Eric Kent Edstrom's Blog, page 2

Delving too deep: when writing becomes dangerous

Your story comes out of a mind, a psychology, a world view.

It’s the same brain that worries, and loves, and envies. It’s the same mind that dreams when its sleeps. Or that gets hooked on a TV show or finishes a bag of chips without thinking about it.

[image error]photo kevron2002

Nothing exists in your story that doesn’t come up from the depths of that same mind.

Writing a novel is to excavate a portion of your inner self.

There are dangers to this work. People think writers—artists in general—are more susceptible to anxiety and depression because they work so much alone, or because creative work appeals to emotional people.

Maybe.

But maybe these mental health challenges are made worse because we are stirring up the silt of our subconcious EVERY SINGLE DAY.

In The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien, Gandalf says:”The Dwarves tell no tale; but even as mithril was the foundation of their wealth, so also it was their destruction: they delved too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled, Durin’s Bane.”

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The Bane he’s talking about the Balrog. And if you’ve read the book—or seen the movie—you know how fearsome that creature was.

And we writers risk awakening our own demons, becausethe act of writing stories is to delve deep. For some some, writing itself is therapeutic. For others, it simply opens wounds. I’m not a mental health professional, so I can’t offer more counsel than this:

If you’re life isn’t working because of anxiety or depression or both, finishing a novel won’t fix it.

It’s time to get help. I have, and it’s made all the difference.

Because there have been times—months on end—when I simply couldn’t write. I didn’t dare.

I didn’t know what was happening to me. Why did my heart start to race, and my head spin with vertigo. Or why would some situations make me weak with nausea and make my cheeks go cold and pressure build and build in my chest?

Looking back, I don’t truly know how I climbed out of that state, but I did not do it alone.

If you need help, get help.

Google some names. Send some emails, make some calls.

Start.

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Your character’s deepest, darkests thoughts

Your character has thoughts, share them.

How much woolgathering your POV character can do is dependent on your genre and your particular style. I like characters who think and reflect. In fact, it’s required if we are to write descriptions that are filtered through opinion.​

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Photo by SergeyNivens

So how do we deliver thoughts effectively?

This will depend on what persepctive you’re writing in.

So here’s a quick rundown the common choices.

First Person is written from the viewpoint of “I” as in: I didn’t know I would fall in love with a vampire, but when he bit me it was all over.

Third Person: She didn’t know she would fall in love with a vampire. But she did, it was all over.

In first person you can easily share the POV character’s thoughts, because the narrator IS the POV character.

I never liked cats. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I never trusted them. When I was a kid we had them on the farm. They were distant animals, half feral. Dad never let us feed them, and frankly who would want to? They killed cute mice all day long.
That’s a direct line into a character’s thoughts.

In Third Person we have to come at it with some slight of hand. Because in Third Person the narrator is NOT the character.

She never liked cats. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say she never trusted them. When she was a kid they were there on the farm, but they were distant, half feral. Her dad never let her feed them. Who would want to? After all, they killed mice all day long.

That example gives us some thoughts, but we get a sense that the narrator is telling us what her thoughts are. To get deeper, we have to peel off some of the narrator.

She never trusted cats. She knew their kind, sneaky, greedy little mouse killers that they were. A cat was a sort of demon, and folk who kept them in their houses were idiots. Dad agreed with her, and he wouldn’t let anyone feed them. The best thing she could say about cats was they kept the dogs busy.

Now that we’re getting into her opinions more directly, they come across as hers. There’s a tone to them that feel like she’s thinking them.

Dang. There was a cat ahead. Nasty calico with a notched ear. She circled to keep wide of it. You can’t trust cats. Sneaky little devils. They play with their kills. Merciless. She had no idea how people tolerated them in their homes. Growing up on the farm they were everywhere. Only purpose they served was to keep the dogs busy. She’d trained ol’ Barney to kill them every chance he got.

Now we are deeper into the third person POV. Did you notice how? The narrator is first reporting her direct experience of the moment. And the the declaritive opinion: “You can’t trust cats.” This feels like her direct thought. We are in her head.

Going deeper into a POV or choosing to hover a bit higher is a choice. We can move up and down these levels as the scene requires. I’ll address that in more detail tomorrow.

For now, just try it out.

You don’t need to italicize thoughts most of the time. But in some genres it is standard and readers like it. Some editors hate italicized thoughts. I’ve never read a convincing explanation for or against it.

Dang. There was a cat ahead. Nasty calico with a notched ear. She circled to keep wide of it.Can’t trust cats. Sneaky little devils. They play with their kills. Merciless.She had no idea how people tolerated them in their homes. Growing up on the farm they were everywhere. Only purpose they served was to keep the dogs busy. She’d trained ol’ Barney to kill them every chance he got.

To me that has a different feel, a different pace. I “hear” the italicized thoughts as unvoiced dialogue. So make your choice based on how it sounds best to you.

If you are introducing a new POV character, starting way down deep in their thoughts really helps immerse readers. Thriller writers often do this when introducing crazy villains and serial killers. Sometimes they’ll be so deep the thoughts come across disconnected and jarring.

He huddled in the garbage bin, nose full of old cabbage and rotty smells. Earthy stink. Worm breath. Eye to the hole. The street was dark and quiet. This was where she passed each night. Twelve thirty. Screw driver, flat head pressed against his thigh. Pain blossomed just shy of blood. The gift, the gift giver, the giver of glorious gifts. The honed flat edge. Like a knife, a wedge, to pry up the skin like a locked lid. Stay still! She might hear him breathing. He let the gift giver sliced his skin, just a little. He stopped himself. Save it. Save it. Save it. Save some for her.

Now we are mainlining this dude’s madness. We are witnessing stream of conciousness as thoughts arise. The reader understands he’s mad, and might even have slight sympathy for him even as they fear what he’s about to do.

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We love them because they’re so bad (writing villains)

Everyone loves bad guys.

But how do we make sure our villain isn’t a mustache twirling sadist, who is bad only because he does bad things.

[image error]photo by sellingpix

The more readers can understand the bad guy’s motives, the more layered the experience of the story.

If you remember one thing: the villain sees himself as the hero. The villain has reasons for what he or she does. Part of your main character’s journey is learning who her foe is and why she must face him down.

In Starside Saga, there have been several “big bads.” The Hargothe claimed to only seek Til’s glorification, though it was clear that he was powermad. “All things are permitted in the service of Til.”

Dunne Yples went mad because he witnessed Kila burning up a village of people. He was sure she was a prophecied destroyer of the world and had to be killed at all costs.

Yiothizandra is a demayne of Night, trapped in Kila’s world against her will. She has contempt for humans, and wishes only to be free (she’s the real victim here, you see), even if it requires killing everyone alive.

As the saga continues Kila faces the Revulsion, the ultimate force of destruction. It is pure suffering and wishes to bring about the End of All Things, including itself.

Bad guys are powerful. That makes them worth fighting. But they also have understandable reasons, even if we think they are insane. In fact, the more compelling (dare I say convincing) we make the villain’s rationale, the more frightening he is.

The beauty is that every writer contains multitudes. We all have a shadow side where our bad guys dwell and plot mayhem. One of the great pleasures of writing fiction is unleashing that aspect of our nature on the page.

Your bad guys may be murderers, or mistresses, or even opposing ladies in a fundraising competiton for the church. She can be the rich woman who outbids your hero on ebay for a family heirloom, or a guy who smashes mailboxes. It all depends on the scope of your story.

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Escape the Muddy Middle of your Novel

Writing through the middle of your novel can be like trudging through a bog, every step an enormous effort, mud sucking your shoes and socks off as you go.

[image error]Photo by Vadymvdrobot

In the distance, fog. Behind you, fog. Above you, fog.

And then come the mosquitoes of doubt and self-loathing. They buzz around you, nibbling constantly, until you cry out: “Why am I doing this to myself?”

This is where I would normally quote Bradbury to you, and you would roll your eyes and tell me to just shut up about Write—Don’t think—Relax already. You’re sick of that and you want an answer to the problem of the day-to-day toil, of churning out words that you know just suck and that aren’t going anywhere.

I wrote 1788 words yesterday.

At no time did I believe the writing was good.

At no time was confident that the descriptions (filtered through the opinions of my viewpoint character) were vivid and compelling.

At no point did I feel pulled along by page-turning momentum.

I’m not immune to the changing weather of mood and emotion.

But I have no intention of stopping, because I have the benefit of experience. Sixteen novels, over a million words published. I know this territory.

The first time you cross the swamp, you don’t know if it ever ends. But if you cross it once, you have that knowledge, that certainty forever. There is firm ground ahead.

Here’s what I’ve discovered:

Your writing is never as bad as you think it is. Scenes written while you feel enthusiastic aren’t necessarily better than the ones you write when you have a cold and want to fall asleep at the keyboard. I’m often delighted by chapters I had assumed were slow-paced masses of confusion when I wrote them.You learn to distinguish between self-criticism of plot and instinctive alarm bells that something isn’t working. Pay attention to your gut, not so much your mind.If you write yourself into a corner and don’t know how to get out, good! Your reader won’t know what’s going to happen either.It’s okay to do a larger loopback and take a right where you previously took a left. Yes, you’ll have to get rid of a bunch of hard-earned words sometimes. That’s no problem. Your only concern is progress.

In any endeavor, discomfort is how you know you’re exercising. It’s what forced your brain to adapt. Recognize it and take satisfaction that you are doing something difficult.

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Write a Page Turner with the BTTR Technique

Want to know how to write a page turner?

The kind that readers simply cannot put down?

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There’s a technique to it. And it’s easy to learn.

Oddly enough, I learned this technique at a little woodworkers shop in Milwaukee. The entry to it was just in the middle of an alley, in the side of a big old warehouse.

It was actually the back room of a slightly larger shop selling brewing supplies to hobbiests. The guy who leased the space was illegally renting out his back storeroom to the woodworker.

I had heard about this guy from a friend who collects typewriters. Apparently the woodworker had been a typewriter repairman way back in the day. But now he was in his 90s and was selling off some of his old tools. Tyepwriters have very specialized tools.

When I went in, the place smelled really off. And I don’t mean strange. It the gaggy sweet smell of decay. I was sure the old man had died and I was going to find his body. If only.

What I found was much, much worse . . .

That’s the technique.

Bait: Spark interest in the reader’s mind with bait. (I want to learn this easy powerful technique Eric mentioned!) Usually a question.

Tease: Delay answering the question with details that seem to be leading somewhere, but you can’t quite figure out where. Show details that create more confusion (brewer hobbiests? typewriter repairman? woodworker? What does any of this have to do with the technique?)

Twist: Surprise with a little (or big) twist. Something unexpected. (bad smell? not a dead body but something worse?)

Release: Relieve the tension, but not all the way beause you put out some more bait.

So how does this translate to scenes in your novel?

Like everything else I’ve discussed, it’s a skill you learn through practice. And once you’ve practiced it, your creative mind will happily use it. This constant bait, tease, twist, release cycle can happen even in very mundane scenarios.

Imagine using it in a scene where your main character is going to meet his girlfriend for dinner where she’s going to tell him whether or not she’ll marry him.

The reader wants the answer. Most will be hoping for a particular answer.

But he doesn’t just sit down and she says “yes!”

You want the waiter to interrupt before the conversation can even get started. You want your hero gauging his girlfriend’s answer from her demeanor, her eyes, her outfit. You make him listen to her talking and talking and still not answering. And he starts to realize that if she’s giving this long preamble, the answer can’t be good.

And then he starts resenting her and berating himself. Because why didn’t he see that her wanting to meet him at a restaurant was a bad sign in the first place? She just wanted to avoid dealing with him in private. She’s here to let him down where his natural politeness will prevent him from making a scene.

OMG this is a disaster.

To make things worse a mariachi trio comes up and starts playing “Bésame Mucho.” It’s agony.

What’s she doing now? She’s getging down on one knee. He’s appalled. She’s mocking him.

NO! She’s apologizing for making him wait, for saying that she needed to think about it. She’s apologizing for ruining his proposal by not leaping into his arms and shouting yes, yes, yes. She’s apologizing for ruining the special moment that they would one day tell their children about.

She’s proposing to him, right now, to make the proposal memory unique and unforgettable. Something they’ll tell their children about with laughter and tears.

“Will you marry me?” she asked, eyes welling with tears.

He pulled her into his arms. He whispered his answer so that nobody but her could hear. “Yes. My dear, sweet love, yes!”

The people seated nearby applauded, and the cheers rose and spread through the restaraunt. But one woman, seated near to the kitchen did not clap, nor cheer, nor clink her wine glass with the back of her butter knife. . . 

And so the cycle continues. You could write a book using only this technique, and it would work out pretty well.

So practice this idea. Take ten minutes and make up your version of the scene above and see where it leads. When your creative mind is engaged in this pattern, you will be dying to see what happens next.

You got me feeling emotions

It’s tempting to go straight at the emotion of a scene. To write what the character is feeling. Or to even have them say it in dialogue.

“I love you.”

That lets the reader know it. But it doesn’t make the reader feel it.

[image error]photo mark@rocketclips.com

The picture above conveys tenderness, love, partnership, safety, comfort, ease. And we can sense it because we can see it.

No emotion words needed.

Here’s a snippet full of emotion that does not use any emotion labels:

Jen studied the table, finding it impossible to meet her mother’s weary eyes. The cafe door jingled as another patron went out. Jen’s neck flushed. Her sweater felt suddenly too tight, too hot. The heat rushed like a geyser to her cheeks. God! To be just a patron and not a daughter. That was freedom. Because then she’d be able to get up and walk out, jingle the bell one last time, and be away from this impossible table and its half-eaten scones and going-cold coffee.

We might need more context to understand all of the emotional currents in the the little vignette above, but we don’t need much.

Even by itself it provokes a sense of several emotions. Jen is uncomfortable under her mother’s gaze. Whatever she’s feeling, it’s making her too hot, and that’s making her more uncomfortable. Is it embarrassment? Is it anger? Is it guilt? She sure has a wish for freedom, which suggests being trapped. The half-eaten meal and cold coffee suggests the meal was interrupted by a discussion that had cost one or both of them their appetites.

Real emotions are complex, and you can evoke them more powerfully by not naming them directly. Let your reader infer the emotion and suddenly they aren’t merely thinking: “oh, this character feels guilty, or she feels judged.” They are feeling it.

And that is powerful.

As you continue in your writing journey, you’ll come across scenes where complex—or chaotic—emotion is needed.

Sometimes the most powerful way to say “I love you” is something quite indirect:

“You had me at hello.”

Do you remember what movie that famous line is from?

That payoff is anything but generic, and that’s why it knocks our socks off.

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Pomodoro Technique for Writers

I got off to a rocky start yesterday, but I did hit my daily wordcount goal of 1800 words.

That’s because I know a technique that really helps build momentum in any situation. You may have heard of it:

Pomodoro Technique

Invented in the 1980s by a university student called Francesco Cirillo who was overwhelmed with his studies, the Pomodoro Technique is super simple.

Set a timer for 25 minutes (I do 20)Write until the timer bell ringsTake a five minute breakRepeat.

This is how I write my first drafts. Twenty minute writing sprints. And yes I do stop mid-sentence when the timer goes off. In fact, I love to stop mid-sentence. Makes starting the next sprint even easier because there’s a thought already in progress.

I add one more step: After each sprint of writing, I record the wordcount for the session. I’m currently using a spreadsheet for this, but I’ve filled up little notebooks with hand-written tallies as well.

Why does the Pomodoro Technique work?

It gives my brain assurance that it doesn’t have to stay in creative mode indefinitely. Creative work can sometimes be very exhausting. Especially if I’m thinking too much.

When the timer is counting down, there’s a very light pressure to make the sprint count. I just have to write something or my wordcount will be super low. It may sound silly, but it workds. And the less thinking you allow, the better. I’ll talk about that more tomorrow, because for some that statement will be confusing.

Doing Pomodoros tells you what your pace is. This helps budget how much time is needed to hit the daily goal. Over the past few weeks I’m average 640 words per 20 minute session. That means I need to do about three of them to hit my 1800 word goal.

Some days that average is much less, especially at the start of a new project.

So give it a try.

It will teach you to write forward. It will keep you from wasting time trying to perfect each paragraph before you move to the next. You don’t need to perfect each scene before you write the next. You need to write the next scene and the next.

Get momentum going.

Writing is mindset. The timer is a constraint that will focus you on the getting words down. Sometimes you need to blow out some gunk before the good stuff comes. Twenty minutes on, five minutes rest. Twenty minutes on, five minutes rest.

Don’t write nonsense. This isn’t freewriting or free association. If you need to pause for a few seconds that’s fine. But if it’s much longer than that, just write the next sentence. Doesn’t matter if you don’t know where it’s going. Doesn’t matter if you like it. Just stop thinking so much and write what happens next.

Trust your subconcious. It knows story.

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She Shrieked: Tagging Dialogue

One of the fake writer landmines is the so-called “he saidism.”

Some editors and style experts will tell you to never use any dialog tag other than “he said” or “she asked.” They might allow an occasional “she whispered” or “he shouted.”

This landmine is easily avoided because 1) it’s not difficult to understand and respect, or 2) you can stomp on it and discover that almost no reader cares. Many huge selling writers put all sorts of dialog tags in their fiction. “He shrieked” “he groaned” “she sighed” “she warbled.”

I tend to stay with “said” and “asked” because I want my readers to skim right past the tag. The purpose of the tag is to make clear who is speaking. If I want to convey a sigh, groan, or shriek, I would be more likely to show it through what actors call a “beat.”

An actor’s beat is a facial expression, a posture change, a turn of the head or eyes, or handling a prop of some sort. These beats reveal to the movie audience what’s going on in a character’s mind.

Novelists can reveal the point of view character’s thoughts by simply having them ruminate on them.

“I don’t think we can stay together,” he said.

So this was it. The moment I had feared. The moment I had connived and lied and schemed to avoid. If he knew how much effort I had put into deceiving him, he wouldn’t just say that so blandly. Did he think I was one of his employees, to be dismissed and replaced without a second thought? Unless . . . “Who is she?”

In that example, we are in first person and the narrator reports her thoughts to us. I don’t need to put on a “I said” tag at the end because we know it’s her talking.

But what about other characters? We can’t write their interior monologue if they aren’t the current POV character.

The answer is to ahve them perform a beat to convey a bit of their emotion AND signal who’s speaking.

I met him exactly on time. I knew something was wrong because he wasn’t at our table in the back corner. Instead he was at a two-top by the window. It wasn’t as private. As soon as he saw me coming he grimaced and put on his sad eyebrows. Totally fake. I sat and looked at him and waited.

He spun his coffee cup between his palms, little quarter turns. Precise, the way he adjusted the vent fan in the car. “I don’t think we can stay together.”

“Who is she?” I just blurted it out. But how dare he dismiss me like one of his lazy employees? If he knew just how hard I had worked (etc, etc)

Here’s another beat.

He bit his lip and looked out the window. “I don’t think we can stay together.”

Just keep the dialogue in the same paragraph with the beat.

So if you find yourself getting antsy because you’re repeating “she said” tags a lot, replace them with beats. They are marvelous for stretching out tension, indicating pauses, or re-introducing walk-on characters to refresh readers’ memories.

Use this technique today on purpose. That will require a little thinking, but not too much. Then move on and let it settle into that back of your mind.

When you add a tool to your skillset, your inner storyteller will start using it.

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The Power of the Loopback

I hit my wordcount goal yesterday (Nov. 6th, 2020), but it took longer than usual.

Why? Because I did a loopback!

I’m a huge advocate of writing forward, and keeping momentum going. But sometimes you don’t remember what you wrote two days ago. It’s okay to loop back, read through it, fix little errors, and add in details as long as you stay in the mindset of discovery and avoid the overthinking that comes with invention.

This is not the time to be “polishing” or rewriting. Many writers get trapped in a loop of continuous polishing of early chapters and then grind to a halt because momentum is lost. (You know who you are.)

The purpose ofa loopback is to refresh your memory, regain momentum, and pick up where you left off with your creative mind fully enganged in discovery.

When I start writing this morning, I will only loop back a few paragraphs. In a day or two, I’ll probably loop back a few thousand words.

Write forward, loop back a little bit, get a running start, write new scenes, loop back a little bit, get a running start, write new scenes.

“Write. Don’t think. Relax.” —Ray Bradbury

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Hating or Loving Your Writing is a Choice

George Orwell struggled with his writing.

In a letter to a friend he wrote, “I am so miserable, struggling in the entrails of that dreadful book and never getting any further, and loathing the sight of what I have done. Never start writing novels, if you wish to preserve your happiness.”

His letters are filled with this sort of stuff.

It’s almost like he was performing self-criticism for his friends and colleagues to shield him from external criticisms. I see this all the time with new writers.

The Orwell state of mind is not an advantage if one wants to be happy and (dare I say it) enjoy writing. It’s certainly not helpful if you want to stay motivated to write.

Orwell is trying to be writer, editor, and critic all at the same time. He was qualified in all three of these domains. And that was his biggest problem.

If you write with an editor on one shoulder and a critic on the other, writing will be miserable indeed. Orwell was miserable all his life.

Ray Bradbury, by contrast, just wrote. He wrote Farenheit 451 in the basement of UCLA on coin-operated typewriters. A dime would give him 30 minutes of writing time, and he didn’t have money to spare. He spent $9.80 writing that book. Money was slipping away every second. He couldn’t sit there and agonize over things or rewrite the same scene over and over. He got on with it.

So here’s my takeaway: You will gain nothing by hating your writing. It will not improve your book, and it certainly won’t make writing easier. You will not protect yourself from criticism by criticising yourself first.

Hating or loving your writing is a choice.

It’s obviously wiser to love it, considering how much time you’ll spend doing it.

So brush the editor and critic of your shoulders and immerse yourself in your world. Go on the adventure and delight in it.

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” —Ray Bradbury

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.