You Can't Trust Real Life

It's Called Fiction For A Reason

“But that really happened,” the writer says. “That’s exactly the way it really happened.”

He’s saying this in response to criticism from his critique group that the scene doesn’t seem real.

“It is real,” he says as if he’s throwing down a royal flush. “That scene is as real as it gets.”

Au contraire. The scene maybe true in the sense it happened, but story requires more and less that the literal truth because, again, it's fiction, a creation.

 

I think this is one of the big mistakes of beginning writers. Often times faithfully rendering something that really happened in life will lead the writer down the wrong path. Either he’ll put in the wrong details or too many details or the whole scene will not fit with the rest of the novel. 

You can’t trust real life when it comes to fiction. (Of course you can't trust real life when it comes to real life sometimes but that's for another blog).

 

Of course you use your life and things that have happened to you and things you’ve felt in your fiction (we need to do this), but you always have to remember that you’re writing a story. You're controlling what happens, how much to tell and show about what happens, and you're trying to do it in an interesting way.  You have to carefully pick and choose details that serve the character and story. You can’t be true to real life and do that. You have to be true to your story. 

 

Disclaimer:  the opinions of this author do not reflect the opinions of this author in either the future or the past. 

 

Thank you for reading.

HOW TO STAY ALIVE AS A WRITER: DO THIS ONE THING

 HOW TO STAY ALIVE AS A WRITER: DO THIS ONE THING

Scheherazade knew the secrets of storytelling that kept her alive for a thousand and one nights. Not bad for a storyteller. For any author wishing to weave tales as captivating as hers you’ve got to do this one thing.( I do not mean you don’t have to do many other things. Interesting characters, good use of language, fascinating setting and so on are needed.) BUT you need to do this one thing or those other important things won’t matter.

So, here was Scheherazade’s story:

King Shahryar, after being betrayed by his first wife, begins marrying a new woman each day and executing her the next morning. Talk about your terrible break-up leading to disfunction. Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter, volunteers to marry the king. On their wedding night, she begins telling him a fascinating story but doesn't finish it, promising to continue the next night.

The king, curious to hear the end of the tale, postpones her execution. Scheherazade continues this pattern for 1,001 nights, telling interconnected stories and always leaving them unfinished at dawn. Her stories are so captivating that the king keeps sparing her life to hear more.

Over time, Scheherazade's wisdom, creativity, and storytelling prowess cause the king to fall in love with her. He eventually abandons his cruel practice and makes her his queen. 

How do you get people to read your work? You make the king HAVE TO know what happens next.

SUSPENSE IS HOW YOU DO IT. SUSPENSE at the sentence level. SUSPENSE at the chapter level. SUSPENSE at the entire story of your novel.  SUSPENSE at the entire story of your series if you’re writing a series.

I’ll go into more detail at a later date but let me just make it simple. YOU SET UP THE READER. YOU MAKE HIM/HER/THEM want questions answered and then you make them wait for those questions to be answered. In-between you give them little progressive steps toward an answer.

For example:

I wake up and my dog is missing.

(The steps in-between are the discovery by me of what has happened to my dog and ultimately who is responsible.)

END: I learn my neighbor three blocks over has my dog. My neighbor refuses to admit it is my dog.

P.S. This is not the end of the story. Or maybe it is. Up to you. Me, I’d want the next part of the story to be me deciding what to do about the situation and then doing it…

It’s that simple. Make the reader have to turn the page.

Three Tips For Discovery Writers. The Third One Is A Secret Weapon.

 

THREE TIPS &DISCOVERY WRITERS’ SECRET WEAPON

Disclaimer: This is just my way of approaching novel writing. Use what helps you and discard the rest. That’s my advice for all writing advice. I am a discovery writer and what I’m giving you are my top tips for my process of discovery. What do I discover as I write? Pretty much everything. I usually just have an idea of who my main character is, and what he or she wants and what might get in the way. I have hardly any details of the character, setting, or plot. My style is my style, but the tone might not even be clear at the beginning.

Three Important Tips

1. Write your first draft quickly. Try to get a draft done in a month or less. Preferably less. Understand that you won’t be writing out everything. If you get on a roll, write the whole scene or scenes of a chapter. If not, just try to explain what happens. So your first draft may only be 20K or 30K However it will be from beginning to end. You will be working on the big three of writing: character, setting and plot. You won’t be working on the important use of language much in this draft. That comes in revision. Be easy on yourself in order to get this rough draft on the page. As I’ve said before, LOW EXPECTATIONS. It is very helpful to have low expectations in this case though, of course, best not to embrace this as a strategy for other aspects of your life.

TIPS TWO AND THREE HAVE TO DO WITH REVISION.

2. Remember that what you have is a draft you wrote in a month. Be prepared to make whatever changes are necessary. You will make mistakes in a discovery draft. You’ll sometimes even realize you have to add more characters or take them out. You have a draft on paper and now you have something to work with, but you have to be realistic; it’s a beginning, not an end.

 

3. TIP number 3 has to do with a specific aspect of number 2 and it’s your secret weapon. Be prepared to reverse engineer on draft 2. In fact, plan for it. Once you get the characters and setting right and improve the language a bit, you’ll need to go through for plot. You discovered your story in your original draft. Most likely, your story will need to be reworked. HERE, SPECIFICALLY, IS HOW YOU DO THAT. You look for places in the manuscript that are exciting and interesting but maybe need to be moved to a later point in the story so that you can build some steps to them for the reader. Let’s say you have a character do something important in the last third of your novel, but it feels abrupt. You look for aspects of the character that make the reader understand her more, give motivation, and you go back through the manuscript and you create opportunities that show the character developing bit by bit so that their act feels authentic. For example, in draft 1, your character turns out to have strong feelings for her next-door-neighbor. This could be a significant sub-plot, but you didn’t realize the feelings until the end of draft 1. Now you go through the whole manuscript and look for ways to build, little by little, a progression that makes the reader see the evolution of the character’s feelings. You know the destination of this aspect of the plot. Show the reader how the character gets there. Do this with all aspects of your novel. Secret weapon.

Hope this helps. Write on, Writers.

Brian

Another Way To Fail At Writing A Novel

Another Way To Fail At Writing A Novel

Another surefire way to fail at writing a novel is to convince yourself that your first draft must be perfect. Agonize over every sentence, every word choice, every comma. Rewrite each paragraph a dozen times before moving on to the next one. If a scene isn’t flawless, delete the whole thing and start over. After all, if your first draft isn’t a masterpiece, what’s the point?

While you’re at it, make sure to compare your fledgling work-in-progress to the polished, published novels of your favorite authors. Clearly, if your rough draft doesn’t measure up to their final versions of novels you love, you must be a talentless hack. Might as well give up now and save yourself the embarrassment of finishing a subpar book.

Oh, and don’t even think about asking for feedback or support. Writing is a solitary endeavor, and if you can’t do it all on your own, you’re obviously not cut out for this. Critique groups? Beta readers? Writing communities? Pshaw! Those are for people who actually stand a chance of succeeding. You’re here to fail, remember?

Lastly, if by some miracle you do manage to complete a first draft, be sure to stuff it in a drawer and never look at it again. Revisions are for the weak. If your book isn’t perfect the first time around, it never will be. Better to let it molder in obscurity than to put in the hard work of polishing it up.

There you have it, folks.

OR you could follow this one simple piece of advice: I RECOMMEND LOW EXPECTATIONS. Know that your first draft will suck, like almost everyone else’s does, and write it anyway. Get it on paper. Then revise and revise until you make it the best you can and let it go and move on to the next project.

How To Fail At Writing A Novel: Write Without Passion

 HOW TO FAIL AT WRITING A NOVEL

WRITE WITHOUT PASSION: a sure way to fail as a novelist

 

If you want to ensure your novel falls flat and fails to captivate readers, one surefire approach is to write without an ounce of passion. Passion is the secret sauce that transforms a mediocre story into a page-turner, but if your goal is to fail spectacularly, it's best to steer clear of it entirely.

 

When you sit down to write, convince yourself that "pretty good" is good enough. Embrace mediocrity. Resist the urge to really try to give your characters passion for what they’re doing. After all, who needs to strive for excellence when you can settle for average? For example, instead of crafting a gripping opening line that hooks readers, opt for something bland like, "It was a day like any other." Or, when describing your protagonist, forget vivid details and unique quirks in favor of generic traits like  “she’s nice" or "she’s smart."

 

As you progress through your story, make a conscious effort to avoid anything that might make your pages come alive. Steer clear of exciting twists, intriguing characters, or profound revelations about relationships or personal growth. 

 

If a character's backstory threatens to add depth and complexity to your narrative, quickly gloss over it or, better yet, omit it entirely. For instance, if your main character has a dark secret from their past, don't explore how it shapes their actions and motivations. Instead, pretend it never happened and keep your story as one-dimensional as possible.

 

Most importantly, if you truly want to fail as a writer, do not care about your characters. Treat them as mere puppets, devoid of emotions, desires, or yearning. When you're indifferent to your characters' fates, it will be impossible for readers to form any attachment to them. Why should they invest in a story when even the author doesn't seem to care.

Above all—whatever genre you write in and whether your style is playful or serious—you’ve got to fail to make a connection with your reader if you want to fail. Don’t try. Don’t consider that every page needs to be compelling. Just write without passion and remain apathetic toward your characters. Create forgettable moments. That’s the way to failure.

 

My last seven novels are part of a series of humorous supernatural horror/urban fantasy novels. The series is titled Strangely Scary Funny and they’re my most popular series by far. These books, by nature,  are lighter than fiction that demands more serious exploration of certain themes. But I still do my best to give my main characters desire for some goal important to the story and events and other characters who get in the way of this desire. I set up important situations, in other words. I make something happen on each page that involves the reader in whatever my characters are struggling with. You do not have to write “deep” “serious” fiction to approach your writing with passion. But, of course, if you do have passion, just be aware that your chances of failure decrease significantly. 

How to Fail at Writing a Novel: Write Characters who don’t have desires

 How to Fail at Writing a Novel: Write Characters who don’t have desires

Characters are the heart of any novel. As important as story and setting and narrative voice and language are, without characters a reader can connect with and care about, your novel is most likely not going to engage the reader. Alas, many aspiring authors fall into the trap of creating flat, uninteresting characters that lack depth and motivation. If you want to fail at writing your novel, create characters without wants or needs.

Great characters are driven by their desires and, at a deeper level, something they need. Take, for example, the iconic character of Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” Elizabeth’s wants and needs are clear from the outset: she wants to marry for love and needs to support her family, to keep them safe from the threat of poverty and loss of social standing. Her desires drive the plot forward and make her a relatable and engaging protagonist. Another example is Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins: Katniss’s primary need is to protect her family, particularly her younger sister, Prim. She wants to survive the brutal Hunger Games and return home. Need is deeper than want, but both are important. These desires drive her actions throughout the trilogy and make her a compelling, relatable protagonist. A third example is Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. Atticus wants to uphold justice and teach his children the importance of empathy and equality. He needs to defend Tom Robinson, an innocent black man, in a racist society, even though it causes him to endanger himself and his family and have much of the town turn against him. 

In contrast, characters who lack wants and needs fall flat on the page. A powerful plot will be weakened by characters who aren’t developed. Readers will struggle to invest in these characters because they have no reason to care about their journeys or outcomes. A lot of bad action movies or thrillers fail in this way. Maybe they have a pretty good plot, but if the audience doesn’t care about the character, they don’t really care about what happens to him or her. 

To fail at writing your novel, create characters who are content with their lives, who have no burning desires or unfulfilled needs. Write characters who are passive observers rather than active participants in their own stories. By doing so, you’ll ensure that your readers will quickly lose interest and set your book aside.

HEY FICTION WRITERS, 3 SIMPLE TIPS TO WRITE FASTER

 HEY NOVELISTS, THREE SIMPLE TIPS TO WRITE FASTER

If you’re like me, you fool yourself more than you fool anyone else. You tell yourself, if you realize you’re gaining a few pounds, that the piece of cake you’re having for dessert really isn’t that many calories when you know it’s as loaded as Elon Musk. I’m just saying. Most of us are not completely honest with ourselves. If you’re a writer, you might fool yourself about how many words you write every day.

FIRST SIMPLE TIP: Keep track of how many words you write every day. I write down how many I do each session and total them up at the end of the day. It keeps me honest. If you’re like me, you’ll get competitive with yourself. You’ll write more by trying to make the number higher than the day before.

Set goals for how many words you want to write every day. REALISTIC GOALS. If you don’t make it, don’t be too hard on yourself. Just having a goal will help you get words on paper. That’s the main thing.

Focus. You can write for an hour and give into the wandering mind syndrome that all imaginative people (kind of need this to be a writer) have or the desire to surf the web or any other distraction you can come up with or you can stay focused. Guess which one will get more words on the page? I’m going to guess that you can guess, but I’ll tell you from experience that the difference in word count is probably much larger than you think. If you can focus and get in the flow, you can really get a lot done in an hour. I’ve done 1500-2000 words on occasion by getting to the flow point. Extra tip: write down the amount of time you write, actually write, to be aware of the true time you're spending each day writing.

Follow these three tips and you’ll definitely write faster.