Category Archives: Craft & Skills

Editing Schmediting

Craft & Skills Kylie Quillinan Rewriting 10 Comments

While roaming the internet one morning (procrastinating, in truth), I stumbled across a great quote from Jenna Morris at Literally YA: Remember, not many people have died from editing.

How awesome is that? Say it again: not many people have died from editing.

This quote really rang true for me because as much as I enjoy editing and re-writing, I have no idea what I’m actually supposed to do. Editing, for me, usually consists of reading the manuscript over and over, changing a paragraph here, a word there, maybe adding in a scene or two. Yes, the manuscript improves, but it doesn’t sparkle and that’s what I need to learn: how to polish the beast-that-was-once-a-first-draft until it shines and glimmers and sparkles.

I’m taking some editing classes with the fabulous Kim Wilkins and I’m learning structure. I’ve learnt to start by searching for those words I know I over-use – “that” and “just” – and eliminate them. If I hesitate on whether I really need the word, it goes and I can usually admit the sentence is stronger for it.

Another editing tool I’ve learnt is the scene map. My hyper-methodical brain loves the concept of a scene map. It allows me to indulge my love of spreadsheets and organising information and yet also provides a lens through which to view the manuscript more methodically.

A scene map lists each scene, one after another. It’s not an outline to be completed before the writing starts, but a review of how the storyline actually unfolded. I have a column of scene numbers (which will eventually be grouped into chapters); next to that is a brief description of what happens within each scene and who the viewpoint character is. A third column is for my notes: heighten the tension here, or develop a relationship better in this scene, or there’s crucial information missing here.

The scene map helps me to view the manuscript more objectively and note where there are problems. Then I can work back through, scene by scene, and fix those problems. If I only have ten minutes in which to work, I can pluck a small task from my scene map and get stuck straight into it. I can’t wait to get to the end of this first draft and start applying my new editing tools.

So tell me, what editing tools do you use?

Four Elements, Part 1, maybe

Craft & Skills Setting and Milieu The Writing Life The Writing Process 5 Comments

Okay, so this is my first blog for Fictorians.  Bit nervous, and all that.  New territory for me, blogging is.  But, having agreed to do it, here goes.

As I understand it, this is supposed to be a blog by writers about writing, and that those of us who participate can write on most any topic that appeals to us.  That being the case, I’m going to spend a few words on the craft of writing fiction.  Oh, not on the nuts and bolts of it, the grammar and vocabulary, the sentences and paragraphs.  No, I’m going to wax at least semi-eloquent on what I think of to myself as the Four Elements of writing fiction:  Characters, Plot, Narrative, and World-building.  Others may disagree with me on the composition of the list, but to me these are the big four.

Different writers approach those elements in different manners.  For example, J.R.R. Tolkien, of The Lord of the Rings fame, did his world-building first.  He created the languages first, then after asking himself the question “What kind of people would speak these languages?”, created the world and the peoples (a/k/a Middle-Earth), and only then began creating the stories, the histories that morphed into The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and all of the other tales laid in that universe.

Other writers come up with the story idea first, then develop the characters and the universe.

Still others create a character first, and the story and the universe grow out of the question “What would this guy do?”  I fall in that category most of the time:  a character usually springs into my mind full-grown and full-blown, and I begin telling stories about him or her because I want to learn what he/she did.

Of course, an author is not locked into a single approach.  We’re free to adopt whichever approach works best at a given moment or for a given idea.  However, I suspect that most of us have a favored approach to the Four Elements.  As I said above, I’m usually character-driven, and my track record is that my best writing occurs when I have a bond with my characters.

But regardless of which door an author uses to enter the hall of the Four Elements, he/she can’t exit without having visited all four of them and incorporating them into the work.  There may be a few exceptions to that rule, but every story I can remember reading that I felt was written well and told a good story had all four elements present.

Of course, none of this is new thought.  Reams of written texts and countless hours of discussion in seminars and other venues have chewed on these elements.  And I don’t pretend to have distilled it all down to pure unalloyed truth.  But it is kind of fun to spend time chewing on  them some more.

Now, I’m going to tell you that all of the above was in the manner of introductory remarks, to set context, if you will.  What I really want to do is narrow the discussion down to one of the elements:  World-building.  But I’ve about reached the limit of what I can do in a single post, so I’ll leave that for my next post.  I’ll try to make it worth the wait.

What Worries You

Craft & Skills Dylan Blacquiere The Writing Life 4 Comments

One of my favourite writing adages is by a Canadian author named Alistair MacLeod, who noted that “writers write about what worries them”. I happen to believe this is true, although I’m biased, as most of my writing tends to involve medicine in some way and I’m terribly worried every day by the thought of misdiagnoses and worst-case scenarios.

I like this statement because it contrasts with the standard advice given to writers starting out, which is to “write what you know”. I’ve never found that to be profoundly helpful, mostly because I feel that people know lots of things and end up writing about things that don’t particularly interest them simply because it feels familiar. To write about what worries you, though – that makes more sense. As science-fiction and fantasy writers well know, writing stories in a setting removed from our day-to-day surroundings leads to richly inventive stories that transport and entertain, but the best of these genres also make us think about issues that matter. The best speculative fiction has been written by people who have things to say about our society, and who use the fantastic or the futuristic to make readers think about problems and their possible solutions. (The worst can do this, too, if the writing is clunky and heavy-handed enough, but that’s another matter.)

What does this mean for people starting out in the business? I don’t mean to imply that every story written needs to have a Message, something important that will change the world if only the right people read it, damnit, and I would even caution against starting out with the idea of holding a mirror up to the world at large. But I do think that adage may help people to hone in on where to start when they stare at the blank screen, trying to call to mind all those tips and tricks about worldbuilding.

Why does this story matter to me? Why is it that I want to tell it? What is it that makes this the story I want to have people read?

For me, thinking of these questions makes it more likely that I’ll be invested in what I write, and that my attention to the craft of characterization and plot and conflict will be that much stricter because of my emotional involvement.  I’m worried about trying to fix people, trying to change the story that they’ve been telling themselves about who they are so that I can offer a treatment plan that will prevent that next stroke or delay that move to the nursing home. Therefore, in my first novel, I am writing about someone who can change people’s stories, for better or for worse, and what that does to the people around him and the people who might want to take advantage of that. If ever I get lost in the details, I can always come back to that worry, and that helps keep me going to the next part of the actual writing.

I’d encourage you to do that, if you’re starting out. Think about why you want to write that story. Think about what worries you, and start from there. It won’t help with the grammar or the editing or the elusive publishing deal right away, but it will make the story matter, and give it that extra bit of meaning to push it down the long road of publication.

The Art of Implication or Show Don’t Tell is for Losers

Character Craft & Skills Leigh Galbreath Rewriting 4 Comments

I’m a fervent believer in the old adage Show Don’t Tell. We’ve all heard it. We all hate it. We all know it’s essential for good fiction — the writer’s Golden Rule. It reminds us that simply telling a story isn’t enough. We have to bring the story alive through choice details that make the simple statement redundant and useless.

So, why do I say that it’s for losers?

Because, lately, I’ve come to realize that the adage doesn’t do the work. I’ve been reading a lot of works in progress by unpublished writers, and I repeatedly come across the same issue. It’s an issue, I myself, have to deal with. It’s not that we’re bad writers. It’s not that we don’t know the adage and put it to good use. The issue is that we don’t use it as widely or was deeply as we should.

First, lets look at the adage itself. Show Don’t Tell only mentions one of the senses. While our mentors might mean to use all the senses, it’s not evident in the statement — and as we all know, words are powerful things. They work on us even at a subconscious level, and the amount of times new writers forget about the other four (or five depending on the story you’re telling) backs me up. As many of us have heard before, genre fiction is immersive. Our readers don’t just read the worlds we create. They live in them. If we were writing scripts, showing the world might be enough. But novel and short story writers must use every sense to make their worlds real. Readers must smell the newly turned earth of the farmer’s field, taste the smoke of the soldier’s recently exploded bunker, feel the slick sweat of the rebel about to be put to the question.

Second, the adage doesn’t encompass the most important aspect of putting across a powerful story — emotion. You can’t show emotion with any power anymore than you can tell it. For example, showing a facial expression is about as informative as just saying that someone’s happy. And depending on how it’s carried off, saying that someone’s happy is easier to understand. But you can imply emotion. When we describe the smell of our farmer’s new turned earth, we imply the satisfaction of  the fruits of a plowed field. When we describe the feel of our rebel’s slick sweat as he awaits his torture, we feel his terror, his discomfort. Emotion, my friends, is the universal language. A reader may not understand a character’s political or religious views. They may not understand how a character’s background may motivate their actions, but they will understand a character’s emotions. Emotions are the true connective tissue between a character and a reader.

For this reason, I’ve come to think that the adage should actually read Imply Don’t Tell. I mean, that is what we’re talking about when we Show, right?

Which brings us to my third reason that Show Don’t Tell is inadequate. Show Don’t Tell is primarily a tool for narrative. We use it for description. We use it for action. But when was the last time someone told you to Show Don’t Tell a piece of dialogue? Doesn’t really work, does it? And when was the last time you realized, or were told by a reader, that your dialogue is flat, repetitive, overwrought, over-simplistic, or just plain unbelievable? That’s happened to all of us. Great dialogue implies subtext, motive, tension without saying it allowed. Great dialogue implies physical and/or emotional danger. When one character asks a question, the person answering doesn’t give a direct answer. They answer a little to the side, in a round about way. And even when they do answer directly, they do so with loaded words that imply more than they’re saying.

So, I put to you all, when you’re writing or revising and you come across a telling statement, don’t wonder how you can show it. Wonder how you can imply it. For, when you think about it, implication is what we’re best at. We can’t in reality, make other people see what we see, feel what we feel, no matter how good a wordsmith we are. If that’s what you want to do, go become a movie director. Writers can only imply with these paltry things we call words and hope the reader get’s somewhere close to the point. By implication, we leave a few cracks for the reader to fill in the gaps, and that is half the fun of reading.