Emotive Writing

After reading a bunch of old reviews I come away with the impression that I have been a rather cold writer, delving seldom into emotional issues. In part this is because I write "hard" SF where the emotional opportunities are few and the primary focus is on the facts, not the feelings of [name you thing]

I have always longed to write an insightful, significant, and touching story.  Perhaps one that would evoke tears or incite longing for what might never be or could have been.  I want to elicit emotion, feeling.  I want to engage the reader on both an intellectual and emotional level. It should be about something universal yet applied to not only the protagonist, but to the reader as well. Instead I find that although I have managed to produce salable stories, some parts of which might touch on some of the above, none of them reaches a level that I would be proud of producing.

Was it some fault of my upbringing - my parents insufficiently cruel or uncaring or my environment so unappealing?  No, I can't remember any period where I felt neglected, ignored, or otherwise abused. All in all, I've had a happy, contented life.  Even during periods of unemployment or sickness things have not been all that dark. Is that my problem?  Does a writer need a depressing childhood or flawed relationships to produce emotionally meaningful work?  Do I need some emotionally wrenching experience to enable me to mine the depths for material? Perhaps I am simply not sufficiently talented and capable of only producing the journeyman stories that fill the pages between more memorable works and that I am a mere foot soldier in the war of words.

Postcards

I often wonder where the ideas come from, the little flashes of insight, memories, or facts that are the germ of a new story. Random events, articles in magazines, the papers, or on the Internet spark something that grows into a "what if" moment.  Usually I chew on it for a while, exploring how it might be worked as a plot, device, or character, fitting it with whatever else gets dredged up in such moments and then, if it seems workable, added to my story ideas file or discarded if it doesn't look like something I'd enjoy working on.  Mostly, the new story ideas come when I'm in the middle of writing something else and don't have time for digressions (as opposed to most writing time when I am desperate to digress into anything more interesting than plastering words on the screen.)

At a con several years ago I joked that I got my story ideas from a guy in New Jersey who, for ten bucks a month, sent me a postcard filled with story ideas.  That got a laugh, but when more than one fan came up to me for his address and asked if he had a subscription service. I began to wonder if I couldn't start a business of thus relieving the legions of conceptually impaired of their money by offering just such a service.

It wouldn't take much.  Every day I have at least three ideas for a story but only the time and energy to write one or two a month.  That means I must discard eighty or ninety story ideas each month for one reason or another.  It would be no great labor to prepare such cards and mailing them would cost little extra.   In MBA terms the project would allow me to realize frangible economic gains from capitalizing on my excess productive capacity with little inventory dissolution.

Exciting as that possibility might be I blush at prostituting my writerly soul with such mundane concerns.  Besides, there can't be that many idiots out there who think they can actually buy story ideas, are there?

Scene Theory 105

  I plotted the latest short story initially as an ten line outline with only a word or two of description on what it might contain.  Using that  outline as a guide I created more complete scene descriptions, changing the single words into sentences and, to be honest, adding more ideas.  I put the scenes in the order I wanted - in this case as chronologically continuous sequences - and then wrote each scene, fleshing out the sentences, and ensuring that all the scene elements are there.

When I completed all of the scenes I had a first draft that contained all the action sequences, dramatic point, and established the principal players, primarily the protagonist and antagonist and the forces that drive them.  I did a final check to make sure that the flow felt right.

During the second draft I tried to develop the characters into more than plastic action figures.  This involved filling out some personal background details, imbuing them with recognizable personalities, and developing the multiple relationships among the principals.  Giving them names and roles not already in the first draft is an important addition at this stage.

At the same time I tried to paint a word picture of the environment where the characters are performing.  This meant creating a more complete world where weather, insects, and plants existed.  I tried to appeal to all the senses - sight, sound, smell, and the way movement feels as you pass through a glen or wade across a stream. How does water sound when rushing over a rock filled stream, for example.

The driving force of the second draft was to make the story come alive for the reader and put as many associative hooks into the story as possible so that the reader becomes the protagonist, becomes one with the world I created.

The final draft is making certain that the logic holds, the details are "correct," and that spelling and punctuation are acceptable.  After that it is a matter only of finding a welcoming home for the beast.

Revitalized

After reading yesterday's post I want to assure everyone that I am not contemplating suicide   I was just in a funk from not being able to write anything decent - a dry spell, nothing more, that passed within a day.

I think every writer goes through these periods of despondency, these dark hours when you doubt your ability to produce anything of worth.  It's part of the manic-depressive cycle of creativity where periods of depression are counterbalanced by manic happiness where words pour out of you like a golden shower and nothing, absolutely nothing written has any faults whatesoever.

Of course, that opinion changes when you start editing.

So today I revert to my manic state and write, write, write, ever hopeful that this day will actually be good instead of just feeling that way.

Resignation

One day it hits you that there will be an end to this; that one day you will close the unfinished piece you are working on and simply walk away from the keyboard, never to return.  On that day you will realize that all you have written, the millions of words you've edited, the few that managed to be published, and the too-many pieces of unsold stories languishing in the dark recesses of your hard drives are nothing more than scratches in the sand, doomed to be washed away by the rising tide of other younger writers who will together produce more in any single day than you could in your entire life and further, that many of them will not only write better than you, better than the anyone whose writing you now admire, but most likely better than anyone you're read.

 Maybe the well of creativity has dried up for you on that future day, perhaps a string of rejections has finally etched away the last of that thin armor of hope that has sustained your production of submissions, or perhaps it has simply tired you of the race, the performance, the struggles, and the effort.  Maybe one day you simply decide that the charade is pointless to continue and resign yourself to the fact that all your work will disappear into the heat death of past memory.

You know, I think there's a story there . . .

Writing Schedules

I did not have a schedule when I started writing. In the beginning I took the occasional boring evening to write, sometimes listening to music or watching television.  Then I started writing an hour or so each lunchtime, sparing fingers from the keys only to grab a bite of sandwich or sip a drink.  I produced my first thirty stories (two of which actually sold!) this way before I abandoned writing entirely.

When I did get back to writing about thirteen years later, I set aside a few hours each evening to simply write.  Only occasionally did I miss writing for at least an hour.  My pattern was the same for years; eat dinner, do family things, walk the dogs, and then write for a couple hours.  Because of the time constraints I turned out mostly short stories, although I did manage to struggle through a few novels that could have stood some more serious attention.

I cannot stress the importance of sticking to a schedule for writing.  A decent novel contains about a hundred thousand words.  That's less than three hundred words a day!  If you write a thousand words of crap and edit three quarters of it out you've accomplished your daily quota.  Anything more than that is a bonus.  Writing regularly also hones your literary voice, making your phrasing and styling more consistent.  Another benefit is that it allows you to maintain a steady focus on the story itself, holding everything in mind prevents missteps of timing, characterization, or "fact."

It also improves your typing speed.

Step Eleven of the Ten Step Process

I come back to the story after producing a diverting piece of work, ready to do battle with the thirty-two thousand word monster I'd left lingering in the recesses of my mind.  In the interim I decided how I want it to end and fully intend to now bend it to my will.

It sits where I left it, each scene glowing in all its color-coded glory, unknowing of the surgery I am about to perform.  After saving the draft I create a copy and begin to pare away all the gloss and glitter that was the result more of me talking to myself about the story (what we call the creative process - noodling, in other words) than informing the reader.  With the fervor of a berserker I hack away any scenes that do not directly impinge on the ending I want.  I use a little judgment and leave only those scenes that I believe are part of a logical flow.  When I finish after a few hours I discover that this has reduced the draft by ten thousand words - a good start.  Of course, I may want to restore some of that material later, but for now it's bye-bye.

The next step is to remove the parts within each scene that do not advance the plot. This is slower and requires more delicacy with the delete key but in the end manages to reduce the narrative by another six thousand really good, but unnecessary words that weren't relevant to what I'm aiming for at the moment.  I can call back what I need from my earlier draft, if I have to, so nothing is really lost.

Once again I dive into the text and word-by-word erase excessive adjectives, collapse gerunds, and do all the linguistic house-cleaning necessary to produce crisp, clean text.  This arduous process removes another two thousand immortal, and now unspoken, words and produces what I believe to be a final draft.

But is it done?  Is this really as good as I can get it?  The question haunts me for a day and then, unsatisfied that I have really done all I could to improve it, I decide to make one more editing pass.  Just once more, I promise. Once more. In this pass I add some of the deleted material, although not necessarily in its former location in the text.  Perhaps another pass before anyone sees it, I think.

On an absolutely final, final editorial run-through I still find places where I can tighten the text.  For economy of expression I convert exposition to explanation, background to dialogue, dialogue to exposition - whatever I think it takes to reduce the density of thought and crystallize the narrative.  In the end I am left with a little over fifteen thousand words; less than half of all that I've written.

And what's left over is enough over for another story, I realize.