The subtle art of foreshadowing takes skill – some may say great skill – for if it’s done without, a work of fiction can be fatally predictable. After all, who wants to read or watch something when it’s painfully obvious exactly how the story will conclude?
For me, there’s nothing better than a story with a twist. Being strung along to believe one thing to find out that what I thought was true never was is part of the art of foreshadowing. It can be done well (The Sixth Sense) in which case the foreshadowing was so subtle as to not be there, or it can be done wrong. Maybe you can come up with a good example. They tend to be the most forgettable stories out there.
I’m hoping to get some kind of twist out of the fiction A-Z story I’m writing alongside this. If you’re reading it, I hope you’ll stick around to the end to let me know how I did. In the meantime, I’m looking for any accidental foreshadowing that already exists, since I had no idea where the story was going as I began it. I think I have an idea now.
How much predictability is too much for you? I’m wondering if there’s anyone out there who likes to know the end before they get there.
Do you ever wonder how much you’re giving away of yourself when you write? Details of a writer’s psyche must show through, since all we really have to draw from are our experiences and our emotions. Our backgrounds: our genetics, our nature and how we were nurtured as children make up who we are, and are inherent in everything we do. Whether a writer of fiction, personal accounts, poetry… what creates our literary “voices” is our individuality.
I worry–not as much now as I used to–how much personal information I’m putting out there, whether intentionally or not. I worry that my kids will read what I write and be embarrassed or scarred – who wants to read their mother’s love scenes after all? How do they know how much of it comes from my imagination and how much from experience? I certainly won’t hand my own mother my novel and say, here, enjoy it. But then she judges me more harshly than anyone on the planet.
Of course, not everything we write comes from experience. I often say that if Stephen King did, he’d long be imprisoned. It’s not as though he goes around killing people, or feels the pain of being hit by a car. … oh wait, never mind. I watched a Youtube video the other day, in which he spoke to a room full of students about his process in writing, among other things. He said that one of the questions he is asked most often is what his childhood was like – what kind of trauma he went through in order to write the things he does. He said there was absolutely nothing… but if there was, he wouldn’t tell.
For myself, I went through an obsession with death after my father passed away suddenly. Not surprising since I was only fourteen years old. Is it why I write horror on occasion? I’m not sure. It was certainly the only traumatic thing I went through as a child. Yet paternal abandonment, in whatever form, shows up in every major work I’ve written to date. It took four novels before I realised it.
This is what I am open about. What about the stuff I’d rather not be? I ask again: do you ever wonder how much of yourself you’re giving away when you write? Is there anyone in your life you’d rather never read your work – or are you careful just in case they do?
I got to thinking about time periods in fiction and how certain events, depending on how close to the story line they happen, can be a dead giveaway for when the story takes place. This can be tricky when writing a piece that takes place in the future. For instance George Orwell’s 1984 or Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – both major works of art in literature, and yet now that we know better they tend to lose a miniscule amount of merit.
It can be even worse if the story takes place in the present, because what might be huge news today, unless it’s a major event, might be a non-issue in the future when your readers are reading it. How about this blast from the past: The L.A. Times announces McDonald’s big news! Read all about it!
My novel takes place in about the present – meaning I don’t really know. In trying to get the days of the week straight with the date, I put it about two years ago, but then again, I’m not sure anyone will really notice but me. But it’s difficult not to put some kind of time frame on a story. My characters obviously won’t be going to a Michael Jackson concert, nor will they be taking the next shuttle to the moon. These kinds of events place my story in the approximate now. They do, however, go to see Aerosmith, unless I write that scene out in the edits. What if, by the time my novel is published Aerosmith stops touring altogether? This will stick my novel in the past, whether I like it or not.
News can also be extremely inspiring, and sometimes it’s tempting to want to write current events into a story. It can even creep in when you’re least expecting it, in my experience anyway. How? Because some point in time everything is news, and there’s someone out there who is bound to remember it AS news, and by that I mean they’re going to remember when it happened.
Unless your story is fantasy–even more so than Lord of the Rings, which was based on World War II–there’s no getting around a time frame in the real world. It’s a tricky thing.
Writing for money–earning a living at it–has long been a dream of mine. I’d dearly love to have any day job, but being single and caring for my two kids with their numerous disabilities, makes it unfeasible for me to work outside the home. I’ve never attempted to hide the fact that I live off of the social assistance that I receive for my kids. Actually, scratch that. I have a paper route for which I earn a whopping $15 per week.
So during the time that I’m not driving to appointments, looking after them when they’re either sick or sent home with behavioural issues, I write. I suppose you could say I’m in a rather enviable position, in that if I do make even one dollar selling a novel I’ve gained something.
The fact is that one day I may find myself living alone. If I’m unable to care for my kids anymore, for whatever reason, and they go to assisted living elsewhere, I’ll have nothing but whatever I gain through this practice of writing. Yes, I have a background in bookkeeping, and have worked in retail, reception, data entry, and on dude ranches and thoroughbred farms, but who will hire me when I get to the point that I can’t care for my children and have nothing to put on my resume since 1999?
Realistically, at this point, my future lies in my writing. When I have enough money saved I’ll take more courses; I’ve never been more determined to do anything in my life, and I want to be good at it. If I can sell these manuscripts I have laying around–three of them so far–either to a publisher or by self-publishing, I may just be okay. Is there a living to be made? I think it’s best I find out now, while I at least still have my paper route.
This is Linda, coming to you today from a moment in time where all I want to do is rest. That’s life. And that’s what this blog, and the theme of this challenge is all about here on “Life In Progress” – life and how writing fits naturally into it. So that’s the “life” part of today’s topic. Now for the writing part.
The experts suggest that when an author writes a novel, he or she should let it rest. Depending on who the expert is will depend on the time frame of the resting period, but most say at least a month. Why is this a good idea?
We get attached to our words. We read them after they are first written wearing rose-coloured glasses, and it’s not until we’ve stopped reading them for a while and then go back to them that we realise how dirty those glasses were. I wrote my first novel, Trixie in a Box, during 2004’s NaNoWriMo. The manuscript has been sitting under my bed, communing with dust bunnies ever since. I took it out last year, thinking it might be a good idea to polish it and e-publish it ahead of my epic The Great Dagmaru, on which I’m currently working. However, three paragraphs into Trixie I was struck hard by how awful it is and it quickly rejoined the dust bunnies. I still believe in the story, but the prose is of fanfic quality – which makes sense since that’s what I was writing a lot of at the time.
Nine years is a long time to allow a manuscript to sit; I’m not recommending it. But to let your work sit for, say, as long as it takes to successfully complete a grammar course isn’t a bad idea. Failing that, the simple practice of daily writing can help significantly, as can reading the works of a good author. I can’t emphasize enough that it must be a GOOD author – someone you aspire to be just like. I tend to pick up the habits and to an extent, the style, of whomever I am reading, whether it’s E.L. James or Stephen King, the former of which is a scarier prospect than the latter.
I know how tempting it is when a story is finished to just publish it – I do it here on WordPress all the time. But for something I want to be remembered for, I’m going to take all the time it needs (not I need) to get it right.
I lose things all the time. I can have something in my hand one minute and the next it’s gone. Disappeared. Like gremlins took it for fun. The idea for this post actually came about when I was looking for my thesaurus so I could look up a good word to use for my “K” post. Can you tell I didn’t find the thesaurus?
What I did find, however, was an idea for a post. I got to thinking, whilst searching, about how the minutiae of life could fit in to a story. For the most part, it doesn’t. It’s rare that we read about in a book or see in a movie a character searching for something they can’t find, having aches and pains, or even going to the bathroom, unless it’s important to the plot.
Then I took my idea one step further – what if something as small as life’s pesky little problems became the plot? It could work, right? It didn’t take me long to realize, it already had!
Where did I drop that damned ring?
Wow, that’s one hell of a belly ache – oh look, an alien!
Next time you need to plot a story, think about the last thing that got on your nerves. Then run with it. At the very least, you may get a blog post out of it.
I can’t write anything funny. At least not on purpose. And it really sucks, since I love to make people laugh. Both in person and on paper, I enjoy being the cause of people’s smiles. It’s a thing for me–I don’t consider myself successful in conversation until the person I’m talking to has laughed, in almost every circumstance. In fact, the only exception I can think of at the moment are telemarketers. Apart from that particular breed of unfortunates, who I’m sure would be doing anything else for a living if they could, if I don’t make a person I’m speaking to laugh, I’m convinced they’re either devoid of a funny bone, or under the age of four months. The latter of the two wouldn’t be reading what I write, however, and that’s what I really mean to talk about.
Writing funny is both difficult and easy. It’s near impossible if I’m trying too hard, even if I leave the piece I’m trying to be funny in to sit while I brood over it. Humour, in my experience, must be spontaneous. It comes out of me like wit, or while making up stupid scenarios over conversation with a friend. In prose it’s … well, I don’t want to say it can’t be done. One of the lines that still comes to mind of my father’s was his most romantic:
Your teeth are like stars; they come out at night.
You’d think with all the times a moment for the perfect joke comes along and goes whisking by, when I say to myself, “I should have said that!” that it would be easier to write witticisms, since I have more time on my hands to think about it. But the opposite is true. Maybe it’s because there’s no pressure when I’m sitting in front of a computer screen, as there is in a social setting. The funny is either there or it isn’t, and no amount of forcing is going to make it show up.
Have you ever read a description of the characteristics of someone with your own star sign and said, “That’s ME!”? I have. I actually stood in a book store Astrology aisle for about half an hour, reading a book off the shelf with my mouth agape. At least I think I did – I remember distinctly being avoided by the other patrons of the store. Maybe they thought I’d bite them. According to this book I was reading, I might have. I enjoy doing things for the shock value, just like the book said.
Just imagine what kinds of quirks can be found for fictional characters from of one of these sometimes amazing, almost psychic books. Though it might not be a good idea to take every single characteristic from an astrological sign and use them all, a few here and there don’t hurt.
Aquarius personality is very independent, any attempt to hold them down or restrict them will cause them, to flee. They need to be free to be on their own. Independence is not just desired by Aquarius, it is essential to their well being.
That would be me to a tee. So if I was to write myself into a fictional situation, my character would have a hard time accepting help, for example.
Do you know your character’s birthday? If so, have you checked with the zodiac to see what sort of person they are? If not, you might want to – or even pick a birthday for them even if it’s never mentioned in your story. One way or another, go buy an astrology book or find a website that describes YOU! If it does, it’s probably accurate for your characters too.
Ah, the dream. I write, I edit, I send my baby out to agents and publishers who will surely snap it up and make it an instant bestseller, and that’s when the fame and fortune starts rolling in.
Suddenly I can’t walk down the street without someone approaching me to ask for and autograph. Actors are calling me at my unlisted number to beg for a juicy part in the upcoming movie based on my book. Life is grand.
But wait. Is it? Is it really?
You want me to do what? Travel around the country doing book-store appearances? Living out of a hotel? Interviews on public television? And… public readings? I can’t read in front of an audience! I was happy sitting in my room behind my computer, half in the can with a bottle of wine! Quick! Somebody grab me my Haagen-Dazs and a spoon. I’m going to hide in the closet!
Is this you? Or is it just me? Because seriously, as much as the money would be nice, it’s not as though I can quit my job and go on the road. My kids are my job – they’re not quittable. I’ve never wanted fame. And I’m sure I’m not the most introverted person on the planet who chose to sit and write books. But does it necessarily have to be part of the package when a novel gets noticed?
Characters are everywhere. Inspiration can be found for them in both the most obvious places and, at times, from the most unexpected.
Take for example when I was searching for inspiration for my Short Story course: I sat in the food court at the mall, alone, eating my Chinese noodles with chopsticks, (I wonder if I’m a character in someone else’s story?) and I people-watched. I do this as often as I can.
While I was slurping up my noodles, I noticed a thirty-something man, casually dressed, walking with an elderly lady on his arm. The woman was just about ready for a walker, but if she’s anything like my own mother, she probably wasn’t ready to admit it. Plot and conflict came to me instantaneously. All I had to do was look at the man and figure out what his problem might be. He became a guy with a career and a weird fetish. His elderly mother could no longer take care of herself so he was faced with the decision of either living his life the way he wanted to, or looking after his mother. At that moment the short story, “On Loyalty” was born, for which I received a mark of A+.
Settings, for me, are the light bulb that rarely flashes inspiration but when it does, it’s usually brilliant – not me, the light bulb. The main characters in my novel came from an abandoned bicycle (who left it there and where were they going?) and a burned out railroad station (a mad magician takes his kidnap victims there to experiment on making them disappear). I put the two together and ended up with a 214K word novel. The mad magician turned into a good guy, but here you can see where I got the idea from. The train station makes an appearance in the story – fixed up and turned into a night club.
Characters can be found in the strangest places. I think even non-writers get ideas for people they see – it’s part of what we do as human beings when we notice the way people are dressed and listen to the way they talk. Yes, it’s slightly judgmental, but whether or not we comment on it, our brains connect situations from past experience to what we are seeing – like it or not.
Do you ever consciously do it? Do you sometimes make up stories for people you see? And if you’re a writer, what is the weirdest place you’ve found a character for a story?
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