THE LOGIC OF FICTION

By Sharon May

Almost 40 years ago, workers in a small town in Kentucky uncovered human bones. The next day, a retired sheriff confessed to the county attorney that he had buried a teen-aged friend near that site during World War II. Carbon dating revealed the bones were of Indian descent, and thus, could not be those of his friend. The former sheriff then recanted, stating that he was drunk when he confessed and probably was retelling bits and pieces of cases he worked.

I heard the recording of his confession, and to this day remember his excitement as he described the car in which he rode to the bootleg joint. His voice cracked with fear as he recounted the walk up the riverbank at gun point as he was forced to bury his friend. I heard the truth of his words, and felt compelled to tell his story.

All would have been fine if I were a journalist. Then I could have just reported the facts, and my job would have been done. But I wanted to write a novel about the sheriff and tried numerous times to find the narrative voice and the plot to tell the events of 1943 along with those of 1987.

A few years ago, I wrote a novella-length draft of the “truth.” But the sheriff I discovered in that draft wouldn’t have recanted once he took the risk to tell. The fear that quietened him at 16 was as real 35 years later. If Lafe had faced that fear and confessed, there would have been no going back. He was a man of his word. The conflict for him was whether to confess at all. To make the best story, my novel could not rely totally on the events as I experienced them.

How can something taken from reality not work in fiction? I mean, it’s real right? William Dean Howells, in the late 1800s, argued that realistic fiction is not only possible but that it required of writers. He believed reality could be captured by relying on the five senses and focusing on the ethical and moral dilemmas of the characters. But the Realistic movement gave way to Modernism and Post-modernism, both of which recognize the artifice of fiction.

Just because fiction is artificial doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work logically. Even Magical Realism and science fiction have physical and metaphysical rules that operate in the story.  

Readers expect a world that makes sense no matter how bizarre that world is. The story needs logic so that readers can envision and believe the plot. Characters’ actions and motivations have to be plausible. Conflicts need to be tangible and create angst and fear of the unknown for the reader as well as the characters. All of that creates a world with meaning, one a reader wants to visit.

After years of rumination and revision, I realized fiction doesn’t have adhere to reality, but it does have to ring true.

 

  

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Columbia II Blogger

NICK ROLON

I dedicate my first blog post to my mother, Teresa, who has been battling brain cancer for nearly  three years. She has been an inspiration as she has hand-written over 3,000 cards during her life with notes of hope, thanks, and goodness to others.

I earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from John Jay College, New York City, and was a staff member of its newspaper The Lex Review. I have spent over 30 years in the retail industry. Sharon, my supportive wife, and I have two adorable dogs, Tucker and Madison. In addition, I have been active in many charities during the last 35 years including the March of Dimes, St. Jude's Children's research hospital, Adam Walsh Center, DARE programs, Kiwanis club, and many local good-news community initiatives. My favorite book/movie is The Natural starring Robert Redford.

Nick's first blog post on this page follows.

THE GIFT OF WRITING

By Nick Rolon         

Writer Somerset Maugham, once said “If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion…It doesn’t matter dammit how you write.”

At 50 years old, I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to re-new a passion I left behind in college over 31 years ago. I had spent a majority of my life dedicated to my career, leaving little time for the important things in life. I hope this blog post will inspire others to “Just Write” – cards, letters, short stories, blogs, social media posts, novels, even a simple post-it note. 

I had been a member of our college newspaper staff and enjoyed contributing articles of social issues, school events, and our sports news. I had always enjoyed writing since elementary school but after college I stopped. That passion was replaced with the fast moving train of life we all experience.

Recently, a group of friends gave me a list of organizations and associations in South Carolina including music, photography, athletics, cooking and then I spotted the South Carolina Writers Association (myscwa.org).   I went to the website, signed up, paid my annual dues, and began attending the Columbia II workshops in November 2018. 

As a novice, I was nervous about attending my first few workshops as I listened to the readings of outstanding writers.  I was amazed with the talent and creativity of the members.  But I heard a common message from everyone around the table, “Just Write.”

The group echoed “We all started writing at some point and it will become easier over time.” Their words of encouragement motivated me and on my second workshop meeting I was able to write six pages of a story about my dogs Tucker and Madison. I received constructive feedback from Ginny Padgett and the Columbia II writers that attended the November 19^th workshop. This motivated me to continue writing and writing without fear.

I was fortunate to have had Flora Rheta Schreiber as my college English professor. She was a writer and author of several books including the non-fiction book, Sybil, which covered the treatment of Sybil Dorsett (a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason) for a dissociative identity disorder (up to 16 different personalities). After spending seven years writing the book, she was published in 1973 and soon the book became a best seller and a TV movie.

I remember Mrs. Schreiber emphasizing the importance of keeping the writing simple to help readers understand the story.  She would walk the classroom aisles, look you in the eye, and say, “Writing is a gift everyone can give; empower yourself with the ability to positively impact the lives of others through your words.”

This holiday season make time to write a note of thanks to someone you love; write a story you always wanted to share; partner with your spouse or child and write what brings happiness to the home; or just doodle on some scrap paper. As J.K Rowlings will tell you, maybe someday that scrap paper will wind up in the Smithsonian Institute.

Several great examples of writing this holiday season include the poem, “The Night Before Christmas” which was published anonymously in 1823 and the letter written by 8 year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, to the editor of the New York Sun on September 21, 1897 titled “Is there a Santa Claus?”

I wanted to provide the letter to the Sun editor and the response to show the compassion and positive influence the gift of writing has on society:

“Dear Editor

I am eight years old – some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.  Papa says If you see it in the Sun it’s so.  Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

115 W. 95^th Street”

Please open the link to see the original response from the Editor of the NY Sun in 1897.

PROPPING UP the MIDDLE

By Kasie Whitener

On last week’s episode of Write On SC, we discussed the challenge of writing the middle of the story.

Often, as writers, we are inspired to write the beginning when some specific inciting incident catches our interest. My vampire novel begins with Lord Byron being rescued by a vampire. My GenX novel begins with Brian learning his best friend is dead. I’ve started short stories with a character recognizing a high school classmate in a magazine, making eye contact with an old lover across a lobby, and pulling into the driveway of a ski cabin on a summer night.

The beginning sometimes feels easy. Or sometimes we draft the beginning and decide during revision to start the story earlier or later. The beginning answers specific questions like, “What makes this day significant?” and “Why are we seeing this character now?”

Sometimes it’s the ending that comes easy.

The inevitable outcome of the vampire novel is that the protagonist will murder the woman he loves. Brian must return to San Francisco after burying his friend. And in the short stories: a football game ends in defeat, a couple agrees to stay committed even while the woman takes an overseas assignment, and power is restored to a community after a Derecho allows an old woman to relish the freedom of being alone.

The ending is where we’re headed and usually writers know where we’re going before the story even begins. The ending can feel inevitable, can feel like closure, and can feel satisfying.

But what happens in between?

What happens between rescuing Lord Byron and killing his sister? Between learning the best friend is dead and letting him go?

The middle of the story is where a lot of writers get stuck. We struggle to line up a good progression of action and settle for a series of conversations. We fail to escalate the action and settle for a series of events that all have the same ebb and flow. We fail to select the most relevant scenes and cut the superfluous chatter from the story.

The middle is also where we lose momentum. We know the beginning is compelling and we know where want to go, but the middle may sag or stall.

What I loved about that Write On SC episode was all the different suggestions for how to prop up the middle of the story. I found this resource and this one, too. Both offer advice for adding the necessary action, tension, and escalation you need to drag the reader through all those long pages before the climactic end.

I immediately went home and looked at each of my stories with a more critical lens. Specifically, I applied these actions to the short stories:

1) listed each scene by what action occurred in it;

2) evaluated whether the actions got progressively dramatic;

3) re-organized the series of actions to ensure they were progressing, and

4) raised the stakes in each scene.

Stories are not compelling without action, tension, and escalation. The middle of the story is where these progressions occur. Taking care to craft the middle of the story can help you ensure your reader’s journey is as compelling at the protagonist’s.

For more craft talk and South Carolina writers, listen live on Saturdays at 9 a.m. at makethepointradio.com or visit our podcast channel on simplecast.

ESCAPIST LITERATURE SHOULD BE MOSTLY ESCAPISM

By Rex Hurst

Now while this statement seems almost self-evident, it’s practically a tautology, I’ve noticed a current trend in the traditional genres of escapism (Fantasy, Superhero, & Science Fiction) have become more and more preachy, as if they’re using the medium to talk down and “educate” the idiot masses. Sometimes it’s a smug little quip about some “social justice” issue. More and more it’s been almost feature length “messages” horned into previously popular franchises.

For me the breaking point was a recent episode of Dr. Who. The new Doctor, in a female incarnation, meets Rosa Parks- not so bad in itself – but most of the episode, 55 minutes in length, was spent of lecturing the clueless companions (and through them, us the idiot audience) all about the Civil Rights era – a lot of which was incorrect or way too condensed. The actual “story” took up about fifteen minutes of time and revolved around some racist from the future coming back in time to knock Rosa Parks off before she could sit at the front of the bus. Not an alien who happened to be around at that time, maybe trying to get home, maybe dealing with similar issues on their own planet. No it was some cookie-cutter red-faced racist who wanted to destroy Rosa Parks. Why? Because he’s evil, that’s why. What more do you need to know, you racist! The entire endeavor was as subtle as a sledgehammer.

The purpose of these escapist genres was to allow the reader to cast their minds away from the nonsense of the world. For the reader to believe that the biggest evil in the world could be cured by throwing a magic ring into a volcano, that there was no problem too big for Superman to handle, that only a spaceship ride away was a world of adventure and beautiful green-skinned women. The escape from reality is why all of these genres became popular in the first place. People want to leave the world and have fun.

That isn’t to say, you cannot talk about social issues in your story. Take a look at any issue of the X-Men from the 1980s (the Claremont era for those in the know) and you will see a message of tolerance for those who are different from you. Somehow this straight, white, male author managed to place this message without disrupting the story or being preachy.

How did he do this? By putting the escapism and story first. If you are working in the fantasy, science fiction, horror, or superhero genre and the purpose of your tale is to push forward an ideological message, then you have a clunker on your hands. Stick to being outraged on Twitter. In escapist genres, the world, the oddity, the break from reality, has to come first. People don’t want a lecture, they want to see something beyond the norm. If you can’t deliver then, more onto a different type of writing.

LEARNING to BE the “OTHER” PERSON

By Raegan Teller

At a recent signing event, another author said to me, “Selling books is hard.” When he walked away, I felt a bit overwhelmed. Would I ever master the marketing skills I need? And then I remembered saying to myself about five years ago, “Will I ever master the skills I need to write a book?”

If you are writer, you know there’s a long list of skills you must have, whether you’re producing a book, short story, or poem. Even if you know how to write a decent sentence, you must learn structure, pacing, and storytelling, to name a few. The list of required writing skills is long, but that isn’t all.

Sometime after my first book was published, I realized that I’m expected to be two, totally different people: an accomplished writer and a marketing genius. On top of that, the skills and behaviors needed to master each role are opposites in many ways. Yen and Yang. How could I become proficient at both?

To confront my being-two-people dilemma, I recalled Martin Broadwell’s four stages of learning I had used often in my consulting practice. When I began writing my first novel, I was at the level of “unconscious incompetence”: I didn’t know what I didn’t know. After writing that book for the next three years, I reached the next level of learning: “conscious incompetence.” I was beginning to realize what I didn’t know—and it was scary. As they say, “Ignorance is bliss.”

While writing the next two books, I honed my writing skills through continuous studying and feedback. Now, I’m able to write at the level of “conscious competence.” But while I have the skills, writing is still hard work and requires a lot of mental energy.

But what about becoming the “other” person I mentioned earlier? Could I also become a marketing genius? Even now, I’m still at the lowest level of learning for those skills: unconscious incompetence. Every day, I learn something I didn’t even realize I was supposed to know. Things like learning how to navigate through the behemoth Amazon maze seems like learning to fly a fighter jet. Slowly, I’m beginning to figure out what I don’t know when it comes to marketing books. While I might be approaching conscious incompetence, I’m nowhere near the final level: unconscious competence. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to achieve that level of mastery. I may not live long enough to see that day, but one can hope . . . and keep learning.

All of this is to say, yes, you can be two different people with different skills and behaviors. One role may be easier and more natural than the other. You’ll learn those skills quicker. But on a parallel learning track, it may take you a bit longer to acquire the skills and assume the behaviors you need to become the “other” person. That’s okay. Just remember, the learning process is the same: one level at a time.

WRITING A MEMOIR

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.thearthousemovie.webs.com

laurapv.wordpress.com

                                               

Three women presented memoirs at the November meeting of Dinah’s Writers’ Group: two were children’s books, and one was an outline of the writer’s life that could be turned into a complete autobiography.

Memoirs can take many forms. I appreciated hearing about the warmth of Dinah’s father and grandfather in a picture book designed for two-year-olds. The story had a surprising amount of depth.

Likewise, the autobiography was extremely poignant because it highlighted a lifetime of pain and the insight that came from overcoming mistreatment. Serious abuse can land a person in jail, or it can propel them to the top. The outcome depends on the stuff that person is made of.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to weave the peaks and valleys of my life into a manual for indie filmmakers. I think this is appropriate. Dinah’s group suggested I rename it Autobiography of a Filmmaker.

As writers, we don’t create stories out of nothing. Art stems from experiences, like a lunch in Newberry followed by an evening Durga Puja ceremony. A trip to Cuba.

I create art, both films and stories, in order to communicate a message that could be the color of a conversation or an outright lesson on decency. These messages come from my family life, my friends, and my work as an attorney.

Judges and courtrooms don’t matter. The day I quit enjoying my clients will be the day I quit practicing law. Their lives are art; their faces are beautiful. My sisters, parents, husband and children are what make life meaningful. Or extremely frustrating. I hope my autobiography will do them all justice.

What I Learned at the 2018 SCWA Pawley’s Island Conference

By Kasie Whitener

I co-hosted the Open Mic on Saturday night at the Pawley’s Island Conference with my friend Mary Sturgill. What I learned was that people are skeptical of Peter Pan and ready for a new interpretation of him. Also that most writers don’t perform their work, they simply read it. And that an open mic should be fun and treated as such if you want people to stay.

For me, the open mic was the highlight of the conference: a chance for writers to come together and read and perform and listen and appreciate the work others put into the craft.

I’m a fiction writer, so I attended the sessions on character development and point of view. These were led by Dr. John Kessel and Therese Anne Fowler respectively. I enjoyed Kessel’s session although it was more lecture style and instructive than interactive and discussion-based. I like instructive because the session leaders are why I’m there. While amateur attendees’ opinions might be interesting, the session leader has the knowledge to apply to the discussion while many attendees’ have only experience or opinion.

What’s the difference?

 Leader (Kessel for example): lose the driver’s license descriptions – hair, eyes, weight
 Attendee (justifying his/her own work): you need to help the reader picture the character.
 Leader: you mean picture what you think the character looks like.
 Attendee: I created the character.
 Leader: then what role does the reader play in creating the character?

When the attendee doesn’t know how to answer, because the attendee (writer) hasn’t considered the reader’s position in the existence of the work, then I know we’re seeing a gulf between the literary folks (Kessel) and the storytellers-who-want-to-be-writers (attendee).

So I learned I’m still in between those. I’m trained as a literary person, meant to understand the nuance of giving vital stats of character (trust the reader to infer necessary character traits from the details I give) and the reader who enjoys a good tall, dark, and handsome protagonist.

Therese Anne Fowler talked about choosing a point of view as a matter of distance. How close does the reader need to be to understand and appreciate the story? How close is too close?

So I learned that the focus on the reader is a big deal. What is the reader’s experience? Is it the kind of experience people buy?

As a voracious reader, I can separate the experiences I’m willing to pay for from the ones I’d rather borrow from the library. And THAT is how you know you have the kind of book agents and publishers want.

Is this an experience the reader will pay for? Gladly?

In the open mic when I detailed Peter Pan getting aggressive with a mermaid, when I made it clear that he was entitled, selfish, and probably psychotic, I learned some people would pay to read that version of the boy who refused to grow up. So, yeah, let’s pitch that.

UNRELIABLE NARRATOR

By Bonnie Stanard

When I was in college I wrote a story in which a girl talked to the reader about her life in a vague and unexceptional manner. In the end, she saw a rat and scurried after it, intending to eat it, at which point the reader realizes the narrator is insane—my attempt at an unreliable narrator.

To get a better idea about the unreliable narrator, I looked it up in dictionaries.

1. A character whose story cannot be taken at face value.

2. A narrator who holds a distorted view which leads to an inaccurate telling of events.

3. A character who cannot be trusted, either from ignorance or self-interest.

First of all, a reminder that the narrator is the character who tells the story. An unreliable narrator, then, tells lies. (I was going to add partial lies, but I don’t believe in partial lies.) Oh, you say, that sounds simple enough. But wait. Who reads a paragraph in a novel, stops, and wonders: “this says it is raining, but I wonder if it really is raining”? Our assumption is that the character telling the story is laying it on the line, giving us the facts (and only the facts, even if it’s fiction) and usually they are.

Since it is the narrator experiencing the action who gives us a false interpretation of the events, the obvious choice of point of view (POV) is either first person or third person limited.

GIRL ON THE TRAIN

I always become suspicious of a story (or movie) that features a character who has lapses of consciousness for reasons such as fainting spells, memory loss, drug or alcohol abuse. These are easy tropes for establishing an unreliable narrator.

SHUTTER ISLAND

The narrator that is insane, deluded or impaired may give you a distorted picture. If you figure that out on the first page, the author is an amateur. A good writer will string you along for pages until you figure out that you’re reading a story told by a deluded or crazy person (the most extreme of unreliable).

ATONEMENT

In more subtle instances, a rational narrator puts forward a view that is corrupted by bias, hatred, or naïveté. You, as the reader, will only be able to pick up on this by comparing the given narration with other verifiable evidence, whether it be from other characters or reality itself.

The purpose of an unreliable narrator is to deceive the reader about a story’s actual facts. Given that our stories are fiction to begin with, this makes for a fiction within a fiction. The more shrewd the deception and the more mystifying the story, the more gratifying for us when we figure it out.

If that isn’t confusing enough, here’s a conundrum for you. One www source lists as an unreliable narrator Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye). Because, says the source, Holden calls himself “the most terrific liar you ever saw.” When events prove he is honest in telling us he is untrustworthy, is he reliable or unreliable?

TRY SCIENCE BABBLE IN YOUR SCIENCE FICTION

By Rex Hurst

For the three of you who know who I am, then you also know that one of the two genres I write in is science fiction. Aliens, lasers, beehive hairdo’d women saying “Show me more of this Earth thing called kissing.” This is my playground. The problem? Well, I don’t actually know much about science and what I do know all tells me that the stuff I write about in “the future” is completely impossible, or unlikely, or ridiculous. One of those.

Of course, this might not be the impediment that it appears on the surface. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, science fiction is easier to write if you don’t  know any science. Then you aren’t limited by all sorts of nasty facts and figures, and are only hampered by a lack of imagination. Most writers aren’t big on hard science, and despite what some might claim, most science fiction readers just want to explore the fantastic without a trip back to their high school science class.

But if you want the illusion of hard science, there is a way to fake it. As science today is expanding at an incredible rate, imagine how much it will continue to do so in two to three hundred years from today. Therefore, it would be perfectly believable for new scientific terms, devices, and jargon to come into being. This is something I observed in old school episodes of Dr. Who. I’m talking about the good ones from the 1970s starring Tom Baker. In these they simply invented techo-babble to cover the fact that most of what they were doing (time travel not the least part) was preposterous. The entire series was rife with such talk and I drank it all in. If it's presented in a straightforward manner, people will instantly believe.

Science today tells us that most people’s organs would be liquified if they tried to accelerate out into the planetary orbit. Well good thing they invented the Corvala Anti-Gravity Pump or the Gravtic Analysier or the Spacio-Cotray Junction, all of which allows people to zip away into space. Try it out. Make up your own. If you get stuck, take a current product and make an anagram of that. You will surprise yourself with what you can come up with.

THE INS AND OUTS OF DIALECT

By Sharon May

So you are interested in dialect. You must be one of those writer fellers, trying to figure people out so you can create a believable character. Using a dialect is a great tool for making characters different from each other. Writers often spell words phonetically to capture the pacing and cadence of a character’s speech or thinking. This is generally what we think of when we say dialect. But remember vocabulary builds dialect too.

The use of dialect by American authors primarily came out of the Realistic period, particularly the Regionalism movement in the late 19^th century. Realists were dead set to record to the nth degree how a person spoke. At times, these writers were indeed making fun of the characters who were markedly different from themselves. “Funny” spellings and enunciation, miscommunications, and misunderstandings added humor. Think of the Northerner in the south in the 1800s.

I come from a region known for its mountain speech. Some folk say its roots are in Elizabethan English. That’s them people who believe it has some linguistic worth. Then there’s folks who make fun of hillbilly speech. “You talk funny,” “What’d you say?” or “Where you from?” are their usual responses when we open our mouths. They think we are dumb, stupid, ignorant, uneducated just because of our dialect. Ironically, we have lots to say about their dialect too, but they are so egotistical or ignorant they think they don’t have a dialect. Remember, everyone has one, some closer to Standard English than others. If you use the dialect of one character, why not depict the dialects of all characters?

Don’t use dialect in a way that insults a character. I write mostly in Appalachian dialect, particularly that of the hills of Eastern Kentucky. Yes, each region of Appalachia does have its own dialect. I don’t use phonetic spellings because they tend to dumb down the characters, making them appear less educated and less intelligent than they really are. I’ve known lots of very smart hillbillies who couldn’t come close to speaking the King’s English if they tried. If your point in using dialect is to dumb down a character, you might want to find another way to depict intelligence rather than risk insulting readers who speak that dialect too.

Also, make sure you actually understand the grammar of the dialect you are working with. If you don’t speak the dialect you plan to depict, then study it first. Additionally, you have to decide if it is important to be realistic with phonetic spellings even if they confuse your audience. Think James Joyce or William Faulkner.

Know the purpose of using a dialect before you start. Some writers of disenfranchised groups use dialect to mark separation from mainstream society and to explore their heritage. This use of dialect is related to theme, a purpose the reader can understand. Dialect for showmanship may be interesting, but may lead the writer down the primrose path.

The FEAR of WRITING: Three tips to overcome the beast

By Jodie Cain Smith

I believe fear is healthy, for the most part. Fear prevents us from petting poisonous snakes, hugging sharks, and driving blindfolded over bridges. Fear tells us to read the expiration date on the milk carton and to put down the big, metal stick in the middle of a thunderstorm. Any fear that keeps me alive, physically intact, and free of food poisoning, I’m a’keepin’. However, one fear I must get rid of is the fear of writing.

What? Wait. Fear of writing? That’s dumb. Yes, yes it is, but it is an emotion I’ve experienced quite a bit recently.

My fear song plays out like this:  I get an awesome idea, a premise that sucks me in. For a couple of days I bask in my brilliance. I research the heck out of it, ensuring every detail is accurate, plausible. I imagine the cast of characters and setting. After all of this, there is only one thing left to do – write the story. This is when fear grips my throat and the lightning that is anxiety pulses through my veins. My idea is too complex. My writing game is subpar. If I attempt to write this and fail, my whole career is over. My fraud as a writer (yep, we all feel this at some point) will be revealed.

Over the course of the last three months, as I have pushed to finish two current projects, I’ve experienced this fear time and again. Through this experience, I was forced to design ways beyond it because, well, my fear of failure beats all other fears. So, if you find yourself in a secluded corner hiding under a blanket sure that the blank screen boogeyman is coming for you, here are a few defenses I have deployed to beat the monster that is performance anxiety. (Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about writing, perv.)

1. Listen to your character even if that little tramp has ideas that in no way fit into your original plot scheme. It’s her story. Let her be a part of it. Let her tell it.

2. Just write. Everyday. (Well, at least Monday through Friday. Even creative genius needs a day off.) If the words are awful, write them anyway. Tomorrow is for fixing. Today we write!

3. Don’t be afraid to abandon a story and move on to a new one. They’re not all winners. Sometimes “killing your darlings” means abandoning the whole thing.

Now, don’t we all feel better? And, no one had to pay a therapist.

READ LIKE A WRITER

By Kasie Whitener

This is a summary of my talk given at The Pat Conroy Literary Center’s Lowcountry Book Club Convention on October 6, 2018.

Voraciously. Inquisitively. Judgmentally. That’s how to read like a writer.

My first book addiction was VC Andrews. I read everything I could get my hands on and not from the library, either. Each fat paperback cost $4.95 at the grocery store. The covers were these haunting graphics of scared young women. They were gothic family drama novels and I couldn’t get enough of them.

Reading voraciously is part of being a writer. Exploring other worlds, savoring word choices, character builds, and plot arcs are all part of being addicted to storytelling. Just as professional athletes hit the gym daily and politicians are always campaigning, writers learn their craft by immersing themselves in it.

All this reading is an investigation. Like a detective in a mystery novel, I’m assembling the clues as to what makes a novel readable, bingeable, and ignore-my-family good.

I read genre fiction to learn the conventions and expectations of the genre. Genre novels satisfy their readers by playing out their story according to specific patterns. We talked extensively about this on Write On SC episode 12.

I read literary novels to see how the greats are playing with the form. Awards like National Book Award and Pulitzer and Man Booker identify writers working at the top of the craft.

Toni Morrison advised we write the book we want to read. In scholarship, this is called finding the gap in the knowledge. We know A and we know C but B is unknown, so we must investigate. For writers, this is the sense that although you enjoyed the book you’ve just finished, it could have been better. You would have done some things differently.

Investigation can mean identifying a specific theme and working through a list of books associated with it. For a while I read every World War II novel I could get my hands on which meant seeing the Great War in every theatre including Shanghai, Charleston, Paris, Massachusetts, England and England again, occupied France in this novel and again in this novel, even Australia.

Judge the novel. How did it begin? I picked up a book recently that began with a character on a plane (cliché) and just as I thought to forgive the author, she began the second chapter with a second character being woken up by an alarm (another cliché). If every man is devastatingly handsome and every woman has a tinge of self-doubt, if the personal conflict just happens to mirror the external conflict, if the dialogue is wasted on greetings like, “What’s up?” and “How’ve you been?” just close the book. Mark it as “never finished” on Goodreads. Give it back to the Kindle Unlimited library.

You can expect better. There are so many books out there, we can never read them all. So we don’t have to settle for the one that Book Bub or Amazon or a mailing list or even our local librarian foisted upon us. Know when to bail.

IN PRAISE OF SHORT FICTION

By Raegan Teller

Let me begin with a confession. Until recently, I turned my nose up at short fiction. I admit it. I was a novel snob. The late actor Cary Grant once said, “Ah, beware of snobbery; it is the unwelcome recognition of one's own past failings.”

My failure to appreciate the value of short fiction was founded in a misbelief that it takes a lot of words to tell a good story. Even though I had studied stories by Eudora Welty, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain and others in various college classes, I wasn’t sold on the unique value of short fiction. I still longed to be immersed in longer works.

Well, that was then. Now, my life is crazy and over-scheduled at times. I love to read, but I simply don’t have time to enjoy novels as much as I used to. So, I have re-introduced short fiction into my reading.

To address this no-time-to-read issue many of us have, the Richland Library and dozens of other places across the country have installed short-story kiosks. You press 1, 3, or 5 minutes to choose how much time you want to spend reading a story, and out spews a story, printed on a strip of eco-friendly paper about four inches wide. These kiosks are showing up in airports and other places all over the world in effort to encourage all of us to read more with less time.

As a writer, I have another confession: short stories are harder for me to write than a novel. It took me years to figure out my novel-writing process so I could arc appropriately, manage subplots, plant red herrings, develop characters, construct scenes, and then pull all those pieces together into a coherent mystery novel. Erroneously, I thought writing a short story would be a piece of cake.

What I’ve learned is that short fiction is truly an art form unto itself, not just a shorter, easier version of something else. On the bulletin board above my desk I’ve posted Hemingway’s famous six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It’s a reminder of how powerful a few words can be and how difficult it is to wield that power artfully.

As another reminder of the significance of short stories, I recently read an article about the large number of movie scripts adapted from short stories. Here’s just a few: 2001: a space odyssey, Brokeback Mountain, The Shawshank Redemption, 3:10 to Yuma, and Minority Report. There are many more.

Now that I’ve had this epiphany about short fiction, what does that mean for me as a writer? For one thing, I’ll give as much attention to developing my short-story writing skills as I do to novel writing. That means I need to write more short fiction, seek critiques, and keep learning. And I’ll re-read some of the great stories and learn from the masters. Most importantly, I won’t ever turn my nose up at short fiction again.  Promise.

THE LATEST ADDITION

Meet Another Columbia II Blogger

TRAVIS PAGE

Travis graduated from White Knoll High School in 2007.  In college he studied Mechanical Engineering, Biology, Biochemistry, Architectural Engineering and briefly thought about trying to get into Pharmacy School.  However, after ten years of becoming familiar with different disciplines he ultimately learned that what he needed was a more traditional 9-to-5 job to make ends meet while he continues to pursue the things about which he’s most passionate.  He’s a bodybuilder, you may have seen him on a community theatre stage and now he is taking on writing.  Maybe you’ll see him in a publication one day.

Travis's first post on this page follows.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS from a NOVICE

By Travis Page

I am only 29 years-old, but I’ve taken on many new endeavors over this past decade of my life: powerlifting, bodybuilding, mixed martial arts, acting, and blogging to name a few. The process of mastering a craft gives my life meaning and purpose. To me, the struggle of learning something new is very engaging, even when it’s frustrating. I’ve heard throughout the years that writing isn’t easy and as I begin pursuing this craft I understand how true that is. I feel it now. That’s also what makes me feel like a real writer and it’s exciting.

The arts can be taught to a degree, but there isn’t a formal way to develop an artist. There is no step-by-step method that can guarantee an idea “works.” You have to keep trying it in different ways. The process of etching out an idea intrigues me. I suppose I’ve never truly tried it before. Sure, I’ve written papers over the years for school assignments, I’ve acted some and put together my own videos for a YouTube channel, but you don’t often get useful feedback on the job you’re doing when you simply throw your creativity out there like that. How can you even be sure that your thoughts and ideas are being communicated? No one will tell you what they really think. That’s why I like workshop. You get a fair and unbiased sense of how your work is being received.

Writing is something that’s worth doing to me, therefore I feel obligated to do it well. For now, I’ll wear my jester’s hat while I figure out this next endeavor for myself. I’m really looking forward to what I can learn about the craft from everyone. I have a bunch of ideas. We’ll see what I can flesh out.

FAITH IN FANTASY

By Kasie Whitener

The very best fantasy novels all have a faith structure.

The faith structure is the myths, legends, and religions of the world being created. When an author works out those things, he or she has developed a foundation for social morality and for characters’ aspirations.       

•  A young girl may discover she has talent for magic but knowing there’s a possibility that she does comes from stories she’s been told: myths.
• A knight might wish for glory in battle but believing he can achieve it comes from knowing others have done so: legends.
• A character might ask a higher power to intervene, but the habit of doing so and the faith that the higher power will respond comes from training: religion.

Authors who work out the faith structure for their fantasy novels are imagining the world before their characters arrived and after their characters have gone. How was that world made? How will that world persist?

When I started reading a new vampire series recently and within 50 pages had not seen any evidence that this author had worked up the faith structure, I put the book down. While “vampires” and “faith” might seem mutually exclusive (the church has always campaigned against the evils of gothic horror), all conscious beings that persist must have a moral code and that code is established by a faith structure.

In Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart, we are introduced to a faith structure born of a lead prophet and his companions who settled this world, each of whom had a particular realm of humanity. Tribes of humans are associated with a particular companion and their professions, families, and customs are all part of that heritage. Carey’s faith structure is so complete, I find myself wanting to identify with one of the tribes. This is not unlike Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft sorting people into houses.

Many fantasy novels employ Ghost, Fae, Goblin, Trolls, Elf, or Wolf lineages and rely upon the already-established rules that govern these beings. For example Fair Folk, Fae, or Faeries cannot lie but they can deceive.

We know the lineage or heritage of a character will determine behavior and that competing lineages set up drama for a novel. But establishing a new faith structure takes time and creates a tremendous amount of exposition which must be carefully incorporated into the story. That’s why the best novels do it: because it takes time and craft and purpose.

When I decided to build a faith structure into my vampire novel, I researched the existing mythology: how vampires came into existence, what they worshipped, how they reconciled things like death and birth. I wanted something new, but something that paid homage to the craft of vampire storytelling, something that showed I’d done my due diligence.

A faith structure makes some things sacred and other things forbidden. It creates rules that govern individuals and communities. Without it, a vampire novel is just a new chapter of fiction in someone else’s fantasy.

MINING YOUR SURROUNDINGS

By Sharon May 

I assume that all writers try to be observant of the world around us. The more I write, the more I try to notice details of my surroundings. As a result, my ability to provide better descriptions and to capture realistic dialogue is improving.

Coming back from a family visit in Kentucky recently, I noticed the ram-shackle, blue and white truck plugging along US 23. Hard not to notice. Usually, I think of houses, not vehicles, fitting that description. I lingered before passing to absorb its appeal, to remember as many details as I could.

The Ford Ranger looked to be at least twenty years old – rusted in many places, so buckled that the cab and bed met in a V mere inches above the highway. Covering the bed was a self-designed, man-made top that made the truck seem about to tip over at any moment. No doubt the male driver was the builder of the contraption. No woman would take to the road in the truck since it was neither safe nor aesthetically pleasing.  

The top-heavy bed cover was one-and-a-half times the height of the truck. Its white plywood walls trapped what looked to be all of someone’s worldly belongings, which looked to have been quickly thrown in. The packer also tied some stuff to the edges of the contraption, one of which was a large gas can for those inevitable emergencies such a vehicle would have. Just as I got ready to pass, I imagined the driver’s appearance as well as the opinions, prejudices, and thoughts he might hold. He looked as I imagined – older, bent but not broken, and rather disheveled.   

In Amsterdam, Peggy and I found The Seafood Bar and ate the most incredible shellfish. The place is always packed. The owners of the restaurant have tried to accommodate the crowd by putting in as many tables as possible, which leads to a cramped environment.   

I wasn’t intentionally eavesdropping, but there was no avoiding it. Since I was only a foot away from the tables to my left and right, I felt and tasted the tone of the other diners’ conversations as well as heard most of the words. The Asian couple to my left acted like young lovers until the food came. The male was so intent on his food, he forgot all about his date. To my right were two 30-ish, well-dressed women. Don’t know their relationship, but their food-play was rather seductive, and I imagined they were on a secret rendezvous.

Not only did I learn more about how people converse, I understand better what they don’t say, but still communicate. I am horrible at including body language in stories, so this experience made me realize how much is said in silence or in the slightest movement.

Awareness is essential for a writer. Often we are so busy getting from place to place, we are not attuned to our surroundings. Take the time to observe.