SIMPLE MACHINES or MAGIC FAIRY DUST?

By Kasie Whitener

There were 250 Wattys winners, and I wasn’t one of them. Over the summer, I’d won the Broad River Prize for Prose and the 2021 Fresh Voices in the Humanities Awards. My unpublished novel took a 3^rd place finish in a writers’ contest in August. I was on a roll.

I really thought my serialized YA story about two kids getting kicked out of Neverland and joining the American Revolution would be a shoo-in for this online fan fiction website contest. Except it wasn’t. I wrote about the serialization project in this post. It’s a former NaNoWriMo effort that just wanted a little revision and to see the light of day.

It’s easy to add my Wattys failure to low turnout at book signings, poor attendance at speaking engagements, anemic growth on my social channels and email list, and the decision to forego NaNoWriMo this year and say my writing career is stalling.

But on October 27, I gave a well-received reading of an unpublished story to a packed bar during “Noir at the Bar.” Yesterday I delivered a keynote speech at the Aiken Book Fair. And that 3^rd-place-winning- vampire novel is in the hands of an agent who loves it.

In this writing life there are milestone events like winning awards and getting representation that seem to be critical to climbing the peak. And then there are low points like showing up to see three people in the audience and cuing up your slide deck anyway while feeling engulfed in the valley of shame.

Last week I discovered this video wherein creative coach Jessica Abel reminds us that our vision of the process for building a writing career looks like this:

1) get good at my craft,

2) get an agent and sell my book,

3) magic fairy dust,

4) retire a famous, rich, world-renowned author.

Except Step 3 (according to Jessica) isn’t “magic fairy dust.” It’s a machine. And anyone can work the machine. You just have to know how. This is a critical conversation for me because I’m using the machine to hoist, elevate, and raise my work for career sustainability, and personal fulfillment.

• Pulley: Attending conferences and festivals (makes heavy lifting easier)

• Lever: Critique groups and beta readers (gets things unstuck, lessens workload)

• Wheel and Axle: Presenting, Sharing, & Teaching (connects me with others, improves craft)

• Wedge: Awards and Recognition (separates my work from others’)

• Inclined Plane (or ramp): Associations (opportunities to lead, create, and shine)

• Screw: Volunteer (embed myself in the work, become deeply engrained in the industry)

When I think of the activities in my writing life as simple machines to move me from where I am toward where I want to be, I appreciate even the low-turnout events, even the no-win contests, and even the rejections and declines.

I am gaining ground not by waiting for someone else to sprinkle luck upon me, but by churning the gears and driving my own success. Pedal down. Roll on.

MAKING MAGIC BELIEVABLE

By Bonnie Stanard

Magical realism (MR) incorporates the unbelievable into the world as we know it. In other words, we writers convince readers that magic is as ordinary as life. After recently reading The Erasers by AlainRobbe-Grillet, known for his ability to mix fact and fantasy, I took notes on how he did it.

TheErasers is a mystery novel about a murder. Descriptions wander with the perambulations of the protagonist—a police inspector named Wallas who has been called in to solve a murder. As he walks from the post office to the police station to what may or may-not be a murder scene, his gets lost, goes in circles, or in one case, ends where he began, which I admit, tests your patience. These geographic twists and turns are accompanied by a vague time line, though the entire story takes place in 24 hours.

Signals crop up suggesting there never was a murder. Witnesses provide vague answers to questions. The description of the murder suspect fits that of Wallas, the investigator. A clock stops at the beginning and starts up at the moment of a murder, which may or may not be the one being investigated. Ambiguity requires us readers to supply our own facts along with what is given. We think we know what's going on, but do we?

WRITING TECHNIQUES TO NORMALIZE THE FANTASTIC

Ideas I've taken from The Eraser that blur the lines of reality.

—Suppositions. As the inspector summarizes the situation to a police officer, we realize that his facts are actually presumptions. Nonetheless, the inspector takes action based on presumptions, though the question persists about what is real.
— Conditional verbs, e.g., could, may, might. In most fiction, these words are dead-weights that slow down the action, but in this instance, they add an element of unreliability.
—Recurring adjectives. To describe different people and/or places using similar adjectives allows a range of uncertainty. Doppelgangers are good.
— Unemotional narrative voice. In other words, when the tone is cool, calm, and collected, the reader tends to believe... even magic.
— Point of View. Without bending the rules too far, a careless approach to free indirect discourse POV allows different characters to provide biased views, deconstructing reality. The POV may blink, but not so much as to dislocate the narrative point of reference.
— Unclear antecedents. This is annoying, but I can see the point of it. There are times when I underlined the word “he” because it could reference either of two different persons. Lack of clarity sidetracks authority.
— Character ID. A close relative to the previous point is to delay referring to characters by their names in describing a given situation. Grillet uses terms like the man, character, customer, pedestrian. This adds fog to the scene, which launches doubt about the identity and/or nature of the character.

My favorite magical realism book is Life of Pi. Yann Martel's masterful writing will have you believing a boy on a raft after a shipwreck can survive with a tiger on board. (The book is better than the movie, which is also good.) Other MR books I've enjoyed are Love in the Time of Cholera; The House of Spirits; and Like Water for Chocolate.

An informative definition of magical realism can be found on Neil Gaiman's Master Class notes.

IN PURSUIT of SHORT FICTION PERFECTION

By Raegan Teller

\In a blog post I wrote nearly three years ago, “In Praise of Short Fiction,” I committed to honing my short fiction skills. While also publishing two more books in my Enid Blackwell series during this period, I diligently began studying this short form of writing. As a result, I’ve learned a lot and have been exposed to some wonderful short fiction writers and their stories.

Recently, I attended a virtual event hosted in Cork County, Ireland, “In Praise of the Short Story.” Three renowned Irish writers discussed the difference between writing novels and short fiction. I took pages of notes, but one nugget stuck with me: novels expand meaning; short stories concentrate meaning. But how does one achieve concentrated meaning? I wanted to learn more.

As a result, I began studying George Saunders. His story “Sticks” is the epitome of concentrated meaning. Last year, I read a collection of his stories, but the most valuable information on short fiction is in his latest book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Saunders is a professor at Syracuse University, and reading this book is like sitting in his classroom. He uses translated Russian short stories by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, and others to teach short fiction. Saunders instructs the reader on what makes each story work and how it’s done. All the stories have universal, timeless themes. But it is Saunders’ analysis of each story that makes this book worth reading.

One of the best chapters in his book is “The Heart of the Story,” which contains this quote by Saunders: “To write a story that works, that moves the reader, is difficult, and most of us can’t do it.” Later in the chapter, he goes on to discuss some of his earlier stories. “I had chosen what to write, but I couldn’t seem to make it live.” These comments reflect on his earlier struggles with the form and how he eventually found his short fiction voice. His comments were both sobering and inspiring.

In his chapter “The Wisdom of Omission,” Saunders quotes Anton Chevkov: “The secret in boring people lies in telling them everything.” Saunders reiterates that learning what not to include in your story is just as important as what you do include. It’s a lesson I revisit again each time I write short fiction.

Saunders’ book is not an easy read. In fact, I’ve read portions of it dozens of times to understand his teachings. Of one story, “Alyosha the Pot,” Saunders proclaims it “perfect.” Ironically, Tolstoy himself didn’t like the story, calling it unfinished. I can’t claim to know a perfect story when I read one, but I do know this: some stories stay with me long after reading them. Like all good short stories, this one brims with concentrated meaning, forcing the reader to keep processing it. If that means “perfect,” then I agree with Saunders.

As for me, I’ll likely never reach Saunders’ level of perfection. But I’ll keep trying.

A PROFOUND PARAGRAPH IS A WORK OF ART

By El Ochiis

The great writers begin their stories with a killer hook which migrates into distinct blocks of text which section out a larger piece of writing – paragraph(s) —making it easier to read and understand. These blocks of text aid readability, setting the pace of the narrative, generating mood and helping to make characters three-dimensional.

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul...” Herman Melville, Moby Dick

There are some major strategies that those writers used to create compelling opening paragraphs - They can help you too: Create a mystery; Describe the emotional landscape; Build characters; Bring the energy; Start with an unusual point of view; Dazzle with the last sentence and Set up the theme. Melville has used at least six of them in his prelude to Moby Dick.

A scene can be constructed in any number of ways – it is up to the writer to break it down to the most dramatic effect – managing content.

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.” Albert Camus, The Stranger

How a writer’s narrator sounds and thinks affects the rhythm and even the design of the paragraph – amplifying voice:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

A paragraph can set mood; Ask yourself, is mine introspective and thoughtful, or hurried and staccato? The length and type of the paragraphs can maintain or change the mood in a scene:

“The future is always changing, and we're all going to have to live there. Possibly as soon as next week.” Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide

“It was a pleasure to burn.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

"Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice.” Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

A writer’s first line should open up a rib cage. It should reach in and twist the reader’s heart backward. It should suggest that the world will never be the same again. Then, remembering that paragraphing is more an element of individual style than of grammar, and, it’s you who’s in charge of what a paragraph should do or what shape it should take, think holistically: What preceded this moment, and what must happen next.

We know that we can’t write like Tolstoy, Bradbury, Adams, Bronte, Baldwin or many of the other prolific scribes, so, how can we learn to create great openings, transporting them into even greater paragraphs? Well, a piece of advice that I hold dear was that motivation runs out pretty soon once we get to the nuts and bolts of the grind, but discipline, on the other hand, is about doing the task no matter what. Read and listen to the masters, then sit yourself down and write every chance you get – because, as Jodi Picoult said, “you can edit a bad page but not a blank one.” How will you orchestrate your story, using the paragraphing techniques above?

IT ALL STARTS WITH A GREAT SENTENCE

By El Ochiis

You think you care about what a book is about, but, really, you care how it sounds, even if that sound can only be heard in your head.

Words are lyrics for the eyes – a line of words where logic and rhythm meet. Good sentences should be as lucid and sincere as good cooking. Even people who can’t boil water for soup will find pleasure in reading this line from a recipe: Warm two tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, then add the sliced onion. The verdict in the following sentence sounds fairer and truer in a way that those in life rarely are: Yesterday’s bread has less moisture and so makes crisper toast. Good writing is clean, full of flavor and a meal in itself.

Great sentences give a start to the beginnings of superb paragraphs which flows into extraordinary chapters, culminating to exceptional stories - a memorable sentence makes immediate sense but sounds just slightly odd:

A screaming comes across the sky. -Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. -Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. -Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. -Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. -Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories. - Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

Orwell advised cutting as many words as possible, Woolf found energy in verbs, and Baldwin aimed for ‘a sentence as clean as a bone.’ Though some of this is true, none of it is a good way of learning how to write a sentence. More ethical demand than useful advice, it forces writers back to their own reserves of wisdom and authenticity. It blames bad writing on laziness and dishonesty, when a likelier culprit is lack of skill. If someone were to order me to make a soufflé, all I could come up with would be a gloopy, inedible mess – not because I am languid or untruthful, but because, although I have some vague idea that it needs eggs, milk, flour and a lot of beating, I don’t know how to make a soufflé.

A good sentence imposes a logic on the world’s weirdness, getting power from the tension between the ease of its phrasing and the shock of its thought as it slides cleanly into the mind and as it proceeds, is a paring away of options. Each added word, because of the English language’s dependence on word order, reduces the writer’s alternatives and narrows the reader’s expectations. But even up to the last word the writer has choices and can throw in a curveball. A sentence can begin in one place and end in another galaxy, without breaking a single syntactic rule.

Can you give your readers something that’s illuminating and cherishable, all on its own as American writer, Gary Lutz once lectured, because "Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”? -L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. When you get sentences right, everything else solves itself or ceases to matter.

FINDING WORDS to PUT MEAT on the BONES of a STORY

By J Dean Pate

After fifteen years writing radio and TV news copy (way back in my 1960’s smoking and drinking days) my default style years later still is bland, plain vanilla language mainly emphasizing activity. In working on my book, this default setting results in telling rather than showing characters and scenes. It may be good for radio newscasts but not for novels.

My storytelling is forthright but not exactly richly detailed.

Recently, I picked up a book I’d read in college, The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I was impressed with the words Hawthorne used to set the scene and describe his characters. The variety of word choices also had me using my laptop to find definitions to understand what he was saying.

Tracking down Hawthorne’s words set me to thinking. It might be useful to use the web or dictionaries, etc. to create a list of words specific to my story. From that I developed a thirty-minutes-a-morning routine of searching for words to help characters and events come alive.

As I worked along, the list grew into sections: descriptions of character, behavior, facial expressions or movements, desires, fears, habits, and thoughts. The exercise has been a helpful tool for identifying words I may have misused and replacing them with those more appropriate.

Now part of my routine includes reviewing the entire list each morning, which helps jump-start my writing.

The web, to me, is an easier resource than flipity-flipping through dictionaries or thesauruses, which I resist, especially if I'm unsure what I'm looking for. It’s easier to Google How do you say…than thinking of what you want to say then turning pages in a thick book for a word you think might work, discovering it doesn’t and being left with where do I look next?

If only Hawthorne had access to Google. Perhaps his phrases might have been forthright and accurate instead of rich but obscure.

Hope this is helpful.

PERFECT TIMING

By Kasie Whitener

In a central plot point to Thor: The Dark World, the nine realms align for a single moment and travel between them is made possible. There’s some electro-physics-movie-gobbledy-gook to explain the whole thing. But you get the idea: #Fate #Rare #SinglePointofLight #Fiction

You know how you get the sense that the timing is just right for a specific thing to happen? ::whispers:: I think I might be in one of those electro-physics phenomena right now.

Exhibit A: Last week I had a number of emails exchanged and a couple of phone conversations with a literary agent who is “very impressed” with what I’m doing. She means the radio show, the blog, the work with SCWA, and other sundry writing-related marketing suchness my family affectionately calls mom’s unpaid work.

Exhibit B: The third midday session of SCWA’s Writing Conversations last week was led by Barbara Evers, fantasy writer and chapter lead for Greenville. She taught us how to write “The Perfect Pitch” to prepare for, among other things, running into the perfect agent for our work in a hotel elevator somewhere.

Exhibit C: This past Thursday was #pitmad, that delightful internet funhouse wherein authors attempt to sum up their book in 280 characters and attract an agent who will “like” the pitch and thereby invite a query. (Using the appropriate hashtags on Twitter of course.)

Why do we feel like success must be the work of the cosmos? Why can’t it be the coming together of preparation and opportunity? That sweet spot where everything you’ve done to show your value, your talent, and your commitment leaves you gloriously prepared to answer the question perfectly. Like Final Jeopardy. Who knew there’d be a category on American Authors? It’s a good thing I read all those bestseller lists.

I wouldn’t be such a believer in superstition like universe alignment if my first book hadn’t found its  way to publication in pure serendipity. One Saturday in July, after finishing my radio show with my pal Rex Hurst, I said, “I really should get a book published to show I have some credibility around here.” Two hours later, in the swimming pool at Columbia Country Club, I was introduced to Alexa Bigwarfe. She’s a publisher.

It wasn’t instant. Alexa publishes non-fiction and while we had a lot (A LOT) to talk about, I didn’t think we were a perfect fit or anything. Then we started walking our neighborhood in the mornings and over a few miles each day we got to know one another better and then (boom-shaka-laka) we made a deal.

Publishing is business. And business is relationships. And relationships are not lotteries. You pursue them, forge them, nurture them. That’s how we find success.

So why would I think the universe might just align to put my book in front of the right people? Because when you put your book out there – when you put yourself out there – eventually someone pays attention. Just be sure to use the right hashtags.

MAYBE THE RULES FOR WRITING FICTION IS TO IGNORE THE RULES

 

By El Ochiis

I once read an article about the “Ten Rules of Writing Fiction” and one of them was to never begin the story with the weather. What if the very thing you needed to write about was central to the story you are about to tell? I meant, if your character is stuck on a road in a remote part of the Yukon, in the dead of winter, weather will be central to the plot. And, a great opening would be: “It was one of those white-outs in Yukon Territory where the blizzard fought for dominance over the impending wind and freezing rain.” Would you not get a visible image of that scene – even if you lived in Bali?

Dorothy Parker once famously quipped, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

Rarely is a Parker quip a compliment, but, speaking of the “Style” Bible, it’s been over one hundred years after the birth of E.B. White and good number of years after I first encountered his classic style guide (originally written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918 – but much expanded by White), it may be time to admit that it’s not all it is cracked up to be.

"Don’t use active voice, paragraphs should be more than one sentence, place yourself in the background, avoid foreign languages; stay clear of accents"... Nabokov’s novels are full of foreign languages, and if Nabokov did it, it can’t be that wrong.

Then, there is Rule Sixteen which implores the writer to “prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.” The book presents two examples, the first, in each, being “wrong:”

A period of unfavorable weather set in.
vs.
It rained every day for a week.

and

He showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward.
vs.
He grinned as he pocketed the coin.

Excuse me, but I prefer “a period of unfavorable weather set in,” if only because it’s less usual and banal.

Recently, the New York Times attempted to explain Jane Austen’s enduring popularity by unpacking her word choices – what they discovered was that Austen had a propensity for words like: quite, really and very – the sort that writers are urged to avoid if they want muscular prose. So, writers are to avoid the very language that has made Jane one of the most beloved writers of all time?

Professional writers probably won’t be tied to any rule book, but, students will need to be taught that clarity is king – still, rules learned early on can be tough to shake, and most of us learned, at least a little, from Strunk & White. I understand that writing teachers know that most people need to master the rules before they can break them. But, as a reader, I prefer the offbeat to the standard – in word choice, in subject matter and in structure.

I think my greatest rule is that a piece of writing should follow a path – if readers don’t have a path to follow, they will get lost. Truth is paradox – in the greatest story ever told, the universe was created “as something out of nothing” – the first and most basic creation metaphor. Opposing ideas form the tension of its very premise. My point, there is no writing guide that can teach you style with any skill – it is in choosing which rules to learn and which to break – to what end – that you can begin to construct your own.

BAD FICTION

By Bonnie Stanard

American Book Review has posted online “Top Forty Bad Books.”  However, this is not a list. Rather, numerous college professors discuss what makes a book bad. They get beyond subjective opinions, at least in the sense that theirs are educated subjective opinions.

Does “badness” belong to the book, the reader, or the situation of reading? John Domini of Drake University asks, “Why isn’t bad in the eye of the beholder? Why should a reader go with anything other than their gut?” Readers should go with their gut, but when it comes to giving a book a reputation, one opinion’s not enough.

Terry Caesar wrote, “Can we conclude today that there are no more bad books, only bad readers? Such readers don’t know how to make even the worst books productive.” What? Blame the readers? I can’t buy that. It’s taken me a long time to overcome reader-inferiority. For most of my life, I’ve thought myself a bad (read that moronic) reader if I didn’t like critically acclaimed books.

Terry Caesar also says that Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is wondrously bad: stylistically precious, lavishly sentimental, ludicrous of characterization, and incoherent of theme. However, he excuses these problems with “Whether from the point of view of feminism or African American culture, Their Eyes is a damn good book.” Huh? Did the word bad just collide with political correctness and end up on the trash pile?

Though our workshop critiques sometimes get into technicalities, good or bad writing isn’t found in sentence structure or word choice. So what does make a book bad? These are samples drawn from the college professors.

• Does not have inherent empathy.

• Does not take risks. Is not curious.

• Makes direct and obvious attempts to call forth an emotion.

• Romanticizes two-dimensional, cutout characters.

• Plot is obviously manipulated.

• Its “message” remains obscure.

• All story is all pointless. Emotions give the story meaning.

• Makes mistakes in its representation of the material world (realistic fiction).

You could write a book on each of these weaknesses, which apply to concepts. It’s not the details they’re talking about. These mistakes originate with an author’s approach, even with their way of thinking. According to Christine Granados, “The novel is a blueprint into a writer’s soul. When I read what I consider to be a bad book, I notice that it is usually written by an arrogant person.” She explains with examples from Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.

Even books by celebrated authors have ended up on bad-books lists. For instance, novels by Kerouac, Hemingway, Jane Austen, and Milan Kundera are on Nicole Raney’s list, “14 Books We Give You Permission Not to Read.” 

Looking at the sampling of American Book Review’s list of fatal flaws, I see criticisms that suggest character goals for myself as a person. I need to have more empathy, curiosity, and subtleness. I need to be unbiased, spontaneous and audacious, principled, unafraid of emotions, and accurate in perceptions. Does this mean that if I improve myself, my writing will be better? Now let me see. Where to start?

Below are samples of books the professors dared to list as bad books.

Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence - It’s like someone put a gun to Nietzsche’s head and made him write a Harlequin romance.

The Genius by Theodore Dreiser – Dreiser had a mind so crude any idea could violate it.

Pierre by Herman Melville - so extravagantly mannered as to be barely readable.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - protagonists’ tribulations attributed to their alcoholism.

The Great Gatsby - manipulates conventions in order to be a “charming” book.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown – formulaic knock-off of fascistic conspiracy theories.

GET BACK TO PLAY

By Kasie Whitener

I’m a swimmer. I started early, as a four-year-old on the six-and-under squad of my neighborhood team. When people ask, I say the only thing I’ve been doing longer than swimming is breathing.

I’m a writer. I started that early, too. In third grade I wrote stories about what happened at home after school that made my teacher chuckle and declare I’d be a fiction writer. In seventh grade I wrote my first novel on four spiral notebooks. When people ask, I say the only thing I’ve been doing longer than writing is swimming. And breathing.

I have left the pool for long stretches of time. Months, sometimes years, go by between me picking up the habit and slowly drifting out of it. When I return, I remember how fun it is to dolphin-kick through the deep end, to take that hard thrust off the wall and glide suspended in the quiet for just a moment.

Likewise, there were long periods of time when I didn’t write fiction. In graduate school I focused on literary criticism. My early career was spent developing marketing copy for print media. As a corporate trainer, I wrote process documentation. During my PhD program, I wrote weekly essays connecting ideas I’d read, demonstrating I was learning and understanding concepts. There was a decided purpose to my work, a destination for it, and I got used to writing being task oriented.

For years, stories bunny-hopped over meadowed pages in my mind, ducked behind trees in a sunlit wood, slipped in and out of shadows. The voices were there – Brian the spoiled college kid mourning his best friend’s suicide, Blue the vampire time-traveler falling for Lord Byron’s sister, Maisy Diller the aging rock star returning to her hometown, even Breezy and Sean circling one another like a pair of twin moons. The voices occupy me like permanent residents of a beach motel: ready to play in the sun whenever I am.

Once I began writing with purpose in 2012, I learned what needed to be done to become read-worthy, and the voices lined up dutifully to complete their tasks.

“Make us ready,” they said. “Share us with the world.”

And fiction writing became work. But that is only one frame through which I can see my writing life.

The other frame, shown to me by Derek Berry at last week’s SCWA Writing Conversations session, is: Writing is fun. Writing can be play.

Writing can be where I come, not to bleed on the page or forge a career for myself, but to explore ideas and fantasies and play with sound and smell and taste and feel.

I shouldn’t have to be reminded that I love to write. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. And yet the reminder to enjoy it, to play, was such a surprising relief that I couldn’t wait to get back to the page.

To type this blog and tell you about it.

HERE ARE the FOUR DESIRES DRIVING ALL HUMAN BEHAVIOR that YOU CAN USE to CREATE COMPELLING CHARACTERS

By El Ochiis

“What is fueling your character’s desire?” Drilled Elias Dillard of The Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, in London, which specialized in theatre arts training, where I had been offered a non-paid position assisting in production. It was one of those dream jobs that sounded much better on paper than in real life.

“I’m not sure what you mean?” I groaned, with timid insolence, looking down at my script for mercy.

One day, an understudy for a top actor was ill and, another duty got added to my list of unpaid responsibilities - I was asked to read. I read the line like I would have written it, not like the writer had intended. Though my action was met with consternation by the director, my version worked better and he became interested in my work. I was given permission to present to him one of my plays from a series called Splitting Seconds.

“All human activity is prompted by passion - man differs from other animals in one very important respect, he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise.”

“Um?” I choked, trying not to cry. I was young, I had no clue what he was referring to. Affecting the stance of an authoritative figure from one of Dickens’ novels, he gestured for me to follow him to his office, a place that housed leather-bound books that were older than the building itself. He had everything in alphabetical order. Pulling one from the “B” Section, he looked up, then down:

“The great British philosophy, Sir Bertrand Arthur William Russell will help you there, my dear.” He offered, with a hint of condescension.

“I had assumed all philosophers were French.” I acerbically responded, taking the book and spending the next week absorbing it like a sponge.

Bertrand Russell, as he is known, states that there are four infinite desires driving all human behavior:

1. Acquisitiveness — the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods — is a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of fear with the desire for necessaries.

2. Rivalry — he argues, is in turn upstaged by human narcissism - many men would cheerfully face impoverishment if they could thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals.

3. Vanity — a motive of immense potency. Think, children who are constantly performing some antic, and saying “Look at me.”

4. Love of power —the most potent of the four impulses, he would argue – is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the same thing. What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it’s easy to have glory without power -Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.

Which of these will you use to drive your character(s) – which two - or all four of them, if you dare?

IS YOUR WRITING HUMANING?

By Bonnie Stanard

Yes, the word is humaning but it’s new and I may not know how to use it. Among end-of-the-year lists are those that document words making their first appearance. Humaning shows up on 2020 word lists.

It was coined by Mondelez International (think Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers), and it’s getting attention—called ad copy genius by some and tommyrot by others.

In a news release, Mondelez explains that humaning creates a unique approach with real human connections, and will uncover what unites us all. Could we say that is an objective we fiction writers are chasing after? Are our novels being upstaged by a company selling Oreo cookies?

More Mondelez: “We are no longer marketing to consumers, but creating connections with humans.” Mmmm. Quite an assertion for a company selling crackers. On the other hand, it makes sense if you’re selling a story.

Mark Ritson, in an article in Marketing Week calls it “the greatest marketing bullshit of all time,” and “its new approach/philosophy/word makes them look very foolish.” When it comes to crackers, I can see Ritson’s point.

Whatever the controversy, humaning has made its way into the urban dictionary with a definition of “to act in a way that can only be described as human.” So this separates those of us who don’t act like humans from those who do? Then what is the opposite of humaning? Animaling? Nooo. (After all, humans are animals.) So is it planting? Maybe non-humaning? Un-humaning? Please! Don’t accuse me of non-humaning!

Marketing companies use and abuse language to persuade us to buy things. The challenge to copywriters is to attract attention at any cost, well, at almost any cost. Most of us fiction writers use a stable of well-worn words everybody understands. But copywriters resort to flaming language. After all, a fire is noticeable. It’s no surprise that words they add are a blister breed of language.

Marketing language plumbs the depths of our materialistic longing while appealing to the shallowness of our introspection. Take the word masstige (mass + prestige), another new word from the marketing industry. It means targeting the masses with prestigious goods. For example, car companies, such as Mercedes-Benz, have used masstige to sell mid-luxury models.

How about listicle (list + article)? Copywriters discovered that lists and/or bullet points quicken interest in products. If you’re like me, your attention span is better suited to lists than paragraphs.

Or thumb-stopping? Meaning to stop surfers from scrolling. Used by Pinterest, Shutterstock, and Samsung. The idea is that these companies help create online material for mobile devices that is so dynamic surfers come to a standstill.

I didn’t know it, but cutting-edge is out and bleeding-edge is in. What next? Butchering-edge? Killing-edge?

Another new one is immersive experience. This reflects the growth of technology and the inroads it has made influencing our senses. For example, a fitness workout app that resembles a game and provides information about your body.

Two new expressions I find particularly annoying: 1) purpose-driven lifestyle brand, a term used by Blue Apron, Chipotle, Goop and Godiva to describe themselves. I don’t need a company brand to make my lifestyle purpose-driven, thank-you-very-much; and 2) core competency, which means the underlying strength of a company or a person. This suggests that some people do not have core competency, something I find demeaning.

You can catch up on the meanings of some fun words, such as awesomesauce, beardo, amirite, nothingburger, and puggle by checking out Juliana LaBianca’s 2020 word list. 

HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED USING INTERESTING WORDS TO MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS SOUND MORE INTELLIGENT?

By El Ochiis

I was studying abroad when an opportunity to intern at a publishing house, presented itself in the form of a requirement from a professor who had a reputation for his dislike of foreign students – his position was that they suffered from an ignorance of intelligent language above common words. Shifting his cigarette from the right side of his mouth to the left, with a flick of his tongue, he would emphatically state that American writers wrote so relentlessly about themselves, it exhausted him. Rumor was if he liked your writing you got a letter from his spouse, a noted editor – a shoo-in for that internship. 

“I take offense to Professor Brodeur’s opinion. I need to pen an essay filled with such uncommonly smart words that it will greatly annoy him,” I announced to Julien, a former student who has gone on to achieve some writing success, offering him my first draft.

 “This is brilliant. He WILL send you to his wife – she is more torturous than he, but in fewer words,” Julien announced, making edits with a pencil he kept behind his right ear. “But, you can raise it to the height of greater intelligence with a few more unusual words."

I took the points Julien made, incorporated them, and, submitted the piece.

One week and a day later, I was summoned for an interview lunch at the Centre Pompidou by Madame Lilou-Arlette Brodeur.  

I arrived half an hour early; I was nervously anxious. Then, I saw her; she flitted through the passageway on black-tipped Chanel sling-backs, moving with the aloofness of a pedigree feline. Laying a leather-bound diary on my backpack, she summoned a waiter. The Centre Pompidou, at that time, was frequented by artist and writers who could barely afford a cup of coffee, wait staff would be a stretch.

My black, torn jeans with the Janis Joplin and John Coltrane patches, topped off with an even blacker Harley Davison tee-shirt and worn cowboy boots were in stark contrast to her couture.  

She placed some crisp francs into the hands of a man walking by, instructing him to purchase a café au lait, fixating her eyes over my head, at something more interesting, finally resting a momentary gaze on me:

“An agelast, apropos,” she spewed, with a French accent, scanning my essay, taking the steaming cup from the gentleman, pushing it towards me.

I thought I recognized some of the terms she was using as the ones Julien had added, but she spoke them with such a precise French accent; I wasn’t sure – this was interesting and scary.  

“I Conspuer a bioviate.” she reasoned, flicking her cigarette in the saucer of the still warm café, opening her book in a manner that let me know I was either being dismissed or she was departing. 

I tried to give the impression that I wasn’t completely dumbfounded by smiling and nodding – I wrote stuff down in the pretense of astute notetaking. Her faint smile told me she wasn’t displeased. But, were those interview questions or stark criticism of my writing?  

 “Hiraeth, logophilic, n'est-ce pas?” she affirmed, rising, checking her watch before retrieving a piece of paper from her diary, scribbling an address and phone number, pushing it at me. Then, she sauntered off. 

I ran all the way to Julien. I breathlessly retold him everything that happened.   

“I think I got the internship, but I couldn’t understand how she was using some of the words you added – the woman is odd.” I exclaimed, holding out the notes I’d taken.

 Julien perused my badly scribbled handwriting. 

“She was saying that you’re a person who rarely laughs (agelast) - she suspects it’s because you only wear black (atrate). She spits in contempt (conspeur) at people who are long-winded with little to say (biovate) – she feels that the essence of your piece was about the homesickness of a place that you can never return to, or never really existed (hiraeth) - you have a gift for words (logophile),” Julien surmised with the confidence of a cryptographer. 

“How do you know this?” I asked, incredulously. 

“I read one of her favorite books – the words I added to your piece were from a book she edited entitled Interesting Words You Should Slip Into Your Writing To Make Your Characters Sound Much More Intelligent – it’s great that she didn’t quiz you,” Julien chortle. 

Can you, as a writer, write a scene for a novel, short story or an essay using words that have no English translation, or interesting words that would help your characters sound smarter in any conversation? Here is a place to start: https://www.dictionary.com/e/keep-classy-fancy-words-listicle/

 

 

 

 

 

 

AT the CROSSROADS of COVID and WRITING

By Shaun McCoy

Perhaps the single most fabulous piece of advice, and simultaneously the worst advice, I’ve ever gotten about writing is that “a good short story exists at the crossroads between two other stories.”

What makes this advice so dang good is that it is absolutely a fabulous way to rescue that initial inspiration you get for a short story, but which just falls a step short. But, one has to admit, what makes this advice so friggin’ bad is just how vague it is.

With a little creative plotting, one can describe about ANY story, no matter how singular in focus, to be at the locus point between two narratives. So, this crossroads idea is like a Schrodinger’s cat. It’s both alive and dead, in a state of literary superposition, until one of us tries to use the dang thing. At that point, we end up with either a fabulously adorable kitten mewling with all the delight of a cutesy internet meme, or find ourselves in dire need of both a shovel and a good plot of land safely away from the prying eyes of whatever darling child owned that feline.

I couldn’t help but think of this crossroads advice as, during my recent Covid scare. I started scrolling through the symptoms. Some of them weren’t very story-worthy at all.

· Dry cough

· Diarrhea

· Fever

I mean, they’re certainly were story-worthy to me. I’m me. If I’m walking down a tunnel toward the light, I want to hear about it. But it wouldn’t really be a good story to you. In that way it is directly analogous to my last piece of failed writing. It’s my baby, so I love it. To you, though, it’s probably about as bland as watching snail race. (Okay, terrible analogy. That would be pretty riveting.)

But then this bad boy of a symptom came up.

· New confusion

Now that’s a story. It leaps out of you with all the exciting context of the now infamous warning label on curling irons: “don’t put in contact with eye.” Of course I shouldn’t put it on my eye, but the very existence of the label means that someone, at some point, did. Or at least, we think they did. Maybe they were murdering a hitchhiker, and that’s how they got their eye wound, and this whole curling iron thing was only the best excuse they could come up with during their police interrogation.

New confusion. What was the old confusion? When struck with this plague, how am I supposed to tell the old confusion from the new? How can the reader? Can the reader know before I do?

But fortunately this won’t ever be a story. The test came back negative. For me, there will only ever be the old confusion—caught right there, smack dab in the middle of the crossroads between covid and writing.

 

 

 

CREATING STORIES OR ARTICLES THAT PULL READERS IN. WOW, HOW CATCHY.

By J Dean Pate

One of my favorite writers, Columbia’s Bill Fox – Southern Fried — would bore-in and magnify and magnify again, peculiar traits of his characters. Then he would stretch them through misguided desires or conflict into hilarious episodes that kept readers turning the page.

For me, it is a struggle to bring my characters and story to life because of being stuck in exposition mode from my days as a broadcast news writer. This leads to results at times that read like I’m writing for speed readers because I want to get the story over with, because TV copy is short.  

“Once upon a time flip … everything was good flip … (oh my god, I must fix this so I’ll add in) . . .  and as she held him tightly Angelica knew in that moment she and Raoul would spend eternity …  sigh/throb…together.”  — Yay, Yahoo!!!

My writing group has been helpful with suggestions. And I have found several books to help me find my way. 

Mystery writer Jane Cleland recommends plot twists to keep readers wondering, “What happens next?”

Whether they be mysteries, a memoir or literary nonfiction, she says the story needs to pivot and turn to avoid boring readers. She says plot twists, reversals and dangers should be counterintuitive, grounded on emotion while utterly unexpected. The goal is to create intrigue and credibility by presenting evidence. Readers need to trust you are revealing emotional truths through believable incidents.

She offers the following questions as guides for developing effective TRDs:

· What does the reader expect to happen next?

· What else could logically happen? (Twist)

· What is the opposite of the readers’ expectation? (Reversal)

· Could something emotionally, physically, or spiritually frightening or dangerous occur (Danger)

· Does the TRD surprise the reader?

· Will it add tension or intrigue?

· Is it credible?

Plot Twists, Reversals and Dangers from Mastering Plot Twists, Jane K. Cleland, Writers Digest 2018 ISBN-13:978-1-4403-52331