Susanne Dunlap's Blog, page 9

Jamie Ford

“Being a writer is easy. Writing is hard.”

Read Jamie Ford’s wonderful advice for writers.

Taking the leap

As promised, here’s the scoop on the workshop with Randy Susan Myers Saturday:

I came in thinking all I had was a jumble of research that would never amount to anything. I left thinking there’s a story in there after all.

I don’t know how much was the sensible ideas and pushing that Randy Susan Myers did to all of us, and how much was just being jolted out of my torpor, my feeling as though I’d completely forgotten how to write now that the manuscript I’ve been working on for a year and a h...

Memory and learning

Last time I participated in a workshop with Randy Susan Myers, I was struggling with the novel that is now awaiting its fate in the hands of a publisher.

It was also only days before my father died. My phone rang in the middle of someone’s reading. I answered it, because it was my father. I don’t know how he’d managed to call me. He was in hospice, and barely able to speak. I can’t really remember exactly what he said, except hello, and I love you. Probably not much more than that. That was t...

Writing dreams

They just. won’t. let me. alone.

All those thoughts about writing that get translated into bizarre dreams.

Last night I dreamt that I was in a house where I’d invited some very unlikely people to live with me. I discovered it was a bad idea, so I decided to move to an apartment I would share with more congenial occupants.

But everything thwarted my move: I couldn’t get a truck, then I decided to walk, then my phone wouldn’t display a map… Despite all this, I eventually found it, in a rather r...

Structure

The idea of structure in a novel used to scare me. I had images of an ossified underpinning that hampered creativity, interrupted the flow of prose and character development.

In the past few years, I’ve decided to overcome that fear. I realized that it’s not always wise to depend on instinct to give structure to a novel, and that thinking about it and studying its principles could make a novel stronger, more compelling to the reader.

I also took a course, an online course, which I followed pr...

Thought for a rainy day

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

                                                                            – Pablo Picasso

Finding the narrative

I’ve discovered I can’t start writing a novel—even if I know how it should begin and end—until I find the narrative thread. Characters can develop on the page as I write, even plot to a certain extent, but I have to have a basic idea of what’s going to tie everything together as a compelling story.

What makes a story? In a word, conflict. Not conflict as in fight necessarily. A conflict between two characters. A conflict within a character between his desires and his duty. A conflict between...

Why?

Why is the world the way it is? Why are people incapable of just letting each other live in peace? Why do good people sometimes do bad things?

Those are some of the whys I’ve been pondering lately. But the biggest one, perhaps because it’s personal, is why do I write?

I haven’t so far been able to fully answer that question. Certainly there’s an element of compulsion: I’m in the habit of writing, I don’t feel as if I’ve accomplished anything if I don’t write each day. I also relish the learn...

Research!

OK, that’s kind of a nerdy thing to get excited about, but my historical novelist friends probably know the feeling.

I’m digging around, reading, making a timeline, trying to connect the dots, looking for the story, and every time I stumble on another fact that gets me excited I feel as if it’s Christmas.

It’s possible that this is unique to writing historical fiction, although research is involved in writing any novel. You have to know the setting, the weather, the local quirks and curiositi...

What characters look like

One of the magical parts of being a writer of fiction is that you get to create characters. Even historical figures, where there might be an image to base the externals on and some letters and historical accounts, leave a lot of room for interpretation.

But it struck me, as I’m reading the wonderful Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network where one of her main characters stutters, how my image of my main non-historical characters always assumes that they are attractive. I suppose this is partly wantin...