Articles archived for March 2011

Rebecca says: I’m excited today to be able to introduce you all to Nava Atlas, a talented writer who is blog touring this month and through April with the fantastic ladies of WOW! Women on Writing. Nava has written a fantastic book for writers, rich with the stories and truths of talented female authors across time. I’ll be sharing a full review of The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life on April 14th and between now and then you have a chance to win your own copy by writing a short blog post about your own experiences with self-doubt, self-acceptance, and writing. But before I tell you more about that, let’s hear from Nava about her own experiences and those of three exceptional women of literature.

Self-Acceptance: A Hard-Fought Battle, Even for Accomplished Authors

by Nava Atlas

There’s a cartoon on my bulletin board of two caterpillars creeping along, with a butterfly hovering above them. One caterpillar eyes the butterfly suspiciously, and says, “You’ll never catch me going up in one of those things!” Maybe it isn’t what the cartoonist intended, but I see it as a metaphor for the sad state of women’s self-esteem. We’re destined to become glorious butterflies, yet we persist in perceiving ourselves as caterpillars, opting for crawling the safer but less exciting ground, instead of allowing ourselves to take flight.

It’s a tough task to reach the level of self-acceptance that allows a writer to feel she deserves to let her talent shine, and reap the rewards of hard work. Think of favorite classic authors such as Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, and Louisa May Alcott, with their distinct styles and personas. It’s hard to imagine that they didn’t burst forth with the kind of self-regard that would allow them to write and succeed gloriously. And yet—they didn’t. Like most of us, they struggled with self-acceptance for years, sometimes for decades. Consider:

Edith Wharton, a wealthy heiress, was surrounded by disapproval, from her snooty mother and society friends to her gadfly husband, who scoffed at her literary pursuits. She tiptoed haltingly into the world of print, hampered by crippling insecurity. It took many small victories — published stories, books, and warm reviews — before Wharton believed she was worthy of success. Finally, “The reception of my books gave me the self-confidence I had so long lacked…” It took the reinforcement of the public and her peers for her to acquire a new image of herself as a capable, talented author—one who, before very long, became the first female author to win the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1921 for The Age of Innocence.

Like Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf’s need for approval was vast, and she sought it from her husband, friends, publishers, and critics. But unlike Edith Wharton, those closest to her gave her just that. That didn’t allay her constant struggle with self-doubt, seeing herself as somehow “less than.” “I can assure you,” she wrote to her friend Vita Sackville-West, “all my novels were first-rate before I wrote them.” When her publishers or husband praised her efforts, it meant everything to her. Woolf needed the reinforcement of others to build a foundation of self-acceptance, which in turn gave her courage to create works that were experimental and far ahead of their time. Though self-doubt never left her, it was a catalyst to constantly do better, not a signal to stop growing.

Louisa May Alcott was determined to make a living by writing, no small feat for a woman of her time. To support her family, she wrote thrillers, gothics, and “sensational tales” under pseudonyms. After years of toil, she took up her publisher’s request to try a “girls’ story,” and reluctantly cranked out Little Women. Though neither she nor her publisher thought highly of the results, the book became an immediate best-seller. When she learned of its embrace by the public, Alcott changed her tune: “It reads better than I expected. Not a bit sensational, but simple and true…” No longer going from one anonymous literary identity to another, self-acceptance came after the “simple and true” novel that emerged from the pen of its reluctant author met an enthusiastic audience. Her career blossomed, as did the fortune she had long craved.

Once I learned of the universal struggles of authors like Wharton, Woolf, and Alcott while researching The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life, I realized that I was behaving more like the two caterpillars in the cartoon than the butterfly. I’ve played it safe by accepting only a certain version of myself as a writer, one that’s occasionally at odds with the “real me.” I think that’s about to change!

Like the two caterpillars crawling ever so slowly on the ground, the illusion of safety can get in the way of progress. After all, caterpillars are vulnerable to getting smooshed on the road. Sometimes acceptance of a new version of ourselves—as writers who have arrived, or are just on the cusp of doing so—lags behind what others have already perceived about us: we’re already aloft, like the butterfly; we just need the courage to lose sight of the ground below.

Rebecca says: Nava is available today to answer questions if you’d like to ask them by leaving a comment or say hi and let her know what you think of her post and her book.

Now, if you’d like a chance to win a copy of The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life there are a few opportunities over the course of Nava’s blog tour that you can find on the WOW! Women on Writing blog along with her other stops.

To win the copy I have available for a loyal Crafting Fiction reader, share your own experience with self-doubt as a writer in 300 to 600 words. Have you experienced self-doubt? Are you searching for approval, and acceptance from others as well as yourself? How has this influenced you as a writer?

You can share your blog post in one of two ways: either post it to your own blog or website with a link back to this post, or send it to me as a guest post for The Craft of Writing Fiction (either by email or in the dashboard).

A few months ago, a friend and fellow writer came to me with questions about action, plot, and how to tell a unique story. His questions were fantastic and I wanted to share our conversation for those of you who might be asking yourselves the same thing; “How can I write a story that is fresh and new if I’m following the ‘rules’ and ‘formula’ set out by tried-and-true authors?”

Oh, good question. Action, particularly in the action movie genre, tends to refer more specifically to motion and movements that are being taken. Action movies involve a great deal of momentum. The pace is usually quite fast and a lot of exciting events tend to occur.
Plot is more collective; it’s about WHY those actions happen, and when and how. The plot involves the motivations of the characters and the causal affect, why one action leads into, or causes, a reaction.

An action movie SHOULD have a plot, but some don’t. If stuff is blowing up and people are running about everywhere but there isn’t some underlying sense of motivation and purpose there is no plot.

A lot of ‘real life’ is fairly plotless. We do stuff, because it’s a new day; that’s action. But without goals and dreams there is no plot and we tend to wander from action to action aimlessly.

Like I said, a lot of real life IS plotless, but during the writing process it’s best to have a plot because in a story things are supposed to happen for a reason. If you factor in an action or event that appears to be plotless it is because within your plot that ‘natural’ or ‘light-hearted’ event is important to the story.

This is Chekov’s Gun Theory, which states, “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

What this comes down to is plot devices. Everything in the story should serve the purpose of the plot. If it isn’t related then it doesn’t belong in the story. The plotless stuff should get taken OUT of a story.

Guy gets up, has coffee, blows his nose, has a shower… The reader doesn’t CARE! So it gets cut. Unless something significant happens in the event, such as his coffee is poisoned or he blows his brains out of his nose, it is noise that will bore and frustrate a reader. If an object, scene, or an action doesn’t serve the plot then it’s superfluous padding which can slow down and even dumb down a story.

Some stories are considered to be plot-driven while others are considered to be character-driven. If the scene develops the reader’s connection with the character it’s considered to be a character-driven scene and doesn’t necessarily ‘need’ a plot. But it’s better if the characters are driving the plot with all of their actions. That is how the two weave together.
Ideally, plot and character go together.

It’s the kind of thing worth considering when reading books. Look at them with your writer’s eye; pay attention to what feels connected to the greater theme of the story. Does anything happen that doesn’t, ultimately, lead into what happens next?
Life does that. If anything in my past had happened differently I wouldn’t be who I am in the present. And books are the same; the action serves the purpose of the plot, or at least it should.

You need both. Or rather, I should say, the best stories have both. There are plenty of stories that are “ok” which cater to one or the other predominantly but the stories readers come to love, the ones they become immersed in and won’t put down, are those which keep a balance between character and plot. Those stories build character enough to make us care that these things happen to this person, and plot enough to make what happens interesting.

Unique writing usually comes from voice. The same basic plot, even very similar characters have been written about hundreds of times before. (This is the basis of The Hero’s Journey.) But YOU haven’t written them. The way YOU tell the story will differ from the story someone else told.

If you talk to twenty people at a birthday party, every one of those twenty people would describe the party in a different and unique way. It would be like there were twenty parties instead of one. Each of us brings our own experiences and unique perspective to our storytelling.
Your storytelling can do things in a unique way based on your voice and the ideas that are uniquely yours.

It is better to balance the expected with the unexpected. Prepare and don’t prepare. Readers love twists, they love surprises, but they don’t like being mislead or sent off on tangents.

So, even if you do something unexpected, when the reader looks back it should be eye-opening for them. On reflection, they should be able to see the things that pointed to the twist before the twist happened.

For example, the second time you watch the movie, “Sixth Sense”, you realise there are lots of things that pointed to the twist from the very first scene. Natural human assumption about the way the world works creates a belief that causes viewers to miss those crucial hints the first time we see the movie, the twist makes us go “Shock, WOW!” and then ohhh, there, and there, oh yes, I remember that happening, etc.

Hints are good. Intelligent readers especially love the thrill of getting hints and trying to guess the ending. But be careful not to make those hints too obvious or the reader will guess and be right.

Well, you can write things completely opposite to that which is tried-and-true. It might work, but it might also become the biggest flop in this history of big flops. That’s what innovation is about; taking a chance that it won’t suck it big time.

If you want to write a book you can sell, you do it the way that has proven to work. Publishers don’t like taking risks so particularly for those of us writing for traditional publishers it can be important to follow the ‘rules’ and do what has proven to work.

If you want to do something fantastically unique and new, then don’t follow the ‘rules’. You have to be willing to break all the rules. It might pay off, but it might not. You have to weigh up if the risk is worth it to you. If you love the process of writing without following the tried-and-true, if it’s fun to be wild like that, then go for it. Forge the path for other writers to follow the new rules you create.

The only real ‘rule’ in writing is to write what you love. Because, odds are, if you love it there will be readers out there who love it as much as you do.

Original conversation took place on the 14th of September, 2010.

You lost your momentum. Your once exciting story feels like it’s gone off the rails somehow. The great beginning gave way to a floundering middle and you don’t know why. It’s frustrating and worrisome but don’t despair. This is a common, fixable problem.

So you’ve written a novel, but something is not quite right. You have a spectacular beginning to your story; a compelling hook, riveting main characters, and a worrisome conflict. Great!  Your ending is excellent with a twist, with a killer resolution – the satisfying all is well or isn’t this ironic last few words.

The problem, you decide, is the stuff in between. The middle of your book is lacking something. There’s no spark, no oomph.

Here are 5 tell-tale signs that your plot is losing steam.

1. Your main characters spend too much time apart.

This little tid-bit actually made a light go on in my head when I realized that the subplot was keeping my main characters apart for a large portion of the book. Doesn’t matter if they’re romantically involved or resolving a different type of relationship. They have to be together to get together.  You need time to build tension and your characters need time to resolve their conflict.

2. Your main character isn’t stressed out.

Conflict is the key to a good story. It creates tension and drama. If your main character is happy and comfortable they are also boring. Whether it’s an arch nemesis sabotaging them at every turn or a love interest that is out of reach, your main character has to suffer. Throwing conflicts in front of them also shows what they’re made of, how deep their desire goes for a given outcome, and what the stakes are. These revelations not only drive a story, they push your character along their arc of development.

3. Random, pointless details.

Do you write about the morning routine? Driving places? How about a few paragraphs describing boring stuff like what they do at work?  Busy work that doesn’t push the plot loses the reader and makes your characters too ordinary. Remember that your book is an escape for your readers. Only use the day to day if it’s significant. For example; if they don’t do something that later on proves a mistake. Then it’s a plot point.

4. Recapping and redundant conversations.

Your reader isn’t dumb. Don’t treat them like they are. If you already showed something in a scene, you don’t need to spend time talking about it, unless it’s a really convoluted storyline in which case sagging probably isn’t the only problem.

5. Second Fiddle becomes more interesting.

If secondary characters, supporting staff, and scenery become the focus of your book you’re in trouble. Quirky side-kicks, sassy best friends, the Beta-Male/friend are all essential, but be aware of those characters taking over. Avoid this by limiting their backstory to only what is relevant to the plot.

But wait. There is hope. Here are some steps to take BEFORE your plot starts to slow that will allow you to side-step the whole horrifying ordeal.  I know that some SEAT OF YOUR PANTS writers out there will hate me for this, but OUTLINING, is the best way to check for signs of trouble. An outline of your plot will help you see some essential components you might be missing.

Make sure you have a book-length plot. The number one reason for losing steam halfway through a story is that you don’t have enough of a plot to support a book-length manuscript.  The subplot doesn’t have enough emotional twists and turns or the main plot is too linear.  An outline can help you see if you need more of one or the other or if your novel should really be a novella or short story.

Make sure you limit the action. This may sound backwards, but too much action and your book becomes frenetic and hard to follow. Doling out the tension systematically, piece by piece, ramping up the stakes just a bit each time is a more effective way to keep your story exciting.

The middle matters in matters of the heart. Use the middle to focus on the romance or the relationship issues between characters. Make sure they contribute to major turning points in the plot.  Don’t go off on tangents like side character issues, or backstory. If you know the middle of novels tends to sag fill it with juicy stuff and it won’t.

Now it’s always a good idea to do check for these problems before your WIP needs a major overhaul. Sometimes going back in and adding subplots or adjusting the pace can fix your novel, but that can be frustrating. Bypass lengthy revisions by simply planning ahead and employing these strategies to avoid a plot that runs out of steam.

And herewith my first attempt,

forgive me for just playing a little here to see what an online community such as this is all about.

This website is, however, all about writing and that is what I do. My day job involves other people’s writing… in the academic sense. I, however, would like to think that my own string of words is a little more creative.

I started my rambling with badly thought out poetry – cries of teenage angst and when my path went to university these changed into short stories. And that is what I have been writing ever since.

I also do freelance editing – this again more in the academic field – less creative and more structured.

I decided to give my writing some structure last year and enrolled for a creative writing course. Specifically short stories. I surprised myself by doing very well. And that was when the writing bug took hold of me.

I am now playing with the idea of ghostwriting. I have come accross two websites thus far which stipulate that you have to be a native english speaker. This I am not.

Maybe that is a sign. Maybe I should take this as a hint that my own voice is important and worthy of being published.

But where do you start? Where do you get your foot in the door?

Another notion that fills me with dread is the one of no restrictions. We all have that fantasy of shouting from the rooftops, but I need some guidelines towards what I should be shouting about. Just a nudge in the right direction.

So with this entry my writing adventure starts in a sense. By putting my desire to write in words here, I can consider it a commitment. Hopefully but making my commitment here, I can have some feedback from the experience of others. And maybe then my whole world will not just be a project in progress, but possibly lead towards something real – my name in print.

Wow! Have you ever been to a workshop or seminar that just BLEW YOUR MIND? That was what the two-day seminar, “The Hero’s Journey“, put on in the Art Gallery of Western Australia Theatrette this weekend, did for me. It BLEW MY MIND! It truly was, as the presenter described, “The be all and end all, the mother of all story-telling theories.”

The seminar, hosted by WAnimate in conjunction with ScreenWest was presented by talented producer, consultant, teacher, blogger, and “student of story”, Karel Segers. Over the course of two days, Karel covered a great deal of ground, from The Monomyth and Mythical Structure, to Hero’s Journey Archetypes, and from the Three-Act Structure to the twelve stages of The Hero’s Journey. He managed to give us an overview of all this while interspersing compelling examples in dozens of clips and sequences from some of the most popular movies in the history of modern cinema. We had a blast. It truly was a lot of fun and I learned a great deal.

Although targeted at animators the seminar was a boon for producers, directors, and writers of all kinds. “The Hero’s Journey” has a particular slant toward screenwriting but I honestly feel that having an understanding of the journey can help fiction writers add depth and dynamic to their stories. By understanding “The Hero’s Journey” you begin to see that stories aren’t just about a beginning, middle, and end. There are stages of evolution and learning built into the character arc that extend throughout the plot. Seeing how this works in the majority of successful books and movies is pretty phenomenal. I’ll never watch a movie or read a book in the same way again.

So, I’m mind-blown. And, over the next few weeks I’ll share with you some of what I’ve learned through the seminar and some of what I’m continuing to learn. I’ll cover:

• The Monomyth and Mythical Structure
• Character Archetypes in The Hero’s Journey
  (and possibly break this down in detail by each individual archetype and that archetypes impact on the journey)
• What exactly is Three-Act and Four-Act Structure?
• Why Three-Acts and Four-Acts aren’t enough
• The Twelve Stages of The Hero’s Journey
  (and probably break it down by each stage and possibly share a series of movie analyses and clips that give examples of these stages)

While I get all these posts written, I’ll leave you with some references that were recommended by Karel and which I’ve already hunted down for my own further research:

• “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell (1949)
• “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers” by Chris Vogler (1998)
• “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers (1991)
• “The Key: How to write damn good fiction using the power of myth” by James N. Frey (2002)
• “Myth And The Movies: Discovering the Mythic Structure of 50 Unforgettable Films” by Stuart Voytilla (1999)

And some I’m still trying to get my hands on:

• “Psychology of the Unconscious” by Carl Jung (1912) translation by Beatrice M. Hinkle (1916)
• “Owning Your Own Shadow” by Robert A. Johnson (1993)

There is a lot to cover and so much more I’ve yet to learn. But you know what was most inspiring about this weekend? I had a breakthrough with my current novel. Some of you might remember that I’ve been “stuck” with my current WIP for months now. My muse is holding my draft hostage at the seventy percent (70%) mark and, until this weekend, I was unable to figure out how to bring the strings of plot together to get to those magic words, “the end”. Thanks to what I’ve learned this weekend I’m moving forward again and it feels fantastic!

I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to Karel Segers and The Story Department, WAnimate, ScreenWest, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, and Writing WA for giving me the opportunity to attend The Hero’s Journey Seminar. I had an incredible time and I’d love to have more of these opportunities coming to Perth.

The author Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Sage advice, but new and intermediate writers may need to first hone their skills a bit. What can they do? Take some free writing courses. A writing course serves as a fine-grained whetstone, giving a sharp edge to roughly textured writing skills.

Where can you take free writing courses? The Internet made the world a much smaller place, and free courses from leading institutions around the world are now available online.

Here are some of the best free online writing courses. The comments for each course are short summaries based on the course descriptions:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

MIT offers a few of its past writing courses on its website. Take a writing course and tell your friends you’ve been accepted to MIT! To incorporate “quark spin” into your next novel, go to this MIT web page! If that doesn’t spark your creativity (and chances are it won’t), then maybe The Creative Spark is more worthy of your time. Professor Karen Boiko taught the course back in 2004. The objective of the course is to develop effective writing and speaking skills along with helping students become aware of their own purpose as a writer.

Another MIT course, entitled Writing and Reading Short Stories, focuses on the craft of – you guessed it – the short story.

Open University

This University is the largest academic institution in the United Kingdom. It offers a number of excellent free-of-charge, online writing courses, including:

• Start Writing Fiction. Improve your skills in creating characters and settings.
• Approaching Prose Fiction. Covers the settings of novels, narrative events and perspectives, types of characterization, and genre. It’s designed as an intermediate level course.
• Writing What you Know. Enhance your descriptive writing abilities. The course also reviews how authors use their own personal history to form the basis of their work. This one is an introductory course.

Warwick University

Warwick University, also located in the United Kingdom, offers a collection of courses in its Podcast Browser. David Morley, Director of the Warwick Writing Programme, leads you through a series of creative writing challenges designed to help you develop your creativity and talent as a writer. You also have the opportunity to send your work for evaluation.

Purdue University

Purdue Online Writing Lab’s Fiction Writing Basics course teaches writing techniques for beginning and intermediate fiction writers. The course covers the basics of plot, theme, character, point-of-view, and conflict.

The average price for an online writing course is $400. So try one of these free courses and save yourself some money!

Brian Jenkins writes about career and school information for writers, among other topics, for BrainTrack.com.