Brian Yansky's Blog, page 25
May 10, 2011
Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories
I don't know if any part of writing confuses me more than structure. I struggle with it all the time. What's the shape of my story? How do I get all that STUFF to fit together? There are so many freaking concerns in writing even a simple story. We writers are juggling character, plot, theme, language and a dozen other things with two inadequate hands and a bit of delusional grandeur. And then, on top of this, we have to somehow create a structure that houses all of our intentions and connivances and deviations, that provides just the right architecture for all that we want to put into our story. It's hard. Really hard. Or so I thought until I saw this explanation sent to me by my good friend Varian who knows that Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite writer people. Thanks, Kurt, for putting it all in perspective.
May 4, 2011
writing news
Sold a novel, which is a big thrill. It's the second one I've sold to Candlewick. I'm honored to be published by such a great publisher. Here's the Publisher's Lunch notice.
Brian Yansky's FIGHTING ALIEN NATION, the sequel to ALIEN INVASION AND OTHER INCONVENIENCES, which continues the story of the survivors of an alien invasion, again to Candlewick, with Kaylan Adair to edit, by Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger (world English).
sara@harveyklinger.com
So it's another alien book for me. I guess I'm going through my alien period. Thank you little green men.
Brian
Brian Yansky's FIGHTING ALIEN NATION, the sequel to ALIEN INVASION AND OTHER INCONVENIENCES, which continues the story of the survivors of an alien invasion, again to Candlewick, with Kaylan Adair to edit, by Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger (world English).
sara@harveyklinger.com
So it's another alien book for me. I guess I'm going through my alien period. Thank you little green men.
Brian
May 1, 2011
the right word
Okay, so I've used this quote before but I've never really tried to explain it on the sentence level, so I thought I'd give it a shot.VIA Mr. Mark Twain, "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightening bug and the lightening."
So let's say you have a story and your character, late at night, hears the sound of a baby crying outside his house. He's falling asleep but it startles him awake. The crying continues and he jumps up and swings open the door and steps out into amoonless night.He finds a cat sitting on his front walk.
So we want a sentence about this.
The sound of a baby crying and a cat screeching were similar.
SIMILAR as used here is definitely lightening bug for me. Oh, it does the job, sure. But it drags the whole comparison down. Maybe, too, the writer is making some deeper observation about how easy it is to think one thing is another, so the weakness of the word "similar" weakens the whole comparison. So much on just one word? Well, yeah. Let me try again.
A baby crying and a cat screeching are strikingly alike.
STRIKINGLY as used here is still lightening bug to me. Again, does the job. Not bad. Better than the first. Almost?
A baby crying and a cat screeching are erily alike? ERILY? Lightening bug. I'm not sure why exactly. Maybe too predictable?
A baby crying and a cat screeching are unforgivably alike. UNFORGIVABLY? For me that's lightening. Of course that kind of sentence makes a point and so the scene should be following this sense of two things that shouldn't be alike being alike and this situation should somehow be an echo of what's happening in the story. But, for me anyway, this is the right word for this sentence.
So much on the right word? I think so. Certain words in certain sentences need to be right and not almost right.
So let's say you have a story and your character, late at night, hears the sound of a baby crying outside his house. He's falling asleep but it startles him awake. The crying continues and he jumps up and swings open the door and steps out into amoonless night.He finds a cat sitting on his front walk.
So we want a sentence about this.
The sound of a baby crying and a cat screeching were similar.
SIMILAR as used here is definitely lightening bug for me. Oh, it does the job, sure. But it drags the whole comparison down. Maybe, too, the writer is making some deeper observation about how easy it is to think one thing is another, so the weakness of the word "similar" weakens the whole comparison. So much on just one word? Well, yeah. Let me try again.
A baby crying and a cat screeching are strikingly alike.
STRIKINGLY as used here is still lightening bug to me. Again, does the job. Not bad. Better than the first. Almost?
A baby crying and a cat screeching are erily alike? ERILY? Lightening bug. I'm not sure why exactly. Maybe too predictable?
A baby crying and a cat screeching are unforgivably alike. UNFORGIVABLY? For me that's lightening. Of course that kind of sentence makes a point and so the scene should be following this sense of two things that shouldn't be alike being alike and this situation should somehow be an echo of what's happening in the story. But, for me anyway, this is the right word for this sentence.
So much on the right word? I think so. Certain words in certain sentences need to be right and not almost right.
April 24, 2011
Decisions
Decisions, decisions, decisions. That's what writing is all about. Many of those decisions should be intuitive in the first draft or drafts. How do you make decisions intuitively? You put yourself in the right place.
Easy to say. Hard to do.
I put myself in the wrong place a whole lot I often realize as I revise my manuscript. What was I thinking? How did I go right when I should have turned left? Why couldn't I see the opportunity for the relationship between my three main characters and the central conflict in that relationship? I didn't exploit that. Missed opportunity. Missed. Missed. Missed.
But—doesn't matter. To get a first draft on paper I just have to feel like I'm going in the right direction, making the right decisions, and make them well enough that I don't end up in Anchorage when I'm trying to get to San Diego. So, I won't get to San Diego in my first draft, but I will go in the general direction of San Diego. I will get close enough that maybe with work in revision I'll know how to get there.
The intuitive decisions of a first draft, along with the conscious ones, only need to be roughly successful. That's all. Most of the real work, in the heavy lifting sense, happens in revision.
Or so I think today.
Easy to say. Hard to do.
I put myself in the wrong place a whole lot I often realize as I revise my manuscript. What was I thinking? How did I go right when I should have turned left? Why couldn't I see the opportunity for the relationship between my three main characters and the central conflict in that relationship? I didn't exploit that. Missed opportunity. Missed. Missed. Missed.
But—doesn't matter. To get a first draft on paper I just have to feel like I'm going in the right direction, making the right decisions, and make them well enough that I don't end up in Anchorage when I'm trying to get to San Diego. So, I won't get to San Diego in my first draft, but I will go in the general direction of San Diego. I will get close enough that maybe with work in revision I'll know how to get there.
The intuitive decisions of a first draft, along with the conscious ones, only need to be roughly successful. That's all. Most of the real work, in the heavy lifting sense, happens in revision.
Or so I think today.
April 17, 2011
voice
The way your character tells his story, the kind of language he uses and how he uses it to tell his particular story is one way to think of voice. A lot of editors and agents say that what the very first thing they look for in a manuscript is a strong voice.
I can see that. I love a strong voice as a reader. I start to believe in the story right away if I'm pulled in by the voice. Voice has to do with diction, of course; it has to do with our choice of words. But the way those words are arranged, the tone that emerges from those constructions, reveals character. I think that's one of the reasons people react to novels with strong narrative voices. They feel an immediate connection to the character telling the story. They want to hear him say more, tell them more.
I can see that. I love a strong voice as a reader. I start to believe in the story right away if I'm pulled in by the voice. Voice has to do with diction, of course; it has to do with our choice of words. But the way those words are arranged, the tone that emerges from those constructions, reveals character. I think that's one of the reasons people react to novels with strong narrative voices. They feel an immediate connection to the character telling the story. They want to hear him say more, tell them more.
April 8, 2011
Reading
Published on IndieReader Houston's blog, too.
I will be at the TeenBookCon in Houston on Saturday, April 9. I'm on a panel called Guys Write Great Stuff. Well, they do. So do gals. Right now, in YA, there is so much great stuff being written it's impossible to read it all.
So guys and gals write great stuff but do guys read it? That's a question a lot of people have been asking in publishing and beyond lately because they're worried they don't. They're worried that guys not reading will cause them to be poor readers later in life. Also, they're worried they may not read for pleasure at all.
I worry about this, too, because I was one of those guys who did almost miss out on reading. I didn't read much when I was a kid. I was well into my sixteenth year before I started opening books without being forced to by teachers.
What changed? I read a novel that did things that I never thought a novel could do. It was strange and funny and frightening and smart and wise and it spoke to me. It did. It was a novel called SLAGHTERHOUSE FIVE. But for every boy, and for that matter girl, it will be a different book. The important thing, particularly for boys, since girls seem to find their way to books and reading easier, is that they find THE BOOK. By this, I mean they find a book that they can't put down, one that overcomes the resistance to books that comes from not reading them. They have to fall in love. One book is all it takes, in most cases, to decide to open another and another.
For me, reading Slaughterhouse Five made me realize I'd been missing out on things. I'd thought until then that reading novels was another task that had to be done for school. At best I thought of it as a distant and formal entertainment, not accessible like TV or movies. When I found out how wrong this was, how novels could speak more intimately and more directly and how I could participate more fully in the story, something changed for me. I saw the world differently. Great books will do that. They will change the way you see the world (maybe a little, maybe a lot) every time you read one.
So books became my entry into new worlds. They became my friends, too, and over the years I still return to many of those friends. Every book that moves you in some way will be a little different, but all will transport you to another world within this one we live in each day. That's pretty amazing. That's a little bit of magic in and of itself. You don't have to become a writer to get great things from books. You just have to become a reader.
I will be at the TeenBookCon in Houston on Saturday, April 9. I'm on a panel called Guys Write Great Stuff. Well, they do. So do gals. Right now, in YA, there is so much great stuff being written it's impossible to read it all.
So guys and gals write great stuff but do guys read it? That's a question a lot of people have been asking in publishing and beyond lately because they're worried they don't. They're worried that guys not reading will cause them to be poor readers later in life. Also, they're worried they may not read for pleasure at all.
I worry about this, too, because I was one of those guys who did almost miss out on reading. I didn't read much when I was a kid. I was well into my sixteenth year before I started opening books without being forced to by teachers.
What changed? I read a novel that did things that I never thought a novel could do. It was strange and funny and frightening and smart and wise and it spoke to me. It did. It was a novel called SLAGHTERHOUSE FIVE. But for every boy, and for that matter girl, it will be a different book. The important thing, particularly for boys, since girls seem to find their way to books and reading easier, is that they find THE BOOK. By this, I mean they find a book that they can't put down, one that overcomes the resistance to books that comes from not reading them. They have to fall in love. One book is all it takes, in most cases, to decide to open another and another.
For me, reading Slaughterhouse Five made me realize I'd been missing out on things. I'd thought until then that reading novels was another task that had to be done for school. At best I thought of it as a distant and formal entertainment, not accessible like TV or movies. When I found out how wrong this was, how novels could speak more intimately and more directly and how I could participate more fully in the story, something changed for me. I saw the world differently. Great books will do that. They will change the way you see the world (maybe a little, maybe a lot) every time you read one.
So books became my entry into new worlds. They became my friends, too, and over the years I still return to many of those friends. Every book that moves you in some way will be a little different, but all will transport you to another world within this one we live in each day. That's pretty amazing. That's a little bit of magic in and of itself. You don't have to become a writer to get great things from books. You just have to become a reader.
April 2, 2011
Leave In, Take Out
Writing is a constant rearrangement, like changing the way a room looks: moving the sofa here and the chair there and the bookcase to the other side of the room. And what should you keep and what should you throw away? Aye, that's the question. It is a lot of work. You need a strong back and sometimes a hard heart. You can't keep everything. Sometimes the very things you love most, like Uncle Harry's velvet picture of tropical fish swimming down Fifth Avenue or Aunt Lulu's diary descriptions of the twelve times she was abducted by aliens, may have to go.
There are many rooms in a novel, but there is no room for anything that doesn't truly belong.
Kind of sucks sometimes.
There are many rooms in a novel, but there is no room for anything that doesn't truly belong.
Kind of sucks sometimes.
March 26, 2011
publishing
I attended an SCBWI conference recently and heard lots of talk about writing and editing and agenting and the future of publishing. What's that future? According to one speaker it is a decentralization of publishing, way fewer brick and mortar bookstores, and way, way fewer libraries. Printed books? They'll limp along for a while and then fade a way. It will be a brave new world of e-books.
And out there in blogland, from a multitude of sources, I hear again and again talk of the end of bookstores and of printed books. A lot of people compare books to music and say that it will be just like what happened to CD's and music stores.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Nobody knows, of course, but I do think of Mark Twain who read about his death in newspapers when he was sitting at home and quipped, later, to those same newspapers, "Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated."
Is there an e-book revolution happening? Of course. Will it change things? Of course. But people do like the "new" and a lot of people who love their new readers might not want to use them exclusively once the newness has worn off. Also, it's in the interest of reader sellers to make this "revolution" seem as overwhelming as possible. So you hear things like—there won't be any bookstores in five or ten years and certainly no libraries etc…
But are books like CD's? I don't think so. People like the feel of a book in their hands. They have a loyalty to it, a relationship with it. No one had that kind of loyalty to CD's. It just isn't the same kind of experience. Some people say that the generation that is coming to reading now will not have that loyalty and this is probably true. UNLESS it isn't. We've had several generations now growing up with videos. And now we can get movies not just with videos/DVD's but in many, many other ways without leaving our house. And the quality is excellent. So why do people? Leave their houses, I mean. Why do so many people still go to movie-theaters? They watch movies at home AND they go to movie theaters because the experience of seeing a movie in a theater still appeals to them.
I think there are plenty of people who will just read e-books in the future, but I also think there will be people who will read e-books and will still want to read printed books (I've read teens saying that so much of their life is spent starring at screens they enjoy looking at a page of print) and like going to bookstores and libraries. It will certainly be fewer than yesterday and today, but they'll be around for some time yet.
Or so I think today.
And out there in blogland, from a multitude of sources, I hear again and again talk of the end of bookstores and of printed books. A lot of people compare books to music and say that it will be just like what happened to CD's and music stores.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Nobody knows, of course, but I do think of Mark Twain who read about his death in newspapers when he was sitting at home and quipped, later, to those same newspapers, "Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated."
Is there an e-book revolution happening? Of course. Will it change things? Of course. But people do like the "new" and a lot of people who love their new readers might not want to use them exclusively once the newness has worn off. Also, it's in the interest of reader sellers to make this "revolution" seem as overwhelming as possible. So you hear things like—there won't be any bookstores in five or ten years and certainly no libraries etc…
But are books like CD's? I don't think so. People like the feel of a book in their hands. They have a loyalty to it, a relationship with it. No one had that kind of loyalty to CD's. It just isn't the same kind of experience. Some people say that the generation that is coming to reading now will not have that loyalty and this is probably true. UNLESS it isn't. We've had several generations now growing up with videos. And now we can get movies not just with videos/DVD's but in many, many other ways without leaving our house. And the quality is excellent. So why do people? Leave their houses, I mean. Why do so many people still go to movie-theaters? They watch movies at home AND they go to movie theaters because the experience of seeing a movie in a theater still appeals to them.
I think there are plenty of people who will just read e-books in the future, but I also think there will be people who will read e-books and will still want to read printed books (I've read teens saying that so much of their life is spent starring at screens they enjoy looking at a page of print) and like going to bookstores and libraries. It will certainly be fewer than yesterday and today, but they'll be around for some time yet.
Or so I think today.
March 19, 2011
Uninvited Characters
I was minding my own business, writing along, when a character I didn't invite into my novel showed up. He just started talking and I knew that he had something interesting to say. Did I let him stay? YEP.
Here's what I think about early drafts and sometimes even later drafts; if a strong character appears, I should hear him out, try to see how he might fit into the story, what he can add. I think these characters don't really appear out of nowhere. If you're connected to your manuscript and you're in the story, they show up out of a need.
And sometimes they're some of the most interesting characters you write.
Here's what I think about early drafts and sometimes even later drafts; if a strong character appears, I should hear him out, try to see how he might fit into the story, what he can add. I think these characters don't really appear out of nowhere. If you're connected to your manuscript and you're in the story, they show up out of a need.
And sometimes they're some of the most interesting characters you write.
March 12, 2011
Okay, it's not brain surgery
Writing is juggling many things at once and not thinking about any of them while you're in the act of writing. There are just so many areas of concern: voice, character, plot, setting, language, and on and on. If we think about them while we're writing, there's a good chance we'll freeze up or go into a kind of stiff, forced writing, or maybe make the wrong choices. And the wrong choices can be deadly in a novel. The wrong choices can lead you to other wrong choices and then you're halfway through the novel and you're thinking, HOW THE HE** DID I GET HERE? WHAT AM I DOING HERE? THIS ISN'T MY BEAUTIFUL NOVEL. THESE AREN'T MY BEAUTIFUL CHARACTERS (and before you know it you're in a Talking Heads song—sorry, off topic). It's not enough to write well. I've said that before, but it's something worth saying again and again. A lot of people write well. A lot of people turn out good sentences. We have to do a lot of things at once to make the right choices or be able to go back in revision and evaluate your manuscript and figure out how to make the wrong choices right.
Writing a novel is a very complex act. Okay, it's not brain surgery, but it's difficult. I do think being aware of the many aspects can help a writer focus on a manuscript's weaknesses in revision and avoid getting stuck on focusing too much on just one aspect. For example, and I have to admit I'm guilty of this myself sometimes, if your novel has serious structural problems rewriting and rewriting the first sentence 2000 times isn't going to help. You have to look beyond the sentence and try to figure out the structural problem. Anyway, being open to changes in revision is a big step toward improvement of a manuscript.
Writing a novel is a very complex act. Okay, it's not brain surgery, but it's difficult. I do think being aware of the many aspects can help a writer focus on a manuscript's weaknesses in revision and avoid getting stuck on focusing too much on just one aspect. For example, and I have to admit I'm guilty of this myself sometimes, if your novel has serious structural problems rewriting and rewriting the first sentence 2000 times isn't going to help. You have to look beyond the sentence and try to figure out the structural problem. Anyway, being open to changes in revision is a big step toward improvement of a manuscript.
