August 18, 2010
Advice About Writing Advice, Please
I’m always trying to update a general advice sheet I hand out in my fiction workshops. If you have things you think I should add or take out or clarify, please let me know. Thanks.
P.S. I’m open to sarcasm too.
“Write as clearly as possible; and in doing so, enclose mystery which is never explained, but which gives life to the whole.” Paul Horgan
If you want to write fiction…
• Be a reader of fiction. Read broadly and deeply in the realm of writing you wish to pursue, but also try to avoid reading only the things you know you will like. Remember that many of your future favorites may be works you didn’t like initially but grew to appreciate. Make a personal anthology of works and parts of works that you admire. Look at it as a whole when it has grown large, in order to discern patterns in what you like—patterns you would probably not notice in your day-to-day routine of reading. Develop your own sense of quality in writing ( your own writing and that of others ), and stand by it without making law of it. And don’t write what you wouldn’t read.
• Your admiration of fiction should include a persistent curiosity about how it works on you—how it produces an experience of the sort you long for.
• Learn to love the practice of writing, rather than thinking only of the rewards that may come after you have written. Remember that no writing is wasted effort: failed attempts are practice and raw material for other efforts. Never be without pen and paper or some way of making notes. Don’t decide to be a writer if you don’t like to write (which is not to say that it should be easy). Know what you want from writing and why you want it.
• Never believe that you will want to publish everything you write.
• Learn to be a good judge of those who judge your writing: sometimes such readers will be idiots, even when they offer praise.
• The story comes first: the “truth” of the experience that informed the writing is irrelevant if the story does not compel attention.
• Be wary of stories that require extensive research: the need for more research may become a ready excuse for avoiding the writing to be done. (This doesn’t mean you should avoid doing needed research.)
• The “idea” for a story is often found only by way of writing it. Beware of Great Ideas for stories that seduce you into thinking that the work is already almost done before you have begun to write.
• Try to live inside the story you are writing. Notice how characters would gesture when they speak. Notice the time it would take to cross a room or a city.
• Try to write a full draft of what you are working on before you begin to revise (once you have established some momentum).
• Strive for economy at all levels: a ten-page story reduced to five without loss is a better story. Don’t describe again what you have already adequately described. Learn to cut the brilliant scene that doesn’t help the story (you will probably be able to use it elsewhere).
• Never assume that the reader will wait long for something interesting to happen. The first sentence is a good place to ensure that the next one will be read.
• Don’t bore the reader ( Which reader? Who are you writing for? ).
• Avoid clichés of word choice, treatment, and concept. Watch out for auto-pilot writing that seems wonderfully easy because—you are spooling out a smear of stock phrases and obligatory situations.
• Don’t present events and information in a story so quickly that the reader has no time to experience such things, or so slowly that interest wanes. Watch out for ineffective overlapping of dramatic scene and summary.
• If you think you have been very clever in a story, you have probably been too clever. If you have to explain a joke—it’s not funny.
• Don’t shift point of view until you have a clear understanding of the problems this may cause.
• If you want readers to care about each word of your work, show that you do by proofreading closely.
* * *
comments
Leave a Reply
Are your students open to sarcasm?
Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Fixing to read.
The cat among the canaries.
Also, this.
Daryl, I don’t know whether or not you subscribe to the reading aloud test, but I suspect that you might and that it may even be something that emerges once a semester is underway and the class gets into sharing and critiquing work. You reckon it might be worth including an encouragement to read aloud — to oneself, to others, from one’s own work-in-progress, from the work of other writers?
Reading aloud doesn’t help those with tin ears, but I think that the stigma sometimes attached to vocalizing or sub-vocalizing while reading prevents many aspiring writers from using what can be a valuable tool.
Sheila–Yes, thank you–I should include mention of reading aloud as you say. We always do a lot of that in the workshops, and I always make a point of noting how the ear will catch problems the eye often misses. Not to mention reading aloud makes the experience of fiction get out there in ways that show the full range of what it can do. I’ll put that in there.
And about sarcasm: I’m open to their sarcasm, if it’s good sarcasm. I don’t mind keeping things light, so long as students aren’t ridiculing what other students are saying or presenting.
I’ve not yet read all of the writers’ responses to Toíbín’s observations, Lucy, but of those I have read, I like best what Joyce Carol Oates says. Thoughtful, seemingly honest, and sensible.
“If you feel you have to explain a joke…”
So true, Daryl. Such is where I find myself sometimes. (Maybe sometimes more often than I’d care to admit.) My explanations often end with, “Get it?”
Response is often, “Yeah.” [I get it, it isn't funny.]
So thumbs up for the rule called “Don’t bore the reader….”
There is a certain controlled improvisation in the works I love to read. The voice in my ear, telling a good tale, with authority in a written piece.
Your writing, for me, does this Daryl. You deliver a voice to attend to.
When the reader starts, s/he is immediately transported to a place and time not they’re own, where one can do nothing but scan the lines and enter another life. One finishes, compelled onward by every word and, at end, knows s/he’s seen some thing of their own place in the world.
Two other great quotes from the Colm Toíbín interview: that he writes, compelled by
and
There’s probably a lot to be said for the discipline that is a necessary part of writing for money. There is nothing soulless about that.
Thank you Rick, my dear man. I very much like the point you make about controlled improvisation. It’s the difference between something that is merely new, and something that is significantly new. So many people looking for edge find a precipice in Nebraska that, indeed, nobody has seen. The “controlled” part of it is a sensitivity applied to selected aspects, with selection being guided by that inner guinea pig of an eye and ear shaped by love of the power of language.
Lucy–Yes, I do understand that many “successful” writes say they don’t enjoy writing, but I also know many aspiring writers who don’t like to write yet still harbor fantasies of making the money the other lugubriously cash-flush writers speak of. My view of it has always been this: I love the feeling of discovery that comes from writing (in the middle of much pain and suffering the process brings); I never wanted to write for money because, then, it’s just a job, and who would fucking prefer working to doing something else more interesting?; and, many young writers are never going to make any money from writing, even when that’s what they are hoping for, but this might change if they come to enjoy the practice of writing, since they would be more likely to do more of it and have a good time as they were doing it.
Yes but it does not always work out that the people who have a great time doing it write anything worth reading. I suppose what I’m hearing in Toíbín’s words is a kind of pointing to something other than either pleasure or the pursuit of money. I think it’s a mistake to read his comments as implying he writes for the pursuit of money, rather that the fact that this opportunity, this possibility, of earning a living, of writing in order to earn a living, is a necessary companion on this road of discovery and discipline, and bringing these hazy worlds into being.
I suggested this link more as a kind of alternative viewpoint to the whole topic, a kind of cymbal crash and the value of that, rather than straightforward advice of any kind. Inspiration is always a kick off from the linear.
“Inspiration is always a kick off from the linear.” So true, Lucy. Thank you. I’m sure tortured souls have produced brilliant work, and many tourtured souls have wanted to but haven’t seen it come to pass. I guess my point concerns motivations and what causes a person to dive into an effort in a way that makes everything else wait. My view is that desire (not to be confused with a necessarily present pleasure) is what makes it more likely that an artist of any sort will find a way to keep doing that thing that seems valuable–even if the end aim of the effort is ambiguous. It is possibly to be inventive in the ways one deals with pecuniary necessities, so as to leave room for one’s desire to write or paint and so on. Of course once one has won a big prize or two, and is sought out instead of having to beg–then it’s splendid to be in a position of being able to say no rather than having to say yes..
Yes, desire or maybe even just a really persistent itch, like a mosquito bite, or as Toíbín has it,”things that will not go away”, and the “grim determination” to deal with them.
You know, this grim determination reminds me of childbirth, labour. Great and necessary things come of it, and by god that child has got to get out of that place it’s in, one way or another. It’s an obvious analogy but I’ve felt something like it in getting this album I’m releasing in a few weeks, out into the world. There is a lot of excitement and care about it along the way, always afterwards, even just after writing or figuring out a line, especially after hearing something Ross has done to it, but the process itself of making this stuff is just very focussed. It’s just a very focussed kind of bringing into being.
the thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately applies more to editing I think than to writing, but allowing yourself the time to get acquainted with the overall arc of the story, the big picture so to speak, so that you can then pay attention to the details.
Lucy–Yes, I love that focus. And I love it that the experience of that focus is there whatever happens. I wonder if that points to a fear I might have of hoping for something? I don’t know. I do know I can’t wait to hear the album, dear Lucy. It is sure to have all of your loveliness in it.
Deron–I like that focus on editing you speak of, since it points to the artificiality of thinking that a work is suddenly there or it isn’t. Different kinds of powers live in a person, and giving all of them a chance to participate is what makes works that are larger than the artist’s intentions.
I don’t expect I’ll ever make more money writing than I do now. But, surprise me universe!
When you put up a creative nonfiction advice post, let me know!
Deron, editing is all, isn’t it? My greatest failing. Not giving time enough to let something sit and cook, to present exactly when it is ready? I feel I’ve been lucky to find the right moment in time for some exertions. Yet, I’ve brought many things out of the oven, under done. Raw, even. I’ve brought things out over-cooked, dry and juice-less.
Is it a lucky happenstance, when all good things come together to make a meal? For Danny, it seems it isn’t so hard, he knows what he is about in the kitchen. (Still even for him, sometimes the hollandaise separates.)
Finding the voice, finding the right moment where some thing has cooked long enough, presenting it at the right moment. Sometimes, all those things come together. Isn’t it delicious when others notice?
And is the judge anyone but you, (for yours, me for mine) in the end?
Jeremy–Creative non-fiction draws upon many of the skills fiction writers practice, so maybe some of this would be useful in that realm. Consider, for instance, Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried, which straddles the line between fiction and non-fiction in a very effective way.
I see you so clearly, Rick,in the flesh and blood, even though I have never laid eyes on you. You are a writer even here, you know. There is a fine gift in that and you have it.
Daryl,
You’re right, of course, though I’ve found in teaching creative nonfiction that most of my students rely too heavily on fictive techniques (for instance, they fail to realize the point-of-view limitations that CNF writers must deal with). I like to have them work with meditative and lyric essays to get them making connections with poetry.
Also, we CNF writers have a “non”-shaped chip on our shoulders, so any time we can differentiate ourselves from the non-negatively defined genres, we take it and run.
Thank you, Cece. Your words bolster me. I count myself an amateur, at best.
I don’t know how helpful this is because it hasn’t (yet) resulted in better writing from my students (I teach, mostly, composition classes), but some of them say it’s helpful, so:
“Write like your subject is more important than you are.”
(I see this as linking up, by the way, with Lucy’s analogy to labor and childbirth: that, yes, the artist brings it to fruition but, at its best, it will seem, even to the artist, to have an agency apart from (and greater than) the circumstances of its making.)
To write better forget any other advice (including this).
John–Hello! It’s good to see your thoughts here. And your advice gets right to the heart of what is needed.
In the end I guess my distribution of an advice sheet is an index of my own frustrations with people who sign up for workshops. When I teach advanced workshops I don’t presume to give such advice except as it relates to specific things that come up. But my university opens beginning and intermediate creative writing classes to anybody who wants to attend, so I often get students who just think it will be an easy class. Many of them don’t even read fiction, and when asked to name a favorite work many will glumly cite a standard text assigned in high school. By the end of the course most of them are much more interested in fiction and can point to things that have actually moved them. But right at first I always feel the need to indicate that the real pursuit of any art requires a deep sense of its value and a strong will to push past lazy efforts.
I remember the writer David Bottoms (or was it David Means?) saying that students would sometimes ask him if he thought they had talent. His response: “If I said you didn’t would you quit writing?” That has always struck me as the right thing to say in that situation.
Jeremy– I can see how the POV limitations would cause problems in a CNF class. I get a whole different set of POV problems in mine! I also find that the most promising fiction writers are those coming to it from having first written poetry (seriously). Nothing like poetry to show a person just how much work a single word can do.
I think it was Auden who said he saw more promise in a young poet who wrote because he wanted to fool around with words to see what could be done with them–than in those who insisted that they had lots of things they needed to say.