Category: Tips and Advice

Welcome to 2014 with some Advice from Chuck Palahniuk

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Chuck Palahniuk, best known perhaps for Fight Club, has some fantastic advice for writers seeking to ‘show’ more in their fiction.

Have a look right here where he takes aim at eliminating ‘thought’ verbs and provides examples of showing vs telling:

Don’t tell your reader: “Lisa hated Tom.”

Instead, make your case like a lawyer in court, detail by detail. Present each piece of evidence. For example:

“During role call, in the breath after the teacher said Tom’s name, in that moment before he could answer, right then, Lisa would whisper-shout: ‘Butt Wipe,” just as Tom was saying, ‘Here’.”

Magic – it’s got to be more than a deus ex machina in your story

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In fantasy fiction, and any fiction that plays with reality, the way a writer uses magic is vital. It can both create a sense of wonder and the necessary suspension of disbelief. For those of you creating your own worlds, the way you employ magic as a story element has to feel reasoned. As if you as the author have considered the impact of magic on your world, not just the plot.

Over the years, best-selling fantasy author Brandon Sanderson has written a few essays on aspects that he feels constitutes a great magic system. They’re incredibly useful posts and we wanted to draw your attention to them.

Below is a quote from the ‘laws’, but it’s worth reading the whole of each essay.

The First Law

An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

The Second Law

Limitations > Powers

Or

Superman is not his powers. Superman is his weaknesses.

The Third Law

Expand what you already have before you add something new.

Hemingway & Short Sentences

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Today, a short post on Hemingway’s four writing rules. His sparse, direct style is much-emulated and will no doubt remain so for a long time.

There are some interesting claims, especially the idea of being ‘positive’ instead of ‘negative,’ but perhaps the simplest ‘rule’ to embrace when working toward a minimalistic style is Hemingway’s first:

1. Use short sentences.

Long sentences have their place in writing. Complex ideas require complex construction, but remember, the more sub-clauses used, the more information you force your reader to store within their temporary or ‘working’ memory. Overload that memory and the reader has to re-read a sentence, and in fiction particularly, this can risk breaking ‘suspension of disbelief’ or pulling the reader out of the story.

So wherever possible, keep ‘em short.

Write What you Know – Tiny Masters

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Over at Creative Nonfiction there’s a great post explaining Susan Orlean’s notion of Tiny Masters.

It’s a brilliant idea and the perfect answer for writers who feel, each time they see the advice write what you know, that they don’t know ‘anything.’ In short, you probably do, you just haven’t realised it yet.

Here’s an example of how it works, taken from the Creative Nonfiction link above:

Make a list of 10 things of which you’re a master. Include talents, skills, hobbies, qualities of character. I’ve created many lists over the years, and they surprise me every time: Making enchilada sauce. Building fires. Finding beach glass. Crossing rivers. Writing thank you notes. Collecting maps. Procrastinating. Teaching tricks to my dog.

Next, you incorporate a mastery into a story or character.  It’s pretty much that easy!

Tiny Masters is useful because the kind of ‘smaller’ detail you’re using will add depth to your work, and because you the writer are confident in that mastery, your writing will naturally have an assured tone or ring of truth to it.

Now, to answer those of you thinking, ‘wait a minute, I’m writing in a speculative fiction genre and I don’t personally know anything about so and so’ (maybe it’s ‘space’) then not to worry.

One answer might be that while you don’t know a tonne about space, you do know about cooking. And so in your story, your character is a cook. Your knowledge of cooking becomes part of the authenticity, and what you choose to do with space, remains the speculative aspect.

Try it out!

 

When is your manuscript ready? (Part 2)

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Following up from a previous post, we thought it would be useful to share some advice from literary agent Carole Blake.

It’s about that next step, about when you have your manuscript ready to query. You may wish to submit a proposal to a literary agent. If so, Carole Blake has some cracking advice on what NOT to do.

Take heed! 

How much can your verbs bench press?

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You’ve heard the advice – make your verbs stronger.

Well, it is good advice. Unless you’re purposefully trying to make a character seem passive or downtrodden perhaps, you should aim for strong verbs, or certainly for variety in your verbs. Sometimes the simpler word will do – but not always.

Therese Stenzel has a useful list here. For example, take ‘sat.’ Sat could be switched for some of the words below, depending on the context. What kind of character is sitting? Where are they sitting?

Sat: eased into, settled, took, perch, plop down, relaxed into

For instance, an injured or elderly character might ‘ease into’ an armchair. By using ‘ease’ instead of sat, you’ve shown the reader something about that character. Your verb is working harder for you, its pulling its weight.

Now, some of the words on the list we’ve linked to might not always need changing. Further to this, ‘looked’ is an interesting one. Looked can impact on point of view, and act as a ‘filtering’ word. A  filtering word is something which may distance the reader from your character or action, which is not desirable.

But more on that topic next time!

Cliches & Story Ideas

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Evoking the familiar in fiction is important – vital even.

But just as often, you want to do something unexpected, to surprise or delight the reader. One of the best ways to do this is to avoid using cliches. Old advice, we know. And certainly not all cliches can be avoided in all circumstances.

Here’s a great list of movie cliches, which are exactly the kind of cliches that appear in fiction too.

Movie Cliches

So, how can you use the cliches to get a good story idea? Well, try this – choose one or two cliches from the list and try subverting them. Maybe flip a cliche on its head by changing something about it. Take this movie cliche from the Animals section:

Dogs always know who’s bad, and bark at them.

A cliche, right? Not to say this never happens in real life, but try subverting this.

What else could a dog recognise? Good people? People about to die? Rich people? Liars? Celebrities in disguise? The list goes on – it really depends on the needs of your story.

When is your manuscript ready?

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One of the most frustrating questions a writer faces is whether a manuscript is ready.

How many drafts, how many revisions or edits, before you can finally put it aside and say that, yes, it’s ready? Before it’s ready to submit, to publish or share with friends, whatever your desired goal, make sure you follow some simple tips before you send your work out there:

  • Check your spelling and grammar
  • Read your work aloud
  • Seek advice
  • Proofread your work
  • Be consistent

Check your spelling and grammar: This might sound obvious, but be sure. A manuscript littered with simple spelling errors or grammatical nightmares will confuse or turn a reader off. Instantly.

Read your work aloud: This is a fantastic chance to hear the rhythm of your words, and find the awkward spots. You don’t have to perform it – just sitting at your desk and speaking aloud is enough. It’ll give you a chance to make sure the flow of words is natural.

Seek advice: Whether this is professional or not – do seek advice. The kind of feedback you get from someone with fresh eyes is invaluable. You’re too close to your project. Find someone you trust to be honest and listen to what they have to say. It’ll probably be hard the first time, but do it anyway.

Proofread your work: Before you send it off – proof your work in a different context. Print it out, change the device you read it on, even change the font. Changing the way you see your manuscript will bring new errors to light – especially typos or missing letters.

Be consistent: Keep your stylistic choices consistent, such as spelling or formatting. Use US or UK spelling either works – just don’t mix them. Keep an eye on other aspects, like your spacing, capitalisation and font uses, both size and type. Imagine reading a report or an essay where the font size and type changes from ten times on page one.

These are starting points only, there’s a lot more care you can take – and should take – but these steps should make a big difference to your manuscript!

Point of View

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Clear and engaging use of Point of View (POV) is vital to good writing, especially in fiction.

Not just a question of who is best suited to telling your story, it is also a micro-level series of choices made by the writer to build and develop character at the same time as developing plot or setting scene.

There is a wealth of advice out there on how to handle POV, but we feel Australian author Karen Miller describes point of view very clearly in her post on Voice and Point of View, in addition to providing a clear comparative example.

Is your point of view working for you?