ADD is an extremely overdiagnosed disorder which has become a crutch and a pop colloquialism. ADD now means anything as simple as daydreaming, letting your mind wander, or having thoughts pop into your head. This amelioration of a real problem is annoying to me, but I have to accept that it is the common usage.
The point of that little rant is that whenever people complain about their so-called ADD and how it is such a hindrance to writing, I will always tell them that they are looking at it the wrong way. ADD only makes writing difficult if you assume writing has to be done in a certain way. If you can't work hard, then work smart.
When I write, I will keep several windows open. I know that at any point, I may lose interest in my current topic. While I could sit down and write one thing for several hours, I could just as easily stare at a screen and not write a single word because I'm daydreaming. Well, if I'm writing a story outline and suddenly I know what I want to write for a blog post, I'm going to open up my Blogger window and start writing a blog post. If I only get halfway through my blog and lose steam, I'll try my outline again. If that fails, I'll see if I can think of any funny comics to write. If nothing is holding my attention, I might just look through my lists of writing ideas and see if something catches my eye.
Now, if you have a deadline, this is a dangerous method to choose. It may put you in the mood to write. It may inspire you to write what you need to get done. But it could just as easily make you do everything except the one piece of writing you need to do. That's when a certain amount of raw fortitude will do you more good than anything else. Of course, if you have several projects that all have to be worked on, then it is a good way to make sure that no one of them falls behind or gets ignored.
Most people aren't wrong; they're just different. You are who you are. Rather than try to conform to other people's styles, just find a style that works best for you.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
2% Risk
In college, my professors would tell us that we need to take risks in our writing. We need to do something we've never done. We need to do things we're afraid to do. We already know that we can do the things we always do. Your current level is a crutch. If you never do things you don't know you can do, you will never get better. Without the risk of failure, there is no chance of improvement. Or, to put it in the stalest way possible: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Now, I was quite the contrary lad then, so my first thought was, what if I take a risk, but it is completely insignificant? What if I write something that is 98% safe and 2% risk? Then I can say I took a risk but I have the luxury of feeling completely safe?
I never ended up asking the question, but I know now what the answer is. If2% of your writing takes a risk, then 2% of your writing has a chance to improve. Nothing in writing is black and white (except the ink and paper). Everything works on a continuous spectrum. The more you work, the more you will improve. The more risk you take, the more possibilities you will be aware of.
The one thing about the 2% risk that needs to be mentioned is that it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Beginning writers are generally terrified of taking risks; that's why they need professors to make them do it. If taking the smallest risk possible allows you to try something new by giving you a psychological edge, then it is a good thing. It may be slower and it may take longer than diving head first in the deep end, but you are still making an effort and actively improving. That is always a good thing.
Now, I was quite the contrary lad then, so my first thought was, what if I take a risk, but it is completely insignificant? What if I write something that is 98% safe and 2% risk? Then I can say I took a risk but I have the luxury of feeling completely safe?
I never ended up asking the question, but I know now what the answer is. If2% of your writing takes a risk, then 2% of your writing has a chance to improve. Nothing in writing is black and white (except the ink and paper). Everything works on a continuous spectrum. The more you work, the more you will improve. The more risk you take, the more possibilities you will be aware of.
The one thing about the 2% risk that needs to be mentioned is that it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Beginning writers are generally terrified of taking risks; that's why they need professors to make them do it. If taking the smallest risk possible allows you to try something new by giving you a psychological edge, then it is a good thing. It may be slower and it may take longer than diving head first in the deep end, but you are still making an effort and actively improving. That is always a good thing.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Ask Yourself Some Questions
When I took writing classes with David Franke, he would tell his students to take the papers they were turning in, go to the back page, and answer some questions.
What is the best part of this paper? What's the worst part? What did you learn from writing this? If you could rewrite or revise this paper, what would you do differently?
This is perhaps one of the most beneficial lessons I learned from Dr. Franke. It forced us to analyze our own work. We had to critique ourselves, both positively and negatively. We had to figure out what we actually did to create our papers. We had to think about what our goals were, how well we achieved them, and how we could do better.
Frankly, this is a process that should never end. Any writer, after every draft they write, should ask themselves these questions. Although it is difficult to be your own critic (whether you are too lax or too harsh), it is usually true that you are more familiar with your work, style, and capability than any other person you know. And even if you try to hide or to deny it, you always know when something is wrong and when something is right.
If you don't believe me, then have somebody else critique your writing. If they criticize a part you know is bad, you will agree with them. If they criticize something you know is wonderful, you will fight them. Trust me, you always know the truth, even if you aren't willing to hear it.
What is the best part of this paper? What's the worst part? What did you learn from writing this? If you could rewrite or revise this paper, what would you do differently?
This is perhaps one of the most beneficial lessons I learned from Dr. Franke. It forced us to analyze our own work. We had to critique ourselves, both positively and negatively. We had to figure out what we actually did to create our papers. We had to think about what our goals were, how well we achieved them, and how we could do better.
Frankly, this is a process that should never end. Any writer, after every draft they write, should ask themselves these questions. Although it is difficult to be your own critic (whether you are too lax or too harsh), it is usually true that you are more familiar with your work, style, and capability than any other person you know. And even if you try to hide or to deny it, you always know when something is wrong and when something is right.
If you don't believe me, then have somebody else critique your writing. If they criticize a part you know is bad, you will agree with them. If they criticize something you know is wonderful, you will fight them. Trust me, you always know the truth, even if you aren't willing to hear it.
Warm Up
My writing peers would occasionally talk with me as they were working on a project. When they started on the first page, they weren't even sure what they were trying to do. When they got to the second page, they were sure that what they were writing was crap. By the third page, they had an idea. On the fourth page, they were building up steam. At the fifth page, they were really into it and excited about what they were writing.
If my peers were writing 20-page papers, or even 10-page papers, that wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately, they mostly wrote 5-page papers. Sometimes they wrote less than that. My professor made the comment that most of his students work in the same fashion, taking several pages to reach an interesting point, and that by the time they finally said something that captured his interest, the essay had finished.
He would have liked his students to continue writing even though they had met the page requirement. He also would have been happy for us to delete this first four or five pages and start an essay from the most interesting sentence.
The mind is like a muscle, he would tell us. You don't get out of bed and run a marathon. You walk around, stretch your legs, get warmed up to work out. I have to agree with Dr. Franke; our best writing comes after we have been writing for a while. It comes when we have gotten into a groove and a mindset of writing.
I think any writing warm-ups will be beneficial, though. If, say, you are in the middle of writing a novel and you don't want to waste your time writing a bunch of crappy pages to warm up, then write something else. Make up a short story, describe a scene, write some dialogue. Do whatever writing exercises you have picked up or make some new ones for yourself. These can then be totally throwaway works that get you into the mindset that you need to be in to do your best.
I will say, though, that the more time you spend exploring and creating in a work, the more likely you are to find something good you weren't looking for. That is one reason that you may be best off warming up on your primary project. Either way, you can't really lose. The only way to lose is to never warm up.
If my peers were writing 20-page papers, or even 10-page papers, that wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately, they mostly wrote 5-page papers. Sometimes they wrote less than that. My professor made the comment that most of his students work in the same fashion, taking several pages to reach an interesting point, and that by the time they finally said something that captured his interest, the essay had finished.
He would have liked his students to continue writing even though they had met the page requirement. He also would have been happy for us to delete this first four or five pages and start an essay from the most interesting sentence.
The mind is like a muscle, he would tell us. You don't get out of bed and run a marathon. You walk around, stretch your legs, get warmed up to work out. I have to agree with Dr. Franke; our best writing comes after we have been writing for a while. It comes when we have gotten into a groove and a mindset of writing.
I think any writing warm-ups will be beneficial, though. If, say, you are in the middle of writing a novel and you don't want to waste your time writing a bunch of crappy pages to warm up, then write something else. Make up a short story, describe a scene, write some dialogue. Do whatever writing exercises you have picked up or make some new ones for yourself. These can then be totally throwaway works that get you into the mindset that you need to be in to do your best.
I will say, though, that the more time you spend exploring and creating in a work, the more likely you are to find something good you weren't looking for. That is one reason that you may be best off warming up on your primary project. Either way, you can't really lose. The only way to lose is to never warm up.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Passing Time
The world you create in your writing has at least 4 dimensions (even if your characters are 1-dimensional), which means that time is passing as the story takes place. It is very rare that a story follows every action a character takes from beginning to end. Usually, there are actions that take a long time to complete, but are dull and uninteresting (e.g. travel and sleeping). When these are happening in the story, the best thing to do is to skip over that time. But how do you do that?
The easiest way is to be completely blunt. If a person starts walking toward the next town over and it takes three hours, you could simply say, "Three hours later, she arrived in town." There's nothing wrong with it, but it is an elementary technique and can get old really fast. The main issue with it is that it tells and does not show. It also has the problem that when the audience reads that the hero is starting a trip or going to bed, we are at a steady rate of time. By suddenly telling us that we have skipped several hours, it throws the reader and disconnects us from the closeness of the world.
Writers will often exclaim that we must show and not tell, but those same writers rarely give examples to explain what that means. I shall try my hardest to not be such a writer. In writing, the passage of time is an illusion. The longer you focus on a single object or action, the slower time moves. Longer sentences also slow down time. Short sentences that explain whole objects or actions in a few words do the opposite. Interest will also affect time passage. Boring things make time drag on.
Now, let's apply these principles. Let's use the example of a person traveling from one city to another. "Sheila took her first step out of the city. She knew she was facing Fairdale, but she could not see it, not even on the horizon. The next steps came easier. There was not much to see as she walked along the trail, a cactus here, a boulder there, but each one provided a distraction. The plant life reminded her of the garden back home and the countless hours under the the midday sun she spent taking care of it. The boulders, much like clouds, let Sheila's mind wander and think of what objects they reminded her of. Several reminiscings and identifications later, the sun was setting and Sheila entered Fairdale."
This is a much stronger passage of time than a simple "three hours later". But why does it work? Let's break it down. The first sentence indicates that a journey is starting. The second says it is very far away, which means it will take a long time to reach. The third says that she is actively moving. The fourth says that it was boring, which means it will feel like a very long journey. The fifth reminds us of time passing and makes us think of the sun beating down from overhead. The sixth makes us think of unknown amounts of time passing while doing nothing at all. The seventh sentence tells us that all of these actions have occurred multiple times shows us the end of the day, and says that the journey is complete.
The technique I just showed can pass large amounts of time with not many sentences. It doesn't bore the reader with unnecessary detail, but still conveys that a lot of time has passed. If you use this technique, be aware that it also creates a mood. Boring activities will make the reader feel alone and depressed, even if that is not intended. Even hwen you are excited about where you're goiong, a long enough trip is still going to take a long time. In that case, you will want to find anothere way to pass time.
Suppose that the travel was completely unimportant to the story that was going on. In our example, we could end with the line, "Sheila took her first step out of the city." After that, a new section would begin, talking about another character in another location. This continues the story while not spending time describing insignificant events like travel. When this second storyline reaches a mundane activity, then you switch back to the first storyline, but now Sheila is already in Fairdale. Now time has passed, but since it occurred at a natural break in the story, it does not bother the audience.
One final note is on the visual media, namely movies and comics. There is another way to pass time available, which is an establishing shot. Consider you have a scene in one location and it is high noon. The next important scene occurs in a different location at night. Wat you can do is show the action starting, like the character walking toward the horizon, then cut away to a scene where we see it is night time, we see that we are in a new place, and we see the main character walking into this new place. We are now aware that the journey is complete, where we are, and who we're watching. If you are writing a comic, this is best done on a page turn, because it is a new page and it takes tame for the reader to turn to it.
The easiest way is to be completely blunt. If a person starts walking toward the next town over and it takes three hours, you could simply say, "Three hours later, she arrived in town." There's nothing wrong with it, but it is an elementary technique and can get old really fast. The main issue with it is that it tells and does not show. It also has the problem that when the audience reads that the hero is starting a trip or going to bed, we are at a steady rate of time. By suddenly telling us that we have skipped several hours, it throws the reader and disconnects us from the closeness of the world.
Writers will often exclaim that we must show and not tell, but those same writers rarely give examples to explain what that means. I shall try my hardest to not be such a writer. In writing, the passage of time is an illusion. The longer you focus on a single object or action, the slower time moves. Longer sentences also slow down time. Short sentences that explain whole objects or actions in a few words do the opposite. Interest will also affect time passage. Boring things make time drag on.
Now, let's apply these principles. Let's use the example of a person traveling from one city to another. "Sheila took her first step out of the city. She knew she was facing Fairdale, but she could not see it, not even on the horizon. The next steps came easier. There was not much to see as she walked along the trail, a cactus here, a boulder there, but each one provided a distraction. The plant life reminded her of the garden back home and the countless hours under the the midday sun she spent taking care of it. The boulders, much like clouds, let Sheila's mind wander and think of what objects they reminded her of. Several reminiscings and identifications later, the sun was setting and Sheila entered Fairdale."
This is a much stronger passage of time than a simple "three hours later". But why does it work? Let's break it down. The first sentence indicates that a journey is starting. The second says it is very far away, which means it will take a long time to reach. The third says that she is actively moving. The fourth says that it was boring, which means it will feel like a very long journey. The fifth reminds us of time passing and makes us think of the sun beating down from overhead. The sixth makes us think of unknown amounts of time passing while doing nothing at all. The seventh sentence tells us that all of these actions have occurred multiple times shows us the end of the day, and says that the journey is complete.
The technique I just showed can pass large amounts of time with not many sentences. It doesn't bore the reader with unnecessary detail, but still conveys that a lot of time has passed. If you use this technique, be aware that it also creates a mood. Boring activities will make the reader feel alone and depressed, even if that is not intended. Even hwen you are excited about where you're goiong, a long enough trip is still going to take a long time. In that case, you will want to find anothere way to pass time.
Suppose that the travel was completely unimportant to the story that was going on. In our example, we could end with the line, "Sheila took her first step out of the city." After that, a new section would begin, talking about another character in another location. This continues the story while not spending time describing insignificant events like travel. When this second storyline reaches a mundane activity, then you switch back to the first storyline, but now Sheila is already in Fairdale. Now time has passed, but since it occurred at a natural break in the story, it does not bother the audience.
One final note is on the visual media, namely movies and comics. There is another way to pass time available, which is an establishing shot. Consider you have a scene in one location and it is high noon. The next important scene occurs in a different location at night. Wat you can do is show the action starting, like the character walking toward the horizon, then cut away to a scene where we see it is night time, we see that we are in a new place, and we see the main character walking into this new place. We are now aware that the journey is complete, where we are, and who we're watching. If you are writing a comic, this is best done on a page turn, because it is a new page and it takes tame for the reader to turn to it.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Quests
Any long form story, aside from a slice of life piece, is going to be about a quest. So, what's a quest.
A quest is a mission that is completed by doing several other missions. In the classic story, the hero wants to kill the villain. That's the main quest. So now the hero has to complete it by doing smaller missions. The first mission is to find out where he lives. The second mission is to go there.
Now, since a quest is made up of missions, you can realize that each mission can consist of smaller missions. Our hero has the simple mission of going to where the villain lives. But on the way, he sees a platoon of guards protecting it, so he now has the sub-mission of evading the guards. After completing the sub-mission of evading the guards, the hero completes the regular mission of getting to where te villain lives. Now he's at the third mission where he has to find and kill the villain.
Another aspect of quests is that they are malleable. Just because a main quest started with a particular mission doesn't mean that it has to stay that way. When our hero finds the villain, he has the obligatry speech before delivering the coups de grace. During this speech, he finds out that the villain was not really a villain at all. He was framed by the person who really did it and was too afraid to come clean. Now the main quest has been altered to go and find this new person and kill him.
As the main quest itself can be altered, so too can it be extended. Our hero finds this new man and kills him, thus ending his quest. But in doing so, he is unfulfilled. He cannot understand what drove the villain to do the things he did. They didn't seem random, but they had no obvious purpose. The hero now starts a new quest of finding out the history of the villain and the purpose of his actions.
It's pretty easy to see that you can use any of these methods to infinitely extend a story. More importantly, it can be used to add interest to a story. If you were reading a story where the character says, "Now that I know where he is, I'm going to hunt him down and kill him", and the very next line is a piece of narration that says, "He arrived at the castle." It glosses over a great amount of time that passed in the story's world, which could have been spent developing the character or having him jump through hoops so that we start rooting for and caring about him.
The other reason to do these quest modifications is that they add excitement to the story. You can tell any story in a sentence (in the example I've been making up, it is "the hero gets wronged and kills the person who did it"). But stories are more than one sentence. So when you tell your story in more than one sentence, make it more interesting than a one sentence story. Now you have a few ways to do so.
A quest is a mission that is completed by doing several other missions. In the classic story, the hero wants to kill the villain. That's the main quest. So now the hero has to complete it by doing smaller missions. The first mission is to find out where he lives. The second mission is to go there.
Now, since a quest is made up of missions, you can realize that each mission can consist of smaller missions. Our hero has the simple mission of going to where the villain lives. But on the way, he sees a platoon of guards protecting it, so he now has the sub-mission of evading the guards. After completing the sub-mission of evading the guards, the hero completes the regular mission of getting to where te villain lives. Now he's at the third mission where he has to find and kill the villain.
Another aspect of quests is that they are malleable. Just because a main quest started with a particular mission doesn't mean that it has to stay that way. When our hero finds the villain, he has the obligatry speech before delivering the coups de grace. During this speech, he finds out that the villain was not really a villain at all. He was framed by the person who really did it and was too afraid to come clean. Now the main quest has been altered to go and find this new person and kill him.
As the main quest itself can be altered, so too can it be extended. Our hero finds this new man and kills him, thus ending his quest. But in doing so, he is unfulfilled. He cannot understand what drove the villain to do the things he did. They didn't seem random, but they had no obvious purpose. The hero now starts a new quest of finding out the history of the villain and the purpose of his actions.
It's pretty easy to see that you can use any of these methods to infinitely extend a story. More importantly, it can be used to add interest to a story. If you were reading a story where the character says, "Now that I know where he is, I'm going to hunt him down and kill him", and the very next line is a piece of narration that says, "He arrived at the castle." It glosses over a great amount of time that passed in the story's world, which could have been spent developing the character or having him jump through hoops so that we start rooting for and caring about him.
The other reason to do these quest modifications is that they add excitement to the story. You can tell any story in a sentence (in the example I've been making up, it is "the hero gets wronged and kills the person who did it"). But stories are more than one sentence. So when you tell your story in more than one sentence, make it more interesting than a one sentence story. Now you have a few ways to do so.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
All In One Sitting
I've always tried to do as much writing as I can in one sitting, even when it forced me to keep strange hours. I do it because I want to keep the feel of my writing.
In my experiences, when I get into a groove of writing, I sound a particular way. I have a rhythm, a flow, a sound. I'm in a groove because I have a steady, consistent pace. Once I stop writing, I'm out of the groove and I lose my train of thought. Sometimes I can slip back into it, but it's not a guarantee. If I wait too long (whether that be an hour or a day), I may never sound exactly like I did when I first started.
When I finish a draft and go back to it, I can always find exactly where I took a break and came back to it because it sounds different. Now, I know that longer or more complicated pieces will take several sittings to create no matter what. That's why we go through several drafts when we write something. But even when I write a new draft, I still try to write as much as I can in one sitting. It always makes life easier.
Eventually, though, there reaches a point where either you simply can't write something in one sitting or you need to make minor tweaks to your work to smooth or clean it up. When you are at that point, then you should make sure to read your work in one sitting (or as few as possible) to check for any bad seams in your work.
The point of this whole thing is that you want a smooth, polished work when you go to publish. Writing it all in one setting is a technique I use to try to maintain a polish in earlier drafts. If you can maintain a style from sitting to sitting, or if you can add all of your polish at the final phase of editing, then do that and save yourself the horrifically late hours of trying to finish a draft.
In my experiences, when I get into a groove of writing, I sound a particular way. I have a rhythm, a flow, a sound. I'm in a groove because I have a steady, consistent pace. Once I stop writing, I'm out of the groove and I lose my train of thought. Sometimes I can slip back into it, but it's not a guarantee. If I wait too long (whether that be an hour or a day), I may never sound exactly like I did when I first started.
When I finish a draft and go back to it, I can always find exactly where I took a break and came back to it because it sounds different. Now, I know that longer or more complicated pieces will take several sittings to create no matter what. That's why we go through several drafts when we write something. But even when I write a new draft, I still try to write as much as I can in one sitting. It always makes life easier.
Eventually, though, there reaches a point where either you simply can't write something in one sitting or you need to make minor tweaks to your work to smooth or clean it up. When you are at that point, then you should make sure to read your work in one sitting (or as few as possible) to check for any bad seams in your work.
The point of this whole thing is that you want a smooth, polished work when you go to publish. Writing it all in one setting is a technique I use to try to maintain a polish in earlier drafts. If you can maintain a style from sitting to sitting, or if you can add all of your polish at the final phase of editing, then do that and save yourself the horrifically late hours of trying to finish a draft.
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