I’m at LDStorymakers this weekend. Had a wonderful time yesterday facilitating idea generation for the magic systems of eight writers who all had some really cool stuff. Today I will be giving my presentation on banishing writer’s doubt, fear, and block using cognitive therapy.
For those who want the slides, here they are.
Banish writers fear doubt and block with cognitive therapy (PDF)
Enjoy!
Another great podcast by the Writing Excuses team, this time on style and voice: http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/10/06/writing-excuses-episode-35-voice-tone-and-style/
Quesion: is it dangerous as a writer to try to improve your style?
A lot of respected authors say it’s foolishness to focus on style. Because story is what people want. Story is the thing. Put all the lipstick you want on a pig, it’s never going to be anything but a pig.
I agree with them. Why fiddle with the words when the content oinks? If you have to focus on something, focus on delivering killer stories.
However, story content is not everything. There is a feeling that comes with how the story is written. You can serve prime rib on fine china in a $100 / plate restaurant, or you can serve it in a cardboard box out on the back lawn by the shed. Same beef, but not quite the same experience.
Orson Card is one of those who cautions against thinking about trying to improve your style. I want you to read this.
Question 5:
I would like to use the discussion in Lesson One as a springboard to my own inquiry. I understand that obsessively analyzing the style in which one writes can lead to bigger problems. However, my problem is not with an overall stylistic deficiency, but a very specific one. Through dialogue, the voices of the characters speak with one another. Are there any techniques you can offer which make the process of composing dialogue any easier? (I don’t expect a wonder formula, just some methods which would help me organize my thoughts a little better.)
— Submitted by Jennifer Dittrich
OSC Replies:
Composing Dialogue
The secret is not to think about dialogue as a separate task. You aren’t writing dialogue, you’re writing an encounter between characters. Part of the encounter is what they say, but part of it is how they react to each other, what they want from each other, what has happened between them in the past, who else is watching and the impression they want to make, and so on. When the characters speak, therefore, they aren’t “speaking dialogue,” they’re using words to do something to the other person — sometimes to try to get the other person to understand some information, but more often to get the other person to do something or feel something or reveal something. That’s what you concentrate on, and then come up with words you might use to accomplish that character’s purpose. Sometimes you’ll try many different opening lines as a conversation begins, and see where they go; sometimes you’ll erase long passages because they don’t feel right to you. But the solution to dialogue problems is rarely to “write better dialogue.” It’s almost always to clarify or change what the character wants or feels or thinks.
Most often, bad dialogue is bad because it’s “clunky.” The usual cause is that you’re trying to “write well,” and your idea of writing well comes from the horrible essays you were forced to write in high school and college. Forget all that! But don’t forget it just when you’re writing dialogue — that’s bad writing even in the essays and papers produced by those very same teachers! Good writing sounds like a person talking. Your narrative sections should be written in fluid language that can easily be read aloud. In other words, your narrative should sound like dialogue spoken by a good storyteller!
So if you worry about your writing style, especially your dialogue writing, chances are that the problem you have is that you are worrying about your writing style instead of worrying about what happens and why in the story! Bad style is almost invariably the result of trying for “good style,” because “good style” is invariably defined by writing teachers and the students who believe them as “writing like someone else who writes better than you.” But you can’t write like them, because you’re not them and their voice isn’t your voice. You can only write well when you write the way you talk, only more clearly and precisely. If you are laboriously constructing your sentences, searching in the thesaurus for “just the right word,” you are almost certainly writing unreadably; and, while you might only notice it in your dialogue, chances are you are writing badly all the time.
How do you cure this destructive habit? Let me give you a parallel example. When I was a child, I had a lyric boy-soprano voice, complete with vibrato. I sang high and sweetly, and that ability to sing was an important part of who I was. But when my voice changed, the “high” was gone and so was the sweet. Grimly determined to get my voice back, I forced a vibrato using very bad technique — a strained, rapid diaphragmatic vibrato rather than one that arises from a relaxed throat. It made my voice sound eccentric and unpleasant — and the tightness that resulted severely limited my range. I went through my college career with that voice, even though I knew it didn’t sound all that good, because I didn’t know how to do it better.
Then I went to Brazil as a missionary. Nobody there knew me as a performer. No one cared how I sang. I stripped away the old pretense and sang “straight,” with clear tone, no vibrato at all. I learned to relax my throat. I sounded like nothing; and then, to my surprise, a genuine, relaxed vibrato began to enter my voice on sustained notes. And my singing range increased, both higher and lower. When I came home, my singing voice was a far more versatile and powerful instrument than it had ever been before. During my forced-vibrato years, I couldn’t “do voices” — I could only sing the one way. Now I could take my relaxed voice and shape it to sound like an old man singing, or a child, or an untrained singer, or an operatic buffoon. I could sing conversationally; I could sing formally. I had my voice at last.
But I had to stop trying to force my voice and just relax, concentrating on the song and not the singer. Before I could sing well, I had to stop trying to sing well and concentrate on singing clearly, singing to the audience.
And if you don’t understand how this applies to writing style, I’m not a good enough writer to explain it to you any better.
You can read it on his site here: http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/1998-08-14-5.shtml
Lots of great insights there. How many ways can you say, “Please, focus on the content of the story!”
But did you notice this line: ” Your narrative sections should be written in fluid language that can easily be read aloud. In other words, your narrative should sound like dialogue spoken by a good storyteller! ”
And this one: “You can only write well when you write the way you talk, only more clearly and precisely.”
Card is talking about improving your style to make it more clear and fluid and authentic to you. Even while warning this questioner as strongly as possible to avoid trying to improve your style, Card prescribes improving your style.
So style matters, even to Card. It just doesn’t matter nearly as much, in most cases, as content does. And I agree with him on his priorities.
However, I still think Card is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Maybe because he’s seen too many wretched stories that had great style. Nevertheless, there IS a way that each of us talks. We talk that way out of habit, but also because we like some of those turns of phrases. Because certain sounds, words, and rhythms appeal to us at some level. Because they feel right.
So what if you’re reading TC Boyle and love the rhythm of his prose? What if you figure out some of what drives that rhythm? What if you begin to use it in your writing? Is that bad?
Or what if you notice how David Farland always puts movement into descriptive passages? Or that you use “really” and “very” really a lot in very many places? What if you like how Dean Koontz stops to paint his characters? His use of metaphor to evoke an image of a person? What if you notice how some of Card’s prose works poetically?
What if your editor notices something you do that jars him so much it sets his teeth to rattling, and when he points it out you agree?
What if you pick up new stylistic elements and options and try them? Are you then going to write excrement?
No. You’re not. Because it’s natural to pick up words, phrases, manners of speaking. It’s natural to try them on. In fact, trying to AVOID this is what’s unnatural.
I used to work with a guy named Rick Jendro. He looks like a young Sylvester Stallone. One thing I loved about him was that he is a wonderful water cooler story teller. Rick used his hands and voice and face when telling his water cooler stories. He wasn’t Acting with a capital A, but he was acting. He was evoking the story. He reminded me of another friend, Jeff Cuthbert, who did the same thing.
I loved listening to both of them. LOVED IT. Partly because of this acting they did.
So I noticed what Rick was doing and Jeff had been doing. The next time I told a story I let myself be a bit more free with my hand motions and actions. I didn’t study movements or anything like that. Didn’t rehearse. I found they just came when I reminded myself to let them come. I tell a better story today than I did before because of this.
Was I wrong to delight in what they did and try it? I don’t think so. There’s nothing wrong with imitation. Good gravy, that’s how we learned language in the first place.
My advice, lowly writer that I am, is to read and imitate. Notice things. Notice every thing that sings. Every thing that clunks. From character to plot to punctuation to paragraphing to dialogue to whatever. Then try things on. Try on structures and plot twists and dilemmas. Try on paragraphing and poetical devices like simile and metaphor. Try on everything that strikes your fancy. Get a whole closet of outfits that feel wonderful on your bones.
And when you write, just write. Don’t worry about the style because all these new outfits you’ve got: the ones that feel most natural for the task at hand will present themselves to you when the time is right. I promise.
In Why Publishing is Making You Crazy—and What You Can Do About It: The Tao of Publishing, Steven Axelrod and Julie Anne Long write an interesting post that takes some findings made by Duncan Watts and attempts to explain why writers should only focus on the quality of their work because they cannot reliably affect popularity in any other way.
I agree with them that social-influence seems like a good explanation for the sometimes unexplicable successes we see in publishing and the difficulty publishers have in both predicting and producing a steady stream of hits. However, I do not find support for their main conclusion that writers can do nothing but write. In fact, I suggest that Watts’ findings show quite the opposite.
Axelrod and Long base much of their argument on an experiment conducted by Duncan Watts that tested the power of social-influence on music selection in some controlled music websites. Watts summarizes his findings in the excellent Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?.
In his part of the post, Axelrod points out that the Watts findings indicate “50% of the factors affecting your career could be totally outside of your control—totally random” and that “unless we can separate out those random factors which contributed to an author’s past success [and we can’t, Axelrod suggests], anything we can say or predict about why she succeeded will invariably be way off-the-mark.” And therefore “what’s interesting—and chilling, as well—is that there’s evidence that the harder a person works to make sense of a random event, the farther they’ll end up from the truth.”
In other words, the only thing an author can reliably do to improve the popularity of his stories is focus on their instrinsic quality. And get more stories out so he has more shots in the fickle social-influence game.
I agree that having more product in the market increases your odds. I also agree that focusing on the intrinsic quality of the writing can do the same. I even agree that this is where authors should spend most of their time. However, Watts’ studies do not indicate other efforts are wasted. In fact, they suggest the opposite.
Watts does not controvert anything we now know about marketing. What he does is clarify the power of social-influence in our decision making and the dynamics of ONE type of endorsement system. What Watts shows is:
These findings, however, need to be put in context. From cars, to camcorders, to recipes, the popularity of a product depends on three main factors. These aren’t new ideas and publishing is no different than any other industry. The factors come from long-standing marketing practice:
Each of these three affects the other two. Visibility makes endorsements and initial attractiveness possible. Endorsements make a product more attractive and more likely to be visible. Attractiveness makes something more visible and more likely to be endorsed. And round and round we go.
It’s true that Watts shows 50% of the effect is due to endorsement. But nowhere does Watts suggest an author cannot increase the probability of visibility and endorsement.
In the study, the endorsement method used was a counter showing the number of times the song had been downloaded. It was random, anonymous, and perceived as unbiased. That was a controlled environment. However, what if a singer had been able to ask all those he knew who loved his song to download it from the site? Or what if someone organized such a campaign independent of the singer? Both actions would immediately affect the probability of the song increasing in visiblity and endorsement and, hence, popularity.
It’s too bad Watts didn’t test this in one of his sites to see if he could make a winner. As it was, all Watts was doing was seeing if he could predict a success by quality alone. He was passively observing, not actively taking measures to increase visibility and endorsement.
Furthermore, the counter is just one type of endorsement system. There are a number of others. We’ve all seen how an Oprah endorsement can move the market. The identity of that endorser is NOT random and has great predictive value. Her decision to endorse is still random. But what if you have a way to make your book visible to her? Would it be a waste of time to do so?
Robert Sawyer loves to tell of one action he took with someone with much less endorsement power than Oprah and the effect it had on his sales. Was Sawyer guaranteed visibility and endorsement from that action? No. However, he DID increase the probability, and it resulted in sales. Here’s his account.
Watts confirms that endorsements have a mighty effect on popularity. Even something as simple as a “most downloads” counter can easily overwhelm a listener’s own reactions. But the logical conclusion is not to do nothing. The logical conclusion is that if authors want to increase their popularity, they must not rely only on the intrinsic value of their product, but they must also search for ways to increase visibility and endorsement.
Axelrod is correct that it’s sometimes difficult to see the effect of any given marketing campaign or tactic. This is because marketing efforts are probabilistic, not deterministic. However, probabilistic does not mean random. Furthermore, it does not indicate you cannot increase the probability of success. While publishers may not be able to produce best sellers every time, I’m confident if they decided to stop marketing altogether, sales would drop.
Will all efforts succeed? No. Any marketing progam needs to consider the effect of diminishing returns. The effectiveness of some actions may be difficult to test. Furthermore, authors may not have the budget to run a campaign large enough to increase their probabilities, although there are strategies to become a big fish in a small pond (see Geoffery Moore’s Crossing the Chasm).
Despite all these issues, we know, in general, getting endorsements helps. In general, the right placement in book stores increases visibility. Author visits to schools, if done right for middle age readers, can also increase visibility. Radio interviews, if done right, do the same. There are many things that DO improve an author’s odds. We can increase the probability of visibility and endorsement by taking intelligence, consistent action.
And that’s good news. We might not be able to guarantee a hit, but one thing IS certain—we’ll have no direct influence on visibility and endorsement if we do nothing.
(BTW, for those interested, here’s a great presentation on a related idea:Six Degrees: The Science of the Connected Age a presentation by Duncan J. Watts.)
In this week’s Writing Excuses comments, a poster named Sam asked:
How do you, as writers, get past your own inhibitions concerning the use of profanity in order to write a character who does use it?
Why get past them?
Any given audience has values (as do you as a writer). Stomp on the values too much and you will make the readers so uncomfortable or angry that their discomfort will outweigh the draw of the story. They will put you down and never read you again. For one audience it’s gore. Another it’s explicit sex or vulgarity. For another it’s the bashing of a political stance or a particular demographic.
If you or your audience is uncomfortable with profanity then say “he swore” OR find another way to convey the information the profanity does.
Writing works by evoking types in the reader’s mind (as well as type resistors for surprise, curiosity, humor, etc.). Trigger a type and all the data associated with that type comes with it. Profanity is one way to trigger a type (or work against type) in the reader’s mind. But there are many other ways to evoke that same type, many ways to produce the same effect. Language, especially profanity, is a powerful and efficient method, but it’s not the only one.
You want a mean cruel man? You can have him call his wife a “cu**” all the time. OR you can just show him doing something cruel to her or slapping her, e.g. he grabs her by the neck and makes her look at the food on his plate up close like some pet owners do to dogs when they crap where they shouldn’t–”Does that look like beef stroganoff to you? Stupid whore.”
Look at Prison Break. Teddy needed to be scary. Profanity could have helped trigger his character. After all, cons use a lot of profanity. But Prison Break was prime time so the writers used other things to evoke the types they needed. Teddy worked for the purposes of that story. All of the cons did. They were believable. And all that without a deluge of profanity.
Stay away from replacement profanity that evokes a different type. For example, if you had Teddy using “darn it” all the time, unless it was part of some particular character attribute, it would have not been believable because it evokes the wrong type, e.g. Ned Flanders.
So if you don’t want to use profanity, don’t. Think about your objective and find another type trigger.
Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Stree Journal called “Darkness Too Visible” in which she complained that it was hard to find young adult fiction these days that isn’t filled with coarse, dark material–profanity, pederasty, mutilation, etc. She claims that “contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity” and wonders “why is this considered a good idea?” She concludes by saying:
So it may be that the book industry’s ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young. Still, everyone does not share the same objectives. The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn’t be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children’s lives.
This, of course, sent hordes of folks into a frenzy of posts sneering at Gurdon’s so-called prissy sensibilities, decrying censorship, and extolling the virtues of young adult literature and dark material in particular. For example, Mary Elizabeth Williams in a Salon piece called “Has young adult fiction become too dark?” rolls her eyes, then deigns to wade into what’s she thinks is an obviously juvenile argument to apparently show Gourdon how “stupid” she really is. Williams concludes:
One of the terrific side effects of an obviously click-baiting piece of editorial twaddle like Gurdon’s is that it reminds people how many fellow passionate readers there are in the world. That incendiary WSJ piece promptly sparked a tear-jerkingly beautiful twitter #YA saves trend full of heartfelt reactions and links to outstandingly reasoned, article responses from well-read adults and teens on the value within so much of YA literature and its downright lifesaving effects.
Williams suggests fiction doesn’t have the power to lead people into bad behaviors. After all, she assures us, “an entire generation of women managed to devour the ‘Flowers in the Attic’ series without having sex with their brothers.” No, according to Williams (and all the #YAsaves folks), YA fiction only saves lives. And she provides a link to prove it.
But Williams misses the mark. Completely. This isn’t about whether fiction has power to influence us in good and bad ways. There’s a huge body of research on media effects which clearly proves fiction’s power for both. Nor is it about the theraputic uses of dark material.
The heart of the matter revolves around a rather mundane thing–customer service and marketing.
Gurdon and those parents she describes in her article want a certain type of entertainment. For years, YA fiction has provided that type of entertainment. But things have changed, and the YA label isn’t reliable to them any more. It’s like someone who has purchased steel cut oatmeal for years is now suddenly bringing the bags home to find them filled with sardines or, horrors, Twinkies.
We can argue the merits of sardines and Twinkies. And a hundred other foods. We can argue the merits of certain types of stories for certain types of readers. And my metaphor above–maybe you think using Twinkies is unfair; maybe you would have wanted me to use something like Triscuts or Wheat Thins. But that’s all beside the point.
The real problem here is that the publishers have ignored a significant segment of the market who want to buy books but can’t find the types they’re interested in. Either the covers and blurb material don’t help them find what they’re looking for, sometimes misleading them, or the publishers have simply made the mistake of not thinking about this segment of the reading market.
The fix is easy. (1) Produce more books for these folks. (2) Label your books in a way that makes it easy for the consumer to find what they want. They’re not asking for censorship. They’re asking for a nutrition label that lets them know what they’re getting. Publishers can do what the movie and gaming industries have done with rating systems that prominently display on the cover. Or use some other method. This isn’t a moral issue, it’s simply a matter of helping the right customers find your good or service. It’s a matter of good marketing and branding.
And I would think, with the upheavals in the book industry today, that publishers and booksellers would want to do whatever they could to boost sales. Surely it doesn’t help to turn customers away because your package is confusing them.
In the meantime, the battle will rage and this simple practical core of the issue will be lost in the fires and clouds of smoke produced by the arguments extolling and excoriating the virtues and vices of fiction.
I’ve added 3 more writing lessons to help you learn:
Find them on the menu or link to them here.
Lesson 2: How in the world does that work?
Lesson 4: More cause and effect
Enjoy!
Theory is important, but practice trumps theory. Every single day.
Lessons 1-5 have all been theory and helping you see how stories work and get sensitized to the effects they have on you. Now it’s time to get to work. In lesson 6, I guide you through a number of key techniques I’ve found helpful in getting me to the point where I’m ready to write the first draft. In this lesson, you’ll learn:
Here it is: Lesson 6: Develop your idea
Enjoy!
Edit 1/24/15 at 10:45 a.m.: Lesson 6 revised
Comments are closed.
This is good stuff. Though I’ve only read the PDF and didn’t attend the lecture, the message still comes through – very practical “IF you are experiencing X, THEN try doing Y” advice. And what writer doesn’t experience some (all) of the doubts and misgivings you list? Thanks, John – very cool!
Glad you find it helpful.