Eric Dontigney's Blog, page 14
February 19, 2013
What Grey’s Anatomy Taught Me about Writing
Originally posted 11-19-2010
Recently, in a desperate bit to impress a woman, I watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. (Okay, it wasn’t really desperate or any particular bid to impress her. We were watching TV and it’s what she had on DVR, but I like to open blog posts with something strong.) Like millions of other people, I got sucked in and have been catching up on past episodes through a combination of Netflix and Hulu. The interesting thing that I realized today was that I don’t think there’s a single character on that show that I’d ever want to know in real life. I mean, seriously, those characters are damaged in ways that would make them all horrible friends to have.
Yet, while I’d avoid them all in the real world, I find their imaginary world to very compelling. It’s the damage you see. The almost absurd degree of brokenness these characters have allows them to serve as mirrors that amplify our own faults to a point that makes it not merely sad, but interesting. After all, small selfishness just isn’t that interesting. We see it all the time. But massive selfishness, of the kind that disregards everything but the range of the moment, is very interesting to watch because the consequences are equally amplified.
So what does all this have to do with writing? It’s simple. Writing with characters that mirror the small, normal flaws of people in normal situations leading normal lives isn’t fun to write. More importantly, it’s not fun to read. Sure, some people are out there writing meaningful books full of depth and symbolism that aren’t (necessarily) fun to read and contain such characters. We should all read those books, sometimes. The rest of the time, we can read books that give us some entertainment value.
For example, I spend a lot of my time reading high-powered philosophy texts. These books are important, meaningful, and frequently agonizing to read. Most philosophers are terrible writers. A lot of it can be laid at the feet of the discipline, but some of it lands on the writers. The rest of the time, I read things that entertain me. For example, I love Jim Butcher’s Dresden series. Those books are not high-powered or particularly meaningful, but they do entertain.
The lead character is damaged in BIG WAYS. Dresden is an orphan. His relationships with women have the tendency to end catastrophically. His lacks the ability (possibly at the genetic level) to refrain from shooting his mouth off to people in the position to do him harm. He makes big mistakes with big consequences. That makes it interesting to come back and see what’s happening with him again. He amplifies flaws I can relate to in some way. I can see them in a size and context that makes it safe to judge them without feeling like I’m judging myself. That isn’t bad for popcorn fiction.
So, unless you happen to be writing important, meaningful novels, don’t feel compelled to make your characters too balanced. Give them amplified flaws and consequences and see if you don’t like the results better.
Writing for a Living
Originally post 5-31-2010
Writing for a living is an entirely different proposition than writing for self-enjoyment or as a hobby. For most writers, that being writers who only write on the side of a day job, you can afford to have an off day or to chase your muse. When you write for a living, you don’t get to have off days, at least not very often. You must essentially commit yourself to the act of writing on a daily basis. I don’t mean five days a week. I mean 7 days a week.
In my experience, taking one day off from writing is the equivalent of taking a week off from any other type of work. That may just be my experience or a product of my organic writing process, but if I don’t write for a few days, it takes me a while to get my mind hooked back into the place it needs to be for me to write effectively.
Writing for a living also means taking on a variety of extra tasks that you don’t have to think about in a regular job. If you can’t balance your checkbook and don’t want to hire an accountant, you probably shouldn’t try to write for a living. You have to maintain extremely accurate financial records. After all, unless you happen to be a staff writer for a publication, you’re responsible for paying your taxes. You can’t do that unless you have the records to do the math.
You also have to become your own marketing team. You have to get your name out there to clients in a positive light. It’s harder than it sounds. Word of mouth is your friend, but you cannot rely on that alone to keep you in enough money to pay rent, bills and buy food. Especially buying food. You cannot write if you’re so hungry it’s all you can think about.
Being your own marketing team may mean that you will have to become at least marginally competent at website building. Fortunately, there are wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) web site editors to help you out with that, but there’s still a learning curve on any new program. I like Kompozer, which is a free wysiwyg site editor, but that’s just me.
Another option is to set up a WordPress blog on your own domain. If you’re willing to pay a little bit, there are WordPress themes out there that will mimic the look and feel of a traditionally constructed website. However, even when your website is built, you still have to fill it with the appropriate content.
This can be more or less of a challenge based on what kind of writing you’re trying to promote. If all you do is write novels, then you’re web presence is built on novels. If you’re like me and write across a number of areas, both fiction and non-fiction, the marketing effort becomes increasingly difficult because your content needs to reflect the scope or your writing.
I recommend doing at least some basic research on marketing approaches for your area of writing before trying to make a go of writing for a living. One very effective way of doing this is to check out the websites of people who are already doing well in that area. See what they have on their site, which social media outlets they work through, and where they submit content outside of their site (if they do).
I hope this has given you some insight into writing for a living and, ideally, will help you save some time if you decide to giving writing for a living a shot.
Eat of Life
Originally posted 5-26-2010
Writing eats. Only what it craves, feeds on like a carnivorous beast, is experiences. Right now, you’re thinking, “Yeah, I’ve heard this all before.” Yet, if we look back at some of the more interesting writers, there is a pattern of intense life experiences. Now, it certainly isn’t necessary to drink yourself into oblivion or experiment with drugs. In point of fact, I personally believe that there’s no intrinsic value for your writing in those behaviors. Writing well is hard work. For most of us, it requires a considerable degree of attention. Neither booze nor drugs has a reputation for helping with that.
Fortunately, mind altering chemical experiences are just a tiny sliver of what life has to offer. I discussed before how adding the occasional mundane details to a character’s life adds credibility. This also applies to less mundane details. For example, maybe you have a chef in your story. You don’t need to have attending a culinary academy to be able to write a passable first draft that involves cooking.
You’ve almost certainly cooked something. Don’t focus on the details of what the chef is doing, but on the things you do know. Talk about heat and smells and noise, things that everyone who’s ever cooked or been near a kitchen will recognize. You can go and talk to a chef about the details later. You might even be able to get them to read that section and offer tips. It never hurts to ask. If you haven’t ever cooked anything, there’s nothing to stop you from trying it.
Make it a point to try out something you’ve never done before a least a couple of times a year. This will help you in lots of ways. First, it expands the base of knowledge from which you write your stories. It may even provide you with an extra scene. Two, new experiences keep you in touch with basic emotions, like fear, anticipation and enthusiasm. If you’re experiencing those things on a semi-regular basis, it’s a lot easier to write about them.
When I talk about experiences, I don’t mean things that are necessarily expensive. Not everyone can afford to take a trip to Europe or hike through the mountains of South America. Not everyone wants to do those things. You can take a walk in the forest, try foreign food, or take a free class. Go to a museum and really look at the artifacts. Note how the light hits them. Imagine the care it would take to dig something like that out of the ground. Then bring that back and feed it to your writing.
February 13, 2013
Things Must Happen
Originally posted: 5-23-2010
One of the things that can make or break a story is action. I don’t necessarily mean gunfights, high adventure and explosions, though they can be fun to read and write. What I mean is that things must happen in the story. There must be movement on some level, whether it’s physical, intellectual or emotional. Without some kind of internal momentum to carry the reader and characters forward, the story stagnates, spinning its wheels and looking for traction.
Think of the last book or story you read where you found yourself starting to skip paragraphs or entire pages. That’s the juncture at which the story you were reading lost momentum. For whatever reason, the writer lost traction there. As an object lesson, if you can remember where it happened. Go back and reread that section of the book where you started skipped parts. Read the section right before and right after it, where you were eager an engaged. Try to identify what it is that bored you or left disinterested. Then, avoid doing that in your own stories.
One of the things I’ve identified as a boredom generator is endless description. Without a doubt, you must describe in your writing, but there’s a line at which description becomes simple telling. People don’t like being told things. They want to stir in their own imaginative herbs and spices. In my own fiction, I’ve learned to err on the side of leaving lots of room for reader interpretation. This is what alpha and beta readers are there to help you sort out. If you haven’t said enough, they’ll let you know. Trust me when I say, you’d rather add details than cut them. It’s harder to kill your darlings than you think.
Character Building
Originally posted: 5-6-2010
You can’t write a novel without spending some time on character building. I’ve been doing some of that recently for the next installment of my Samuel Branch Series. Everyone has a take on how to do this successfully and mine is pretty organic. When I start out, I usually just have a vague sketch of what I want a character to be like. I try to define what they’re major quirks and strengths are and then I write from there. I didn’t always handle it this way. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about the characters, building major histories for them, only to find out I was going to scrap about 90% of what I thought was true because it didn’t accommodate how the characters needed to behave in the story. I tend to think that this is an important point. The characters are ultimately there to serve the story, not the other way around. If you find yourself altering major elements in your plot, to the detriment of the story, you’re probably trying to write around the character.
This does not mean, of course, that you’re characters can be inconsistent. They need to behave in a way that makes sense, not only in terms of the story, but in terms of what they have done before. For example, if you have your major villain/antagonist acting in a way that is contrary to all prior behavior, there had better be an exceptionally good reason for it. The same is true for your hero/protagonist. I’ll come back to this a little more in an upcoming post on plotting. The point here is that it’s a lot easier to modify a character (and have it make sense) than it is to modify a story arc on the fly.
