ARE YOU PLAYING FOR KEEPS OR JUST PLAYING?

 Kristin Lamb wrote an intriguing post on how to write NO MATTER WHAT:

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/how-to-become-a-lean-mean-writing-machine/

She points out that many of our noted writers were journalists, but forgot the two most famous:

 Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway.

When the bullets are flying and the forest fire blazing, your editor does not have time to wait for your muse to become inspired.

She equates journalism with blogging since it is a form of digital journalism.

And she is right: 

We have to be concise, engaging, and convey the most information using the fewest words possible.

BUT IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR STORY …

Your novel is going nowhere.   

It will be buried under “wonderful moments” that tug at the heart and stalls your story.  

What is the story of LOTR? 

Is it Frodo throwing the Ring into the river of fire in Modor, or is it Frodo finding Frodo?

What is the story of GONE WITH THE WIND?   

Is it Scarlett hopelessly chasing Ashely Wilkes or vainly trying to retrieve the vanished South she loved?

LEARN TO SEE WHAT IS AROUND YOU.

Take the first face you see in the next crowd. Describe it in ways that would draw in a reader and accurately display what your eyes see.

What follows each major scene in your novel?  If it does not turn the reader’s expectation upside down, you’re going to bore her.

DRAW YOUR READER INTO YOUR NOVEL BY MAKING THEM PART OF IT.

How to do that?   

Give them a character to root for, to relate to.  All humans bleed, hope, have their hearts broken.  

Have your heroine suffer those universal blows.   

Better yet have your antagonist suffer them as well.

BE A DO-ER NOT A DREAMER.

Write every day.  Even if it is only a paragraph.  Write every day.

Make a Bonzai tree out of your novel.   

If you write 5 pages in the morning, refine them to 3 in the evening.

SAY IT IN QUALITY NOT QUANTITY.

November is coming up.  Forget volume.  Focus on value.

Have you ever read a novel and groaned, "Just get to the point!"

Don't do that to your reader.   

Raymond Chandler once wrote: "She gave him a look that jutted four inches out of his back."

Short.  Punchy.  Funny.

It made me want to read on.

I hope that this helped in some small way.  If not, read Kristen Lamb's blog.  I know she will help you.

GHOST OF MARK TWAIN HERE_ IWSG POST FOR July

"I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them."
- Mark Twain

Ghost of Mark Twain here:

I try not to criticize that Stephanie Meyer gal to Roland, but her books madden me so that I cannot conceal my frenzy from him.

I have to stop every time I begin.

Every time I read any of those Twilight/Good Night books, I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Then, I realize that gal ain't dead yet.  Maybe I can convince the ghost of Lovecraft to fix that for me, don't you know?

I just flat couldn't finish any of those DEAD books by that filly Charlaine Harris.  If she would listen, I would tell her that a successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.


Not that any woman no how ever listened to me when I was talking sense.


That her books sell don't necessarily make them good.

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail.

The trouble with most fiction of today is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.

I know you friends of Roland are more open to listening than those two fillies, so I have a few hints at how to write yourselves a good novel --

1.) Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

2.) And while we are on the topic of editing --  NEVER POLISH THE FIRST CHAPTER UNTIL THE LAST ONE IS WRITTEN.

3.) A novel is like a young'un -- it grows in ways you never planned.  Just type it out chapter by chapter, letting the growing pains take you where they will.

4.) A novel is like life -- things happen, new ideas suggest themselves, and intriguing possiblities arise.  Throw them into the soil of your novel, you will be surprised at what the harvest will be.

5.) A novel to be novel must be novel.  Don't have the dog wag his tail.  Have his tail wag him.

6.) A novel is a dog house --

     So is your house going to hold a small, a medium, a lagre dog -- or just for the husband when he is thrown out by his wife?

     The size of the "dog" will dictate how you go about structuring your "house" (novel).

7.) Plots are limited.  Characters are limitless.  So always begin with the characters.

     Your novel will shine, not by what you have going on in it, but by the breath you breathe into your characters.

8.) The characters you develop depend on who you are.  Hemingway was Hemingway.  Shakespeare was everybody else.

Remember:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

AN OPEN LETTER TO WRITERS FROM HEMINGWAY

*
Ghost of Ernest Hemingway here.

I and some friends at Meilori's

were talking about Ms. Fite's complaint about no support from those who had dangled its promise to her.

Now, all of you here already know how underwhelmed I am by these monthly word races:

the rush for word count blunts your ability to produce words that count.

Charlie’s (Scribner’s) ridiculing of my daily word count was because he did not understand me or writing well

nor could he know how happy one felt to have put down properly 422 words as you wanted them to be.

And days of 1200 or 2700 were something that made you happier than you could believe. Since I found that 400 to 600 well done was a pace I could hold much better, I was always happy with that number. But if I only had 320 I felt good.

Candy, my dear, listen to an old ghost:

Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.

There’s no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it is like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

I think you should learn about writing from everybody who has ever written that has anything to teach you.

You must set a regular routine. Believe it or not, Candy, I had one:

Ordinarily I never read anything before I wrote in the morning to try and bite on the old nail with no help, no influence and no one giving me a wonderful example or sitting looking over my shoulder.

So, you see, those who refrain from giving you support or chiding you for lack of production are actually doing you a very real favor.

Zelda Fitzgerald has urged me to do what your computer friends seem reluctant to do. So as a gentleman ghost, I will give you a few hints on how to write each day:

1.) You have to look at your words as if seeing them for the first time.

What is on the page is all your readers are going to see :

not what you meant to say, not the images that were in your mind while you wrote them ... just your words.

What emotions do your WRITTEN words leave you with? Yes, I ended that sentence that way on purpose. See how I did that? Don't do it.

2.) If you want to succeed, you must have talent like Coleridge had.

More important, you must have the discipline of Michaelangelo. Coleridge wasted his talent in drugs.

Leonardo wasted his talent in doing party favors for princes.

As my friend, Samuel Clemens, once wrote:

Each day is a coin. You can spend it any way you want. But you can only spend it once. Make each day count.

3.) Leave out the non-essentials.

You know what I mean. Pick up a book in the store at random. Slip into the middle and start to read. What do you see?

Enormous, bloated eye-boring paragraphs. Plaster paris descriptions of places I have no wish to be. Slides of cousin Merle's trip to Idaho. (If you have seen one pair of potato eyes, you've seen them all.)

Blah-blah-blah.

The dialogue should be short, funny, something to bring up your eyes from the page and make you reflect on something that hit you like the memory of your first mistake in public.

There should be danger, love, or laughter ... on every page. Because it may be the only page the considering buyer will ever read.

4.) The most important gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.

Sitting at Meilori's the other night, I read a few entries in a computer-journal first paragraph contest of all things

There was this one where a woman lay in a pit of dead bodies, looking up at a ton of rock and more human corpses about to drop on her. Did she curse and get the hell out of the way?

No, she lay there like Hamlet contemplating the state of the world where such a thing could happen.

Excuse me, lady?

I understand depressed. After all I did commit suicide. But if tons of rock and rotting bodies are about to crush me, I scramble the hell out of the way.

5.) Your scenes must read true ... fake we can have by listening to the State of the Union address.

You living read to live outside of yourselves ... in adventures where life makes sense, where you find fun, acceptance, and love.

Life is only life ...

when it is real ... or seems real.

When characters are flat, prose puppets, made to do what you want them to do, not what real flesh-and-blood humans would do or say ...

the story seems flat like coke left out on the table a day, no fizz, no sparkle ... no readers.

6.) Good writing is true writing:

If a writer is making up a story, it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life he has and how disciplined he is. So that when he makes something up, it is as it would truly be.

The more a writer learns of life, the better he or she will be able to imagine what a set of circumstances would feel or seem. Do it well enough, and the readers will get a feeling as if what they are reading actually happened.

7.) I learned never to empty the well of my writing.

I learned to always stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Last Bit of Wisdom:

Writers should work alone.

They should see each other only after their work is done,

and not too often then.

Write for yourself. As you type your manuscript, write for a person you know, living or dead, to make that person smile or be caught up in the wonder.

There!

What are you doing still staring at the screen? Put the seat of your pants in the seat of your chair and WRITE!

* {This photgraphic image is from the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (JFK Library).

This image was originally created and/or owned by Ernest Hemingway and/or his wife Mary Hemingway.

After Ernest Hemingway's death, his widow Mary donated many of his papers, photographs and other items to the JFK Library,

and transferred the copyright for images she owned to the JFK Library.

The JFK Library is part of the National Archives, an agency of the United States Federal Government, and has released the photos into the public domain.

This photo is marked "Public Domain" on its web page at the JFK Library.}

HOW TO WRITE THEIR BEST READ OF THE YEAR

"At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable."

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, Forward to Sweet Bird of Youth

*) Tennessee gives us the first clue :


Readers usually first discover the world of books for the same reason Tennessee found the realm of creating his own worlds :

Something was lacking in their daily lives.

Like the hunt for the mythical will-o-wisp, the hunt for the fulfillment of that lack drives them even today to read.

In childhood, we often feel different, feel outside the group, feel weak, and feel unloved.

Those same ghosts haunt many into their adult lives.

Give readers a protagonist that they can identify with,

whose goals and hurts echo their own,

and dangle the fulfillment of those aims in front of them being threatened -- well, you've certainly gotten their attention.

Which brings us to the real number one.

1.) Learn the lesson of Madonna :

Before you can get them to read your book, you have to get the reader to pick it up.

Your Title :

When Madonna chose her name it was controversial, attention-getting, and short.

Same for the title of your book. It must be short, grab the eye from the endless titles on the book shelves, and be jarring :

LIPS OF THE LEPER. SEX ON THE ROAD. RIGHT TURN ON DEAD.

Tell me you wouldn't at least pick up those books to flip a page or two.

Which leads to our second path to Best Read of the Year.

2.) Each page may be your reader's last.

Think channel surfing.

Have you ever surfed the TV, just listening for a second to each program you passed?

One would have a snippet of dialogue so jarring or funny or both that you just had to stay and watch.

Another would have a scene so riveting,

you leaned in close on the edge of your seat to see what would happen next,

hoping to be able to catch on to the story as it progressed.

Each page of your novel has to be like that.

You have to turn the browser into the buyer. You have to keep the reader burning to turn the next page. Arthur Miller has a clue to how we can do that :

"One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world,

and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives."
ARTHUR MILLER, "The Shadows of the Gods"

3.) Be like Megan Fox's plunging cleavage or minuscule hem line : eye magnets.

Suspense. You have to keep them guessing. How?

4.) Sow the dragon's teeth, water, then reap the deadly harvest :

a.) Show a ring of black mushrooms in the neighbor's yard in whose center lies your MC's dead cat.

b.) A little later have your neighbors invite your MC to dinner. They are eating those black mushrooms stewed. Your MC politely declines that item on the menu.

c.) A few chapters later, the rings of black mushroom are in everybody's yard but hers. And everybody has stopped talking to her.

d.) One evening as she coming back from her nightly jog, she sees a mob of zombie-like neighbors trudging to her door, each carrying a tray of those black mushrooms.

You get the idea : Suggest a puzzling problem. Let it blossom strangely. Have the harvest come out of the darkness to threaten your MC.

4.) When a good writer is having fun,

the audience is almost always having fun too.

STEPHEN KING, Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 17, 2007

Make the readers laugh.

The laughter will make the following harrowing adventures that much more intense.

Work to give your characters one-liners that the reader will repeat to her friends.

Making your readers chuckle along with your heroes will endear them to her. So when one cries or makes the ultimate sacrifice for the others, the reader will mourn as if for a real person.

Your novel will have the semblance of real life even if it is a fantasy or horror story.


Humor is the glue that holds the reader to the next page :

"As we understand it, the surest way to make a living by the pen is to raise pigs."

ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs

5.) Don't forget the music :

"To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make." Truman Capote

Have each page contain a paragraph of prose that rolls like billowing fog in the awakening dawn, catching the heartstrings of the reader.

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions." James Michener

"In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection.

But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word.

When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm."

Fran Lebowitz {Which is great advice.}

6.) Love is not a four letter word in writing.

Most readers live loveless lives in this country. Sometimes the loneliest people in America are the married ones.

At least give them the dream that real love can exist between two intelligent people.

Give them love that survives the bed sheets and goes with the couple into their daily lives.

Give that loving couple struggles that draw them together not pry them apart. A true, lasting love is like driving a car at night.

You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

LAST WORDS :

Writing is eternal,

For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent,

And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe.
As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin, So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, Proverbial Philosophy

***

GYSPY_ALL RIGHT HUMANS, HERE'S HOW YOU WRITE A BESTSELLER

Food Guy's laid out in Bronchitis-Land, so it's up to me to pull up the slack.

Again.

1.) You have to look at your words as if seeing them for the first time.

What's on the page is all your readers are going to see : not what you meant to say, not the images that were in your mind while you wrote them ... just your words.

What emotions do your WRITTEN words leave you with? Yes, I ended that sentence that way on purpose. See how I did that? Don't do it.

2.) If you humans want to succeed, you must have talent like Coleridge had.

More important, you must have the discipline of Michaelangelo. Coleridge wasted his talent in drugs. Leonardo wasted his in doing party favors for princes. I tried to tell them both, but no human listens to the wisdom of knowing eyes.

3.) Leave out the boring stuff.

You know what I mean. Pick up a book in the store at random. Slip into the middle and start to read. What do you see?

Big chunky, eye-boring paragraphs. Plaster paris descriptions of places I have no wish to be. Slides of cousin Merle's trip to Idaho. (You've seen one pair of potato eyes, you've seen them all.)

Blah-blah-blah.

The dialogue should be short, funny, something to bring up your eyes from the page and make you reflect on something that hit you like the memory of your first mistake in public.

There should be danger, love, or laughter ... on every page. Because it may be the only page the considering buyer will ever read.

4.) Like Hemingway told me : the most important gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.

No shit.

While Food Guy was droning the Mormon Tabernacle of snores, I was reading Nathan Bransford first paragraph contest for laughs.

There was this one where a woman lay in this pit of dead bodies, looking up at a ton of rock and more human corpses about to drop on her. Did she swear and get the hell out of the way?

No, she laid there like Hamlet contemplating the state of the world where such a thing could happen.

Uh, excuse me, lady?

I understand depressed. I mean, I do live with Food Guy, and all. But if tons of rock and rotting bodies are about to crush this furry princess, I scramble the hell out of the way ...

and leave the hissing at life's pissiness for when I am safely out of the way, thank you very much!

5.) Your scenes must read true ... fake we can have by listening to the State of the Union address.

You humans read to live outside of yourselves ... in adventures where life makes sense, where you find fun, acceptance, and love. Life is only life ...

when it is real ... or seems real.

When characters are flat, prose puppets, made to do what you want them to do, not what real flesh-and-blood humans would do or say ...

the story seems flat like coke left out on the table a day, no fizz, no sparkle ... no readers.

6.) Last words of wisdom from the princess :

Good writing is true writing. If a human is making up a story, it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life he has and how disciplined he is. So that when he makes something up, it is as it would truly be.

The more a human learns of life, the better he or she will be able to imagine what a set of circumstances would feel or seem. Do it well enough, and the readers will get a feeling as if what they are reading actually happened.

Last : Write for yourself. And write for a person you know, living or dead, to make that person smile or be caught up in the wonder.

*) My paws are sore. That's all the wisdom you humans can handle. Oh, goody, Food Guy just turned over. The snoring assault has ended.
***