Brian Yansky's Blog, page 20
June 8, 2012
major/minor characters
"Major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed."-Graham Greene I think this is an important point. I also think this is something we all struggle with. We try to get everything about a major character out right away and the result is the beginning of our manuscript becomes summary rather than scene. Too much of a rush. The major characters should be revealed little by little, as fits with the story, and they should slowly emerge into complex rounded characters. This is where SHOW instead of TELL does apply. Minor characters are often snapshots. They may not evolve except in a way that promotes the advancement of story. They might just be a quick sketch that is useful to develop main characters or story. Beware the manuscript that has no minor characters. If all you have are major characters then most likely something is wrong. I’m a big believer in equality but not in fiction. If all your characters are equal then something is probably wrong. The reader needs main characters to focus on and identify with. Character is everything. If a reader identifies with a character she will
excuse a lot. But one aspect of this is understanding that a major character
will emerge through the engagement of that character with the story.
May 30, 2012
Roughly three years ago I started blogging. Here is my fi...
Roughly three years ago I started blogging. Here is my first blog reprinted. In that time I've had one novel published and two others accepted--all by Candlewick. Not bad.
Last week (three years ago) my Old English Sheepdog, Merlin, pulled some of the manuscript pages of my latest WIP from my desk and began to eat them. Merlin, like most dogs, is adept at non-verbal communication. Of course he is also, another noble trait of the canine, notoriously good-natured and non-judgmental. I wondered what could have driven him to such uncharacteristic and extreme criticism. After I managed to wrench the somewhat chewed but readable manuscript pages out of Merlin’s toothy grip, I started to read them. A growing uneasiness began at the nape of my neck and spread and that uneasiness became queasiness and that queasiness became despair. It was, alas, all wrong. Started in the wrong place. Went on too long here and not long enough there. Most importantly the life, somehow, had been squeezed out of it and the characters moved as if they were clueless stick figures rather than living creatures. Merlin was right. So though I am going to write about writing in this blog, and though I’ve written a lot of words and sentences and pages and have learned, maybe, a few things that might be of some small use to beginners, the truth is no writer, on any given day, really knows more than a sheepdog happily chewing away on a manuscript. And what we know on any given day is sort of a stab at the truth. Another day we might feel differently. I should probably end everything I say about writing with—Or so I think today. That’s a good idea. Or so I think today.
May 18, 2012
all manuscripts start as ugly ducklings
Today was one of those drivel writing days. I was decrying this on facebook. You know, poor me. I’m writing drivel. My sentences are drivel and my paragraphs are drivel and I’m beginning to feel as if the whole new manuscript is drivel. Well, I didn’t go that far on facebook but I will here. I fell into that place of self-loathing where I considered select-all, highlight, delete and…….good-bye cruel drivel.BUT I didn’t. Sometimes we should but most times when we’re writing early drafts we’re writing a lot of drivel. I reminded myself that all novels start as ugly ducklings. Of course not all will become swans but that’s not really the point. You have to believe and you have to keep on as if everything you write will make that miraculous transformation. Give your manuscript a chance. Keep going and believing and don’t be discouraged by drivel. A little or sometimes a lot of drivel must fall into every manuscript. Revision, rewriting, editing…we have lots of chances to make our ugly ducklings swans.Or so I think today.
May 7, 2012
MANUSCRIPT BLINDNESS
I think you need time between drafts but maybe just a few days UNTIL you are absolutely sick of writing the manuscript or until you're certain you've revised as much as you can. Then I think you need to let the manuscript set for a much longer period--a month. You aren't seeing it anymore. You're in love with certain sentences or paragraphs or even chapters and you've gotten attached to them. You've become close to your characters. Too close. They're real now. They're like real people. You've been with them for months and months. How can you cut them or even radically change them? They're yours. It would be betrayal. What kind of a person are you?You admit-- a word here and there in the manuscript can be changed. Fine. Tighten the language. Sure. At this point even if your critique group says there's something wrong, you're going to secretly think the something that is wrong is THEM.
You have manuscript blindness.
The good news is it's not a permanent condition.
It's a point we all reach. I read something by Stephen King where he was saying that when he gives his manuscripts a big rest between drafting and revision, like five weeks, he always find something big he's missed. Something big. Even Stephen King, writer of a million novels, is susceptible to manuscript blindness.
At some point, when you've lived in the world of your novel for a long time, you just can't see what might not be working. You need the distance of time. You need fresh eyes. On that first time back to your manuscript it's important that you be brutally honest with yourself. You won't see the manuscript that freshly again until it's been accepted and you're working with an editor. Go into revision being open to major changes and you will improve your manuscript.
Or so I think today.
You have manuscript blindness.
The good news is it's not a permanent condition.
It's a point we all reach. I read something by Stephen King where he was saying that when he gives his manuscripts a big rest between drafting and revision, like five weeks, he always find something big he's missed. Something big. Even Stephen King, writer of a million novels, is susceptible to manuscript blindness.
At some point, when you've lived in the world of your novel for a long time, you just can't see what might not be working. You need the distance of time. You need fresh eyes. On that first time back to your manuscript it's important that you be brutally honest with yourself. You won't see the manuscript that freshly again until it's been accepted and you're working with an editor. Go into revision being open to major changes and you will improve your manuscript.
Or so I think today.
April 29, 2012
characters
I was dreaming last night about my WIP, which woke me, which made me think about my dream, which had my characters in it talking about something that had nothing to do with my manuscript. But then that got thinking about a scene and anyone who has insomnia from time to time knows that once you start thinking in this way sleep is not coming back. I blame it on the characters Our creations can be quite vocal sometimes. You can hear them grumbling and moaning and laughing. I’m just glad they can’t talk to us directly or I would get no sleep at all. I can imagine many conversations: “Dude, are you going to leave me there with this guy talking about Forest Gump? Just kill me.” Or someone else would complain about how they’re not getting enough page time. Or someone else would complain about how I’d made him or her less kind, more kind, weaker, less intelligent, mean, not mean enough. Characters are demanding. A writer has a hard time getting them out of his mind when they start making noise. They’re the life of the story. I suppose they have the right.
April 21, 2012
Excited to post the Publisher's Marketplace announcement ...
Excited to post the Publisher's Marketplace announcement of the selling of my new novel, Utopia. Nothing against dystopia but I'm going another way this time. Unfortunately, everything isn't idyllic in Utopia either. That's life in a novel. Sh*t happens.
ALIEN INVASION author Brian Yansky's UTOPIA, set in a quirky small Iowa town where the strange is normal, about a 17-year-old who has the gift or curse, depending on how you look at it, of being able to talk to dead people, and finds himself caught up in the mystery of two murdered girls, murders that lead him to town secrets long buried, again to Kaylan Adair at Candlewick, by Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger (world English).sara@harveyklinger.com
April 17, 2012
grammar and fiction
One day I was out with everyone from my Extreme Birding Club. In this club we not only spot the birds, but we capture them and make them tell us a secret. The more rare the bird, the more rare the secret. As everyone knows, at least where I live, birds are stubborn about revealing secrets. They know a lot of them. I won’t say we’re above pulling out a feather or two in order to get the bird to spill. Still, we don’t kill them. We don’t eat them. You could say it’s kinder than buying a chicken at the grocery store and pretending it just appeared there out of thin air. You buy the chicken. You’re part of the chain of events that causes the chicken to be born for his solitary purpose of being consumed by humans You eat the chicken bought from the store. Me, too. I’m not criticizing—just saying. Don’t judge me.
Extreme Birding isn’t for the faint of heart.
After we get our secret we always give the birds some food and send them on their way.
Extreme Birding will make you thirsty and so the group often goes out for a beer. While having a drink someone said, “I just called my wife and told her ‘the whole group of birders drink Shiner Bock' and she corrected me and said it should be ‘the whole group of birders drinks Shiner Bock.’ Who is right?”
I decided to give the Grammar Guru a call right then and there. It turned out he was in the middle of chanting. Gurus chant a lot.
“What were you chanting?”
“Old Marx brothers quotes.”
“What’s one?”
“Outside of a dog a man’s best friend is a book. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
“Good one.”
“What is your question grasshopper?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
“Another Marx brother quote is ‘wishes are like buttocks. Everyone has one.”
“That’s not a Marx brothers quote.”
“Ask your question.”
I asked: Is it “the whole group of birders drink” OR “the whole group of birders drinks.”
“Ah, he said, "Group noun problem. A group is considered singular. It’s like a class or a flock or a committee. If it is considered one, it’s singular. What’s confusing here is that the writer added the “of birders’ which made the writer think the subject was birders (plural) which would mean the noun would have no “s” on it. (They drink/ It drinks). However, since the subject is group, it’s singular (it drinks) so the sentence should be ‘the whole group of birders drinks.’”
Here are more examples:
The class learns.
The class of students learns.
The flock flies overhead.
The flock of birds flies overhead.
END OF STORY.
Extreme Birding isn’t for the faint of heart.
After we get our secret we always give the birds some food and send them on their way.
Extreme Birding will make you thirsty and so the group often goes out for a beer. While having a drink someone said, “I just called my wife and told her ‘the whole group of birders drink Shiner Bock' and she corrected me and said it should be ‘the whole group of birders drinks Shiner Bock.’ Who is right?”
I decided to give the Grammar Guru a call right then and there. It turned out he was in the middle of chanting. Gurus chant a lot.
“What were you chanting?”
“Old Marx brothers quotes.”
“What’s one?”
“Outside of a dog a man’s best friend is a book. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
“Good one.”
“What is your question grasshopper?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
“Another Marx brother quote is ‘wishes are like buttocks. Everyone has one.”
“That’s not a Marx brothers quote.”
“Ask your question.”
I asked: Is it “the whole group of birders drink” OR “the whole group of birders drinks.”
“Ah, he said, "Group noun problem. A group is considered singular. It’s like a class or a flock or a committee. If it is considered one, it’s singular. What’s confusing here is that the writer added the “of birders’ which made the writer think the subject was birders (plural) which would mean the noun would have no “s” on it. (They drink/ It drinks). However, since the subject is group, it’s singular (it drinks) so the sentence should be ‘the whole group of birders drinks.’”
Here are more examples:
The class learns.
The class of students learns.
The flock flies overhead.
The flock of birds flies overhead.
END OF STORY.
April 8, 2012
Branding--just say no?
I know many writers worry about branding, which I understand as promoting your fiction in a certain way so readers can think of it as a brand. Should we worry? It may be helpful in the sale of fiction but I wonder if we, as writers, should allow ourselves to think of our work as a certain brand. I mean, I'd hate to feel that I have to write a certain way in a certain genre just because someone has said my brand is X. What if I want to write Brand Y or Brand Z this time around? As a reader, I like to read science fiction, fantasy, realistic fiction, magical realism, and all kinds of fiction that mixes these and other genres. I am often drawn to fiction that is genre bending, in fact. So as a writer I'm going to write different kinds of fiction. I love the feeling of starting a new novel and not knowing exactly where it will go. I love trying different things. I realize the idea of branding is just a way to attract readers and, lord knows, there's nothing wrong with that. However, as a writer, I don't want to get too cozy with the idea that my work fits neatly into a "brand". I want to be open to write what excites me. Or so I think today.
April 3, 2012
failure
Failure
What does it mean to be a failure at writing fiction? To me it means you've said you want to be a writer and you don't write. You give up on writing. That's the only way you can fail to be a writer. A writer writes. He writes well. He writes badly. He writes in-between the two.
There are setbacks, like writing and rewriting a work and still knowing deep down it doesn't work. There's writing and rewriting and sending a work off again and again and getting rejected. There is writing a book, getting an agent, selling the book to a publisher, seeing it go to bookstores, seeing it disappear from bookstores a few months later, and looking at less that stellar sales. None of these are failures. They're difficult and they're things that most writers go through, but they aren't failure.
Failure, to me, is one thing. It's giving up. Whether this happens before you finish your first novel or after your third or fourth manuscript. The only way you can truly fail as a writer is by stopping writing. Some do. The rejection gets too much for them or they realize they don't love writing enough. There are a lot of highs and lows in writing. Some people can't tolerate these. There are many reasons to give up, I suppose.
But there's one compelling reason not to. If you're doing something you love, you're very, very lucky. It's hard to find things you love. It's hard to find work you love. If you love to write, it's something you can do your entire life. We're lucky.
What does it mean to be a failure at writing fiction? To me it means you've said you want to be a writer and you don't write. You give up on writing. That's the only way you can fail to be a writer. A writer writes. He writes well. He writes badly. He writes in-between the two.
There are setbacks, like writing and rewriting a work and still knowing deep down it doesn't work. There's writing and rewriting and sending a work off again and again and getting rejected. There is writing a book, getting an agent, selling the book to a publisher, seeing it go to bookstores, seeing it disappear from bookstores a few months later, and looking at less that stellar sales. None of these are failures. They're difficult and they're things that most writers go through, but they aren't failure.
Failure, to me, is one thing. It's giving up. Whether this happens before you finish your first novel or after your third or fourth manuscript. The only way you can truly fail as a writer is by stopping writing. Some do. The rejection gets too much for them or they realize they don't love writing enough. There are a lot of highs and lows in writing. Some people can't tolerate these. There are many reasons to give up, I suppose.
But there's one compelling reason not to. If you're doing something you love, you're very, very lucky. It's hard to find things you love. It's hard to find work you love. If you love to write, it's something you can do your entire life. We're lucky.
March 22, 2012
talent--who needs it?
Talent: How Important is it?
Let's leave out the most important thing, far more important than talent, which is drive. Drive to actually write and drive to learn from mistakes and failures is far more important than talent. But I'll come back to that.
As far as talent goes in the great community of writers, if you take all the writers who are really writing and not just talking about writing, probably forms something like a bell curve. There are some who have very little talent with language. They're tone deaf. They don't have any stories to tell. They don't really SEE and you have to be able to see to be a writer. If you've ever watched the first days of American Idol, you know these people. They think they're great singers (why or how this is possible is another post) and they are truly terrible. Not just not good--terrible. There are a few would-be writers like this. On the other end, there are a few who have amazing talent. They can see. They can make language do amazing things. They have an immediate sense of story. They have amazing talent and a good education. They're in a great position to write wonderful things. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.
Beyond these extremes are most of us, the great middle. It has a range of course. Some are at the low end of middle and some at the high. It's my contention that with perseverance, hard work, and determination most people in this middle will eventually be published—if they keep at it long enough.
If you have some talent, you have to turn that into more by struggling through the process of learning to write, learning the basics first and then the intricacies of plotting and character and language. Only through this lengthy struggle can you do more and more of what you want WITHOUT thinking about it when you're doing it. That's essential when writing. You have to do without thinking about it or you will freeze some part of you and your characters will act in untrue ways. You're like the batter at bat. You can't think, ah here comes the pitch and now I will swing and… If you do that, the ball is long gone. But to get to this point you have to have learned all the things that go into hitting the ball. Same with writing.
But my main point here is just this: most of the writers you read are from the great middle. Sometimes writers with great talent never go anywhere because they don't have drive and a love for the process of making stories. A lot of writers in the middle have those things and they simply refuse to give up. They compensate for weaknesses. Maybe they can't write really beautiful or strong or clever sentences but they can tell a story and they get better at their sentences and they really work on their story-telling ability. They become writers, writing pages upon pages every week. Like everyone they make the same mistakes over and over again, but they don't allow themselves to be satisfied with merely turning out pages. They find ways to get around those mistakes.
It's hard. It's hard.
But I believe most writers who keep at it will be published and will write good work.
Let's leave out the most important thing, far more important than talent, which is drive. Drive to actually write and drive to learn from mistakes and failures is far more important than talent. But I'll come back to that.
As far as talent goes in the great community of writers, if you take all the writers who are really writing and not just talking about writing, probably forms something like a bell curve. There are some who have very little talent with language. They're tone deaf. They don't have any stories to tell. They don't really SEE and you have to be able to see to be a writer. If you've ever watched the first days of American Idol, you know these people. They think they're great singers (why or how this is possible is another post) and they are truly terrible. Not just not good--terrible. There are a few would-be writers like this. On the other end, there are a few who have amazing talent. They can see. They can make language do amazing things. They have an immediate sense of story. They have amazing talent and a good education. They're in a great position to write wonderful things. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.
Beyond these extremes are most of us, the great middle. It has a range of course. Some are at the low end of middle and some at the high. It's my contention that with perseverance, hard work, and determination most people in this middle will eventually be published—if they keep at it long enough.
If you have some talent, you have to turn that into more by struggling through the process of learning to write, learning the basics first and then the intricacies of plotting and character and language. Only through this lengthy struggle can you do more and more of what you want WITHOUT thinking about it when you're doing it. That's essential when writing. You have to do without thinking about it or you will freeze some part of you and your characters will act in untrue ways. You're like the batter at bat. You can't think, ah here comes the pitch and now I will swing and… If you do that, the ball is long gone. But to get to this point you have to have learned all the things that go into hitting the ball. Same with writing.
But my main point here is just this: most of the writers you read are from the great middle. Sometimes writers with great talent never go anywhere because they don't have drive and a love for the process of making stories. A lot of writers in the middle have those things and they simply refuse to give up. They compensate for weaknesses. Maybe they can't write really beautiful or strong or clever sentences but they can tell a story and they get better at their sentences and they really work on their story-telling ability. They become writers, writing pages upon pages every week. Like everyone they make the same mistakes over and over again, but they don't allow themselves to be satisfied with merely turning out pages. They find ways to get around those mistakes.
It's hard. It's hard.
But I believe most writers who keep at it will be published and will write good work.
