Category Archives: Writing

On Critiquing

Bloggers with rabid fans (e.g. Dooce, Miss Snark) fascinate me. Or, rather, the fans fascinate me. Anything the blogger says they will agree with. God forbid they disagree with the blogger and get banished!

So, I was pleased to see that some of Miss Snark’s fans actually disagreed with some rather dubious advice that she gave recently.

A snarkling had read a writing buddy’s manuscript and found some aspects of it lacking (this is a shock? It’s a draft by an unpublished writer…) and asked Miss Snark what to do. The snarkling seemed to be baffled at this development, like the possibility that the manuscript wouldn’t be ready for publication hadn’t even crossed her mind.

Miss Snark:

You say “I was glad to read your novel. I never offer comments but I can answer questions about it.” General questions like “did you like it” can be answered truthfully with “not as much as I hoped I would after reading -and this is where you insert the name of the work you did like.” You’ll know she has no idea about character development if she doesn’t ask anything about it.

What?! Give the poor writer a critique, goddamnit. You’re her writing friend, not her mother. Don’t be mean, but do be honest. Tell her what she’s doing wrong. (If it’s an unmitigated disaster, pick your battles; choose whatever’s worst and start there.)

You don’t say: “Your novel sucks.” That’s being a jerk. You say: “I didn’t find your characters believable because *insert reasons here*. I suggest you do this.” This is constructive criticism. There are three parts to it:

1. Make it an “I” statement: “I think…” “In my opinion…”
2. Give specific reasons why the characters (or whatever) aren’t working.
3. Suggest what could be done to fix the problem.

I know it’s hard. Do it anyway. Both of you will be better writers for it.

If she takes it well, she’ll have an awareness of her writing that she never had before; this may be a turning point for her. If she takes it badly, you’ll know not to offer to read/critique her work again. Regardless, you will learn so much from critiquing. It will make your writing better. Honest.

Thankfully, some of the snarklings offered suggestions along this line. In fact, this time, they offered much better advice than Miss Snark herself. Read the comments.

Truth

Excellent post on truth in writing, be it fiction or non:

A more useful criteria would begin with the understanding that all good writing seeks the truth, whether that’s a metaphorical or an objective truth, and it should be judged accordingly. Deciding if a book is “true” or not should never stop at the title page; a good reader should never suspend his or her critical faculties. This is precisely why reading is such a mentally interactive experience, why writing is — in my opinion — an essentially higher art than other, more passive media. While reading a book, one must constantly be engaged in trying to hear dialogue, visualize surroundings, judge character and background. A good book, in turn, challenges a reader; makes him or her rethink what they are sure they know and believe.

In which I find out that I'm not a real person

Literary fiction is like haute couture; real people may not buy it but it’s what’s featured in the pages of the New York Times and defines your line.

It makes my head hurt, both that there are people who write who don’t know what literary fiction (otherwise known as plain old literature) is and also that literary fiction is continually disparaged as being something that “real” people don’t read.

*sigh*

Finishing a Novel

I ran across this article at HollyLisle.com a few days ago: How to Finish A Novel. Just quoting the headers here. I’ve bolded the ones I think are pertinent to finishing, i.e. getting to “The End,” as opposed to just writing a novel in general.

  • First, know how it ends.
  • Write your ending, and then write to it.
  • Create five or six “candy-bar” scenes, and use them to keep you moving forward.
  • Write about people you enjoy spending time with.
  • Use an outline.
  • Allow yourself to be surprised.
  • Write because you want to, not because you should.
  • Write what you love, not “what sells.”

I think knowing how it ends and using an outline are the most important. I’ve given up thinking you can write your way to the end of a novel (a short story, sure) without at least a semblance of an outline. You can start without knowing how it ends, but you can’t finish. At least I can’t. I’ve realized that I need to be writing to something. If I can visualize where the story needs to go, what the next big scene is, then all is fine. Since I usually have most of the story worked out, all goes well for a time. But the closer I get to the end, the harder things get, because I’ve always been vague about how things end. I think this is my downfall. Time to figure out how things end.

*

Almost forgot: You know how I always joke that there should be a National Novel Finishing Month—well, there is! NaNoFiMo.

NaNoFiMo is a challenge to write at least 30,000 words on your unfinished novel draft and to reach a conclusion to the novel, between Dec. 1 and Dec. 31.

Also, more about outlines:

First of all, it helps you know where the story is going, so you don’t run into dead ends or run out of steam. It can help you find the slow spots in your narrative, it’s much easier to add scenes and characters to an outline than a novel-in-progress, and it helps you focus on the craft of the story, as opposed to the art of writing.

An outline is also extremely helpful when it comes to motivation. Once the story is down on paper (in outline form) all you need to do is add the bells and whistles; the action, dscription, and dialog. You don’t need to worry about what happens next because you already know. That frees up your mind to create characters and settings and scenes without having to wonder if the book is working, or if there’s enough conflict.

Should a writer be invisible?

As an actor, [Philip Seymour] Hoffman says that his job is to be invisible. The idea is that when you are watching in Capote, you are to believe that you are watching Truman Capote himself. He believes that he has “done his job” as an actor when you forget that he is actor.

Well, I think that, as a writer of fiction, I want the reader to forget about me all together. As you are reading The Untelling, I want you to think that Aria is a real person. I have to wonder that knowing too much about the author can detract from that possibility.

Hmm. I don’t need to know anything about a writer; I enjoy reading plenty of writers whom I know little to nothing about. For example, I adore Pat Barker but know zip about her beyond the bio blurb that appears on her books. And that’s fine. At the same time, if a writer I like chooses to share more of his/herself, I’m interested. In particular, I’m interested in process (the same goes for artists, actors, etc.). If you’ve read a lot of a particular writer’s fiction, it can be really fun / interesting / instructive to read a memoir/autobiography and see where the ideas came from. Conversely, what’s happening now is that I’m finding writers I might otherwise never have heard of via their blogs—and subsequently adding their books to my “to read” list. I figure if I enjoy their blog-writing, then I’ll probably enjoy their novels.

I may be unique (though I somehow doubt it) but reading a writer’s personal writing doesn’t make his/her characters less real for me. I always view fiction as an alternate reality. It’s kind of like keeping up with friends/relatives that live away. They’re there and you’re here and sometimes you visit. Maybe it’s because I do write that I can separate writer and character and allow for them both to be real. I know my characters aren’t me. They have their own lives. They do and say things I’ve never done. Yet, it’s not like I’m telling them what to do and say. It’s more like I know. Not all at once, but as I write, the story unfolds, as if I were watching it. Which makes them feel real to me. So if my own characters—who I know are creations of my imagination—can on some level be real, then there’s no reason why someone else’s characters can’t also.

I think the concern here stems from the same root as the memoir craze: the general public’s apparent need for stories to be factual. Writers start to worry that if readers realize their stories are (gasp) made up, then they (the readers) won’t find them believable. What is that about? I do not know. Mayhap we need to start a movement to make fiction cool again. Fiction: not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Another thing I’ve said in the past: if a book is well written, you’ll forget that you’re reading. You’ll forget about the words on the page. You’ll forget that someone typed those words. You’ll forget who that person is. Not forever, but for the duration. If you are hyper-aware that you. are. reading. a. book… then the writing is crap. In other words: write well and nothing else (including what you do or don’t know about the writer) should matter. If it does, then it’s the reader who has a problem, not the writer.

Name Dropping

Back in November, I wrote a post about the annoying overuse of brand names in popular fiction. Well, apparently I’m in good company. Maud Newton posts:

Jessa Crispin hates what she calls “the Emo Boy writers.” (I particularly like her observation that “emo boys namedrop because it’s the only way they know how to explain someone.” Too many contemporary authors replace the individual experience with its pop-cultural echo. Why should anyone read a story if its characters can be evoked solely by reference to punk’s heyday or bad 80’s television?)

Worth a Read

How to Do What You Love

I especially liked this part:

Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they’re twelve, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side.

Jumping from one sort of work to another is an odd thing. Sometimes it’s a sign of discipline, and sometimes it’s a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out, or boldy carving a new path? You often can’t tell yourself. Plenty of people who will later do great things seem to their friends and family and even themselves to be disappointments early on, when they’re trying to find the work they love.

…

Kids who know early what they want to do seem impressive, as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids. They have an answer, certainly, but odds are it’s wrong. If you read autobiographies (which I highly recommend) you find that a lot of the most successful people didn’t decide till quite late what they wanted to do. And not because they were indecisive, or didn’t know themselves. It takes a long time to just to learn what different kinds of work are like.

I have this line — “I always admired the ones who were sure.” — I think I wrote it in one of my paper journals. Anyhow, it has stuck in my head, which makes me think it would be a good first line. For Jas, perhaps.