One thing people talk about is just writing the rough draft without editing yourself. But they also say practice makes permanent. Only practicing correctly makes perfect. So if you write without thinking and editing you could end up developing bad habits couldn't you? I often wonder what I should be thinking about while writing. Writing is thinking so it's hard to think about anything but what you're thinking. Thinking about what you're doing while writing would hinder your thinking. It's basically thinking two things at once. I guess it can't really be done.
Dean R. Koontz wrote books on writing novels but his technique kept changing throughout his life. His nonfiction books (Writing Popular Fiction and Writing Bestselling Fiction) written before he really started writing #1 bestsellers. He advised outlines in his books but he said later that when he started getting #1 bestsellers he had stopped outlining and in fact would get each page perfect before moving on to the next. I see the good thing about this technique being that he's practicing good writing daily rather than putting it off for the final draft. He's constantly got his mind on writing good fiction well so that when he does write off the top of his head he's developed good habits. So eventually each page would probably come easier and the rough draft (the rough single page he writes in the morning) will be better each day. Nowadays so many people are texting and reading their phones. The quality of fiction as result is probably also increasing. Ironically in an age without bookstores writing is probably going through a renaissance. Still though that probably translates to more bestselling writers and more writers and more challenging times for writers. In light of that fact we should be sharing who the top writers are and discussing the top narrative styles. Another thing is that there will be more readers perhaps. Also more opportunities to make your book into a movie. The best writer I've come across is that guy who wrote Ready Player One. I really like his style. I tend to prefer less sophisticated writing. I like movies too and so for me a story has to be entertaining and I don't feel I should have to work any harder reading a book than watching a movie. If I have readers I don't want them to have to work hard to understand me. Tolstoy's goal was being clear. He hated the writing meant merely to impress. I think being clear draws readers in but you can't be boring. Stephen King employs colorful metaphors and no adverbs.
I think though that outlines can be good if they are written as brainstorms or as trees. The possibilities for each story branch out from the first word. You can draw a tree structure of all the possibilities. What's nice then is that each branch is a tree in itself and any branch you don't use can become the next branch when you get stuck. You can have several branches but you can then take all the ideas from all the branches and add a lot of them in later when you get stuck. You don't have to though. You can just keep adding branch after branch. Working on a page at a time seems like the best method. The reader probably wont notice continuity errors outside the first chapter at least not at first. Getting each page perfect before moving on to the next allows you be even more familiar with the story and makes you more prepared to write the next page. I can see this technique as a way to prepare you for the time when someday you might be able to write a whole novel without having to edit. One fly in the ointment of this technique is that the human brain is designed to think and to come up with scenarios. Perhaps in the case of writing you can't really develop bad techniques. Your brain may get better at writing simply by doing it and perhaps not editing yourself and just writing off the top of your head is the best method. Writing is just talking but at a much slower pace. Perhaps you can't really develop bad habits by not editing yourself as you go along. Just reading a book or watching a youtuber tends to make me write in the voice of the person I watch or read. Your brain is designed to think and good thinking may be the result of not self editing. It's boring to edit yourself. It's work and all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. The last thing a writer wants to be is dull. Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of non-fiction and the guy who made Carnival of Souls as his first movie was a maker of Educational films. In fact EC stands for Educational Comics. EC being the most popular comic book company of the 50s. It's possible a lot of the stories in EC comics were true horror stories. Most are pure fiction though I'm sure. Anyway no doubt most people read mostly non-fiction and watch the news so anyone who writes non-fiction will probably have more appeal to a mass audience. So perhaps the best technique to be a good writer is to spend time working on non-fiction. Perhaps doing what I'm doing writing by writing a Blog. My writing here is pretty much un edited. You're probably well aware of that fact if you do read this. I wouldn't be surprised if no one does. One thing I know I do is just meander. My subject changes as I go along. I'm basically just brainstorming I guess. Thinking on paper on the keyboard. This particular article started out as a comment on youtube but it got so long I and had advice in itself which I didn't know if Kelly Rice would like. She's really thoughtful and deep and I'd recommend her channel.
In this article I just wrote and if I saw a mistake I corrected it. I think it's good to correct mistakes because it seems like a pain to go back and reread your writing just to find mistakes. There's not much you can do with a story after it's witten. It seems like outlines would be good for getting ideas. If you can see the big picture you can see how things fit together. Perhaps by outlining and working on the outline and changing it a lot you could then get to a point where you really see all the possibilities at once and you don't feel locked into a particular way of telling this particular story. There are many ways it can go so when you end up editing out chunks of it your not heartbroken and it doesn't feel wrong to you. All versions of the story should feel good and be fine and all you're trying to do is find the best version. King Kong another movie that started by a documentary filmmaker and did in fact start out as a sort of documentary started in the middle. Starting in the middle seems like the best way to start a story. This gives the reader the impression that the writer knows the story well as if it really happened to him. All true stories actually happened in the past but when you write off the top of your head the story is really just happening as you write it. The reader might then get the impression that as he's reading it the writer is just making it up. A lot of movies that are ad libbed actually do seem to ba ad-libbed. You can tell the actors are making up their own lines on the spot. It's probably a good idea to have the characters make up their own lines but they should then rehearse them repeatedly till they can say them convincingly so that they don't appear to be making them up on the spot. Being on the spot and having to come up with something will make the character seem slow. In a real life situation a person just says the one thing they have on their mind and they probably have few other thoughts. Only a liar might be thinking one thing and saying another.
Carnival of Souls being low budget was forced to film all it's scenes on location. This is probably what gives it re-watch ability. It's almost like a window or time machine taking you back to 1962. A lot of professionals worked on it for free. Good writing and movies flow from reality. From a connection to the truth. They encourage artists to "draw from life". Boris Vallejo said he always uses models. Indeed he photographs them and has no problem tracing the photographs onto canvas (probably with an opaque projector). His drawing skill however makes sure that the fuzzy projection is fine tuned to razor sharp clarity. It's a time saver but his connection to reality makes his paintings better than photographs. They pop off the cover of books and compel readers to buy them.
I see a common thread through this article though it seems to meander and that's reality. Thinking is something we do naturally and that's all writing is. If you need to write longhand so that you can write as quickly as possible that's probably the best but that does force you to rewrite (which isn't necessarily bad though I would recommend perhaps doing this a page at a time. Write a page longhand and then type it in before writing the next page longhand. Like get a 200 page notebook and maybe do two sides of a sheet or if your only writing on one side then use two sheets and that would equal about one page of a book. If you can do several pages a day probably it would be good to go back and forth. If you can learn to touch type that will help a lot though or get someone to type it for you. Even better if you can get someone to dictate it two you wouldn't have to write at all. Make sure your writing carries a clear thought from sentence to sentence. Making sure it's clear and yet not boring. No over editing. Heinlen would just write it once and then send it in and only make changes if the editor asked for them. He's the one who sees the story freshly and is going to know what works and what doesn't. Over editing can make you dull and the only way the reader is going to have fun is if he's vicariously watching you having fun. Some things are like that. You have to have fun sometimes. Sometimes it's mandatory.
So I guess I've come to the conclusion that writing is thinking and it's best if you don't think about anything but what you want to think about and while you think about something just transcribe the thoughts your thinking onto the page. In the case of fiction though you actually are sort of lying so I can see how you might end up giving the reader the impression you are making it up as you go along because that's what you're actually doing however in the case of writing you can pause and get back on track. You don't have a viewer there watching you make up a story off the top of your head. They aren't seeing your pauses as you focus back on the main train of thought. As you write fiction then the goal is probably to focus on what's happening next. What would happen next. Seeing the scene in your head. Focusing on the scene as well as possible. Perhaps a picture of the scene that you can look at next to you on your desk. Perhaps a map and pictures of the characters present. J.K. Rowling did that. She made tables of her character's powers and skill levels. Yeah character sheets present on your writing desk would probably help a lot. Perhaps also names that sort of personify their personalities. For instance Luke Skywalker is a pilot. He's a farmboy with his head in the clouds never his mind on where he was or what he was doing. Pilots sort of walk through the sky metaphorically. Darth Vader mean's Dark Father. And Grumpy the dwarf's name leaves no doubt about what sort of mood he will be in. A good name isn't just about having a clever name it can be a tool to help the writer keep making sure the character does things according to her personality. Writing in first person seems easier but I tend to just write about my own experiences and base everything on my own experiences. Writing fiction is difficult because it's less straightforward. It's the same with games vs business applications. Games take a computer and turn it into a simulation of real life. A computer can do a lot but it can't even replicate a person even though a computer is considered like a brain. It's really though pushed to do everything a human brain doesn't do. Simulations combine all those things and create everything in the universe that isn't the human brain. It also tries to make it something that it's not. So any time you want to make something something other than what it is you're bound to come up with difficulties. You can't put a square peg in a round hole unless the hole is a lot bigger than the peg. That's essentially what fiction is. It's taking one thing and making it into something else. A business application though is doing with the computer things that the computer did before it was a computer. The first computers were created from calculator parts. So business applications are much easier to write. Books are also much more suited to non-fiction. Film I guess may be more suited to fiction. It's a lot easier to create fiction on film non-fiction because the actors are all well aware that they are on camera. The first films have all the people on the street gawking at the photographer as he films. So I guess it's not surprising that the best films are made by those who honed their skills making documentaries. They are much better at filming on locations. They are also capable of getting in and out of a location without having to pay a fee to use the property.
Preparation seems like a key to good fiction writing. However an outline probably isn't one of them. Character sketches, maps things that spark the imagination and allow it to create. Those are your outline. Your outline is whatever gets you in the zone and gets you into the world you're creating. For Tolkien this was probably messing around with the Elvish language and his maps and the paintings of Middle earth he created. These things made his world and the characters real to him. I've heard about a book on Role Playing Games refered to as helping someone with his fiction writing. J.K. Rowling was on a Train when she wrote Harry Potter and as a result a Train ends up in the story itself.
Friday, August 3, 2018
Friday, April 27, 2018
Why it's Hard to Get Published
Everyone knows how to write. We are taught it from the first grade and often kindergarten. So for 12 years we learn to write. If you go to college you get even more writing classes in the USA at least. I had writing up until I graduated because I didn't do well on the final writing test. Everyone who graduated had to pass yet another writing test.
It's really no surprise that Americans are such great writers. In other countries college is about learning a marketable skill but in the USA they make you take more GE (probably because it's cheaper to hire General Education teachers) It's not that writing is difficult and "Can't be taught". It's that so many people are good at it and yet the world only needs so many writers. The number of fiction writers needed is proportional to the number of tastes any one person can have minus all the books that have already been written. By contrast the number of school teachers needed is proportional to the population. If there are a billion people on earth there will be a need for about 1,000,000,000/100 school teachers. That's a lot of school teachers. IT professionals needed is proportional to the number of businesses.
How many tastes could one person have? That number doesn't increase with the population. Maybe if people live longer the number of writers needed will increase. Writers don't just compete with other writers but with all the writing that went before. With Science fiction however technology changes so they actually have a better chance. Old science fiction novels don't age well because we now know mars doesn't have canals. Edgar Rice Burroughs didn't focus on the canals so much and he took into account the fact that the martian atmosphere needed to be replenished by artificial means but not every science fiction novel ages so well. So if you don't mind the fact your stuff wont last as long you probably have a better chance as a science fiction writer than as anything else. There are always new discoveries and theories you could write about if you keep up on the latest scientific discoveries.
Jane Austen is just as good a read today for historical fiction readers as anything published today so while historical fiction may be more popular it's value will continually diminish as writers add to it. You are competing with all the stuff that's already been published so the competition always increases.
Anyway that's why it's so difficult. It's not because fiction writing is hard. What really works will probably boil down to things other than anyone has ever said or wrote about. There are probably some amazing techniques out there. However there are mistakes that a lot of beginners make and they are pretty obvious. Like they will not add enough dialogue or they are hard to understand. If you just make your writing clear with a main character who has a clear goal in mind who cares if they ever reach it. Just make that goal continually out of reach. Gilligan never got off the island so your character never needs to reach his goal. Once the goal is reached the story's over anyway. If you want him to keep trying write a sequel your readers will love you for it. You never know what you are doing right and you are probably doing more right than you know. So write a first chapter and let someone read it and get their advice and do your darndest to take it. They are the only ones who can really tell you what's working or not. You know the story yourself so you are unable to tell whether you're adequately conveying it. If you are worried about giving away too much that's solved if you don't know yourself what's going to happen. It tripped up J. K. Rowling that she knew the whole 7 book series because she ended up telling too much right at the beginning. Hopefully it was a bunch of obvious foreshadowing. I don't see how you could give away the whole plot even if you knew it. I'd be interested to know how she did it. But yeah if you don't know the whole plot beforehand. It would be hard to give it away. I used to really think a person should write the ending first and work backward but really why not write the last line of each chapter first and work each chapter backward. A chapter is a story in itself and it's a story that the reader can grasp. A novel is too big to really appreciate at one sitting anyway. But I'm going into too much detail here.
My main point is that novel writing isn't that difficult to do well it's just hard to be published. Slush-piles are full of first novels that have obvious mistakes (to anyone who has even read one "how to write fiction" book. I was reading Harry Potter the other day (just the beginning). I can see how she got passed over actually because the beginning seems to start way too early in Harry's life. I came across an audio-book that seemed to start much later and it started with Harry's home life and a trip to the zoo I think and I couldn't believe how good it was. She's got that Roald Dahl vibe (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) . I'm surprised she was passed over by so many publishers because even the story about a guy going to work is pretty entertaining. I think more for me though and for her at the time because I've always struggled to find work and she was out of work at the time. That's probably why I appreciate "Career Opportunities" by John Hughs so much.
A lot of really great writers didn't even write their stories. They dictated them. It's possible that there are writers out there who can't even write. A lot of writers who do write say the dialog out loud first so a writer who dictates it to a secretary is probably killing two birds with one stone. you could certainly write a lot faster by just dictating it.
My opinion is that it's really not that hard to write fiction you just need to avoid making a few easy to avoid mistakes. There may are probably some really advanced techniques that would blow people away but most mistakes can be avoided by just reading a book on how to write. An article might be good enough though. Maybe I should write an article that covers everything you need to know to be a fiction writer (provided you've graduated from high school.). I admit I'm not a "published" author but I was never encouraged to spend all day writing a novel. I should have done one of those contracts with my parents where I agree to go to college if I don't get published when I was young. Anyway this is mostly just what I'm thinking and I'm about to try what I just wrote down. Maybe it will work for me. Maybe it will work for you.
People read to learn I think. The most popular writers have this "educational" vibe about them. Salenger, J K Rowling, Roald Dahl, Todd McFarlane, Art Adams. The last two are comic book artists but they have a literary look maybe due to cross hatching. People read to better themselves even if it's just fiction. If people want pure entertainment they would probably just watch TV. People are willing to suffer a bit while reading. They don't expect it to be all pleasure. The writers job is to make it as pleasant as possible. For me reading has always been a way of improving myself. Am I the only one who checks to see how much of the book I still have left? I'll check how the thickness of the book I've read compares to the thickness of what I've finished. I almost always doing that. Very few books have I read that I actually didn't want them to end. Actually it's only one and I'm a bit ashamed to tell you what it was. It was actually a non-fiction biographical book by a first author I think. First authors have an advantage because they aren't writing to grind out text necessarily and they have a very non-repititious way of writing because they don't have a set "style". Some are trying to get as many words on the page as possible if they are writing fiction but if they are writing about a real person they will have plenty to write about if they take the time to do the research. Yeah beginners have an advantage because they don't have that professional feel where everything has the same "style". They haven't got to the point where they are doing it just to do it and get paid. They are doing it because they enjoy it and when they have something to write. It's a bit disjointed and while that can call attention to itself it also makes it a bit more interesting. I guess you really don't want the writing to call attention to itself though because you want the reader to focus on the story and forget the writing.
Probably the best way to do that is to ask questions. I think it's OK to include questions in a story.
I guess I'm getting sidetracked but I guess the point is that it's difficult to get published because it's pretty hard to stand out. Some people have come up with a lot of really good techniques that pretty much go against a lot of common wisdom. People say they don't like exposition but the top novels have a lot of it in the beginning. They don't begin with action either contrary to what's been told. Action scenes may get the reader interested but it's like where do you go from there? Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Ready Player One all start with humble beginnings. The Ordinary or even less than ordinary eventually (gradually) becomes extra-ordinary. They all connect that ordinary in some very clear way to that wider more amazing adventure. Katness starts out poor, Bilbo starts off ordinary if not poor at least not rich. The story basically connects an ordinary person to an extra-ordinary fantasy realm. It's a simple formula easy to copy. It's not really constricting either because there really isn't anything. Change is a form of conflict. As long as things change there will always be a little apprehension.
It's really no surprise that Americans are such great writers. In other countries college is about learning a marketable skill but in the USA they make you take more GE (probably because it's cheaper to hire General Education teachers) It's not that writing is difficult and "Can't be taught". It's that so many people are good at it and yet the world only needs so many writers. The number of fiction writers needed is proportional to the number of tastes any one person can have minus all the books that have already been written. By contrast the number of school teachers needed is proportional to the population. If there are a billion people on earth there will be a need for about 1,000,000,000/100 school teachers. That's a lot of school teachers. IT professionals needed is proportional to the number of businesses.
How many tastes could one person have? That number doesn't increase with the population. Maybe if people live longer the number of writers needed will increase. Writers don't just compete with other writers but with all the writing that went before. With Science fiction however technology changes so they actually have a better chance. Old science fiction novels don't age well because we now know mars doesn't have canals. Edgar Rice Burroughs didn't focus on the canals so much and he took into account the fact that the martian atmosphere needed to be replenished by artificial means but not every science fiction novel ages so well. So if you don't mind the fact your stuff wont last as long you probably have a better chance as a science fiction writer than as anything else. There are always new discoveries and theories you could write about if you keep up on the latest scientific discoveries.
Jane Austen is just as good a read today for historical fiction readers as anything published today so while historical fiction may be more popular it's value will continually diminish as writers add to it. You are competing with all the stuff that's already been published so the competition always increases.
Anyway that's why it's so difficult. It's not because fiction writing is hard. What really works will probably boil down to things other than anyone has ever said or wrote about. There are probably some amazing techniques out there. However there are mistakes that a lot of beginners make and they are pretty obvious. Like they will not add enough dialogue or they are hard to understand. If you just make your writing clear with a main character who has a clear goal in mind who cares if they ever reach it. Just make that goal continually out of reach. Gilligan never got off the island so your character never needs to reach his goal. Once the goal is reached the story's over anyway. If you want him to keep trying write a sequel your readers will love you for it. You never know what you are doing right and you are probably doing more right than you know. So write a first chapter and let someone read it and get their advice and do your darndest to take it. They are the only ones who can really tell you what's working or not. You know the story yourself so you are unable to tell whether you're adequately conveying it. If you are worried about giving away too much that's solved if you don't know yourself what's going to happen. It tripped up J. K. Rowling that she knew the whole 7 book series because she ended up telling too much right at the beginning. Hopefully it was a bunch of obvious foreshadowing. I don't see how you could give away the whole plot even if you knew it. I'd be interested to know how she did it. But yeah if you don't know the whole plot beforehand. It would be hard to give it away. I used to really think a person should write the ending first and work backward but really why not write the last line of each chapter first and work each chapter backward. A chapter is a story in itself and it's a story that the reader can grasp. A novel is too big to really appreciate at one sitting anyway. But I'm going into too much detail here.
My main point is that novel writing isn't that difficult to do well it's just hard to be published. Slush-piles are full of first novels that have obvious mistakes (to anyone who has even read one "how to write fiction" book. I was reading Harry Potter the other day (just the beginning). I can see how she got passed over actually because the beginning seems to start way too early in Harry's life. I came across an audio-book that seemed to start much later and it started with Harry's home life and a trip to the zoo I think and I couldn't believe how good it was. She's got that Roald Dahl vibe (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) . I'm surprised she was passed over by so many publishers because even the story about a guy going to work is pretty entertaining. I think more for me though and for her at the time because I've always struggled to find work and she was out of work at the time. That's probably why I appreciate "Career Opportunities" by John Hughs so much.
A lot of really great writers didn't even write their stories. They dictated them. It's possible that there are writers out there who can't even write. A lot of writers who do write say the dialog out loud first so a writer who dictates it to a secretary is probably killing two birds with one stone. you could certainly write a lot faster by just dictating it.
My opinion is that it's really not that hard to write fiction you just need to avoid making a few easy to avoid mistakes. There may are probably some really advanced techniques that would blow people away but most mistakes can be avoided by just reading a book on how to write. An article might be good enough though. Maybe I should write an article that covers everything you need to know to be a fiction writer (provided you've graduated from high school.). I admit I'm not a "published" author but I was never encouraged to spend all day writing a novel. I should have done one of those contracts with my parents where I agree to go to college if I don't get published when I was young. Anyway this is mostly just what I'm thinking and I'm about to try what I just wrote down. Maybe it will work for me. Maybe it will work for you.
People read to learn I think. The most popular writers have this "educational" vibe about them. Salenger, J K Rowling, Roald Dahl, Todd McFarlane, Art Adams. The last two are comic book artists but they have a literary look maybe due to cross hatching. People read to better themselves even if it's just fiction. If people want pure entertainment they would probably just watch TV. People are willing to suffer a bit while reading. They don't expect it to be all pleasure. The writers job is to make it as pleasant as possible. For me reading has always been a way of improving myself. Am I the only one who checks to see how much of the book I still have left? I'll check how the thickness of the book I've read compares to the thickness of what I've finished. I almost always doing that. Very few books have I read that I actually didn't want them to end. Actually it's only one and I'm a bit ashamed to tell you what it was. It was actually a non-fiction biographical book by a first author I think. First authors have an advantage because they aren't writing to grind out text necessarily and they have a very non-repititious way of writing because they don't have a set "style". Some are trying to get as many words on the page as possible if they are writing fiction but if they are writing about a real person they will have plenty to write about if they take the time to do the research. Yeah beginners have an advantage because they don't have that professional feel where everything has the same "style". They haven't got to the point where they are doing it just to do it and get paid. They are doing it because they enjoy it and when they have something to write. It's a bit disjointed and while that can call attention to itself it also makes it a bit more interesting. I guess you really don't want the writing to call attention to itself though because you want the reader to focus on the story and forget the writing.
Probably the best way to do that is to ask questions. I think it's OK to include questions in a story.
I guess I'm getting sidetracked but I guess the point is that it's difficult to get published because it's pretty hard to stand out. Some people have come up with a lot of really good techniques that pretty much go against a lot of common wisdom. People say they don't like exposition but the top novels have a lot of it in the beginning. They don't begin with action either contrary to what's been told. Action scenes may get the reader interested but it's like where do you go from there? Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Ready Player One all start with humble beginnings. The Ordinary or even less than ordinary eventually (gradually) becomes extra-ordinary. They all connect that ordinary in some very clear way to that wider more amazing adventure. Katness starts out poor, Bilbo starts off ordinary if not poor at least not rich. The story basically connects an ordinary person to an extra-ordinary fantasy realm. It's a simple formula easy to copy. It's not really constricting either because there really isn't anything. Change is a form of conflict. As long as things change there will always be a little apprehension.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Writing Science Fiction
I just figured out how to write science fiction at least the kind that starts off with an enigma.
I'll give you an example.
- look at a future science technology. One you make up yourself or someone else makes up
- figure out why it's not possible today (perhaps though it is possible in which case you could patent it)
- look at the drawbacks
- look at the dangers
- Begin of your story where danger becomes reality. (This is like in fringe, X files and Star Trek The next Generation and Doctor Who) Where the opening sequence something strange happens but the reader and characters don't know why because they haven't been told about the technology. They aren't aware of it or that it exists. (it might exist in their setting and the reader can be made aware of it if the characters are aware of the technolgy but he and the characters haven't yet connected the technology and the strange event) I suppose it doesn't have to be some horrific thing either as long as it's sufficiently compelling and strange.
- The rest of the story is about the investigation into what happened and slowly the technology that caused the problem is revealed. I guess this is more a mystery than science fiction.
I'll give you an example.
- A space alien startles a farmer and is shot.
- Upon getting hit by a bullet the alien explodes.
- The creature has the ability to speak telepathically (implanted radio transmitter) which is necessary since it lives in an environment devoid of any air which is necessary for sound to travel.
- What is odd is that it is a being that lives in space (an environment with no atmosphere) and yet he exploded in an atmosphere on earth.
- In the course of the story it is discovered that since there is no air in space space creatures carry a lifetimes supply of oxygen in a device implanted in their lungs. Upon being hit by a bullet the oxygen canister exploded. (it could be that the creatures detonate the canister themselves to prevent us from capturing them)
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