Extremes Are Easy

The advice when planning out your characters is to know them thoroughly. Know them better than the audience does. Know things about them that may not even appear in your story, but are part of their character (which would affect how and why they do the things they do).

This is good advice, but not always easy. People are complicated and it takes a lot of mental energy to build one from scratch.

Sometimes the simplest way to go is to make your characters extreme. Extremes are easy. Somebody who is all good all the time will be pretty predictable. Same thing for people who are always lazy or permanently trouble making.

If you are wanting to start getting into serious planning for your writing - where characters are from, how they got where they are, how they would react to situations - start by working on extreme characters. You can still make them interesting, even if they are somewhat predictable.

Muster Up The Courage

It's a funny situation to be in, when you really want to do something, but you are held back. All too often, you are held back by yourself. You are full of fear and doubt and hesitation, so you have to muster up the courage to step forward and do what you want.

The irony to me is that courage is seen as this great, valorous quality, but ultimately, it is simply removing your inhibitions. If you are thinking about writing a novel, you may not do it because you fear the work, fear you might fail to finish, fear you may be embarrassed when others hear about it, fear that it sucks. But beneath all of that, you want to write that novel!

Courage, in this case, is ignoring those fears and pushing forward. You may do so because you are more confident than fearful. You may do so because you lied to yourself and said that you weren't afraid. Whyever you did it, you overcame your inhibitions.

If courage is simply overcoming your inhibitions, it is no wonder that alcohol is known as "liquid courage".

However you choose to do it, realize that your fear is a cover-up. Whatever it is you think you're debating, you know what the answer is. Muster up the courage and do it.

Not All Subjects Fit Your Style

I am succinct. I like to make every sentence matter, every word matter. I am short and to the point. If I ever repeat myself, it is for emphasis, not for ambiance. As it turns out, not all subjects fit that writing style.

I wrote a story which involved a gory battle that ended in a tragic death. This is not something you gloss over. It is not something you casually describe. It is a scene which needs to be embellished.

Because it is not my style to embellish scenes, it is a bit unnatural to do so. However, that is no excuse to avoid it. My story lives beyond me. I owe it to my creation to make it the best that it can be. If that means going beyond my comfort zone, so be it.

Hope

Hope is a step below confidence. It is the feeling one has where they do not expect their desired outcome to happen, but they still sincerely wish that it does. When people hope, they imagine the outcome; they plan for the outcome; but they are not confident of it.

In general, people hope when they have nothing else. Otherwise, they would be devoting their energy to some brilliant plan of action to get what they want, instead of waiting for the future to happen and finding out if it was favorable.

But because of that, hope is the single most emotionally powerful thing one can do. When you see characters hope, they are desperate. They are in a bad place and sorely need the best possible thing to happen. They may not always get the best possible result, but when something positive does happen, then the audience is overwhelmed by it. Similarly, when a character hopes and gets nothing good from it, it makes that sting even worse.

Be wary when using hope in your writing. A little bit can go a long way. Doing too much of it makes the characters powerless and thus useless. Making it negative can be a total bummer. Making it excessively positive feels like a deus ex machina. And, as with all techniques, if you don't use it very often, it doesn't get the chance to become predictable or stale.

Don't Look For Problems

This is a subject I wrote about last year (using almost the exact same title, actually), but it is one I am compelled to revisit. Right now, I am on both sides of the reviewing table. I am having my two editors reading my latest work, which I will be sending out soon. I also am reading two different people's works.

The most important thing that needs to be done before anybody reads anything for anybody else is to find out what the author wants from it. For example, one friend is mostly just sharing her work. She welcomes any comments, but is not particularly looking for any specific feedback. My other friend is in a similar spot, but is looking for specific feedback. How are things working? How are the dynamics between characters? What questions are raised as you read this?

The story I sent out is certainly my style, but it is not my subject (I'm being a good writer and experimenting outside my comfort zone). Because of that, I am asking for feedback that is somewhere between specific and general. I do want to know how the overall feel of the piece works, but I have an idea of what my editors will think (mostly that it's good, but a little hokey). So what I need more than the general is specific feedback on what is working well and what is not. I need to be told what is dragging the story down and given thoughts on how to change it. I am not worrying about proofing whatsoever. I'm largely not concerned with sentence-level problems because I am not far enough along for that to be a worthwhile concern.

Three different authors are having their writing looked at and want three different things done in their reviews. However, even if you are reading something from somebody who wants you to be super picky, the advice remains the same: don't look for problems. Read the story naturally. Real problems will be readily seen. If you want to go through it slowly, with a fine-toothed comb, go ahead. But if you jump in specifically looking for problems, you will end up with a bunch of false positives. You will make a lot of changes that don't make the piece better, just different. And that is bad editing.

You Have To Make Sense

 It is a shame that writing represents reality, but very rarely actually is reality. Sure, there is plenty of nonfiction. I bet there is even plenty of nonfiction that doesn't make up any details. But even then, we have a filter. Extraneous crap gets left out in editing. But so much of life is extraneous crap.

I can't have a conversation without tangents. My mind is working too hard at too many subjects to stay too focused on any one of them. When somebody makes a statement (including myself), my brain makes some kind of connection, and then is compelled to share that connected thought. And if I ever showed that kind of thing in writing, it would be awful.

Sure, there are types of writing where one's thoughts just sort of get spewed out. There's stream of consciousness, for one. But even in stream of consciousness, there is a flow (probably why they call it a stream). It may be a little jumbled or may have some gaps that need filling, but there is a sense to it.

If you showed the mind working like it really does, jumping from subject to subject with no introduction or explanation, sometimes not even having a single thing whatsoever to do with the previous subject, you would be accused of terrible writing (and rightly so).

Writing is all about communication. Words without sense are just gibberish. And gibberish is the antithesis of communication.

Sometimes Writing Isn't Like That

If there is one thing I really want to do with Cheff Salad, it is to show reality. I do not lie here. I do not exaggerate in order to manipulate (only as creative license). I only speak my mind, whatever my mind is saying when I hit New Post.

Sometimes, I write about this amazingly intellectual world, this very personal process. It is not uncommon for writers to talk about working with words like they are building blocks or some material they can arrange and rearrange and stitch together. And sometimes writing is totally like that.

And sometimes, writing isn't like that at all. Sometimes writing is not about the words for me at all. I may just be trying to get a story, work on a concept or philosophy. Hell, sometimes I am just trying to figure out what happens next.

Sure, everything comes down to words. Writing doesn't exist without words (writing without words is drawing). But, the words themselves are not always the concern. There are microscopic and macroscopic aspects of writing. The microscopic can be very cool. It is truly awesome to be able to tinker and smooth and polish, to pick one words out of hundreds of thousands of words that produces the exact effect that you want. But that is not the entirety of writing.

I know that this post could be 2-3 paragraphs shorter. I have said the same thing over and over and over again. I am doing this to hammer down the point. And, to connect it with my introduction, I want to say that I will sometimes post very contradictory things here. There is a reason for that, and since I don't lie here, the reason is that writing is a large world and one of very, very opposite-seeming things which are simultaneously true.

Watch out and try not to get too stuck in your ways. Somebody with an opposite belief may be equally as correct as you.