situation. I try to make, inherent in that character and situation, a conflict and the kernel of what the story might be about. Then I build my story from there.

Alas, I think it's easy to confuse a cool setting or even an interesting character with a STORY. When one of my students says my story is about ancient Rome and there's this really cool dragon in it and some mythical creatures and I've got this character named Sid. He's funny. You'll really love it.

I think, I want to.

I say, Great. But what's it about?

I just told you.

Not really.

It's about ancient Rome.

You told me about setting and you mentioned character. What's it about?

But--

This can go on for a long time. Sometimes the student gets it and sometimes they don't. A cool setting is not a story. That can be a great part of the story. The setting can be fertile ground for the conflict needed to build story. By itself though, not so much. Not at all, really.

Story is more than setting. It's more than a building a character. It's the movement, the progression of character and plot within a design. It's about making the right choices--which conflicts to focus on for example--because you have a clear sense of character and plot movement. Obviously there are many other aspects of writing that need to work, too--great language, dialogue, voice, as mentioned-setting, etc...but this idea of story and its development is crucial.Whether you're an outliner or discovery writer, working on this sense of progression and design can be crucial to finding your way in your novel.

For me, starting with a character and situation,  and building from it helps me find my way.

How you begin & How you develop the Beginning--a strategy

•How to beginCharacter in a situation…and the situation must have potential for CONFLICT•A boy and a girl from warring families fall in love. (this may have been done once or twice)•A boy’s father dies and he suspects it’s murder—worse that his uncle is involved and maybe his mother.•A policeman owns ten cats and comes home one night and they’re all gone.
•A sea captain becomes obsessed with finding and killing a large sea mammal.THEN TO DEVELOP THE BEGINNING•YOUR MC WANTS SOMETHING BUT SOMETHING GETS IN THE WAY SO THERE IS A STRUGGLE. •NEEDS SOMETHING—DEEPER STRUGGLE•OR ANOTHER WAY TO THINK OF THIS--•MC HAS GOAL/AN OBSTACLE GETS IN THE WAY.HOWEVER YOU SEE IT—the character’s conflict WITH self, another character, society, natural world, supernatural world, technology drives the story, develops characters, creates progression

Conflict--an interview

Instructor Q&A: Brian YanskyPosted by Writers' League Staff

“We read fiction to see characters struggle and overcome or fail to overcome the conflict in their stories.” -Brian Yanksy

Brian Yansky is teaching a class for the Writers’ League of Texas called “Developing Conflict in Fiction” on May 27 at St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX. The class will identify and discuss different kinds of conflict and how to use them in novels and stories. Read the interview below and visit the class page to learn more.Scribe: First off, why is it important to develop conflict?Brian Yansky: Conflict is at the heart of all fiction. It develops characters, propels plot, and makes setting relevant. We read fiction to see characters struggle and overcome or fail to overcome the conflict in their stories. From a writer’s POV, creating conflict within your characters and between your main character, other characters, or perhaps society or nature or any number of other possibilities builds narrative. You’ve got to have conflict.Scribe: Do you find that characters are developed with a specific conflict in mind, or do conflicts form based on the characters?BY: Both. For me, usually, I start with a character and a situation. The situation has to have the potential for conflict in it. The character wants/needs something, and something gets in the way of her want/need.  This is one way to build a central conflict for the character. However, as the character develops, other conflicts will occur to the writer. It’s a process. The character creates conflicts by her actions in trying to deal with problems and conflicts.Scribe: Are there any specific tips you rely on to generate conflict within stories?BY: The big tip is to start with a character in a situation that will create conflict from the inception of the story. But beyond that it depends on the story. A character in conflict with society—  for example, Hunger Games, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird – will find conflict everywhere because they’re struggling against something large and powerful.  Just generally, I look for friction inside a character, between characters, or between a character and setting or a character and plot. Developing this friction will develop conflict, which will develop character and plot. That’s why conflict is so essential. It helps the writer build her story.Scribe: Have you noticed any trends of less-common conflicts emerging in contemporary fiction?BY: It should be pretty clear that I think conflict is in just about every story. Whatever the new trend is, it will have conflict and writers will find creative ways to make the conflict different and unique.A trend that’s been done many different ways is “end of the world” stories. The setting creates immediate conflict in these stories. There’s conflict between survivors and other survivors, or those pesky walking dead or a world consumed by nuclear winter, or aliens, or gods.  One of my favorites in this kind of story in recent years is Station Eleven. If you’re looking for a good “end of the world” story, check that one out.

Why do I write?

Sometimes I wonder why I have this compulsion to create characters, to worry over a sentence, to make stories.  Why do I do it?  There are many answers. A list of them wouldn't be hard to make. But there's also no clear answer.

Why do we love the things we love?  And the answer to this, like the answer to why I write, is a mystery buried deep beneath the layers of reasonable and perfectly acceptable answers.

I've always loved dogs. Always loved stories--movies, comic books, and then books. I've loved people. I love some people. And the list could go on...because there are a lot of things I love but...I write out of obsession and dislocation and attraction and habit and...need...

 Writing makes me happy, sad, angry, satisfied. It feels like I have a purpose. Finish the story. I'm almost always working on something and, whatever else is going on in my life, I have this story that needs to be finished. Writing is thrilling,  difficult,  annoying; it's a lot of things at once. Maybe above all  it's compelling. Writing stories compels me to move through my days, my weeks, my months.  I want to get the damn thing finished--though of course there's always a part of me that doesn't because then I'll be pulled from the world of that story and into the uncertainty of a new story.

So in a way there is this constant in my life. The many changes, the moves and stands, the trials and the failures and successes, the life I live, always has this going on in it. A story I'm trying to tell. A story that needs to be finished. So maybe that's my best answer. I write to finish the story.

How to Begin...

So there are many, many ways to begin a novel. Some people start with ideas--I do sometimes--and their process is to attract other ideas and build characters and story from this idea beginning. Others start with a bit of story--this happened so... They make up characters that will help them build their story. They develop them Or maybe they already have characters in mind because the origin of the story is an article or a some spin off a movie or something that happened to them or someone they knew. Some writers begin with a single scene idea or even an image. I read one novelist say he began a novel with someone he once saw--a girl on a boat leaning on a rail and looking down at the sea.

Point is--writers work differently. Not only that but sometimes a writer will use different methods for different stories. Creative types are that way. T I've started a novel with an idea. Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences started with a simple idea--what if aliens invaded the earth and killed off almost all the population? What would happen to the survivors? And the story, beginning with that premise, took off for me.

BUT most of the time I start with a character first and a situation.  Let me give you some examples.

A boy and a girl fall in love but their families are at war.

A young man thinks his uncle killed his father but his uncle marries his mother and the young man struggles with taking action against the uncle.

A ship captain becomes obsessed with hunting down a big water mammal.

A girl must compete in a state ordered game to the death; if she doesn't kill everyone, including a boy she's known since she was a child, she will die.

These may look a little familiar but, hey, most stories have been told. It's your particular spin on them that makes them completely new. But really--there are an endless number of situations you can imagine characters in. Be creative.

This is just the beginning. Some hard work--developing the character in the situation-- is ahead.  There are many ways to approach this too. That's kind of a theme of mine when I talk about writing. THERE IS NO ONE WAY. Find the way that works for you. I'll get to some approaches on developing an initial situation and character next blog.

One Simple Way to Help You Write Better Fiction(language)

I think the tell and show problem happens because in the throes of creation we're grasping for main points of action and reaction and variations of them. We want to get them down before we lose them. I do this. A lot.

So what happens is we get the structure of a paragraph wrong for fiction. Our paragraphs, in an inexperienced writer this can be many, many paragraphs, become structured like we learned to structure them in our high school essays. Topic Sentence. Development of that topic sentence. Repeat and repeat and repeat.

We tell the reader what we're about to show them and then we show them.

Wrong.

And we don't see it because we tell ourselves we are showing. But the problem is we're telling first and then we're trying to show with the rest of the paragraph.  Causes lots of problems. For example, it drains a paragraph of suspense. If you tell the reader what will happen first and then show it, well they know, don't they. It makes the paragraph feel repetitive and sometimes clunky. Often it will even undermine development of the paragraph because the author won't see choices he would if he were in the mind of his character moving forward. Above all, it weakens the verisimilitude of the paragraph.

Instead of telling and then showing--just show. We want our paragraphs to stay in the POV of the character experiencing the scene. We want to experience it with them. See it through them.

Like I said. I still tell and show. But in revision I'm conscious of this problem and I look for it and do my best to stay in POV. I think it's made my fiction stronger. Hope this helps.

Once I know the ending, and sometimes this takes me a whi...

Once I know the ending, and sometimes this takes me a while, a draft even, I can start figuring out how to design my novel. I need to know where I'm going  to know how to get there, to make every scene work toward that destination. Endings, so important.