Staying in Shape

Welcome to the New Year everyone.

Staying in Shape - OK, I'm not talking about how many push ups and jumping squats you can do.

I've been thinking about the elements of prose and storytelling, and wondering how you keep all of those skills sharp.

Stephen King in his book On Writing talks about carrying around the Grammar Tool Box. He uses a neat metaphor in the book for this, but I'm afraid nothing can really get me all that excited about grammar. I tend to learn it as I need it, then let myself forget it - after which point it becomes instinctive. I usually only need to research grammar once in a blue moon.

What started me off on all this was reading about competitive athletes and how they stay in peak condition. Then I was thinking, 'What is peak writing condition?'

My first reaction was that time is the critical issue. I you asked a sprinter what he was going to do with the first hour of his available training he is going to answer 'sprinting' . It's only the tenth or twentieth hour where weight training, cross training or stretching start to come into the balance.

So - assuming you do have ten or twenty hours to actually write, what would you do with part of this time to stay in condition? I guess it's all about filling in the gaps - literary cross-training. If you are writing novels, write some short prose to hone your skill and rein in the wordiness. If you are writing third person, try first person. If you are scratching to get the words out - remove the mental barriers and give yourself permission to write anything as long as the words keep flowing, even if you are typing out the blurb on the back of a cereal box. If you are a pantster - try plotting. If you are an obsessive plotter - try letting the narrative take over.

How do you stay in Writing Shape? What else could help to increase Writing fitness, or do you just need to get the words out? Do you do any deliberate work to hone writing skills?

Telepathy and Characterisation

I don't know if you have ever read Stephen King's book On Writing, but one of the things that really stuck in my head was his description of writing as telepathy.

In essence what you are doing is very carefully crafting your own Thought and placing that down in a special format that can be interpreted by another person. All the thoughts, images and musings on themes (both conscious and unconscious), particular word choices, phrases . . . You are communicating this directly into the brain of another human being - across time and space. When you sit down to read a classic, you are opening a window into the mind of that long-dead author. Meshing your thoughts up against theirs and for a moment provoking a state within yourself that echoes that of the original creator.

Recently I have been thinking about this in terms of character. As writers we all try to craft our characters well. We want them fleshed out, with believable reactions and thoughts, consistent backstory and good dialogue. We want their purpose to be consistent with where they have come from, and their goal to echo their nature. But these characters cannot help but be an extension of what we are. The ones we like are those that have characteristics that we respect, or perhaps aspire to. Or perhaps they live the life we may dream of, strive for what we dare not. The antagonists are the opposite - encapsulating all the attributes we perceive as negative, and standing directly in the path to the hero (otherwise there would be no conflict on this level).

So these characters end up projected right into the mind of the reader. I would contend that at this point their is an immediate judgement - just as the human mind forms immediate conclusions about strangers you may be introduced to. Either you like them, or you don't. You have an immediate connection, or you are left underwhelmed. And just as the same person can either be the love of someone's life or a dull stranger (for different people), your characters can strike a chord with the book-buying public or potential editors or fail to create this response.

Now, of course there are some elements of human nature that are nearly always appealing. We love the girl who saves the kitten, or the man who cares about his friend. But when we extend to other elements of character, the reader can simply not connect with your crafted thought-projection.

In story, its the old scenario at the crit group. You circulate the story and find that two people loved the character, two hated them and four hardly care about them - and crit your word choices instead.

Have you come across situations where your characters have both connected to and underwhelmed different readers? Have you ever had one editor rave about your characters while another fails to care about them? Have you ever hunted down a book that everyone was raving about, only to find you either hated the characters or found them vacuous?

PS: I may be out of Internet range over the next day or so, will try to log in wireless, but apologies if I do not respond to posts.

Breathless

I recently reread Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghost military SF Series. This is a rightly highly praised collection that has sold extremely well.

A couple of things struck me when I was trying to deconstruct the books to see why I liked them so much. Here are my thoughts in no particular order.

1. The pages crackle with high energy. The reader is taken on a breathless ride. Something is always happening.
2. The line-by-line is remarkably simple and clear. The writing never gets in the way of the story. The author never tries to show how clever he is at the expense of the reader.
3. The plots are essentially very straightforward. The action is not lost in complexities of chance or motivation.
4. There is an interesting cast of characters who spark off each other. You care about the protagonists.
5. There is no deeper message than the essential truths of people acting under pressure. The author does not try to force you to buy into his personal conspiracy theories.
6. Each book has a different theme - trench warfare, haunted house, siege, insurgency etc. This refreshes the interaction between the characters and their responses to situations. You are not reading the same book a dozen times.

OK, I am sure I have missed some points. Can you suggest other characteristics of a great action story? How much do you agree with my analysis, or not?

John

Lone Wolves N' Critters

So what's your critiquing style? How do you milk those nuggets of wisdom about your work from the minds of other writers?

There is the ever-popular critique group.

Advantages include the ability to bitch over coffee, or for late-night varieties, dinner and few choice glasses of wine. Networking is a bonus, and in the right company can be lots of laughs. Also on the upside, there is usually no shortage of opinions. In fact many groups bloat to such a size they are in danger of becoming dysfunctional. By the time you have reached the stage where you have a chairperson with a stop watch and you start talking in abbreviated code with words like 'Ditto' and 'Anti-Ditto' its probably time to lead a revolution or form a splinter group (or both!)

One disadvantage of the critique group is that they can fall into a rut.

The first species of rut is of the safe & predicable kind, where everyone is well known and overly careful of other peoples feelings (or just downright hedging/holding back and favoring potential networking over critique). Everyone enjoys a nice coffee and perhaps may leave with an glow of satisfaction, but key problems with work go unremarked.

Another species of rut is where a skewed dynamic takes hold. Perhaps most of the writers favor certain types of writing, genres, or characters. Over time a small clique emerges that dominates the tone and direction of critique - limiting the range of feedback as other opinions are squashed, or are expected to be so out of favor they are not mentioned in the first place. Perhaps people whose work is on the 'out' of the norm will be regularly targeted - and they find themselves in vehement finger-pointing territory. This doesn't mean that the clique are wrong, sometimes you get the most useful crits from the Hostiles, but if its so demoralizing that the writer's work ends up grinding to a halt - that's time to bail out.

Other writers go the Lone Wolf. Writing mostly alone, self-editing then getting critique only from one or two other writers they know and trust.

One example that springs to mind Louise Cousak. She told me once that she just cannot do the crit group thing. For the first draft she pretends she is the best writer in the world and does it all without external input. Only after the masterpiece is finished does she fish it out. There is an echo there with Stephen King from On Writing. In the book he says, 'Write first for yourself, then for everyone else'. Another version of this is: Write the first draft with the door closed and the second draft with the door open. I think I also recall that Kim Wilkins also tends to go the lone wolf. So there are a couple of very successful Australian writers who don't favor critique groups, but produce good quality work regardless.

I guess I howled in the wilderness for a long time before I found my first critique group. Now I tend to gravitate toward groups, although I also have a few writers I will shoot material off to on the run. Now days I do find it hard to physically get to a meeting, although that's the time factor more than anything else.

What works for you? Got any traps for the unwary to share?