Brian Yansky's Blog, page 29

Characters

Characters need to be put at risk and they need to risk things to keep the reader involved. I've said before that you have to be cruel to your characters, make bad things happen to them, which will delight your reader or at least fascinate them (who can't help looking at a train wreck?). But I would add that these bad things often come out of the characters' acts. The characters' mistakes are part of what keep us involved in her story.

Pushing on and BookTrailer

There comes a point in almost everything I work on when I want to give up. I want to quit. I think to myself, this will never work. I think to myself, what is wrong with you? I think to myself, start over you fool. Quit wasting time.

Actually, this isn't something I just think about writing. I've thought it at other times, too. We all do. But with writing—it happens with nearly every novel I try to write. I'll be writing a first draft in all of its unwieldy and maddeningly imprecise glory ...

Seeing Your Fiction

I think this has to do with the author's vision. Whatever your skills with the various aspects of writing a novel, whatever your talents, you have a unique way of looking at the world. Everyone does. If you can imbue your work with the unique vision, find the voice for it, then you've done something. Something for you. Something for the person reading.

I know when I start reading certain books I feel an immediate rapport with the voice of the novel, an immediate interest, because it feels aut...

blocked writers

Writers do get blocked. It happens all the time. Some people call that writer's block. But unless you have some physical problem or some serious mental problem, the way around it, I believe, is to keep writing. Anyone able to put their fingers on a keyboard or pick up a pen can write. The blocked writer can write. They just can't write well. I think this is what happens to writers who get stuck. They're disappointed in the writing so they think/feel they can't go on. They stop writing. This...

physical gestures

Along the same lines as the last entry—thinking about being specific. Avoid generic physical gestures. We need physical description to make a scene real but having someone drink a glass of wine or light a smoke, say, during dialogue just to get some physical gestures into the manuscript won't do much to improve it. It might even work against the scene's momentum and undercut the reader's confidence in the writer.

Just as the description needs to communicate something more than generic, paint...

Description

I was working through a revision of my new manuscript and I realized that sometimes my language wasn't as precise as it could be because I wasn't showing or telling the reader what was going on in my character's mind. Also in description, I wasn't always putting the reader there by being there with my character. What did the way he saw his surroundings mean to how he was experiencing what was happening? This is at a language level; it's so important to making a connection with the reader.

Her...

Onward Through the Fog

You can quit.

You can always quit.

Writing is tough and you'll have some days when you want to give up either because of rejection or some other disappointment or maybe because the words won't come at all or maybe because only the wrong words or the almost right ones will come. A disappointment as thick as a London fog will set in around you.

You can always quit.

But what if Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn had said to hell with it in the African Queen (I'm a fan of old movies) and giv...

Getting Help

When I let others read my work-- my wife, my critique group, my agent, my editor-- I am always as open as I can be. I always listen to their thoughts and criticisms. I reread comments several times. People can help you make a better manuscript and I try not to let my ego get in the way of that. I want the best manuscript I can create and I'll take help wherever I can get it. Readers help. Good readers can really help.

That said, some people will try to make specific suggestions for changes. T...

IS YOUR STORY REAL &ARE YOU YOUR CHARACTERS?

(Double posting: also on my agent, Sara Crowe's, blog)

My answer

I have a book coming out in about two months, ALIEN INVASION & OTHER INCONVENIENCES. My first two novels were somewhat realistic and I got the usual questions about whether I was my character and if my story was real. I gave the usual answer. Some of the story and characters, in a very changed form, have elements of autobiography but most is made up. In this new novel, aliens invade the world and conquer it in ten seconds and e...

Manipulation

I think one thing to consider when you get to rewriting is that nearly everyone has big holes in their manuscript. No use getting depressed about this unfortunate aspect of writing. No matter how long you've been writing, no matter how much you think things out, there will be problems that you didn't see, couldn't see, until you've finished the whole manuscript and gone over it a couple of times. Usually, along with a lot of small problems, they'll be at least one big thing that feels wrong. ...