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.
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?
They say, ‘write what you know,’ but does that mean if you’re not an astronaut, you can’t write about astronauts? Okay, maybe it helps, but that’s what research is for. Personally, I take the rule of, ‘write what you know’ a little more loosely than that.
Take, for instance, yesterday’s post where I used the example, ‘The steamy kitchen reeked like a wet cat,’ when showing what better detail looked like. Had anyone asked me what a wet cat smells like, I would have had to tell them that I honestly have no idea. I’ve never owned a cat, let alone a wet one. In other words, I think it’s the details where our experience really comes in handy.
Having said that, not all things can really be described. 99.9% of us have had at least a sip of water, but can you describe the taste? And take, for instance, what it’s like to urinate. We’ve all (100% of us this time I think) done it, but if I’m writing from the point of view of a male, I’m unable to accurately describe the action of doing so standing up. Does that mean I shouldn’t write from the male perspective? Again, research comes in handy. I can ask other people (preferably male ones) to tell me what it’s like, but I still won’t have had the experience. And so I’ll probably never write a story in which my male character is dealing with bladder issues. Either that or, like the wet cat, I’ll get good at faking it.
My novel takes place in a real city: Kingston, Ontario, Canada. I don’t live there, but I’ve been there many times, and thought I knew the place well enough to be able to set a story there. Said story written, I decided to take the time to vacation there for a few days by myself, to really do some research, and I was amazed at what I gleaned. Because my characters get off the train there at the beginning of the novel, the station was one of my obvious places to visit. I sat to wait for the westbound train and whist there, noted the colours of the waiting room seats, the landscape outside – even the way the doors worked. When the train stopped I watched to see which track it was on, so I knew my characters would disembark on the nearside of the station rather than having to take the underground passage to get across. All of this will come to perhaps a sentence or two in the novel, but I believe it will add to the feel, as well as have the people who live in Kingston nodding in agreement when they read my book. I could never have accomplished this from information I took from Wikipedia; I had to experience it for myself.
Other life experiences from my past also often manage to creep into my stories. What comes through most vividly for my characters to experience are the wonders of nature I have had the gift of being part of. There’s nothing quite like the quiet of a country field on a snowy night, or the singing of cicadas on a sweltering summer afternoon. These are the things that make fiction come to life. Real life.
Can you tell when something is contrived in a story?
I’ve bemoaned, before, the difficulty I’m having in trying to cut down the length of my manuscript whilst keeping the important little details intact – and at the same time making it readable. In a much broader sense than the idiom perhaps implies, the devil is in the details.
After letting my ex read the beginning of my novel a couple of weeks ago, I know now that my problems are indeed serious. When we were together he was not only my sounding board, he was the one I wrote to impress, and impress him I did with the details I put into my stories. He told me that they were what drew him in, placed him in the story so that he could feel as though it was going on around him. Two weeks ago, however, the first criticism he gave me was, “Where’s the detail?” I knew I was screwed.
While you might want to scream at me, “He’s your ex, Linda! Of course he’s going to criticize!”, I know he wants me to succeed – and I’m sure it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that if I make millions off this book he won’t have to pay child support. Heh.
So what is detail, and how am I to know the extent to which I should go to add it? I personally don’t like to read a book where every nook and cranny is described; every piece of clothing, or each hair that is blown out of place. I think the most important details are the ones that stimulate the senses. They say the sense of smell brings the most vivid memories to mind, yet ironically it’s the one I most often forget, and have to insert into a scene after it’s written.
For me, the most efficient way to add detail is to eliminate the passive voice. Just one example and I’ll leave it there – the rest I’ll save for my fiction post.
It was hot and smelly in the kitchen.
vs
The steamy kitchen reeked of wet cat. What were they cooking?
The detail adds to the word count. And yet which would you rather spend time reading?
We’ve discussed it here in the past and the general consensus seemed to be that most people would rather read a longer well-written book than a shorter one that sucked. I agree. It’s why I read Stephen King.
What I’d love to know today is, what kinds of detail do you enjoy? Do you want to know what every character looks like or would you rather use your own imagination? Do you want to know what they’re wearing down to the designer, or is a pair of starched jeans enough to tell you that they go to way too much trouble with their laundry?
There’s nothing like a good critique of your work, is there? But how do you go about getting it?
Long, long ago–maybe about two years (I have a short attention span)–I was afraid to share my words with the world. I was scared that someone would steal my stories, and so I was hesitant to allow anyone to read them. When I did finally break down to hand my manuscripts to people to read, I limited the exposure to friends and family. The drawback is that typically all I received in feedback was, “That was nice!” or “I liked it!” which is great, except it doesn’t help. I wanted to know what was wrong with it. I know now that my first manuscript sucks as far as style and grammar go, but still, the only feedback I’ve ever received is positive.
The solution must be to give my manuscripts to people who will dissect them. Pull them apart, tear the words to shreds and hand them back to me in a green garbage bag to put back together. Still, for fear of seeming mean, unless I’m paying someone to do it, it’s difficult to find somebody with that sort of gumption. But I’m guilty of the same thing! I fully acknowledge that critiquing is a difficult task. Telling someone what they’ve spent the last year bleeding from the soul on needs a complete overhaul is painful for everyone. And believe me, I’ve wanted to tell authors that their hard work sucks dusty ping-pong balls, yet I either found it difficult or avoided it altogether.
Is it better to leave the job to a professional? Or do you ask those who have an emotional attachment to the task? Personally, I say pay for that whipping, baby! It’ll probably make you a better writer.
It’s the on-again, off-again, great blogging debate: why do writers have blogs? In my own experience, my reasoning has evolved, and in a very satisfying way.
At the same time I discovered WordPress, I was told that if I wanted to write and get my name ‘out there,’ I should start a blog. The scariest part was deciding to use my real name; then came deciding what to actually write about. While that particular choice hasn’t evolved much, what I have found as the biggest surprise, is the community here. I got my name out all right – but I hardly have publishers knocking on my door.
There are many different reasons for a writer to blog. My personal favourites are; to build an audience for that eventual bestseller; to keep in the practice of writing, especially while editing; and the best one of all: to have easy access and a (good) excuse to procrastinate, rather than edit the above-mentioned eventual bestseller.
I suppose if I do ever get off my butt and start sending out queries to magazines and the like, I may be able to use this blog as a sample of my work. We all have to start somewhere, and it’s really the age-old question – what do you put on a resume when you have no previous experience? Well, here’s my experience right here. But again, am I just using the blog to procrastinate?
One way or another, the very best part of this whole blogging experience is the wonderful people here on WordPress. Even if I never make it to the bestseller lists, I will always have this great community of people who are as dedicated to writing (and art and photography) as I am. If I’ve gained anything, it’s the valuable insight and fantastic friendships – and I’m meeting more people every day. What could be better?
It would be interesting to know if your reasons for blogging are the same now as they were when you started. Are you as surprised as I am at the support you’ve gained here? I know without it, I may just have fizzled out by now – both as a blogger and as a novelist with an erstwhile eventual bestseller.
For the short fiction that goes with this post, please visit my fiction blog here: B is for … Bob the Blogger.
“Well, it’s about a girl who leaves home and meets a magician.”
“Oh. That sounds … nice.”
“But his family has this deep dark secret.”
(Best case scenario.) Their eyebrows lift a notch. “That sounds intriguing!”
(What usually happens because I lost them after the word ‘magician.’) “What? I was paying attention to something else.”
Explaining what your story is about can be the most difficult thing. From what I’ve discovered by experience, it’s even harder than writing a blurb – because at least with a blurb, if someone is going to bother reading it, they’ve probably committed themselves mentally to paying attention to at least two sentences – one more than you’ve got to grab them with in conversation.
Trying to explain what I do, off the top of my head, is never easy. I don’t have a natural gift for talking about myself. That’s why I write. And so I’m thinking that this may be one of the major reasons that it’s not a good idea to talk about being an author at all.
Before I do, however, publish my novel, I’ll be sure to write myself a sentence which I will recite verbatim whenever anyone asks.
It was February when I signed up for the A-Z April Blogging Challenge. At the time I had energy. “I can do this!” I said. “It’ll be easy!”
I even decided on a theme way way wayyy back then. “I’ll write about writing!” I said.
Well, with a week left to go I’m putting a brave face on and I’m saying, “Yes! I can still do this!” I moved the badge to the top of my sidebar, and I’m waving it proudly.
Meanwhile, I’m gathering all the notes I’ve written on napkins, in the notepad on my phone, on the ceiling in my bedroom… yeah, that was back in February … on what exactly to write about, and I shall give it a go!
How will I keep it fresh and entertaining? Life, of course. Rather than gobbling about the rules and guidelines, I shall devote the month of A-Z on writing, to how I pull from the observations, characters, emotions, etc., etc., I find in everyday life and apply them to creating stories and all the elements which go into them.
It’ll be … fun!
If you’re reading this and you’re joining in the fun of A-Z April, please let me know in the comments so I can follow along with your posts. Let’s have … fun together!
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