Category Archives for writing advice

The First Rule of Beginning a Story . . .

. . . don’t start with strangers bashing each other in the mouth or the nuts or anywhere else. “[I]f you plunge instantly into the action, you risk losing the reader,” writes Damon Knight in Creating Short Fiction. “It is hard to take much interest in absolute strangers, no matter how enthusiastically they may be bashing each other.”

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rules of Write Club, as Chuck Palahniuk demonstrates in the opening of Fight Club:

fight 2Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden.

Why does this beginning work, though the narrator has a gun shoved in his mouth in the hook? (Also note the comma splice. Does that work for you? Why? I like it; it speeds the beginning, alerts you to the roller coaster ride you are about to begin, and tells you you’re about to get your nose bloodied, or worse, much, much worse.) I think Palahniuk’s beginning works, because, if you are like me, you’re suddenly asking who is this person who gets you a job then shoves a gun in your mouth? What kind of psycho is this? It raises suspense.

But Knight is probably right. You have to begin a story and make the reader care about the narrator. And unless the narrator has a gun in his mouth, you probably won’t be interested. You don’t have to have someone in such dire straits to get your money for  nothing and your beginning for free. You do need tension and suspense or provoke interest, as  Knight confirms, “The opening must establish character, setting, situation, the mood and tone of the story; it must provoke interest, arouse curiosity, suggest conflict, start the movement of the plot—all this in about two hundred words.”

What do you think? What makes a good beginning?

—Todd

But Learn the Rules First . . .

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”—W. Somerset Maugham

Earlier, I tweeted the following link to breaking writing  rules. Thought I’d share it here for those who didn’t see it then. Also, I would say you do need to learn the rules, learn to use them effectively before breaking them.

Anyhow, enjoy:

5 Classic Writing Rules We Could Do Without

—Todd

John Scalzi on Writing

I have to recommend John Scalzi’s blog Whatever for any writer—fiction no matter the genre (and I’m not really sure why you don’t read science fiction), non fiction, copywriting, or whatever. Not only does he share insights about writing, but also gives other writers plugs. He’s also funny.

And an example of how the SF & F community seems much more willing to pay it forward with other writers than writers in other genres.

Scalzi also recently posted an interview in which he talks about his background as a journalist and film critic, and about the most important event of his life–getting laid off at AOL and deciding to become a freelance writer. At that point he took control of his career. Something writers need to do more of, even this on.

So, enjoy this video.

—Todd

One Word Writing Prompts: Wormhole Follow-up

Here is a follow-up to my first episode of One Word Writing Prompts:

For Wormhole. I received one comment from a contributor named Gene:

 

“WORMHOLE!!!!”
“Yes, and don’t fake astonishment. Mankind has progressed beyond fake astonishment.”
“Ahem . . . yes, excuse me.” Wormhole, wormhole he muttered to himself.
“You know I’m not sure the whatever it is – astonishment, disgust, etc – is fake.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m the 3 star Chancellor aboard this ship. I now fake astonishment as easily as I’d know a ‘pigsty’.

“PIGSTY!!!!”

So, OK, one response is good. But we need more People! Get to writing!

—Todd

How Many Words Must a Writer Write Down To Know He or She Has Written a Novel?

Word Count

Word Count

I once read somewhere Mark Twain kept a running word count in the margins of his manuscripts. Word counts are probably a weird obsession held largely by writers. We survive by them. Sometimes we’re paid by the number of words we write. Sometimes we use the count to measure a good day’s work, whether those words add up to a few sentences or several pages.

Word counts also tell us—somewhat arbitrarily—what sort of work we have written. Is it a Tweet (which actually is even more micro, down to the character)? Is it an essay? A short story? A novella? A novel?

A few months ago, a writer friend of mine Gerald Warfield and I shoptalked about just such things. We couldn’t come up with a solid answer. But a blog post from Writer’s Digest gives some novel advice at least, breaking down some average word counts for novels of different lengths.

The link is here. Of course, it’s not the end-all declaration of authority, but it must count for something.

—Todd

None but a blockhead

One of my new favorite writers is John Scalzi. Besides writing some good SF, he also writes a blog—Whatever—in which he writes, well, whatever he wants. Often his posts, to my delight, are a look inside another writer’s life; it’s the sort of site that’s often encouraging and inspirational, but grounded in the realities of writing for a living. And it helps me feel not quite so alone in my ambitions and worries and even my small triumphs as a writer.

One of today’s posts addressed an issue most writers have to struggle with—money. Specifically saying it’s OK and good to actually make money from writing. It doesn’t make you a hack or sell-out. Upbringing (“money is the root of all evil”) combined with university English courses and professors and fellow students that romanticized the suffering, always struggling pauper writer/artist, it’s hard to break free of such a negative mindset toward money. So, I wanted to share Scalzi’s post below for those, like me, who have struggled constantly with this issue:

 A Moment of Financial Clarification

Copy editing conundrum 1: “try to” vs. “try and”

Today, I’m introducing the pilot episode of what I hope to make an irregular feature on this blog . . .

Copy Editing Conundrums

(clap)

At work today I encountered a conundrum: the encroachment with seeming frequency of the bugaboo “try and” vs. “try to”. The first encounter wasgrammar in a sentence I was editing. The next almost caused me to spit out my lunchtime sandwich.

I was reading along in what otherwise seems a fine book, Kelly L. Stone’s Living Write: The Secret to Inviting Your Craft Into Your Daily Life, (Ms. Stone, please don’t hate me; I am a copy editor, so it’s perfectly natural) when I stumbled upon this sentence:

Setting herself up to try and achieve the impossible was, at first, a trouble spot for Amber Leigh Williams, author of Denied Origin.

My immediate desire was to change “try and” to “try to”. Alas, I couldn’t edit this error apparent! By Crom! No hack-n-slash fun for me. Saddened, I closed the book, and thought about writing this very blog post you have before you.

I gnawed on this conundrum for some time, and a-googling I went. Had the world gone mad? Had “try and” officially seeped into the language? I sought experts. OK, one expert—Grammar Girl. Here’s what she has to say about it (click “it” to follow the link).

So, copy editors, what is your opinion? “Try to” or “try and”?

Best,

Todd

 

To an editor, go

“It is better to be good
than to be original.”
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
(1886-1969)
 

Is it the willingness to improve craft that makes you a professional writer?

By Todd Glasscock

Some years ago, when I first began blogging, I entered into a fierce debate over the quality and value of NanoWriMo, and the debate went something like this: We’re professionals and this contest degrades the profession of writing! No! It encourages people to write and read and love fiction! You’re wrong! No! You are! Pffft!

The argument I threw into that Pandora’s Box was—if I’m recalling correctly—about the nature of what it meant to be a professional writer (I’m pretty sure it has little to do with being paid to write) rather than a beginner or amateur. For the most part, I concluded, its dedication to the craft, the desire to be good, that divides the professionals from the amateurs/beginners.

The professional will work daily to evolve his craft. The professional will write the ending of A Farewell to Arms 29 times to get it right, and then hope his editor Max Perkins or F. Scott Fitzgerald (so I’ve heard) can sort the goddamn thing out. The professional will struggle to write a third sentence to balance a parallel construction, or so he hopes.

The professional will take her NanoWriMo manuscript or any manuscript she’s written, and read it as the first draft it is. She will polish it. She will revise it 29 times, if that’s what it requires.

And she will not zip it to a publisher or even self-publish until she’s let someone read it, preferably a professional editor, or at the very least another writer she trusts, someone who will push her limits. She will have to set aside her ego—this is the writer’s best and worst friend—and make a thousand more decisions before it becomes the novel or story or article it should be.

I have been thinking of the nature of a professional writer, the writer who wants to be good and not merely published to feed her ego, after reading this blog post yesterday in the Huffington Post. Its last two paragraphs really struck me as being the most important in the post.

You have to set your ego aside as a writer. You have to have fresh, well-trained eyes to see the missing parts, to catch the subtle connections or missed connections in your prose. You have to be willing to care about your craft and willing to push yourself. That’s what makes you a professional.

So I leave you with those last two paragraphs to ponder:

Finally, let’s talk about editing. This extremely important step is often overlooked by authors. Why? Because it’s easy to find someone to edit a book, right? Wrong. Editing is a pretty specialized skill set; someone who can find ‘typos’ isn’t a good editor. You want someone to help you raise the bar on your work and create a final product that is something you can really be proud of. An editor will give you critical feedback (especially if you’ve hired a content editor, which I highly recommend), and often improve your work beyond what you might have been able to do on your own.

It’s good to remember that publishing isn’t just about finding the right place to print and publish your book. It’s about a lot more than that. Publishing is a business, if you treat it as a business model you will always succeed.