Tag: writers

Why Writers Must Learn to Kill Their Babies (Less Morbid than It Sounds)

Okay, let me explain…

When I was taking film classes in college, my professor explained a key lesson that every writer must learn. They must learn when it is necessary to kill their babies.

You have an idea. It’s a brilliant, shining idea that came to you in an incandescent flash of inspiration. A magnificent idea that is the beating heart of your story. It is your motivation and driving force. The story would not exist except for this one concept.

It could be anything. A single scene. A character. A set piece. Even a single line of dialogue. Whatever it is, it was amazing enough to make you sit down and write.

It is your precious baby.

You finish the first draft of your story. You’re very pleased with it, especially how you incorporated your idea into the overall work. You send it out to readers for feedback. And the unexpected happens. They’re dubious about your baby. They don’t like it. They say that it doesn’t mesh with the rest of the story. In fact, it’s holding your story back from its full potential. It’s a liability.

Without realizing it, as you wrote and developed your setting, characters, and plot, they outgrew the original idea. That concept you love so much is no longer the plot’s beating heart. It is a tumor that threatens the quality of your narrative. The scene is out of place and unneeded. The character is completely detached from the rest of the cast. The set piece is just a waste of words. The line of dialogue is silly.

For the sake of the story, you must kill your baby.

If that sounds grotesque, it’s only to communicate how strongly writers can feel about their stories, and how painful it can be to remove something that can feel so personal to you. It’s a necessary culling that must be performed for the good of your writing. It is a sacrifice, one that almost every author must make at some point or another. And for those who aren’t willing to make the sacrifice, well, their story suffers for it. The readers might, too.

The lesson here is that something that seems like its working at the beginning of your project can become an utterly awful proposition by the end. A chef likes garlic, so he adds a ton of garlic to his casserole. Then he tastes the final product and gags. It was a good idea at the time, but …

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The Myth of the Easy Masterpiece

We’ve all heard the glorious stories of the writer who dashed out a masterpiece over the course of a weekend, solicited it, and made big bucks. Or we hear about someone writing a book for kicks, posting in on Amazon, and suddenly getting offers from film studios to turn their sudden runaway success into a show. It’s a tempting motivation to become an author, or scriptwriter, or whatever. These guys made it. How hard can it be?

Pretty hard, actually. After all, we only hear about the successes. What about those stories written over a weekend that never took off? How many books on Amazon do you think there are that nobody’s ever read?

I don’t know where I first heard the story that the screenplay for Good Will Hunting was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck over a weekend. Probably one of those motivational stories my teachers told me as an example of how life doesn’t actually work. It’s not true, by the by. Matt Damon wrote the original 40-page script as a drama class project, then worked with Affleck on revising it into a full Hollywood script. So, no, they didn’t conjure a masterpiece out of thin air in just a couple days. The foundation was already there, and they still had to work hard to translate it from written word to big screen.

Hugh Howey wrote Wool as a one-off short story that he put up for sale on Amazon. And yes, it did become so successful that he ended up writing sequels and selling the film rights and getting a good deal out of the whole thing. But as unusual as the success of Wool is, it was still based on years of writing experience and hard work. Howey had already been a diligent writer long before he published Wool. The story may have been a one-off, but Howey’s efforts weren’t. He goes into detail at length about his writing on his own blog.

All of which is to say, if you hear about a runaway success, that success is probably the result of a lot of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears that rarely make their way into the story told in magazines. The humdrum routine of writing, or scripting, or painting, or sculpting, or whatever medium you can think of doesn’t usually make for a good story, after all. Customers want the end product. The tedious hours of chipping away at marble or revising a fourth draft aren’t what they’re buying. And, quite frankly, do they even need to know about all that sweat and work?

If you’re truly devoted to something, you’ll put in the effort necessary to see it through to completion. Writing isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme. In fact, it may be the worst method possible for getting rich quickly. Sure, there are plenty of authors out there who make a living off their books. Many of them are quite wealthy, even. But only because they work to an almost obsessive degree on their projects. They devote extreme amounts of time to writing to the near-exclusion of all else. That’s not the easy path to wealth.

So, no, there aren’t any “easy masterpieces” in the world. Just a lot of grunt work and diligence that is never seen by the public eye.

Do what you love, not what you think will make you rich. That’s one thing that can make life a bit easier.

The gods and beings of ancient myth never went away. They just moved on with the times.

My book, A God Walks up to the Bar, is currently available on Amazon.com. Venture into the world of the Greek god Hermes, a world filled with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, magic, and trickery. It’s a tough job, being a god!

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Planning Ahead vs. Winging It: A Reflection on Writing Styles

Ever heard the phrase “writing by the seat of your pants?” Some writers have a knack for making up the whole story as they go. They start with no outline and no treatment. They just start writing and end up wherever they may. Improvisation is a special skill and can lead to some truly inspired work when the author goes with his gut and lets the story flow out of his mind. Like a spring bubbling out of the rock, making things up as you go can produce the most unexpected and wonderful stories.

It’s also a skill that not everyone has the good fortune to possess. I, for one, need to know where my story is going before I begin. The outline is the foundation of every story I write. Every scene, every step, every action must be planned out in advance. Like an architect designing a building, I have the blueprints spread out before me so I have an inkling of where my plot will ultimately end up.

Otherwise, I’m adrift at sea and tossed about by a series of random events on a meandering journey with no point or overarching theme. Ok, some stories do work well with random-events plots, but these aren’t the type I’m trying to write. I try to stick to my strengths.

That being said, writing is a truly organic process, and I mean that in more ways than one. Stories come alive on the keyboard (or under the pen if you’re so inclined). Like living creatures, they have urges and inclinations of their own, and a writer develops the intuition to detect those urges and know when to follow them and when to restrain. “Story whisperer” isn’t a term you’re likely to ever hear, but like animal trainers, writers end up gaining a deeper understanding of how their story “thinks” and where it wants to go. Exploring new potentialities can lead to new plot threads that improve the overall end result. Writing is full of pleasant surprises like that.

As someone who loves to plan ahead, I’m not always interested in developing every new thread of a story that is revealed as I write it. But I do find that I tend towards winging it in certain circumstances. Dialogue, especially, lends itself to improvisation, if only because no matter how much I develop a story’s framework, the dialogue between characters never really falls into place until I sit down and write it in detail.

This is the fun of writing: Watching your characters come alive and gaining a deeper knowledge of how they think and relate to each other. I’ve surprised myself plenty of times with how my own creations grow beyond my expectations.

Action scenes can also end up going in completely unpredicted directions. Writing a fight scene or a chase can deviate from the “script” as it becomes apparent your original plan simply won’t work. So, I adapt and change course. Action scenes are hard enough to write as it is. Learning to wing it when necessary adds a whole new layer of challenge that can, nevertheless, improve your story if it lines up with the logic of the scene and the characters’ natures.

What does this all mean for you as a writer (assuming you are one, of course)? Well, maybe you’re a little freaked out by my talk of stories as living creatures and think I should get some therapy. Or maybe you’re nodding in agreement. How I write is certainly not how others write, and the ideas that friends and teachers tell you may not line up with your own. Everyone has a different style: Some love to go in without a clue and find out where they end up, others definitely need a solid framework before they can begin the first sentence.

Writing styles are unique to the writer. Everyone has their own process. Whether winging it or planning ahead, all writers find their sweet spot and use it to create something awesome.

The gods and beings of ancient myth never went away. They just moved on with the times.

My book, A God Walks up to the Bar, is currently available on Amazon.com. Venture into the world of the Greek god Hermes, a world filled with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, magic, and trickery. It’s a tough job, being a god!

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Lessons I Learned Writing My First Book, Part 5: Humility

What’s the greatest challenge you face as a writer? The hours of hard work spent crafting your story? Pushing back against writer’s block? Trying to research a key piece of your book that you can’t quite get right? Finding a publisher? Finding the money to publish independently?

After all the effort you put into your book, there comes a point where you crave vindication of your efforts. After everything is said and done, you put it out onto the market and …

Where’s the jubilee? Where’s the praise? It’s MY book, it’s MY effort. Don’t I deserve it?

And here comes a hard truth: No, you actually don’t.       

We should all dream big, because big dreams encourage us to strive for excellence. But dreams alone are not the key to any sort of success. Hard work, diligence, and consistency are far greater allies in that regard. It’s easy to look at examples of literary success and think that somehow, through the mere act of wanting, we not only are able to join them, we deserve to join them. To stand up there with Hugh Howey, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Abnett, Jim Butcher, Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Pratchett, et al.

Or, going even further, to see ourselves as the next William Faulkner or Charles Dickens or F. Scott Fitzgerald. And then we complete our book, we’re proud of it, and we put in on the market and … it’s another book.

A good book, maybe, but there are no laurels or songs or movie deals. It’s a book. One among hundreds of thousands. Roll up your sleeves if you want to get more notice, because it won’t get noticed by itself. You’re an author. Not THE author, not the greatest author. An author.

Harsh? Maybe. But eating humble pie is a bittersweet affair. Reflecting on my journey to where I am now, I’m darn proud of what I’ve done. I enjoyed writing my book, and I’m enjoying starting my second one. If I wanted glory, I’d pursue a different profession.

It still stings a little, though.

Humility comes in many different forms. Sometimes it whirls in and knocks us off our haughty high ground. Sometimes it’s a series of events that remind us we’re not as self-important as we thought. Sometimes, it’s doing something that others look down on as unimportant. It’s not something that’s enjoyable to learn (a running theme with my past few articles, I’m noticing) but, as I’ve already said before, it’s necessary. Pride and egotism can take a good job and hard-earned goodwill built up with your audience and turn it to ash. We’ve all seen it. Maybe you’ve even been there before.

Keeping ourselves in perspective can, I hope, help us to understand our place in the very big and crowded world of publishing and, rather than discourage us with delusions of insignificance, drive us to work harder toward a successful and fulfilling career. Humility helps us see ourselves clearly and to see the things we can do to make ourselves the best people we can be.

The gods and beings of ancient myth never went away. They just moved on with the times.

My book, A God Walks up to the Bar, is currently available on Amazon.com. Venture into the world of the Greek god Hermes, a world filled with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, magic, and trickery. It’s a tough job, being a god!

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Lessons I Learned Writing My First Book, Part 4: Patience

Waiting, waiting, waiting. All things come to those who wait, or so they say. It’s a bit glib, isn’t it? Besides, waiting is only half the game.

Patience isn’t just about waiting. It’s about focus. It’s about working without complaint. It’s about denying yourself instant gratification in favor of long-term benefits. It’s about enduring the terrible uncertainty of whether your hard work will pay off.

It’s not … fun, per se. It’s useful. And, in the words of knowing parents everywhere, patience “builds character.”

As you may have already gathered from my previous ramblings, writing isn’t a fast process. Therefore, it takes patience. And I learned to be so while writing and publishing my book. But you know what? The writing part wasn’t where patience came into play for me. I LIKE writing, so it never felt dull or slow.

The real test was submitting my work for beta reading and editing. Not because the people I worked with took an unduly long time to respond, mind you. I’ve had the pleasure of working with great people. But it tested ME. Waiting for critiques, I could only think, “What will others think of my book? Is it good enough? Is it bad?” And I couldn’t get instant feedback and sate my desires to know. I had to sit back and wait.

There’s fear in the waiting, sometimes. Patience requires a modicum of courage. The horrible question, “What if?” pervades our minds when we think about what COULD happen. And the longer we wait for something, anything, the more “What if?” needles our minds. What if my book is bad and nobody likes it? What if I don’t get to my child’s rehearsal in time because of this red light? What if I can’t get off work in time because of this one slow customer? And so on and so on.

So, I was tested. I had to wait in inaction for a little while. I didn’t like it, but watcha gonna do? And there is a certain cathartic relief when your patience pays off and the wait is over. Delayed gratification and all that.

Discipline, perseverance, and patience. These qualities are like muscles. They must be exercised on a regular basis to grow strong. My last lesson, however, is the hardest because it is something we can’t directly govern. Life is happy to teach it, and we either learn … or we don’t. I’ll discuss it in more detail in my next post.

The gods and beings of ancient myth never went away. They just moved on with the times.

My book, A God Walks up to the Bar, is currently available on Amazon.com. Venture into the world of the Greek god Hermes, a world filled with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, magic, and trickery. It’s a tough job, being a god!

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Lessons I Learned Writing My First Book, Part 3: Perseverance

Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty …

Do you like doing pushups? What about arm curls? Or squats?

Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty … eighty-seven …

They can take a lot out of you. How often have you been tempted to stop halfway through your exercise routine?

Ninety … ninety … ninety-FIVE … Ninety … SIX.

Or have you only gone as far as you could before the burn set in?

Ninety-NINE … ONE … HUNDRED.

Perseverance is when you keep going even when your body and mind don’t want to.

There’s an element of stubbornness in persistent people. They refuse to give up or go home when things are looking down, when the weather is cruddy, when they just want to curl up and sleep the afternoon away. Perseverance is the tenacious insistence on never leaving a task half-done.

Writers need to persevere. We need to never give up no matter the circumstances. How many books have been left half-finished, never to be read by others? How many books have never been written at all?

The most important thing, I’ve found, is to focus on the end goal. It’s easier (not easy, mind you, but certainly more bearable) to stick with it when you know how close you are to the end. And as I look back, I see how quickly that work time passed. Rather than focusing on present difficulties with drafting my book or stumbling over writer’s block, I quietly focused on the goal of finishing and publishing. It really does help.

Sometimes, I felt like I had nothing worthwhile to say, or that nothing I did say could measure up to other authors. What do you do during such times? You motor on. Perseverance is, quite simply, never giving up.

There’s a lot of books that will never be written. I take satisfaction in putting one more out into the world.

The gods and beings of ancient myth never went away. They just moved on with the times.

My book, A God Walks up to the Bar, is currently available on Amazon.com. Venture into the world of the Greek god Hermes, a world filled with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, magic, and trickery. It’s a tough job, being a god!

Enjoying my blog? Don’t want to miss a single post? Subscribe for updates on when I post and follow my writing career, musings on fiction and storytelling, and reflections about life in general!

Lessons I Learned Writing My First Book, Part 2: Discipline

You’re running at a steady pace. You’ve been running for the past thirty minutes. Sweat streams down your back and drips from your brow onto your nose and neck. The marathon is halfway done. Only halfway. Your thoughts stray. You think of a cold glass of water. You think of resting – just for a moment – and catching your breath. Or maybe longer than a moment. You ran half a marathon. That’s good enough.

But you don’t stop. You keep running. You stumble and nearly trip. You regain your balance. You find your rhythm again and keep running. You feel out of breath. Now, the temptation to stop feels more like a necessity. Can’t finish the marathon if you can’t breathe. You feel like you’ll faint from exhaustion.

You remember your breathing exercises. You’ve trained for this. And you find your second wind. A burst of new energy propels you forward. You keep running. At last, you reach the end.

Marathons are a discipline. They take training, practice, and the determination to finish what you started. Writing is the same way. Crafting a book isn’t a quick sprint. It’s not a pole vault or long jump where you throw all of your strength into a few seconds of exertion. Writers must pace themselves and must be willing to get up every day, sit down at their computer, avoid the temptation to get hooked on Youtube or Facebook, and write their word count for the day.

For all that we exalt discipline and admire it in people, it’s not exactly the most well-practiced quality. We like people who accomplish great things: maybe build a skyscraper, or paint a masterpiece, or simply make a million bucks. We look at those people and we think how much patience and hard work must have gone into their achievements. We see the results of discipline, and think we should give it a go, but so many of us just can’t push ourselves. Why? Because discipline sucks.

Writing is a marathon
Runners at the start of the 2012 Borgess Half Marathon//Simon A. Thalmann//Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

It’s a slow-burning candle. It isn’t fancy and it isn’t glamorous. The results of discipline are glamorous. That fancy skyscraper, that painting, those million dollars. Wowee! I want that! But putting in the work is a pain.

Writing isn’t exactly a glamorous, exciting process either. Silently typing away at a computer doesn’t make for a great show. It’s not something you show off to others. “Look, Bob, watch me write my story! Isn’t it so cool?” Yeah, nobody’s going to care about the process. They want to see the end product.

Do you want to write? I mean really write, as a lifelong hobby or career? Do you envision yourself as a published author? That vision is the end result of discipline. You must train yourself to write on a schedule that works for you. Every day, every couple days, whatever you find works best. And then you must train yourself to be consistent about it. It’s not always pleasant, especially starting out, but it does get easier over time.

I have a day job. I had to find the time to write. Frequently, coming home from work, I didn’t want to. But I did it anyway. And the end result is, I wrote a book! I published it! I accomplished what I set out to do!

I don’t meant to scare away any of you potential writers out there. But writing can feel like a chore at times. Even so, when we set our minds to doing the things we love, we’ll make the time and effort to do them. But it does take dedication. Dreams are all well and good, but they’re nothing without action, and discipline demands action. Even a dream job has its drudgery, right?

And it’s sweeter in the end, to run toward your goal and finally reach it after a long, tiring run.

The gods and beings of ancient myth never went away. They just moved on with the times.

My book, A God Walks up to the Bar, is currently available on Amazon.com. Venture into the world of the Greek god Hermes, a world filled with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, magic, and trickery. It’s a tough job, being a god!

Enjoying my blog? Don’t want to miss a single post? Subscribe for updates on when I post and follow my writing career, musings on fiction and storytelling, and reflections about life in general!