The Wood Beyond The World Forum General Tips and Tricks Thread

I feel it will be good for us to have a thread devoted to tips not belonging to any one category. Maybe this is a little out of place, but meh, I feel we should have one anyways.

Here's a bunch from Stephen King's On Writing. If nothing else, I just saved you guys $10.

Writing is telepathy. It is trying to communicate a message or image (both, really) from your mind to another person's mind. No person will see exactly what your mind sees. It is the job of the writer to communicate as much as what is necessary, while leaving enough left out for the reader to have fun filling the gaps. The writer cannot be fully detailed, or the work becomes an instruction manual.

You must not come lightly to the blank page. If you can't take it seriously, then you have no business with it.

Read William and Strunk's Elements of Style.

Eliminate needless words.

Kill your darlings.

Fear (or timidity) is the root of bad writing.

Your first duty is to the story. Your second duty is to the truth.

Practice is invaluable. Honesty is indispensable.

Always do it for the joy. Never do it for the money.

No one and nothing will inspire you. There are no muses. Muses are like a kid with an ant farm. They're always watching, but they're never gonna do anything. Writing is like building a house. Both are hard work, consisting of (what seems like) menial labor. Both end up as something great.

Read a lot and write a lot. There is no way around these two things. You don't need to read to study, you can read for fun. The lessons will be assimilated automatically. Bad books teach us what not to do, and encourage us to keep writing (in the "I can do better than this guy, and he's published!" sense). Good books teach us what to do about style, narration, plot, and characters, and encourage us to aim higher (in the "I want to write like this!" sense). If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write. 50% of your writing time should be spent on reading. This will not seem strenuous if you enjoy what you're doing. If you're not, you're not cut out to be a writer.

Writing is a toolbox. The most commonly used tools are on top. Rarely used ones are on the bottom. The toolbox has five or six levels.

The first level is vocabulary and grammar. Use your own vocabulary, not $3 million dollar words to make yourself sound smart. Nine times out of ten, the first word you thought of is the best one for the job. Use the word that is appropriate and colorful. Grammar is the same. If you read enough, you will assimilate all the rudiments of grammar you will ever need. If you've grasped the rudiments of grammar, you can experiment with sentences that don't always include nouns and verbs. The object of fiction is to tell a story, not to strictly adhere to rules of grammar.

The next layer is elements of style. There are not so many tools here, as there are tools not to use.

Avoid the passive sentence form. People use it because it's 'safe'. "The meeting will be held at eleven o'clock" is safe - it's a proper sentence without needing to know who's holding the meeting, who will be at the meeting, and so on. "The meeting is at seven o'clock" communicates the same thing in active tense. Have someone/something doing something. Do not have something being done to something/someone.

The adverb is not your friend. The adverb is the coward's way out. Writers use the adverb when they are afraid that some emotion is not being communicated clearly, and the adverb is there to properly punctuate it. This is doing the reader's thinking for him/her. The surrounding prose should, and usually does, communicate what the adverb is doing. Go through every first draft and find "ly" and kill all adverbs that deserve it.

Do not use adverbs in dialogue attribution (ex. "Don't do it!" she said mightily). Do not change the verbs to compensate for the lack of adverb (ex. "Don't do it!" she gasped.) The word "said" is always good enough.

Always add "'s" to possessives. Even ones that end in 's'. "Thomas's bike" is easier to read than "Thomas' bike", which the reader will hiccup at. This is the word of William and Strunk.

The paragraph is the next layer of the toolbox. These demonstrate whether the book is hard or easy by the white space and frequency of dialogue. Paragraphs meant to explain/describe start with a topic sentence, just like always. Everything else depends on the story, where the paragraphs determine the division themselves.

Words combine to form grammar. Grammar combines to form sentences. Sentences combine to form paragraphs. Paragraphs combine to form stories. Every story, big or small, was built one paragraph at a time, like a house.

Good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, clear and clean style).

There are a lot of bad writers, many competent writers, few really good writers, and geniuses. Bad writers are often on MySpace, writing one-page slash fan fiction, or technical manuals. Competent writers are often newspaper staff, magazine writers, bookstore rack authors, and Open Mike Night speakers. Really good writers are published and have varying degrees of fame and fortune. Genisuses are fortunate freaks, like Faulkner, Shakespeare, Eudora Welty, Dickens, and so on, all unaware of what made them geniuses, otherwise they would bottle it and sell it at $19.95 a pop. You cannot make a bad writer into a competent writer. You cannot make a good writer into a genius. But you can make a competent writer into a good writer.

How much writing is enough? Who knows. James Joyce was happy to get seven words out. Some authors write "The End" and start writing the next book immediately. Others like Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger write one book... ever. Finding out your writing style (the style of the act, not the words) will take experimenting until you find something comfortable. If you write 2,000 words a day you can finish a 168,000 word novel in three months, a season. Write every day. I'm not f*****g kidding here. Write every day, or there will come a time when you won't write any day. That may be too lofty for a goal for us (including myself), so try for a thousand words a day, with a day off during the week for good behavior. The point here is to make writing a habit.

Have a writing room. It should be a humble room.

You can write about anything, as long as you tell the truth.

Pay attention to how real people around you act.

"Write what you know" is a sound philosophy, but falls apart when talking about fiction, because we can't know what its like to be psychic or teleport. Write what you want to read. Then put in all you know about life, people, environments, friends, relationships, sex, work, anything you know. The point of this is to make a world/situation that is not impossible to believe. John Grisham writes lawyers because he knows lawyers, he was a lawyer. With this, he could write lawyers with the mob, lawyers versus politicians, lawyers in love, and lawyers in space. He writes what he knows to give plausibility, then what he knows less to give a story.

People love to read about work. No one knows why.

Plot is nowhere. Do not plot your work, do not write a plot outline. Write a situation, then have your characters guide it to the conclusion. Why? Two reasons. Because life is largely plotless. Because it prevents spontaneity of the story. If you don't even know where the story is going, the reader definitely won't, and excitement is sustained. Stories must grow out of the situation + characters. Stories are like a fossil, a small bone poking out of the ground, that needs to be uncovered by brushing away the dirt. Brushing, brushing, brushing. Things will happen to the characters as the fossil reveals itself. You write the characters as what they would do if they were in the situation. Never plot. Write a story. The story is the boss.

Situations arise from "What if?" questions. This is the bridge between inspiration and story.

Description is best when it involves all five senses. Especially smell, if its appropriate. The trick is knowing how much to reveal. Skimp on physical descriptions of people. Use the mind's eye to see the key details and write those down. Leave the rest to be filled in by the reader.

Use metaphors that are appropriate to the mood/genre of the story.

Don't use cliché metaphors. Don't use metaphors that you've heard before.

In dialogue, never tell a thing if you can show it. How to write dialogue is best learned by talking and listening. Especially listening. Use dialogue for character development.

Be real with the dialogue. If a character would swear, have him/her swear, even if you don't. If a character would sleep with a cheap s**t, even if he's the hero, then he sleeps with the cheap s**t. Never censor yourself, and prevent others doing it for you at all costs. People that do are afraid of hearing the truth. Your job is to tell the truth.

Characters grow/develop as the story grows/develops.

Character archetypes, such as "The evil emperor", the "anti-hero", and "the tough princess", don't exist in real life, and your job is to simulate real life (tell the truth). Remember that.

Make your characters act in a way that keeps things happening, and seem reasonable to the reader. All characters do things based on anger, fear, happiness, disgust, shame/guilt, sadness, desire, pity, love, discovery, and other emotions. In other words, they act based on how they feel.

Fancy things like onomatopoeia, symbolism, stream of consciousness, verb tense, back story, theme, pacing are all nice. Use them when the story seems like it has it already. Do not shove them in there. Do nothing that gets in the way of the story or decreases the value/quality of it. Upon reading the first draft of the story, you should be able to see certain elements like that creeping in. Your job is to bring them out further into the light in the second draft. Find a thing that shows up a lot, then play with the images, themes, and ideas that you associate to bring it out further.

You can't please all the readers all the time. You can't please some of the readers all the time. Try to please some of the readers some of the time.

Story is the trees. Theme is the forest. If you get writer's block, recollect the theme of the work, and have your characters do something that applies to that. But theme is not a big deal. Good fiction begins with story and progresses to theme, never the other way around.

The drafting process consists of a first draft, a second draft, and a polish/final revision (the 2.5th draft). But this only how one successful writer does it. Others wrote and rewrote a page at a time.

The first draft is done with the door shut. This the all-story draft. Write it as fast as you can, with little looking back and little evaluation of what's right/wrong/good/bad/going to work/not going to work. Keep enthusiastic. Relegate self-doubt. It should be written with no help from anyone else. You don't want to be forced to explain things. You don't want praise to make you complacent.

When the first draft is finished, order a pizza and let the story sit (incubate) for at least six weeks to regain objectivity. Let someone else read your work during this time. Do not talk to them about it until you are ready to talk about it. Do not stop writing during this time. Write smaller things.

When six weeks is up, read the draft in one sitting (if possible). Concentrate on fixing mundane things like spelling and inconsistencies. You can make notes and make things clearer. Look for coherency, symbolism, theme.

The second draft is done with the door open. Show your work to four to eight close friends who will critique it, not review it. They must be both objective (looking for inconsistencies and mistakes) and subjective (overall feelings of realism and pacing). Listen to the points that are common between them. If some of their points conflict, tie goes to the writer.

Second draft = first draft - 10%. Be a leaver-outer, not a putter-inner.

All stories start in media res. Don't concentrate on it. Start your story at the beginning. And when you come to the end, stop. The reader is more interested in what's going to happen than what already did. Everyone has a history, most of it isn't very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, gloss over ones that aren't.

Research is okay, it adds flavor to the story. Do not let it interfere with the story. It is a story, not a technical manual.

Matt, thanks for saving me that money!

Really, all that's good advice -- and I am grateful, because I never read books on writing.  I've heard King's praised -- I've looked into a couple of Annie Dillards, just a few peeks.

The only thing I'd fault him on is what he says of J.D. Salinger. (And I'm going to have to go back to the character thread now that I've remembered the Glass family.)  It's true Salinger published only one novel -- but he published 13 stellar short stories, that redefined the genre.  Four of them are rather long, and were published in book form in pairs: Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters & Seymour: an Introduction; and Franny & Zooey. His work is, among other things, a marvel of characterization.  I think everyone who wants to write should read everything by Salinger.

I'm too impatient for readers to wait till I've completed something before I let anyone look at it.  Dickens wrote in installments.  The original verison of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a radio play, written week by week, to deadline and usually at the last minute.

That's why I like posting chapters here as I complete them.  Nick read the entire first draft of the second part of Of Two Minds a chapter every two or three days, and both Nick and Bill were following Compelling the Demon in that fashion before I put it aside to finish OTM.  The feedback I get as I'm writing is all filed away in my brain -- some of it I act on fairly soon, before the piece is finished, which cuts down on revision later -- some I just sit on till I know for sure where everything is going.

King's advice is good once you get past all the biography of how he did this and that.   But Dwight Swain is better.  The difference is that Dwight was a teachers teacher and many of his students went on to become best sellers.  Dixon, (one of his students) has her own book out and she puts it in plain english for the non scholars.  Its a very easy read I have been told, and geared more towards younger adults. 

 

I have also enjoyed James Scott Bell, who put a book out on Plot and Pacing.   In it I found out why I did things a certain way that work, without even knowing I was following a formula.   Interesting.   Donald Maass has several books out on the craft of writing and his are geared more from what it takes to break over the top from a top Literary Agents perspective.  I learned alot about his thoughts on the publishing industry and that too helps to a degree.  Know thy opponant.

 

Nick.    

Okay, here are some more tips and tricks from [Fan]Fiction Advice threads on various message boards that I used to frequent.

SouthernComfort says...

Spelling and Grammar - You'll never believe how frustrating it is to read an otherwise good piece, yet stumble over awkward phrases and bad spelling. Word has an exceptional spell checker, and from what I've heard OpenOffice has a decent one. You might even give Word's grammar check a try - it's not great, but it can help.

The Plot Has You - Randomly throwing ideas onto a page will get you into trouble, fast. A solid story is more like a road trip - you have a destination in mind, there are things you want to see on the way, and occasionally there's a breakdown. Find a theme and stick to it, know beforehand the whats and whys of the great conflict that drives your story, pick a few ideas or scenes that should be seen, and at then end wrap everything up, put the story away, and start again with a new tale.

Your Characters, and How To Abuse Them - Real people have huge, sometimes debilitating, flaws; good characters have them too. Think of a person who has a heart of gold, the courage of a dozen men, yet lacks the motivation to actually do anything with his life; a person who has the skill and the drive to succeed wildly at her ambitions, but who's desire to be noticed for those skills and talents often overrides her common sense; a young man who's intelligent and hard-working, but by the whims of fate can never be satisfied with his life. I've just described three very real people, but imagine what kind of characters they would make.

After you have your characters built in your mind, exploit those flaws. Give them the hard time they deserve. It might not matter whether your characters overcome their flaws and find happiness-ever-after, of fail miserably and die ignobly; what matters is that their stories are multidimensional, and that they will stand out and be the vehicle that carries your tale to the end.

A Damn Good Read - Hunt down a copy of The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Not only is it a good read, it's essential reading for building legendary stories.

Perspective says...

Know when to use cliches. Lots of fanfiction by people just starting out, myself included, is just horrible to read, with wooden dialogue and over-blown Plot etcetc. Sadly lots of people then give up at this point. Don't. Take it on the chin and carry on writing. Cliches, like sterotypes, come with a nugget of truth/actually happen sometimes. They're also cultural signposts, pointing the way for your reader's brain. Sometimes you might actually want part of a story to be fairly straightforward, sometimes you might want to play around with things a little.

Read different genres, by different authors. Books are full of the most random hodge-podge of information that can come in handy later. Look at how the authors write, and what they're trying to say with it. While you're at it, nick their plots and see where you would take them. Ask yourself why you think that bit of the story needs changing, and you are a step closer to finding your writing style.

CaButler says...

Don't be afraid to try something different - if you have a plot idea or a character that seems out of the norm or just doesn't fit right, don't be afraid of it. Try given it a off shoot or short story and see how the characters act. You never know when you'll strike gold.

Put characters on a short leash - and I really do mean that. As you write your character's you'll start to grow and want to add things on just because it'll make the characters grow, be more interesting, or whatever. Try to avoid doing that as much as possible. Let them grow, obviously, but don't let them go too far out of hand. Someday's they'll end up writing themselves, so don't give them to much control (no, I'm not crazy when I say this as this can happen to anybody).

Finally, have a basic idea for a plot. The plot doesn't really need to be fleshed out until a little later in your story. It's a good idea to leave a couple of hints as to what the overall plot is, but sometimes it is better to hide it from the reader until a critcal moment, then it becomes a "OMGWTF" moment. At that point, anybody reading your stuff will be hooked.

TacomaSquall says...

I'd make one addition to the tons of good advice here. Know when to follow advice. Remember that every writer will have his or her own unique voice - and a slavish devotion to the guidelines here is no guarantee to produce quality writing. The advice presented here is a huge set of tools for the writer to use. Not all writers use all tools equally.

No one knows everything about writing. And if they tell you they do, they are full of crap.

And I think that's enough for now. Now you guys trade some advice.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think On Writing is a waste of 10$. Like The Elements of Style by Strunk & White, they are part of my library. I go back to them every so often just to get a reminder of things I should be watching out for.

I do agree with Nick that the biography part. You can skip it without losing any of the content.

Yet in the end, all the tips, tricks and suggestions are just that. They should not be a concrete bunker defining your writing but a rickety scaffolding allowing you some freedom to experiment. Rules are made to be broken. Yeah, us Canadians like to go our own way.....

And look at what happened to the Romans when they started breaking long established rules....lol.   Sorry, another reference to my Italian heritage since Loekie is bring up the frozen wastelands again. lol. 

 

Nick.

My comment about Canada had nothing to do with being a frozen wasteland, within the context of this thread, my dear Nick. It is just that up here, above the 49th parallel, we do have a tendency to break various rules that irks many of the American politicians and pundits.

And I don't think the Roman Empire is a good metaphor here. For writers, it becomes the exact opposite, I feel. Many writers start off being a little maverick. Breaking rules, skating that fine line. But once they become established, they become sticklers for the rules. And don't produce anything fresh and new.

Oh, by the by, if we are going to throw in heritage, I will raise your Italian by my being Dutch.

Hey, you know what they say about us Italians - we didn't make the wheel. We just made it better. ;)

Loekie, you do know I am having fun with you...right? 

 

Nick.

Always, my dear Nick. I expect nothing less from you. Hee-hee.

Our banter will become legend, in time. And talking about frozen wastelands, we are now getting bloody freezing rain! Means I will have to skate to work tomorrow. Sigh!