K.M. Weiland's Blog, page 48

4 Ways to Write Meaningful Comedy

Notoriously, comedy is one of the most difficult forms of writing. This isn’t because it’s so hard to write a gag or a line that’s funny. Life’s a pretty hilarious place, after all. No, it’s difficult because translating goofiness into meaning is vastly more difficult.

These days, we tend to think of comedy as fluff—silly people doing stupid things so we can relate to them just enough to laugh at them and thank heavens we’re not that dumb. But comedy can be so much more than that.

Comedy is the key to entertainment, and entertainment is the key to winning readers over and selling them on every other meaningful thing in your story.

And, yes, I said meaningful. The idea that comedy is meaningless entertainment is false. Comedy is never meaningless. No story is—which is why writers have a responsibility to wield comedy more wisely and responsibly than just about any other technique in their arsenal.

Frankly, in the the sea of meaningless, vulgar, diluted (and, for my money, not very funny) comedy that floods the media these days, if you can write meaningful comedy, you will, without doubt, find yourself with a story that rises far above the pack.

Top 4 Tips for How to Write Meaningful Comedy

There’s a method to every madness, even for how to write meaningful comedy. Here are four tips to get you started, whether you’re writing flat-out comedy or just wanting to infuse a little humor in your adventure, romance, or mystery.

1. Comedy Should Have a Message

Ironically, theme is more likely to be ignored in comedy than in any other medium. And yet, comedy has, arguably, the greatest power for sharing theme effortlessly and painfully: if you keep readers laughing, they’ll never accuse you of preaching at them with heavy-handed themes.

Frank Capra directed some of the greatest screwball classics of the 1930s, including Arsenic & Old Lace, You Can’t Take It With You, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. But no one would argue these stories are mere fluff. They are stories with powerful social and personal messages that remain classics as much for their themes as for their humor.

Capra said:

The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don’t get people to laugh unless they surrender—surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they’re with you. And they listen to you if you’ve got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they’re your friends.

How many comedies today offer meaningful ideas that stick with you long after you’ve closed the book or left the theater? How many create character arcs that offer anything beyond a cursory (and usually improbable) overnight change?

Consider such classic sit-coms as the beloved Andy Griffith Show from the 1960s, in comparison with most of the shows on television today. The heart behind the story is what makes the comedy just as funny today as it was nearly sixty years ago.

2. Comedy Should Be More Surprising Than Shocking

Surprise is the essence of comedy. Readers are led to expect one thing—only to be pleasantly surprised by something else. Really, as much as anything, we’re trying to get readers to laugh at themselves for their mistaken preconceptions.

However, too many writers have come to rely on shock value—usually in the form of social vulgarities—as a crutch for evoking the necessary surprises of comedy. Comedy today is almost synonymous with foul language, sexual explicitness, and gross-out gags. But for what reason? To make a shocking comment about society that both amuses and stings readers into a greater awareness of themselves and their world? Generally, not so much.

The problem isn’t just that this approach to comedy is arguably degrading to both storytelling and society, but that it’s an ultimately self-destructive tool. The more you shock audiences, the more shock-proof they become, and the harder it becomes to reuse the technique.

Occasionally, I’ll watch the 1990s British comedy As Time Goes By with Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer. Accustomed to the rapid-fire vulgarities of the current slew of American sit-coms, I keep expecting the same from this show around every corner. But not so. Instead, it actually relies on good ol’ storytelling (remember that?) and the ever-deepening context of its characterization to consistently evoke laughs from surprise rather than shock. Granted, this requires far more skill to pull off, but who doesn’t enjoy a challenge?

3. Comedy Must Offer Readers a Relatable Protagonist

I can’t remember the last modern comedy I watched or read that featured a truly likable protagonist. Outrageously selfish, stupid, and even despicable people are, apparently, the only ones who are supposed to be funny anymore. That may be true for a three-page story or a five-minute YouTube skit. But for a full-on novel or movie?

As Kurt Vonnegut famously said:

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

I would argue this is even more important in comedy than it is in drama, if only because suspension of disbelief makes more demands upon readers in a comedy. Screwy people doing screwy things are much easier to swallow if we like them—0r at least relate with their screwy choices.

4. Comedy Must Be Socially Aware

In her “10 Writing Tips,” Joyce Carol Oates reminds us:

You are writing for your contemporaries not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.

Because comedy has the ability to walk that fine line between pointing out the flaws in contemporary social consciousness without (necessarily) being offensive, it will always be the most time-sensitive of all thematic media. This does not mean what’s funny to one generation will not be funny to future generations. Not at all. But it does mean comedy will always be interpreted through the lens of the time in which it was written.

William Powell and Carol Lombard’s classic 1936 romp My Man Godfrey offered a commentary on the Depression that was both biting and heartfelt—and which we still appreciate in that context today.

The David Niven and June Allyson remake twenty years later reused all the same gags but failed to work as well, largely because the era in which it was made—the late 1950s—could not offer the same context for the story’s thoughts about the responsibility of wealth.

By the same token, Mel Brooks’s original 1967 musical shock comedy The Producers was just far enough away from, but not too far away from, the atrocities of World War II to be able to make outrageous fun of Hitler and the Nazis. The 2005 remake, on the other hand, was so far distanced from the generation that actually experienced the war (and, thus, had the right to laugh at it, as a part of a necessary healing process) that it lacked all context and was far more offensive than funny.

This isn’t to say modern authors can’t write funny stories set in historical periods (because, of course, we do), but rather that even our historical stories will inevitably be implicit commentaries upon our own time period.

Just because something is funny doesn’t mean it has to be meaningless, anymore than food that’s yummy has to be bad for us. Comedy is one of the most powerful tools in your writing toolbag—no matter what genre you write. Use it consciously and responsibly, and you will also use it to great effect.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! Do you ever write meaningful comedy into your stories? Tell me in the comments!

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5 Misconceptions About Writing That I Used to Believe

Are we modern-day writers lucky or what? We enjoy unprecedented access to the wisdom of all the writers who have gone before us. I’m not kidding. the wealth of excellent information at our fingertips is insane. But you don’t get nothing for nothing, and the something we’re exchanging for all this great advice is a pretty hefty load of misconceptions about writing.

Just about every writer I know, myself included, has gone through an early period of hair-yanking frustration, in which we were trying to kneel and learn at the feet of the masters, but they kept giving us advice that:

a) we hated.

b) we didn’t understand.

c) we just plain couldn’t make work.

Hence, the almost universal phase called Writers Against the Stupid Rules Because They Obviously Don’t Work.

But the problem isn’t with “the rules.” Like I said, there’s so much great writing advice out there, you could fill your pool and swim in it (after you become rich and famous and have a pool, of course). The problem is two-fold.

1. On the one hand, there is certainly some very bad advice floating around out there—some of it from very excellent and respected writers.

2. And then, on the other hand, there’s perfectly good advice that doesn’t always mean what it seems to mean, and which new writers notoriously misunderstand and religiously apply in all the wrong ways.

Both are equally dangerous.

5 of the Sneakiest Misconceptions About Writing

Today, I want to look back at some of the most insidious misconceptions about writing that I have fallen prey to during my career, so you, in turn, can avoid getting sucked into their undertow.

1. Write What You Know (aka, Have an Adventurous, Amazing Life—or Else)

“Write what you know” has almost become the poster child for abused and misused writing advice.

On the surface, it’s solid. After all, how can you write what you don’t know? And yet, when writers first hear this simple little line, you can usually see them deflate. “You mean I have to throw all the dragons and dukes and debutantes out of my story?”

A few of us may well lead extraordinary lives. A few of us may want to relive those extraordinary lives on the page (perhaps even in memoir). But most of us are admittedly prosaic. We make eggs for breakfast, do the laundry, mow the lawn, take the dog out, watch Netflix serials, and go to bed. Every so often, maybe we’re lucky enough to journey far away and have adventures on a tour bus or get sunburned hiking a national monument. But even that isn’t exactly dragons and dukes and debutantes, is it?

Honestly, “write what you know” has got to be one of the dumbest bits of advice ever conceived. No doubt it was intended as a well-meaning prodding toward proper research. But that’s not what it sounds like. What it sounds like is: stop with all the imaginary flights of fancy, grow up, and do write about serious and important things.

Thanks very much, but no thanks.

Believe This Instead:

The irony here is that the reason any of us becomes a writer is thanks to an incredibly rich inner life that grants us an incredibly rich perception of the outer world. Our commitment shouldn’t be writing what we know, but rather to knowing as much as possible.

In her “5 Bits of Writing Advice,” P.D. James gave writers a much better idea to live up to:

Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer—however happy, however tragic—is ever wasted.

2. Never Consciously Apply Theme

The idea here is that theme is supposed to find you, rather than the other way around. If you’re really a writer of any worth, you’ll prove it by being able to airily and effortlessly float to through the metaphysical land of Deep, Meaningful, and (Always, Always, Always) Abstract Philosophies. You must be so deep in this place of spiritual genius that your theme wells up from your narrative like oil from Texas. And when it does, you’re more shocked than anyone: “My, who could ever have guessed that’s what this story was really about?”

Honestly, in the beginning, when I was first informed that the only way to approach theme was not to approach it, I about had a panic attack. The only way to be brilliant was not only to not try to be brilliant but to not know anything about being brilliant? Okay, sure, anything you say, Mr. Writing Expert, sir.

Now, I say: BUH-lo-nee.

Granted, theme is one of the highest of high concepts in writing. It’s hard to do right, and very easy to do wrong in a way that comes across as on the nose and preachy. It’s no wonder some writers—even masterful writers—are scared of it. They let their subconscious do all the heavy lifting, never looking straight at the subject, and just hoping and praying it’s all going to turn out.

Maybe it’ll turn out, maybe not.

Believe This Instead:

The idea that you can’t consciously and logically approach and create your theme is not only wrong, it’s crippling. Theme joins with plot and character to create the trifecta foundation of all stories. You deliberately work on your plot and character, don’t you? So why would you leave that third leg of your foundation out in the cold?

The reason this bit of advice gets perpetuated is because when you create plot and character, you’re also creating theme, whether you realize it or not. This is why writers discover themes “effortlessly” arising from their stories. They were working on it all the time; they just didn’t realize it.

But how much better to bring poor Brother Theme in out of the dark and give him a place at the table? When you’re able to create plot, character, and theme in concert, all three elements are all the stronger and more cohesive. You lose nothing by approaching theme deliberately. You only enhance your ability to portray it adroitly.

3. You Can’t Be Logical About Writing

You hear this one all the time. It comes in a variety of forms, everything from “rules can’t govern art” to “outlining will kill your creativity” to “your inner editor is plotting to assassinate you in your sleep.” We hear it all the way from on high, from some of the greatest writers of our time, so of course we have to believe it, right? In his nearly classic writing book The Lie That Tells a Truth, John Dufresne has this to say:

If you’re having trouble, that means you’re thinking. You’re being logical, critical.

Sounds totally reasonable, right? Except, according to this, we’re not supposed to be reasonable. It sounds like we’re supposed to throw our logical, analytical left brains out the window. After all, those infernal internal editors of ours just cause so many problems. They make us miserable.

That’s why (as I sometimes tease) we tie them up and lock them in the closet while we write. Everything just becomes so much easier and more intuitive when we run on instinct instead of logic.

Believe This Instead:

That’s true enough as far as it goes. Writers must rely on intuition, creativity, the subconscious, and what I call the writer’s greatest weapon: gut instinct.

But that’s only half the arsenal necessary to write good stories. If you chuck the other half of your brain, the best case scenario is that you have to work twice as hard to achieve your full potential.

Barring logic from the writing process is not the answer. Rather, you must learn to harmonize creativity and logic into a perfectly synchronized piston, pushing and pulling, giving and taking, at every moment of the process, to give you both the power of creativity and the precision of logic.

What Dufresne is really recommending is to avoid overthinking. Don’t use your brain to the exclusion of your imagination. But don’t go so far in the other direction that you become incapable of looking at the (very logical) equation of story and using your analytical conscious brain to recognize and correct problems.

4. You Have to Be Either a Plotter or a Pantser

I gravitated to outlining almost from the beginning (although I didn’t develop the full-blown outlining process I now use until I started my sixth novel, Behold the Dawn). Like many writers, I just intuitively knew which camp my brain fit into: the logical and patient plotters versus the spontaneous and innovative pantsers (aka writers who “write by the seat of their pants,” or without an outline).

But, oh boy, I had no idea the firestorm I was walking into. I soon discovered both these camps were adamant their way was the only right way to create art. I fired my own round of bullets in this war, before nobly taking the high moral ground of pacifistic tolerance: “Everybody’s got to do it their own way. No one way is better than the other. There is no one road to proper storytelling.”

Believe This Instead:

I still believe that. What I don’t believe anymore is that there is actually such a thing as a “plotter” or a “pantser.” Even though writers certainly fall into general categories of right- or left-brain approaches to the writing process, we’re only distracting ourselves from true productivity with this idea that every writer must be either a plotter or a pantser. Or, you know, a plantser—just to make sure we include all of you lonelies who don’t get to play with the rest of us in one of our exclusive clubs.

Except… are you the lonelies? Or are you the ones who really understand how things work?

I have come to believe we’re all plantsers. We all plot; we all pants. We all use our logical brains; we all use our spontaneous imaginations. Yep, even me—and you don’t get much more outline-y than my fat, in-depth outlines.

Plotting and pantsing are not exclusionary approaches. Rather, they are both necessary tools for bringing our fictional visions to life. By trying to box our processes into comforting camps of camaraderie, we may actually be stunting our ability to use the full range of available techniques.

5. You Must Write Fast

I still remember reading the following bit of advice from no less than Stephen King:

The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.

I probably turned a little pale, maybe even felt a little sick to my stomach. I know I definitely squirmed. I’ve never written a book in three months in my life. I wrote my 1920s aviation-adventure novel Storming in something like five months, but that was just the first draft; that didn’t count the other five months of outlining.

Still, this speedy approach to writing has obviously served King and other bestselling writers well.

Indeed, if you start investigating the habits of those authors lucky enough to be part of the “boom” of legitimately successful indie novelists, the one thing you almost invariably find is an incredible output of work—at least a book a year, perhaps even a book a month.

Believe This Instead:

I’ve been a hustler all my life. I run 110 mph all day, every day, the speedometer needle always in the red, churning out checkmarks for my to-do list at a crazy rate. But interestingly enough, not with my fiction. My fiction I write slow and steady. The very thought of having to speed it up slays me (and not in the good way).

This year, I’ve been learning some hard lessons about the destructiveness of “hustle” in general, learning how to take better care of myself, to slow down and enjoy the journey of life. But the thing I find particularly interesting is that the only area of my life in which I didn’t have to learn this lesson also just happened to be the most important area of my life: my writing.

Instinctively, I somehow realized from the beginning that forcing myself to up productivity on my fiction would destroy my enjoyment and fulfillment in the process. It’s perhaps the only area of my life in which I (mercifully) intuited that productivity is not the point.

So what is the point? Well, honestly, that depends on the writer. For me, I’d say the point is undeniably the journey itself—the exploration, the evolution, the experience. This isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with writing fast. If that’s the speed you run at, slowing yourself down may prove just as destructive for you as undue speed would for me.

What’s important to realize is that what works for Stephen King won’t necessarily work for me and what works for me won’t necessarily work for you. You must be honest and brave enough to find your own path to fulfillment and success in your writing.

***

Writing misconceptions are just part of the game. We can’t avoid them. We can’t blame other well-meaning (and sometimes just misunderstood) authors for trying to share what’s worked for them. But we must be aware of the truth behind every statement.

Get into the habit of doing a gut-check on everything you’re told about the writing process. Be warned that just because you don’t like a bit of advice doesn’t mean it’s not true. But if something someone says (even if she’s your favorite author ever) has you squirming and turning a little green, take note of the cognitive dissonance you’re experiencing.

Don’t try to assimilate advice just because someone says it with conviction. Use your own experiences and understanding to collect the bits that work for you and to incorporate them into your own process in the most meaningful way.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! What are some of the misconceptions about writing you’ve struggled with and overcome? Tell me in the comments!

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How to Take Advantage of Your 4 Most Important Characters

Your story may or may not have a cast of a thousand, but even if it does, 996 of those characters are going to be primarily background. They provide the context for the four most important characters in a story.

Who are these characters?

1. Your protagonist (of course).

2. The antagonist.

3. The reflection.

4. The love interest.

Why are these characters so important? Is it just because they’re staple archetypes which readers expect out of sheer familiarity? Or does it go deeper than that?

I’m gonna vote for the latter (’cause that was obviously a trick question, and in trick questions the latter is always the safe choice).

These four characters are important for the simple reason that, together, they provide the foundation for not just your plot, but a multi-faceted theme.

The 4 Most Important Characters in Action

The first thing we need to note is that it’s not enough to just throw a nominal protagonist, antagonist, reflection, and love interest into your story. In order for these character types to pull their full weight within your story, they must wholly fulfill their unique thematic roles.

Take a look.

1. The Protagonist Represents the Main Thematic Principle

Your protagonist is the center of your show. As such, readers understand he is the one who will ultimately prove or disprove the story’s main thematic principle. He represents either the right principles that will change the world around him (if he is a Flat-Arc character) or the wrong principles that must be changed in his own life (if he is a Change-Arc character).

For Example:

Consider Ross Poldark. He’s a complex character, full of black, white, and shades of gray. But he is decidedly the beating heart of the story’s thematic presentations. His ideas about ambition, compassion, and equality—as well as his often blunt, sometimes violent, and always disruptive ways of sharing them with his world—offer the standard (for good or bad) against which the rest of the characters are measured.

2. The Antagonist Represents the Dark Side of the Protagonist’s Thematic Principle

What’s a story without a little opposition? Great themes arise out of great conflicts. Why? Because an unopposed thematic principle is an unproven principle. Great stories are those that examine theme from every possible angle, honestly exploring every question or argument readers might raise.

The antagonist plays a surprising role in this. Undoubtedly, he will offer a counter-argument to the protagonist’s position, and you might think this argument would be most effective when it is directly opposed to the protagonist’s. But not necessarily.

Instead, it is through the antagonist’s similarities to the protagonist that the most powerful thematic arguments arise. The protagonist believes in certain means to certain ends. The antagonist shares a belief in either the same means or the same end—and in so doing, he proves the dangerous aspects of the protagonist’s beliefs.

For Example:

George Warleggan is a perfect foil for Ross. In so many ways, they are similar: self-made men, vastly ambitious, aggressive, intelligent, even in love with the same woman. George starts out, not with hatred for Ross, but admiration. He recognizes their kindred spirit and wants to be friends.

He is more like Ross than anyone else in the story, and it is their similarities that bring them into competition and then eventually drive their hatred for one another. George is a symbolic representation of the darkness within Ross. George’s arguments for an alliance between them make a vast deal of sense, providing a strong opposing view to Ross’s pride, stubbornness, and lack of foresight.

3. The Reflection Proves the Value of the Protagonist’s Thematic Principle

Like the antagonist, the reflection character is both alike and different from the protagonist. But unlike the antagonist, it is the reflection’s differences that are most important. This is a character who starts out at least nominally on the protagonist’s side, sharing the protagonist’s own moral views.

But it is this character’s differences—his inability to share the protagonist’s adherence to or evolution into the story’s Truth—that provide a strong argument for why the protagonist must fight through and win his thematic battle.

The beauty of this system is that both the antagonist and reflection characters are complex characters of contrast. The antagonist opposes the protagonist in the plot, but shares many compelling similarities to the protagonist. The reflection allies with the protagonist in the plot, but presents many telling differences to the protagonist—traits both good and bad.

For Example:

Ross’s cousin Francis presents an interesting reflection. He and Ross are alike in many ways, sharing family loyalty and history, as well as childhood friendship and a love for the same woman. They both own copper mines. They are both husbands and fathers.

And yet it is their differences that are most telling. In almost everything that matters, Francis is Ross’s direct opposite. Where Ross is strong, Francis is weak. Where Ross is bellicose, Francis is inclined to peacemaking. Where Ross is forebearing, Francis is petty. Where Ross is compassionate, Francis is careless. Where Ross is industrious, Francis is lazy.

Together, Francis and George provide a reflection for every one of Ross’s traits—the good and the bad, reflecting his own thoughts and actions back upon himself and demonstrating to us every downfall of the thematic path upon which Ross finds himself.

4. The Love Interest

Not every story will have a love interest, but when present, the love interest inevitably functions as an impact character—someone who guides the protagonist. While the other archetypal characters provide symbolic catalysts and roadblocks on the protagonist’s journey, the love interest, in turn, acts as a sort of measuring rod for the protagonist’s progress (or lack thereof).

The love interest does this by symbolically rewarding (drawing nearer to) or punishing (drawing away from) the protagonist, depending on where he is in alignment to the story’s Truth.

This does not mean the love interest is perfect or has a prefect understanding of the Truth. But he or she instinctively provides proof that the protagonist must earn worthiness by adhering to the thematic Truth.

For Example:

Ross’s wife is a beautiful character. She is wonderfully flawed, but she is always a fixed point, continually guiding Ross back to his Truth. She is not a master or an instructor. Indeed, for the most part, she feels herself inferior to her higher-born husband and worships the ground he walks on.

And yet, she is the story’s lodestone—proving the best parts of Ross’s Truth about how to live a worthy and meaningful life—acting as both an example to him and a spur when he makes mistakes and turns toward the Lie.

***

It’s possible, in a larger cast, for more than one character to fit into the above character archetypes. However, you will keep your thematic presentation at its sharpest by likewise sharply defining these four characters and their relationships to one another. When all four are present, you can be sure you’ve created a strong, compelling, and moving story form.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! Are all four of these archetypes present in your work-in-progress? Why or why not? Tell me in the comments!

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When Does Writing Get Easier? The 4 Steps to Mastery

“When does writing get easier?” This is one of the most common questions writers have asked me throughout my career. The bad news is that, all these years, I’ve been giving the wrong answer. The good news is that the right answer is pretty fantastic.

In years past, when people asked me this question, I was as truthful as I knew how to be. I would look at my own struggles, my own doubts, and I would have to tell them:

Sorry, it doesn’t actually ever get any easier. Enjoy that first book, because it only gets harder from there.

Cue stunned silence and wall-eyed stares. (And me shrugging awkwardly and apologetically.)

But here’s the irony. Everybody who has ever asked me that question was asking the wrong person. I was struggling down in the trenches, trying to get my little brain around very big concepts, trying to wrangle the infinity of grand stories and themes into my very finite skill set.

I may have been a little farther down Beginner Road than some of the people who asked me this question, but I was still a Beginner. I didn’t understand story theory or structure. I could only fumble through explanations of what made certain stories work or not.

In short, I didn’t have a clue.

But in the years that have followed, I think I can say I’ve started to get a clue or two, and this year, those clues have culminated in a very interesting new mountain peak. Frankly, it’s a mountain peak I didn’t know existed. No one ever told me it existed (or, if they did, I laughed at the whole idea and promptly forgot about it).

But I’m here to encourage you that it does exist, and it’s name is: The Place Where Writing Gets Easier Because You Actually Get It.

The Myth of the Suffering Writer

Raise your hand if you love quotes about how hard writing is. Here’s one I posted myself a few months ago:

Writers, as a whole, embrace the difficulties of writing with good-natured and self-deprecating irony. We simply love it when it our fellow authors—especially established and acclaimed authors—talk about how hard writing is. It makes us feel better. If it’s hard for even Stephen King and William Faulkner, well, then, we must not be doing so badly ourselves.

The wordcraft is hard.


The storytelling is hard.


The “rules” are hard.


The sharing of our deepest selves is hard.


Heck, just forcing ourselves to look into our deepest selves is sometimes hard.

One of my favorite quotes has always been Ernest Hemingway’s:

Talk about taking off the pressure! If even Papa never felt like he mastered writing, then certainly I don’t have to worry about it. If it’s hard, well then, that’s as it should be. Now, excuse me while I fortify my upper lip, make some more coffee, and go suffer for the next couple decades.

All of these feelings are absolutely, utterly, 100% true. There’s a reason you resonate so strongly with these declarations of difficulty, and that reason is that writing is hard—your writing, my writing, Papa’s writing.

But don’t for one minute believe this is the whole picture.

Just because you will never write a perfect story does not mean you will not consistently attain certain levels of mastery. Just because writing sometimes feels like running blind through a dark forest does not mean someday you the sun won’t rise and your eyes won’t open. Just because writing doesn’t make a lick of sense in the beginning doesn’t mean it won’t make sense in the end. And just because it’s hard as heartbreak right now doesn’t mean it will never get easier.

Writing is only ever hard for one reason: because you don’t yet know what you know.

The 4 Stages of Learning How to Write

An oft-quoted (and misquoted) Arabic proverb shares the following four levels of mastery:

Each of these stages represents a corresponding level of difficulty and mastery. In the early stages, we encounter greater difficulty because we have less mastery. In the later stages, we are able to handle greater technical difficulties with greater ease because we have greater mastery.

In short, being a writer does get easier, not because the writing itself gets easier (it doesn’t), but because your capacity to manage the difficulties grows exponentially—if you’re willing to embrace the possibilities, endure the difficulties while they last, and reject the misconceptions that mastery is impossible.

Let’s take a look at each of the four stages.

Stage #1: You Don’t Know, and You Don’t Know That You Don’t Know

A few months ago, in a post about “The 7 Stages of Being a Writer,” I talked about how the first step many of us take as writers is mistakenly believing we’re “writing geniuses”—when, in all likelihood, we… weren’t. This overestimation of abilities (or sometimes not so much an overestimation as a complacency) also corresponds with first stage of knowledge: not knowing that you don’t know.

Comparatively, this is a pretty blissful stage. A lovely lack of objectivity about your work gives you rose-colored glasses. Your stories are marvelous. Your writing is sublime. Basically, you’re in love. You’ve just discovered writing, and it’s thoroughly amazing. You can’t imagine life without this powerful and endorphic high.

If you’ve already moved past this, it can be hard not to just roll your eyes at others who are still enjoying this delusionally delirious phase (which is probably symptomatic of the fact that you inwardly cringe whenever you remember your own naïvety in this stage).

This is actually a very important and extremely healthy phase. If your first experience as a writer was to be overwhelmed by the infinity of everything you don’t know about writing, you probably would never have written that first word.

Instead, you’re given the gift of early ignorance. You get to play, to have fun, to experiment—with absolutely zero pressure to be better than you are. That’s why writing that very first (awful) first draft is often one of the best writing experiences you’ll ever have. That’s why I used to tell people to enjoy that first draft, because once you start to know things, there’s no going back.

Stage #2: You Don’t Know, and You Know That You Don’t Know

Welcome to the Pit of Despair.

In the same way the Second Act is a place of confusion, cognitive dissonance, and great struggle for your protagonist, the middle two stages of writing mastery are the hardest. This is where you start really appreciating it when Hemingway says things like:

At this stage, perhaps after receiving a critique of your writing, you begin to realize maybe you have a thing or two million to learn. At first, you take it in stride. But it can quickly become overwhelming. There’s just so much to learn about writing, and no matter how much you learn, you just never quite seem to be able to juggle it all.

It’s kind of like Barney Fife trying to teach the town drunk Otis Campbell how to stand at attention. Something is always sticking out in the wrong place.

But not to worry. The “suffering” in this stage is largely the result of your very good taste. Your conscious knowledge and your practiced skills aren’t quite up to snuff yet, but you know that. In an interview in the March 2017 Writer, Ruth Ozeki remembered:

Much of the self-flagellation we inflict on ourselves is the result of just this. We have a deep subconscious understanding of what a story should be, but we lack the conscious understanding to actually make it happen. This is the part where we feel like we’re running blind through the dark forest (whoops—smack!—ran into another tree we didn’t even know was there).

Ursula Le Guin explained:

This is easily the most difficult of all the writing stages, if only because it can be so difficult to judge your progress. Often, it seems you’re making no headway at all—which can lead you to believe this must be it. Writing is clearly an endlessly masochistic endeavor, and the best we can do is just reconcile ourselves to a lifetime of stumbling around in the woods and hoping we’ll occasionally catch a firefly.

It’s true some writers will never get past this stage, but you do not have to stop here.

Stage #3: You Know, But You Don’t Know That You Know

It isn’t enough to just write and hope you’ll get better (although you undoubtedly will). You must also be constantly studying to expand your understanding. Don’t settle for understanding your stories; seek the greater understanding of Story as a whole.

When you do this, new horizons begin to open before you. Slowly, almost magically, good things start to happen. You don’t know how, but your writing is actually starting to be pretty good. You write one good book, hold your breath for a bit, not daring to believe it could happen again so soon, but it does! Two good books in a row!

Your hard work in Stage #2 is starting to pay off. Your knowledge is growing, and you are slowly beginning to step into a mastery of your craft.

Still, things are rough. You’re experiencing a lot of doubt. Your story seems really good. You believe in it. Most of your readers like it. But… you don’t know it’s good. The most sensible explanation would seem to be you’re regressing to the unobjective delusions of Stage #1. Best not to be too optimistic. Better go look up some more writing quotes from your fellow miserables. Oh, wait, here’s some:

 

Okay, enough wallowing.

You think you’ve reverted to an inability to be objective? Well, you have. But there’s a difference. Instead of being unable to recognize how bad your writing is, now you’re failing to recognize how good it’s becoming.

Your writing still isn’t perfect, by any means. Some of your doubts aren’t delusions at all, but rather signs of your growing story awareness. In fact, the greatest challenge of this stage is a refusal to trust the accuracy of your story senses.

All through Stage #2, you had it drilled into your brain that you didn’t know a thing, that you couldn’t trust your knowledge. Now, it’s time to start unlearning that. This isn’t, however, a conscious choice you make. Make it too soon, and you will revert to Stage #1’s determined ignorance. You will know you are entering this stage, as you feel your power growing (muahahahaha!) and tentatively begin to embrace it.

Stage #4: You Know, and You Know That You Know

Welcome to a brave new world.

This is that land most of us don’t even know exists when we start writing. It’s not a land where writing is easier. Not at all. It’s a land where writing is far more complex than we ever imagined. But it’s also a land where the juggling act of early questions and skills seems easy thanks to our new mastery.

Mastery is multi-faceted. It doesn’t mean you write perfect stories. It doesn’t mean words of fire and destiny spark from your fingertips to your keyboard every time you sit down.

What it does mean is that you have reached a place of harmony between your subconscious understanding of story and your conscious understanding. Now, when your imagination says, “This is what I want to do!,” your conscious brain confidently agrees, “And this is how we’re going to do it!”

You’re still walking through the forest, dodging trees. But not only has the sun risen over the horizon, you’ve also opened your eyes. The forest holds many surprises yet—many glens and streams you’ve never explored, many creatures you’ve never met. But like an experienced woodsman, you’re now confident in your ability to meet what comes.

You’re not suffering anymore. You’re centered. You’re at peace. The difficulties still come, but now they are challenges to be enjoyed because you no longer fear they may overwhelm your inadequate skill set. You’ve fought your battles, you’ve earned your laurels, you’ve come of age.

You were always a writer. Now you’re an author.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! What do you currently find most difficult about writing? Tell me in the comments!

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/kmweiland.com/podcast/when-does-writing-get-easier-4-steps-to-mastery.mp3

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in iTunes).

The post When Does Writing Get Easier? The 4 Steps to Mastery appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How to Write in an Authentic Historical Voice

Let’s say you’re writing a book set in the 14th Century. Naturally, as a diligent and conscientious writer, you want to do your research and write with an authentic historical voice. In fact, you’re so good and so authentic that what you end up with is something like this:

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us, ther was a duc that highte theseus; of atthenes he was lord and governour, and in his tyme swich a conquerour, that gretter was ther noon under the sonne.

You’re a genius! Except… none of your readers know what you’re talking about (or that you just ripped off Geoffrey Chaucer).

So you try again and write something like this:

So, there was this old story about this duke. He was big bananas, baby.

Now readers can understand this just fine, but… the story still doesn’t make sense because nobody in medieval England probably even knew what a banana was.

4 Ways to Find the Best Historical Voice for Your Story

If you’re writing a historical character (or any character in a non-traditional setting), how can you find the right balance between accuracy and accessibility?

Let’s find out!

1. Study the Original Language

The farther back in time you go (or the farther from your country of publication), the more inaccessible the language will become—and the more you will have to compromise to make it it legible to your readers.

The greater your compromises, the better your understanding of the original language should be. Read extensively about your time period and geographic area. Learn the rhythm of its language and the patterns that governed its speech. More than anything, you’re looking for the rhythms that will evoke this period without necessarily adhering to its rules.

2. Study the Modern Perception of the Original Language

Next, start looking out for what modern-day readers expect from this time period and place. Depending on the popularity of the era and its proximity to our own, their expectations may align very closely to the reality.

For example:

The 1960s need to sound pretty much exactly like the 1960s, if only because many of your readers will have lived through that decade themselves.

The 1860s need to sound pretty close to the 1860s, if only because many of your readers will have read period literature and will understand (as the filmmakers of the western  Jane Got a Gun did not) that “girlfriend” did not come into its common usage until 1922.

The 1360s, however, do not need to sound like the 1360s. Not anywhere close. Medieval English is now so far removed from modern English that no one expects or wants to read historical fiction that sounds (and spells) just like  The Canterbury Tales . What modern readers do expect from antique time periods is a greater formality to the language, perhaps even a few “thees” and “thous” and “prithee let me beg a boons.”

3. Study the Common Mistakes

Once you understand how contemporary writers commonly handle the historical voice of your period (and, thus, what  readers have been trained to expect from it), you must also give some though to the most commonly perpetuated mistakes.

For all that readers want their historical characters to be accessible, they don’t want to be ripped out of their suspension of disbelief by obvious inconsistencies or impossibilities. Since your readers are obviously interested in the periods you’re writing about, chances are good they’ve done enough studying of their own to know Nero couldn’t possible talk about “fiddling” while Rome burned—since the violin had yet to be invented.

For help in identifying common mistakes and myths, start by checking out the following fun reads:

Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders by Susanne Alleyn
What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank by Krista D. Ball
Hustlers, Harlots, and Heroes by Krista D. Ball
What Jane Austen Ate and Dickens Knew by Daniel Poole

4. Choose a Consistent Mix of Original and Modern Language

Finally, you must make educated decisions about the right mix of language for your story. Choose where compromises are necessary (for example, in the spelling of ancient words) and where they are not (for example, in maintaining the no-contractions rule in the speech of Georgian gentry).

Then stick with your rules. If you spell it “jail” in one scene, don’t suddenly spell it “gaol” in another. If your minstrel character calls his lady “you” throughout the story, don’t suddenly switch to “thou” at the end (unless you’re deliberately and correctly using the more personal pronoun for characterization purposes).

Your goal is to create an accessibly modern voice with just enough historical flavor to evoke the period without interfering with your readers’ comprehension or enjoyment of the period.

For example, Charles Portis’s strict adherence to a historical voice in his post-Civil War western True Grit makes it an immersive but decidedly quirky narrative.

Margaret Mitchell’s decidedly more modern voice for Scarlett O’Hara’s infamous adventures in the same period are perhaps less accurate, but more accessible—while still providing enough flavor of the period and place to convince readers they’re actually visiting Reconstruction Georgia.

A great narrative voice is one of the key factors in bringing to life a powerful story. Finding the right balance of individuality, authenticity, and accessibility can make the crucial difference in pulling readers into your story.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! Have you ever used a historical voice in your stories? What period? Tell me in the comments!

The post How to Write in an Authentic Historical Voice appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

Most Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 59: Overly Complex Plots

Complex plots? Good. Overly complex plots? Not so good.

Complex plots are the stuff of literary mastery. They can take a story beyond a single dimension into an intricate exploration of life. Dickens, Mann, Eliot, and so many more literary luminaries show us how to do it right.

But do it wrong, and what we end up with is an incohesive and tedious tangle of barely connected plotlines that test readers’ patience.

If all of writing is a balance, this balance is nowhere more important than in juggling simplicity and complexity.

Although you want to imbue your story with the warp and weft of a lushly woven complexity, you never want to draw attention to that complexity. It should arise so effortlessly from the tightness of your narrative that readers never stop to think, “Wow, this is complicated!”

4 Reasons You Might Be Writing Overly Complex Plots

How can you accomplish a beautifully balanced complexity of plot? And just as importantly, how can you tell when you’ve strayed past admirably complex plots into overly complex plots?

These are good questions. And that, of course, means they have very good answers! Following are four reasons you might be writing overly complex plots.

1. You’re Telling More Than One Story

You will never end up with overly complex plots just because. Story theory itself will help you spot the threshold separating good complexity from even just a little too much.

The first thing we have to ask is what constitutes a “whole” story? How do you know when you’ve gone beyond telling one story to telling more than one?

There are two major (but entirely symbiotic) aspects to a story.

1. Plot

And what makes a plot, you ask? That would be the central conflict. The protagonist (or group of protagonists) have a central goal toward which they’re moving, which, in turn, is blocked by the conflict created by the antagonistic force’s obstacles to that goal.

Think of that goal as a finish line at the end of your story. That’s the one thing the characters are primarily working toward in this story. The moment they either definitively gain or forfeit it, the main conflict ends—and so does the plot.

2. Theme

Out of plot arises theme (or is it the other way around?). Theme is the story beneath the story. It’s what all the narrative action is really about. The opposing forces of conflict in your plot are offering a statement about the world—a Truth, whether large or small.

Just as the plot is ultimately about one core objective, the theme must ultimately be about one core idea. No matter how many sub-ideas you explore, they all relate back to this one central statement of Truth.

That’s how it works. Every story = one plot = one theme.

Doesn’t matter how complex your story is, how many characters your cast includes, how many subplots you’re weaving. A cohesive story will always come back to this one equation. This is the rock-solid heart of simplicity at the core of every truly admirable complex story.

Of course, what this means by extension is that if you violate this principle—if your story mutates an extra theme or an unrelated plot goal—then, boom!, you’ve just moved beyond writing one story into writing several (or, more likely, one main story with a bunch of half stories tacked on around the corners). Your plot is no longer complex in a good way, but rather overly complex.

Your Most Important Takeaway:

Identifying plot and theme is the single most important principle of determining which “extras” belong in your story and which don’t. It requires you to mentally strip your story down to bare bones, so you can fully understand exactly what it’s really about, under all the flash and fluff.

Then you can start rebuilding it from the ground up. You’ll have to kill the darlings that don’t support your primary dramatic and thematic principles. Instead, choose only those characters, subplots, and scenes that enhance the overall effect of your story’s beating heart.

2. You’re Confusing Readers

Aligning your plot and theme is the foundation of complex plots that work. But you can get your foundation right and still end up with a plot that feels overly complex.

The bottom line: if you’re confusing readers, you need to streamline things.

Reader confusion could arise from any number of issues within your story.

1.  Poor Plotting

Plotting is about more than just identifying and streamlining your primary dramatic principle. You also have to make sure you’ve chosen structural beats that reveal that primary dramatic principle.

Your seven major structural moments (Inciting Event, First Plot Point, First Pinch Point, Midpoint [Second Plot Point], Second Pinch Point, Third Plot Point, Climax) create the backbone of your story. They reveal what your story is about. This means every single one of them needs to be about your primary plot.

If not, you’re sending mixed signals about which of the plotlines in your story is the main plotline. More than that, if you’re neglecting your main plot at any of the structural moments, it means it’s going to appear as an incomplete equation and will fail to be as strong as it should be (if it doesn’t fail altogether).

2. Poor Foreshadowing

You might also be creating the impression of an unnecessarily complicated plot by failing in either planting or paying off your foreshadowing.

Think of the two halves of your story as reflections of one another. To create a cohesive overall picture that makes sense and seems simple no matter how many working pieces it uses, those two halves must mirror one another. What is set up in the first half must be paid off in the second. What is paid off in the second half must be set up in the first.

Otherwise, your story ends up with loose ends jagging out all over the place, poking holes in your readers’ suspension of disbelief, and cluttering their minds with unanswered questions and cognitive dissonance.

3. Poor Writing

Finally, your story may end up seeming overly complex, not because of any inherent problems in the plotting, but simply because of how you’re presenting the plot.

Unclear writing obfuscates the clean lines of your plot, making it seem more complicated and cluttered than it really is. For example, all of the following may trip readers up:

Poor use of POV (via both head-hopping and simply choosing the wrong narrative perspective for certain scenes).
Poor dissemination of backstory information (especially character motivations).
Poor conveyance of linear clues (whether you’re writing a mystery or not).

Your Most Important Takeaway

Once you have a clear understanding of your plot and theme, make sure you’re telling it in the smartest and most straightforward way possible. Always measure your choices of structural beats and POV against your main dramatic and thematic principles. Then seek out objective beta readers who can help you learn where you’re not conveying your throughline clearly and powerfully.

3. You’re Making Things More Complicated Than They Need to Be

I find this one starts tripping most authors up roundabout their second or third novel. By that point, we start feeling we’ve really got a handle on this writing thing, ergo we must be ready to move on to something truly complex, intellectual, and James Joyce-ian. We don’t want to write a simple little story. We want something admirably complex and deep.

So… we start throwing in stuff for the sake of stuff (kind of like using big words just for the sake of big words). We go out of our way to create a complicated, twisty-turny plot, with tons of characters and extremely complicated (sometimes even contradictory) motivations and goals. Not to mention misdirection and red herrings galore.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of those things in themselves. They all work together to create deliciously deep and chewy stories. But only when they work. If they’re in the story for the explicit purpose of creating complications, then you must be extremely honest with yourself about whether they’re actually advancing the plot or just getting in its way.

Simplicity is always best. It is the sign of an authorial mind that knows itself, knows its story, and understands the single best route from Beginning to End. William Zinsser sums it up:

Only once you understand how to write simply can you begin to create complexity that doesn’t obscure, but rather clarifies.

Your Most Important Takeaway

Don’t set out to write a complex story. Write the story that’s in front of you. If it needs to be War & Peace, it will show you that on the page. Always ask yourself the following questions:

Can I simplify this?
Will adding this subplot enhance or interrupt the story’s thematic principle?
Will this be a vehicle readers can ride deeper into the story—or is it an obstacle barring their entry?

4. You’re Creating a Frenetic Feeling

Finally, you’ll want to evaluate the overall tone and narrative approach of your story. The way in which you organize your scenes and multiple narrators, as well as your pacing, will affect the overall feel of your story. Your goal should be to make even the most legitimately complex of stories feel as simple as possible.

It’s true multiple narrators and a fast pace are more likely to contribute to an overall frenetic feeling. This doesn’t mean you can’t use them just as adeptly in a complex story. However, it requires a masterful hand upon the wheel.

At every stage of the writing (outline, draft, revision), take a step back and look at the big picture of your story. Once you have an absolutely clear vision of your story’s foundational elements, you will be able to make informed decisions about even the smallest factor and its ability to enhance or detract from the overall affect you’re trying to create.

Avoid busyness for the sake of busyness. Even if all of your complexities make sense, you can leave readers’ heads spinning if you throw things at them rapid-fire. This doesn’t mean you need to drag everything out, but pay particular attention to the balance of your scene structure (scene/action and sequel/reaction) to create a supportive ebb and flow within your narrative pacing.

Just as importantly, make sure you’re properly developing your characters’ emotional reactions. For every cause within the action of the plot, there must be a sensible effect within your characters’ reactions. (And, of course, vice versa.)

Your Most Important Takeaway

Be mindful of the overall sense you’re creating in your story’s big picture. It’s extremely easy for authors to get lost in a story’s minutiae, to the point they think they’re creating exactly the effect they want, when really a few wrong choices within the narrative may be combining to create a very different effect.

This is why it’s important to occasionally step back from the nitty-gritty of the actual words. Stop every quarter of the first draft to do a “50-page edit” and read over the entire story so far. After you’ve finished the first draft, give yourself a break of several months to gain some objective distance. And, of course, share your manuscript with trusted beta readers who can tell you if their experience of the story lines up with your intentions.

***

Ultimately, the problem of overly complex plots is really the problem of authors writing stories they either fail to fully understand and/or aren’t in control of. Learn to understand your story, to identify the primary thematic and dramatic principles, and then to bring them to life on the page with the right mix of techniques. Do that, and you will always find a perfect balance of complex simplicity.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! What do you think is one of the negative effects readers experience when reading overly complex plots? Tell me in the comments!

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/kmweiland.com/podcast/mistake-59.mp3

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in iTunes).

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How to Write (and Not Write) Expository Dialogue

Dialogue is one of the most versatile of all narrative fiction techniques. It allows us to characterize, to create both context and subtext, to entertain via humor, and to share some of the best and punchiest prose rhythms in the entire book. Because it is the only narrative technique that is a “true” form of showing, instead of telling (aka explaining, aka describing), it also creates some of the strongest and most vibrant sensations in all of writing.

However, its very versatility can make dialogue easy to abuse. One of the most common ways in which it is abused is by turning it into expository dialogue.

Expository dialogue is dialogue that explains. At its rudest and crudest, expository dialogue takes the form of the infamous “as you know, Bob” conversation, in which one character tells another character something the other character already knows, with the first character then telling the second character he knows he knows it. (Yeah, it’s just as bad as it sounds.)

However, expository dialogue can be even subtler and trickier than that. It can slide into dialogue in ways that may not be as egregious as “as you know, Bob,” but are certainly not the best choice for sharing information with your readers.

Is Expository Dialogue Sneaking Into Your Writing?

As western author Brad Dennison pointed out in an email:

I don’t think enough writers understand that a novel isn’t just a movie on paper.

In a movie, information can be shared in only two ways. Either, you share it visually (e.g., the bank robber has a gun in his hand) or through dialogue (e.g., the bank teller yells, “He has a gun!”)

Modern writers are influenced in our storytelling as much, if not more so, by movies and TV than we are by books themselves. Too often, this means we might also attempt to limit ourselves to sharing information via expository dialogue.

Most writers these days are smart enough to avoid blatant “as you know, Bob” gimmicks. So they ratchet up the sophistication knob a few notches and sneak that info into their dialogue in less blatant ways. Sometimes this works admirably, sometimes not.

What’s the difference between expository dialogue that works and expository dialogue that doesn’t?

The bottom line is always: Does it make sense for the characters to be talking about this?

What Bad Expository Dialogue Looks Like

Bad expository dialogue looks like this:

Evan smacked his fist against the Thunderbird’s dashboard. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Cara looked up from her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. “Doing what?”

“You know, all of this. Robbing a bank! We couldn’t come up with a better way to pay off Don Carlo for accidentally getting his son arrested?”

“I know, I know. How were we supposed to know Jack was really an undercover agent?”

“That’s not the point. The point is you’ve hatched this crazy plan to storm into a bank in broad daylight, wearing Frozen masks. You don’t even like Frozen!”

Now, this conversation isn’t that bad. It shares backstory and character motivation in a snappy minimum of words. Neither Evan nor Cara stooped to saying “as you know.” But we do have Cara acknowledging  she already knows everything Evan is telling her (“I know, I know”), which is a huge tip-off that this dialogue isn’t as sensible as it seems.

2 Ways to Fix Expository Dialogue

You have two options open to you. Either you fix the expository dialogue so it’s smoother, smarter, and less obvious. Or you work your way around the need for dialogue altogether.

1. How to Write Good Expository Dialogue

It is totally, totally possible to write really great expository dialogue. Good screenwriters are da bomb at this. Classic cinema, in particular, offers a plethora of excellent examples of how to rattle off tons of information in dialogue that’s so smart viewers don’t even realize they’re being force fed the facts.

Consider these gems from Casablanca. All of these exchanges offer important information about the characters and story, but all are so rapid-fire and sharp-witted that we’d be sorry if they weren’t in the movie:

Major Strasser: We have a complete dossier on you. Richard Blaine, American, age 37. Cannot return to his country. The reason is a little vague. We also know what you did in Paris, Mr. Blaine, and also we know why you left Paris. Don’t worry, we are not going to broadcast it.

Rick: [reading dossier] Are my eyes really brown?

—or—

Captain Renault: Rick, there are many exit visas sold in this café, but we know that you’ve never sold one. That is the reason we permit you to remain open.

Rick: Oh? I thought it was because I let you win at roulette.

Captain Renault: That is another reason.

—or—

Captain Renault: My dear Ricky, you overestimate the influence of the Gestapo. I don’t interfere with them and they don’t interfere with me. In Casablanca, I am master of my fate! I am…

Police Officer: Major Strasser is here, sir!

Rick: You were saying?

Captain Renault: Excuse me.

The key is to make all dialogue pull double or even triple duty. Avoid on-the-nose revelations of information. Instead, focus on conveying the information through what the characters aren’t saying. And always make them say it in interesting, or even humorous, ways. Humor makes any pill go down easier.

2. How to Share Exposition Without Using Dialogue

As a novelist, you have more expository options open to you than do screenwriters. You don’t have to cram all the exposition into dialogue.

Like screenwriters, you too can “visually” share information, via description. But you can also simply tell readers.

“Tell” has become something of a dirty word among writers. But it doesn’t have to be. Used wisely, telling can allow you to share information in the simplest, most straightforward, least intrusive manner possible.

For example, assuming our ill-fated bank robbers from the initial example hadn’t already had an opportunity to show readers the events they’re talking about, this information could be shared much more intuitively in a simple paragraph of narrative:

Cara handed Evan a plastic Princess Anna mask.

He glared, but took it anyway. This is what they got for being stupid enough to believe Jack the Stupid Undercover Agent when he said he just wanted to be stupid friends with Stupid Little Carlo. Still, there had to be a better way to pay back Don Carlo than robbing this bank.

Speaking of stupid.

Dialogue is one of your most valuable weapons. Hone it to its sharpest edge by using it for exposition only when that exposition makes sense and can offer some of the most interesting conversations in the entire book.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! How do you think expository dialogue is different in written fiction than in screenplays? Tell me in the comments!

The post How to Write (and Not Write) Expository Dialogue appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

3 Ways to Make Your Writing More Visual

Written fiction is comparatively unique among art forms. Why? Because it isn’t visual. Unlike theater, dance, painting, sculpture, and photography, writing offers no inherent visual images. And yet, as any reader can tell you, reading a good story is a tremendously visual experience. This means you, as the writer, bear an important responsibility to make your writing more visual.

Think about your favorite book from childhood. You see it, don’t you? Think about the novel you’re currently reading. The first thing that pops to mind is probably an image you’ve imagined based on the author’s words.

That’s the phenomenal power of wordcraft. Unlike other art forms, writing has you creating something out of nothing. You are triggering the magic of your readers’ imaginations to help them, in essence, create their own art. Unlike viewing a painting, in which everyone sees pretty much exactly what the artist put on the canvas, reading written fiction allows the individual participants to paint their own mental pictures—with just a little help from the author.

That’s where you come in. It may sound as if readers are doing half or more the work, and authors therefore have it totally easy in comparison to their visual-artist brethren and sistren—but not so. If anything, your job is all the trickier for the subtlety involved in creating stunning visuals out of literally nothing.

Sounds like a blast, right? Today, let’s talk about how to make your writing more visual, and, in so doing, improve just about everything about your story.

But first things first…

What Is “Visual” Fiction?

Let’s be honest. When it comes to visuals, all written fiction looks exactly the same. Little black squiggles on a white page. Visually, it’s about as exciting as the lines in the concrete sidewalk outside your house. But when authors do their jobs right, few readers remain aware of the black-and-white reality in front of them.

Visual fiction is designed to help the readers visualize the story. There’s a very good reason most of us fall asleep over dry textbooks. There’s nothing to visualize.

Here’s an excerpt from a (sadly) very boring history textbook:

Less than a month after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, on May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. John Hancock was elected president. The assembled representatives of the American people decided emphatically that they would fight. The Continental Army was established, a call was issued to the colonies to raise troops and funds, and George Washington, who had distinguished himself as a lieutenant colonel in the French and Indian War, was appointed commander-in-chief.

Not exactly this, it it?

Or how about this, from J.M. Hochstetler’s Crucible of War?

Squinting through the Stygian gloom against a driving sleet that threatened to scour the skin from his face, Carleton assessed the faintly blacker line of the frozen New Jersey shore still some distance ahead. Their progress was agonizingly slow, and at every moment the water’s surge drove jagged ice floes against their clumsy vessel, threatening to either stave it in or capsize it. Or both.

The rising nor’easter that had plagued the Continental Army all the way to McKonkey’s Ferry, increasing in intensity while they embarked on a fleet of heavy black Durham boats, ferries, and other sturdy craft, showed no signs of diminishing and every sign of worsening. Its shriek whipped away the creak of oars, the slap of water and the thud of ice, the stamp of horses’ hooves against the ferry planks, and the animals’ occasional agitated squeals when their footing lurched beneath them.

Visual fiction uses a deft weave of narrative techniques to create vivid moving images in the readers’ minds. It turns words on paper into mental movies.

How to Tell if You’re Creating Images—or Abstractions

In order to make your writing more visual, it must offer two things.

1. Images

This is in contrast to the dry recitation of fact in the textbook excerpt above. The only image it offers is that of George Washington—and only because most everyone already has his face imprinted in their memories.

2. Concrete details

This in contrast to abstractions, which offer the idea of an image, without providing enough information for readers to actually create their own mental vision.

Abstractions are generalities. They’re also things we take completely for granted, which means you may sometimes not even notice you’re using them.

Which of the following do you find more visually compelling:

Abstractions can show up at any level within the story, in plot, theme, and character. At best, they use a foundation of shared understanding to build common ground with the reader. At worst, they end up as shallow stereotypes, symptomatic of authors unwilling to dig deeper for the unique and vibrant specificities of their own stories.

If you can learn to replace abstractions in your descriptions and the narrative itself, the bigger-picture generalities will often fall away effortlessly.

In The Lie That Tells a Truth, John Dufresne explains:

Like dreams, fiction communicates in images. Why? To involve you in the story, to engage your narrative imagination. To affect your emotions. Images are more vivid and more emotionally powerful than abstractions. In writing, both are formed with words.

3 Ways to Make Your Writing More Visual

Figuring out how to make your writing more visual is as simple as following these three steps.

1. Discover Your Story’s Inherent Images

Before you can make your writing more visual for your readers, you must first be able to visualize it for yourself. Most stories come to their authors in visual snippets, so you doubtless already have some ideas. Here’s how you can dig even deeper.

Sink Into Your Dreamzone

In his book From Where You Dream, Robert Olen Butler calls the writer’s immersion in the subconscious imagination “dreamzoning.” He encourages writers to deliberately set aside time to focus on this.

Sit in a dark room or go outside at night. Light candles or a fire pit. Turn on some powerful music. Just sit there for an hour or two and let your mind wander over your story. Don’t get too conscious in planning your plot or figuring our your characters. Just let the images float through your mind, like the snippets of scenes in a movie trailer.

Not only will you gain some great visuals, you’ll also come up with organic and powerful scenes, and learn things you never knew about your characters and themes.

Collect Images

Use the Internet to your advantage. Just as interior designers create a “mood board” to help them find the right feel for the rooms they’re decorating, you should collect images that help you turn your own imaginings into concrete realities. Look for characters, settings, clothing, props.

I collate Pinterest boards for all my books, including my portal fantasy sequel work-in-progress Dreambreaker.

Even if you feel you have a very clear mental image already in mind, finding a specific representation in an actual photo or painting can help you flesh out the vague and foggy corners.

Never Settle for the Generic

Push yourself. Especially when the time comes to actually sit down and start outlining or writing, get into the habit of taking a second or third look at everything in your story.

Instead of a standard castle with moat and turret, what could you create that would add more visual originality? Instead of giving your heroine a simple locket as a keepsake, what could you come up with that would be more visually interesting and, even better, more characterizing?

Make sure you’re taking full advantage of every character, setting, and prop in your story—no matter how inconsequential.

Pretend You’re Watching a Movie 

Remember, you’re not writing a book, you’re creating a mental movie. So let it play in your head. How would you shoot it if you were a director? What would the cinematography look like? What would the soundtrack sound like? Sink into your dreamzone and watch your story unfold in front of you.

Does it look suspiciously like the last twenty movies you saw in the theater? Then you know you have to go deeper still to find the truly unique and interesting images readers haven’t already seen a hundred times.

2. Use Theme to Refine Your Story’s Images

Imagery is powerful because it is visceral: it plunges your readers into places, situations, and relationships they would never have otherwise experienced. But it’s arguably even more powerful because it is inherently subliminal.

Create Symbolism

Images speak to the human consciousness on a deeper level. The sea, the moon, the twilight—all of these speak of more than just the surface objects, colors, and meanings. They are general symbols, which we all understand. But they can also be specific symbols that speak to the specific thematic motifs within your story.

Every single image in your story offers the opportunity to enhance your story’s deeper meanings—but only if you consciously examine each scene for specific images that quietly underline your theme and advance your plot.

As you’re digging past the obvious images to find those unique to your story, make sure you’re not just choosing those that are flashy. Refine your choices by selecting settings and props that have special meaning (or will come to have special meaning) for your characters and their inner journeys.

Advance Your Plot

Symbolism speaks largely to your character’s inner conflict and character arc. But you’ll also want to choose images that serve double duty by explicitly advancing your plot. Try to avoid imagery (or settings or characters or props) just for the sake of imagery. Every time you add a new element to a scene, ask yourself, “How can this tie into and advance the story’s external conflict?” If it can’t, then choose something else.

Use Your Images to Create Poetry in Motion

Symbolism is a powerful tool of subtext. Because it is both blatant and subliminal, it works to create a layer of deeper meaning without being on the nose or preachy. Nowhere does written fiction have a greater opportunity for subtlety than in its imagery. When you choose a powerful image that speaks to your story’s theme, you are showing readers, without needing to resort to any type of telling to get across your message.

Even better, creating beautiful images on the page gives you a ripe opportunity for adding a little poetry to your prose narrative. As you can see from the beautiful examples in the previous section’s graphic, gorgeous imagery is almost always the result of gorgeous writing.

3. Bring Your Story’s Images to Life

Now that you’ve learned how to discover and refine the right choice of imagery for your story, you get to start bringing those images to life.

Show, Don’t Tell

It’s not enough to simply tell readers “a boat moved through the river,” you must bring the moment to life in a way that makes them feel the bump of the waves, the spray of the water, and the hot reflection of the sun. Showing gives readers the details they need to bring the scene to life in their own imaginations. It provides them the tools to become, essentially, your co-writer.

Choose Specificity

Choose your words carefully—they are your only weapon. Look for specific and vibrant choices. Don’t write “off-white,” but “bone-white,” “moon-white,” or “white the shade of week-old snow.” One well-chosen detail can bring to life an entire scene.

Exercise your right to colors. A single splash of color can transform a description. Which do you see more clearly?

“She shrugged into her coat.” –or– “She shrugged into her scarlet coat.”

Understand the Physicality of Your Scenes

In order to fully represent a setting or cycle of motions within your story, you need to fully understand the physicality of your story.

Don’t know what the distance of 100 yards looks like? Go outside and pace it off.

Don’t know how a fistfight would play out in real time? Block it out with a friend or at least in front of the mirror.

Don’t know how a jackhammer would feel in your hands? Go borrow one.

Find the Right Balance of Description

Finally, a word of caution. As I’ve written about elsewhere, learning the perfect balance of description in your narrative is really the art of good narrative all to itself. Ironically, striving to make your writing more visual does not mean sharing every last possible visual detail with readers.

Thomas Hardy may have been able to get away with writing an entire first chapter’s worth of description for his main setting of Egdon Heath in Return of the Native, but you don’t need to do that. You can achieve exactly the same effect in a careful paragraph (or less) of well-chosen descriptive words.

***

There are only a handful of things that raise a novel out of the pile of mediocrity and into something truly memorable for your readers. Strong visual writing is one of those things. If you can convince readers to imagine your story as vividly as you imagine it yourself, you will have succeeded in your first, and arguably most important, task as a writer: that of bringing your story to life.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! What are you doing these days to make your writing more visual? Tell me in the comments!

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/kmweiland.com/podcast/3%20ways%20to%20make%20your%20story%20more%20visual.mp3

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in iTunes).

The post 3 Ways to Make Your Writing More Visual appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

3 Ways to Test Your Story’s Emotional Stakes

Part 14 of The Do’s and Don’ts of Storytelling According to Marvel

You can do almost everything right in a story, and it will not matter. Acing your story structure, constructing a solid thematic premise, and punching your card on every important character-arc beat will not matter—if you don’t also nail the emotional stakes.

The craft of storytelling is largely logical. We study story theory to discover the patterns that emerge from story to story, and then apply these universal facets of structure to our own stories.

But as important as logic is to good writing, it can never bear the burden of good storytelling all by itself. Emotion is every bit as important (arguably more so) in getting readers to actually care about and invest in the logically compelling story world you’ve created.

That’s where emotional stakes come in. It’s the glue that holds together your plot, character, and theme. It’s what takes your story from solid but empty framework to the realm of something readers will enjoy, remember, and perhaps even be impacted by.

Fail in your emotional stakes, and your entire story—however great its structure or character arc—simply will not matter. Unfortunately, that’s the category in which we find the highly-anticipated entry of Doctor Strange into the Marvel cinematic universe.

In Which Dr. Strange Learns Many (Many, Many) Things, Fights Bad Guys Just Because, and Tries to Serve Tea

Welcome to the (long-overdue) fourteenth installment in our serial exploration of the good and the bad in the Marvel movies. I missed Doctor Strange in the theater last November, which meant, no doubt, I missed out on a little bit of the dazzle from its gorgeous special effects. At the end of its two hours, however, I wasn’t too bummed to have saved an extra $10 bucks on ticket fare.

But first the good things:

I found Doctor Strange a very solid story. It’s structure is nicely in place, and it offers a lovely and sound character arc, as supremely (see what I did there?) arrogant neurosurgeon Stephen Strange gets hit in the head (err, hands) by life and is forced to rethink his assumptions about himself and the universe.

The whole kaleidoscopic special-effect approach is lovely.

The ladies, in my opinion, stole the show, with Tilda Swinton using her eerie charm to excellent effect and Rachel McAdams breathing much-needed warmth and life into her every scene.

The antagonist Kaecilius—however abbreviated his screentime—at least got the opportunity to offer some legitimate-sounding reasons for his evil plan to give everyone “immortality.”

Thor’s tea.

What Does It Mean to Move the Plot?

“Move the plot, move the plot—everything in your story must move your plot!!!”

So rail all writing professors.

Meanwhile, the writers themselves just want to bang their heads against their keyboards in desperate frustration. “Okay, yes, fine, great—I want to move the plot. But what does that even meeeeaaannnn?!?!?!?!”

(Enough interrobangs, for you?)

(No?)

(Okay, sorry: ?!?!?!?!!?!)

The whole concept of how to move the plot can too often seem more than a little vague. We get that moving the plot basically means “making story happen.” But sometimes it’s difficult to identify which scenes accomplish that and which don’t.

There you are with a (seemingly) perfectly good scene. Stuff is totally happening. People are falling love. Good guys are fighting bad guys. Empires are crumbling. And yet… your editor won’t stop sending you these terse notes: “Cut it. It doesn’t move the plot.”

Arrrgh. No wonder the frustration level sometimes goes through the roof on this issue.

That’s why, today, we’re going to take a definitive look at what it actually means “to move the plot.”

Move the Plot = Change the Plot

Sometimes writers get hung up on believing they’re moving the plot when, really, they’re not. This is because, ironically, moving the plot doesn’t necessarily require movement. Just because characters are running around doing lots of stuff in any given scene does not automatically mean that scene is moving the plot.

Moving the plot simply means changing the plot.

A scene that moves the plot is a scene that creates forward momentum by leaving the story different at its end than it was at the beginning. As Wordplayer Kate Flournoy mentioned in a comment to the post How to Write the Perfect Plot (in 2 Easy Steps):

A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that every scene should contain something that changes the flavor/direction of the plot, however subtly, on whatever level. It might simply be a teensy forward step in a character’s arc, or it might be a mind-boggling discovery about the villain that will end up contributing to his downfall. It might even just be a tiny smidgen of foreshadowing. But it has to be there.

A Scene-by-Scene Comparison: To Move the Plot or Not Move the Plot?

Let’s take a look at this concept in action, shall we?

Following are two (very short) scenes.

One of the easiest ways to determine whether a scene is failing to move the plot is to examine its scene structure. More often than not, if a scene isn’t moving the plot, it’s because one of its crucial pieces (usually, goal or conflict) is missing entirely.

However, because you can fool yourself into thinking a scene must be moving the plot simply because you know your structure is all there, we’re going to look at two perfectly structured scenes—one of which moves the plot and one of which does not.

Example #1: No Plot Movement

Leah arrived for work at the Daily Tribune and pounded on the door of the editor, Mr. Larkey.

“I know you canceled my story, and I’m not going to stand for it!” (Goal)

The door opened a crack, and Larkey’s lackey Larson poked his big ugly mug out. “Mr. Larkey says beat it.” (Conflict)

“He can tell me that to my face.” Leah gave the door a mighty shove.

The door wouldn’t budge against Larson’s bulk. He reached out a paw and easily slid her back. “Beat it.” He closed the door in her face. The lock turned.

“Hmp.” Leah kicked the door for good measure. “Don’t think this is over!” She turned to go. (Outcome)

The structure’s all there. But did the plot change? Not a bit.

And how do we know this?

Take a look at Leah’s goal. Does her relation to that goal change in any measure? At the beginning of the scene, she wants to get her article printed, but Mr. Larkey (and Larson) stands in her way. By the time we get to the end of the scene, there’s been quite a bit of movement—pounding, shouting, shoving, and kicking—but nothing has actually changed. Leah still wants to get her article printed, and Mr. Larkey still stands in her way.

In short, this scene is a whole lot of sound and fury signifying a whole lot of nothing.

Example #2: We Have Movement!

Leah arrived for work at the Daily Tribune and pounded on the door of the editor, Mr. Larkey.

“I know you canceled my story, and I’m not going to stand for it!” (Goal)

The door opened a crack, and Larkey’s lackey Larson poked his big ugly mug out. “Mr. Larkey says beat it.” (Conflict)

“He can tell me that to my face.” Leah gave the door a mighty shove.

The edge of the door smacked into Larson’s nose. Blood spouted. With a shriek, he stumbled back.

Behind his desk, Mr. Larkey shot to his feet. He jabbed a finger at Leah. “You’re fired!” (Outcome)

So did the plot change? You bet. Leah’s attempts to strong-arm her story back into the paper not only failed, they got her fired. Plot officially moved.

Ideas for Moving Your Plot

Your scene won’t always need to end with a flat-out disaster. You can also make use of sidelong disasters (“yes, but” disasters), in which the character achieves her goal but with consequences that push her sideways, instead of allowing her unimpeded progress toward her main story goal.

The point is this: every scene must create a new set of consequences that your character has to deal with. Otherwise, the landscape of your story remains static, and your character ends up like a hamster on a wheel—running for her life but getting nowhere fast.

As Kate mentioned above, you can create scene change in any number of ways.

Throw in a scene revelation that knocks your character’s socks off.
Thwart her goals.
Let her accomplish her goals—only to have the victory turn out bittersweet.
Even if you can’t change the course of the plot for the protagonist, at least change something for a subplot character.

Change is the life’s blood of fiction. Use it wisely in every scene and you’ll keep your plot galloping forward, your readers riveted, and your editors silent as a semicolon.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! How will you move the plot in your latest scene? Tell me in the comments!

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/kmweiland.com/podcast/what-does-it-mean-to-move-the-plot.mp3

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in iTunes).

The post What Does It Mean to Move the Plot? appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.