There was a time when I considered teaching English in Japan. One of the warnings I read was to prepare yourself with a completely different kind of student. The student who cares the most will speak the least. They will be silent and observe. And at thought point, I asked myself, is it possible to teach people who are greatly rational and logical how to be creative? And I believe I can.
1. Write down any sentence you want.
If the person is very rational, living in the real world, and doesn't want to be creative, then you will expect a pretty boring sentence.
I ate tuna at lunch.
2. Choose one word and replace it with a word that has nothing to do with the original.
The word should be the same category, like you can't replace a noun with a verb, but other tan that, it is good. In fact, just trying to find two words that have nothing to do with each other is a fun enough game.
I ate televisions at lunch.
3. Make sense of the situation.
In the example, a person eating a TV is pretty crazy. What is actually going on here? Unless there is a way to swallow whole televisions, or if it is a very small set, then maybe I dismantled it and am eating each part separately.
I ate televisions at lunch, piece by piece.
4. Create a past.
What could possibly have happened to create the current situation? There are many strange, absurd, bizarre scenes that happen in the real world, but they all make sense when you know everything that happened before it. Create the history that makes your scene make sense.
I bet the class at recess that I could eat anything. Stacey said, "what about the TV". I ate televisions at lunch, piece by piece.
5. Create a future.
Every action has a consequence. The crazier a scene you have, the more interesting the consequences have to be (unless you are spectacularly good and being spectacularly bad).
I bet the class at recess that I could eat anything. Stacey said, "what about the TV". I ate televisions at lunch, piece by piece. I didn't win the bet, but I did miss the test.
I will not guarantee that everything you write will be gold, but I will guarantee it will be creative. You will have created something that previously did not exist. If that's not creative, I don't know what is.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Definitions
I think that, within the field of writing, my pettest of peeves would have to be people who say that you can't teach good writing. Why not? Because good writing has a certain inexplicable quality? What makes it inexplicable? If it can't be explained, then how can you know what is or what isn't good? You seem to know enough about it to wield "good", so why can't you define it?
As far as I'm concerned, anything that can be identified can be defined. If I can identify bad writing, then good writing certainly exists. And if bad writing and good writing both exist, then there must be certain, tangible criteria that separate them. Finally, if I have an exhaustive list of criteria that classify writing as good, then any piece of writing that follows these criteria will be good.
Although I have never taken the time to analyze writing so thoroughly and have never put together such a list, I have just laid down the framework to teach good writing. Tomorrow, I will teach creativity.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that can be identified can be defined. If I can identify bad writing, then good writing certainly exists. And if bad writing and good writing both exist, then there must be certain, tangible criteria that separate them. Finally, if I have an exhaustive list of criteria that classify writing as good, then any piece of writing that follows these criteria will be good.
Although I have never taken the time to analyze writing so thoroughly and have never put together such a list, I have just laid down the framework to teach good writing. Tomorrow, I will teach creativity.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Gifts and Promises
As an artist, especially one who gives their work away for free and on a regular basis, I think the most important and most ignored subject is distinguishing between gifts and promises.
If I have a webcomic, and I say that I update two days a week, then I am promising two updates. When I say it is every Tuesday and Thursday, then I am promising that my updates will happen on those days. Surprisingly, updates are a point of contention among webcomic makers.
Some creators feel that they don't owe the audience anything because they are giving away their work for free to the people. I happen to disagree with them on every point they make. For one thing, the audience gives the creator traffic, fans, support, and occasionally money. For another thing, the moment you say that you update, you are promising to update. You owe it to yourself, even if not to the audience, to update when you say you will because you gave your word.
So if a promise is what you say you will do, then is a gift something you don't say you'll do? Sort of. If I feel like giving people an extra comic on Sunday just because I felt like it or because I wanted to thank people for checking the website on non-update days, then it is certainly a gift. If I tell people people that I will occasionally put up extra comics on my twitter feed, I would still call that a gift because it is on occasion. I promised that some will be there, but with any regularity.
The more important thing to realize is that it is easy to turn a gift into a promise, and that it is very destructive to have that happen. Gifts are fun bonuses. extras are the bare minimum of work. If, instead of having one promise and several occasional gifts, you simply have seven promises and no gifts, the fans may love all of the content, but if you miss any one of those, you are now breaking your promise and the audience is upset that you broke your word.
If people loved my Sunday special strip a lot, they may ask for another. Since I like making my audience happy, I do another one next Sunday. Eventually, I decide that I will start updating my comic every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. My gift is now a promise. If I don't produce a strip on Sunday, I will get emails and other messages from my fan asking what happened and where the Sunday strip is. Even if I leave a message on my website that says that there won't be a trip today, but there will be a make-up strip on Monday, I have broken my promise. Now doing an extra strip on Monday isn't even special; it's just an apology. What a terrible way for people to treat your art, as an apology.
In the Webcomics Weekly Podcast #54, the Halfpixel guys discuss ustream, a website that allows people to stream videos (basically airing their own live TV online). One of them said that he uses it as an apology. The idea is that if one of his strips is going to be late, he will do whatever drawing and inking needs to be done for the comic and the audience will see it live. Although it is a nice bonus to see a strip drawn live, it is sad that it is only done to ask for forgiveness for being late.
They went on to talk about Lar DeSouza of Least I Could Do, saying that his method is the most perfect use of ustream. What Lar does is do a stream showing how inking and coloring a strip from Least I Could Do or Looking For Group, then continues to draw for fun for the people there, taking requests and answering questions. More importantly, he doesn't do it on a regular basis. He announces when he is going to do it and it becomes a special event for the people who get to join in. I believe that this is the perfect example of giving a gift to your audience and keeping it a gift.
If I have a webcomic, and I say that I update two days a week, then I am promising two updates. When I say it is every Tuesday and Thursday, then I am promising that my updates will happen on those days. Surprisingly, updates are a point of contention among webcomic makers.
Some creators feel that they don't owe the audience anything because they are giving away their work for free to the people. I happen to disagree with them on every point they make. For one thing, the audience gives the creator traffic, fans, support, and occasionally money. For another thing, the moment you say that you update, you are promising to update. You owe it to yourself, even if not to the audience, to update when you say you will because you gave your word.
So if a promise is what you say you will do, then is a gift something you don't say you'll do? Sort of. If I feel like giving people an extra comic on Sunday just because I felt like it or because I wanted to thank people for checking the website on non-update days, then it is certainly a gift. If I tell people people that I will occasionally put up extra comics on my twitter feed, I would still call that a gift because it is on occasion. I promised that some will be there, but with any regularity.
The more important thing to realize is that it is easy to turn a gift into a promise, and that it is very destructive to have that happen. Gifts are fun bonuses. extras are the bare minimum of work. If, instead of having one promise and several occasional gifts, you simply have seven promises and no gifts, the fans may love all of the content, but if you miss any one of those, you are now breaking your promise and the audience is upset that you broke your word.
If people loved my Sunday special strip a lot, they may ask for another. Since I like making my audience happy, I do another one next Sunday. Eventually, I decide that I will start updating my comic every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. My gift is now a promise. If I don't produce a strip on Sunday, I will get emails and other messages from my fan asking what happened and where the Sunday strip is. Even if I leave a message on my website that says that there won't be a trip today, but there will be a make-up strip on Monday, I have broken my promise. Now doing an extra strip on Monday isn't even special; it's just an apology. What a terrible way for people to treat your art, as an apology.
In the Webcomics Weekly Podcast #54, the Halfpixel guys discuss ustream, a website that allows people to stream videos (basically airing their own live TV online). One of them said that he uses it as an apology. The idea is that if one of his strips is going to be late, he will do whatever drawing and inking needs to be done for the comic and the audience will see it live. Although it is a nice bonus to see a strip drawn live, it is sad that it is only done to ask for forgiveness for being late.
They went on to talk about Lar DeSouza of Least I Could Do, saying that his method is the most perfect use of ustream. What Lar does is do a stream showing how inking and coloring a strip from Least I Could Do or Looking For Group, then continues to draw for fun for the people there, taking requests and answering questions. More importantly, he doesn't do it on a regular basis. He announces when he is going to do it and it becomes a special event for the people who get to join in. I believe that this is the perfect example of giving a gift to your audience and keeping it a gift.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
First Draft Woes
If your writing feels hollow or empty, the best thing to do is fill it out. But how do you do that? I would like to share the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten (which was in a martial arts class) to answer that: If you fix your mistakes in the beginning, you won’t need to correct them later. For a writer, the beginning is the first draft, so that is where we will work.
The conventional wisdom of writing is to write too much. The idea is that it is far easier to cut out material than it is to add more in. I support this method, but I think it deserves more explanation as to why. Consider what it means to write too much. It means you explained the location too thoroughly. You write about the action too much. You explained the characters too deeply.
The only way you can write too much is if you know your story so well that it is a real experience for you. This is a good thing. When you know a story so intimately that you can tell it the way you tell stories that happened to you, you guarantee that your story is complete and believable. As an audience member, I may not need two pages dedicated to describing the clothes that a man on the subway was wearing, but if you know them that well, then I can be sure that your character will act accordingly.
When you write too much, you have to cut it back. That doesn’t necessarily mean cutting scenes out, though. Sometimes it just means telling your story more efficiently. That’s not too big of a deal. It’s like a puzzle. What sentences add to your story (building the world, generating interest, telling the action)? Which ones take away from your story (unneeded detail, boring sentences, stale scenes)? This is what editing is all about!
The problem with not writing enough is that it generally means the opposite of what I just covered. It means you don’t know your world well enough. You don’t know what is going on. You haven’t told enough story to be a whole story. When you haven’t written enough, it means you have to create more, and that is the hardest part of writing. If you are ever writing and you are just not sure if you have enough or if what you have is good, trust your gut.
People are generally pretty perceptive of the quality of their work – they usually just ignore that voice in their head that tells them when something is wrong. Don’t ignore the voice. When that one sentence just doesn’t sound right, there’s something wrong with it. If some passage or explanation doesn’t sound completely reasonable, you know there’s something wrong with it. More importantly, when something is wrong with your writing, other people will notice it, too.
Whenever I write, I give my first draft to a reader. A good reader is hard to find, but if you can find somebody whose opinion you trust and whose ability is adequate, hold on to that person as long as you can. The interesting I have noticed about having people read my writing is that they catch every part that my mind told me was wrong. A good reader won’t let substandard work slide through the cracks.
These are going to be the most helpful tools in getting over your first draft woes. Aside from that, all I can say is make sure that you have a story that you are dying to tell and that you know it better than anybody else does.
The conventional wisdom of writing is to write too much. The idea is that it is far easier to cut out material than it is to add more in. I support this method, but I think it deserves more explanation as to why. Consider what it means to write too much. It means you explained the location too thoroughly. You write about the action too much. You explained the characters too deeply.
The only way you can write too much is if you know your story so well that it is a real experience for you. This is a good thing. When you know a story so intimately that you can tell it the way you tell stories that happened to you, you guarantee that your story is complete and believable. As an audience member, I may not need two pages dedicated to describing the clothes that a man on the subway was wearing, but if you know them that well, then I can be sure that your character will act accordingly.
When you write too much, you have to cut it back. That doesn’t necessarily mean cutting scenes out, though. Sometimes it just means telling your story more efficiently. That’s not too big of a deal. It’s like a puzzle. What sentences add to your story (building the world, generating interest, telling the action)? Which ones take away from your story (unneeded detail, boring sentences, stale scenes)? This is what editing is all about!
The problem with not writing enough is that it generally means the opposite of what I just covered. It means you don’t know your world well enough. You don’t know what is going on. You haven’t told enough story to be a whole story. When you haven’t written enough, it means you have to create more, and that is the hardest part of writing. If you are ever writing and you are just not sure if you have enough or if what you have is good, trust your gut.
People are generally pretty perceptive of the quality of their work – they usually just ignore that voice in their head that tells them when something is wrong. Don’t ignore the voice. When that one sentence just doesn’t sound right, there’s something wrong with it. If some passage or explanation doesn’t sound completely reasonable, you know there’s something wrong with it. More importantly, when something is wrong with your writing, other people will notice it, too.
Whenever I write, I give my first draft to a reader. A good reader is hard to find, but if you can find somebody whose opinion you trust and whose ability is adequate, hold on to that person as long as you can. The interesting I have noticed about having people read my writing is that they catch every part that my mind told me was wrong. A good reader won’t let substandard work slide through the cracks.
These are going to be the most helpful tools in getting over your first draft woes. Aside from that, all I can say is make sure that you have a story that you are dying to tell and that you know it better than anybody else does.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Collections vs Installments
Writing exists in segments. Most writing is small in nature, and so it is naturally segmented. Blog posts, essays, poems, comic strips, and short stories are all so small that you can generally take them all in at one sitting. For larger works like novels, the segmentation is the chapters.
For a writer, the question of distribution revolves around these segments. How do I give my writing to my audience? In the past, and traditionally still, you take a bunch of your segments, throw them together, and get a publisher to sell it as a book. It's still viable, but extremely difficult to get into. More and more, writers are publishing their own work, one installment at a time. In the world of comics, this is old news. Strips have always been distributed one at a time first, with collections coming out long after the originals have been printed. However, the larger implications are largely ignored.
How does a person read a collection? There are a few possible ways. They might sit down and read it front to back. They might take it with them and read bits and pieces during their free moments. They might leave it in the bathroom and read a bit with ever sit. More importantly, when the book is finished, they have nothing else to read. They have to go out and buy a new collection and repeat the process.
If your work gets published in a collection, it might succeed or it might fall flat. If people like your work, you might be asked to make another collection. During that time, you have to think of ideas, flesh them out, create some writing, and repeat the process until you fill up another book, then get it sent to the publisher, printed, and distributed. With all of that time passing, the people who read your work and liked it, who clamored for another installment, have moved on to several other collections and may have even forgotten about you. It's dangerous.
When you post your work in regular installments, you avoid that problem. Webcomics are most famous for doing this, but anybody with a regular blog does the same thing. Essayists like Paul Graham regularly have a new piece every month. Even David Wong's novel John Dies at the End began as a regular installment online. All of these writers have a fan base that continually grows. People who like the writing enough to visit the site more than once generally don't stop returning. They have no reason to stop.
If you produce writing at regular intervals, you should never run out of material. If you never run out of material, then the audience will never move on or forget you. They may read other people's writing since your installments only have so much content, but that is no problem. Just because they are reading other people doesn't mean they stop reading you.
So what are the implications of people reading your work every day (or whatever your update schedule is)? It means that you have people coming to your website every day you update. It means that people are constantly looking at the ads you host (which means more money) and it means that they are constantly reminded that you have merchandice for sale. They become loyal. You have become a part of their lives, as regular and inseparable as putting clothes on and drinking a cup of coffee every morning. Even when you aren't laugh-out-loud funny, they still like seeing your characters and what they are up to.
Having regular installments is beneficial as both a businessman and as an artist. The money that can be generated from constant viewing of ever-increasing viewership is quite pleasant. Having the constant and immediate feedback from your fans (and detractors) will create a deep bond, closer than any other artist has with their audience.
For a writer, the question of distribution revolves around these segments. How do I give my writing to my audience? In the past, and traditionally still, you take a bunch of your segments, throw them together, and get a publisher to sell it as a book. It's still viable, but extremely difficult to get into. More and more, writers are publishing their own work, one installment at a time. In the world of comics, this is old news. Strips have always been distributed one at a time first, with collections coming out long after the originals have been printed. However, the larger implications are largely ignored.
How does a person read a collection? There are a few possible ways. They might sit down and read it front to back. They might take it with them and read bits and pieces during their free moments. They might leave it in the bathroom and read a bit with ever sit. More importantly, when the book is finished, they have nothing else to read. They have to go out and buy a new collection and repeat the process.
If your work gets published in a collection, it might succeed or it might fall flat. If people like your work, you might be asked to make another collection. During that time, you have to think of ideas, flesh them out, create some writing, and repeat the process until you fill up another book, then get it sent to the publisher, printed, and distributed. With all of that time passing, the people who read your work and liked it, who clamored for another installment, have moved on to several other collections and may have even forgotten about you. It's dangerous.
When you post your work in regular installments, you avoid that problem. Webcomics are most famous for doing this, but anybody with a regular blog does the same thing. Essayists like Paul Graham regularly have a new piece every month. Even David Wong's novel John Dies at the End began as a regular installment online. All of these writers have a fan base that continually grows. People who like the writing enough to visit the site more than once generally don't stop returning. They have no reason to stop.
If you produce writing at regular intervals, you should never run out of material. If you never run out of material, then the audience will never move on or forget you. They may read other people's writing since your installments only have so much content, but that is no problem. Just because they are reading other people doesn't mean they stop reading you.
So what are the implications of people reading your work every day (or whatever your update schedule is)? It means that you have people coming to your website every day you update. It means that people are constantly looking at the ads you host (which means more money) and it means that they are constantly reminded that you have merchandice for sale. They become loyal. You have become a part of their lives, as regular and inseparable as putting clothes on and drinking a cup of coffee every morning. Even when you aren't laugh-out-loud funny, they still like seeing your characters and what they are up to.
Having regular installments is beneficial as both a businessman and as an artist. The money that can be generated from constant viewing of ever-increasing viewership is quite pleasant. Having the constant and immediate feedback from your fans (and detractors) will create a deep bond, closer than any other artist has with their audience.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Embellish and Relish
I wish it was a kind of sandwich so that I could sell it. Unfortunately, it is an idea I will share for free.
I, for a very large portion of my life, was focused on facts. When I told people about something that happened, I made absolutely sure that I was giving the most accurate information. If I wasn't sure what was correct, I would stop, try to figure out what was right, and then give up and say that I don't remember and continue on talking. I was a terrible storyteller. I was never interesting, never went anywhere, never got the reaction I wanted, and never told stories worth repeating (you had to be there).
Kelly, on the other hand, is a great storyteller. He will wrap you in, get you interested, make you laugh, and then make you laugh more. When I hang out with him, I'm always amazed at the crazy things that happened that gave him all of the great stories he had. Then I found out they didn't.
As I heard the same story told over again, I heard a new version of it each time. Suddenly the facts were a little different. They got the same point across, but they flowed better and made people laugh (which was their point).
It bothered me at first, seeing inaccuracies just naturally come forth and the speaker being ok with it. Now, I don't mind it at all. I realized the purpose that it serves. It keeps people in the story, not getting lost. It tells them what they need to know and brings them to the punchline. It makes for good, interesting storytelling.
I now advocate the process that I call embellish and relish. When you are telling a story, embellish the facts, especially if you don't know what they are. Make it obvious what you are getting at. Never stop the story. Get your audience to care. Even if you are telling a you-had-to-be-there story, if you tell it well enough, it will feel to the audience like they actually are there. And if you want your audience to care about your story, then you need to relish telling the story. Love it from the beginning to the end and have just as much fun telling it as you did experiencing it.
I, for a very large portion of my life, was focused on facts. When I told people about something that happened, I made absolutely sure that I was giving the most accurate information. If I wasn't sure what was correct, I would stop, try to figure out what was right, and then give up and say that I don't remember and continue on talking. I was a terrible storyteller. I was never interesting, never went anywhere, never got the reaction I wanted, and never told stories worth repeating (you had to be there).
Kelly, on the other hand, is a great storyteller. He will wrap you in, get you interested, make you laugh, and then make you laugh more. When I hang out with him, I'm always amazed at the crazy things that happened that gave him all of the great stories he had. Then I found out they didn't.
As I heard the same story told over again, I heard a new version of it each time. Suddenly the facts were a little different. They got the same point across, but they flowed better and made people laugh (which was their point).
It bothered me at first, seeing inaccuracies just naturally come forth and the speaker being ok with it. Now, I don't mind it at all. I realized the purpose that it serves. It keeps people in the story, not getting lost. It tells them what they need to know and brings them to the punchline. It makes for good, interesting storytelling.
I now advocate the process that I call embellish and relish. When you are telling a story, embellish the facts, especially if you don't know what they are. Make it obvious what you are getting at. Never stop the story. Get your audience to care. Even if you are telling a you-had-to-be-there story, if you tell it well enough, it will feel to the audience like they actually are there. And if you want your audience to care about your story, then you need to relish telling the story. Love it from the beginning to the end and have just as much fun telling it as you did experiencing it.
Writing as Energy
Some days I spend 10 hours sleeping, then wake up, feel tired, and go back to sleep for another 2 hours. When I get up, I'm still tired, but I can't sleep anymore. I turn on my TV, and watch whatever is on, still not getting out of bed. Not long after that, I get tired and sleep for another few hours. Before I know it, the day is over and I did absolutely nothing.
Other days, I get up in the early morning, go to my classes, go into town to do chores, go to a meeting, read chapters from several books, take notes on those books, write 5 pages worth of assorted homework, and I would still have time and energy to do more.
Internal energy is extremely weird to me. The more you use, the more you have. Of course there is a certain amount of recharging needed. The body does need food and sleep. But doing work makes you want to do more work. Doing nothing only makes you want to keep doing nothing. It doesn't balance out the way other things normally do (like gas in your car, the more you use, the less you have).
Writing, or at least thinking, seems to be the same way as energy. I find that once I start thinking, I can't stop. One idea leads into another. But sometimes the logic isn't that direct. Sometimes while writing down an idea I think is funny or interesting, another idea will pop into my head that I think is also very funny.
When I don't write, or even don't think in general very much, it's not so much that I don;t get ideas, but I never investigate them and I certainly don't write them down, which means that I will quickly forget them (the equivalent to them not existing at all).
I am very happy to be keeping this blog. It forces me to think and write every day.
Other days, I get up in the early morning, go to my classes, go into town to do chores, go to a meeting, read chapters from several books, take notes on those books, write 5 pages worth of assorted homework, and I would still have time and energy to do more.
Internal energy is extremely weird to me. The more you use, the more you have. Of course there is a certain amount of recharging needed. The body does need food and sleep. But doing work makes you want to do more work. Doing nothing only makes you want to keep doing nothing. It doesn't balance out the way other things normally do (like gas in your car, the more you use, the less you have).
Writing, or at least thinking, seems to be the same way as energy. I find that once I start thinking, I can't stop. One idea leads into another. But sometimes the logic isn't that direct. Sometimes while writing down an idea I think is funny or interesting, another idea will pop into my head that I think is also very funny.
When I don't write, or even don't think in general very much, it's not so much that I don;t get ideas, but I never investigate them and I certainly don't write them down, which means that I will quickly forget them (the equivalent to them not existing at all).
I am very happy to be keeping this blog. It forces me to think and write every day.
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