Emotional Intensity

As I grow older I think I'm beginning to lose some of the emotional intensity I had as  a youth. I'm not that old, but I'm also not young. Time was that I scoffed at the idea of young people bringing emotion to the table, invigorating the older generation.

Somehow it's true, and it's catching up to me.

This past week I read a short excerpt from my niece's novel that she's working on. Mechanically the piece was good, but emotionally it drew me right in. That ability to immediately capture a reader in the world is something that I lack. I don't know if I ever had it, but I certainly have less of it now. I'm much more willing to sit through some long deliberations than I was as a youth.

So if you get anything from this post, think about this. Be excited about what you are writing. It doesn't matter what you're writing, just be excited. And don't be afraid to let that energy show.

A Plug for Persistence

I often say that publishing a first book is like getting your master's degree. You've got to build up the skills of storytelling, word crafting, description, grammar, plotting, outlining, and don't forget the actual matter of disciplining yourself to complete a long term project. Revising, editing, submitting, revising again, scrapping a project and moving on to something better.

Writing is hard work. But I found an interesting observation from Betsy Lerner in her book, The Forest for the Trees (Revised and Updated): An Editor's Advice to Writers. She pointed out that the only real difference between writers that succeed and writers that don't was this, writers who don't succeed give up. Writers who succeed keep writing.

To be fair, she was talking about a specific type of writer (She breaks the writers she's worked with into six groups. This group was the ambivalent writer...that's the group I feel most at home with.). But I think it's safe to say that if you want to be a writer then you can develop the skills that will get you published. And if you keep working (remember that w word) then you'll likely get published again.

So keep writing. And check her book out. You might find something useful.

So.....

My writing background isn't in novels. Oh sure, that's where I started reading. But I started really writing scripts for movies and plays. That's the only way I could get a whole story out. Consider: a screenplay is about 90 pages long, each page is made up of mostly spaces, barely any space is taken up with flowery prose, everything is dialogue. A short novel is 50,000 words (or 200 pages at 250 avg. words per page). Writing a screenplay you can cover a lot more ground with less words. It really fit my impatient nature.

To tell you the truth I still enjoy script writing for its focus on dialogue.

To that end I'm going to share one of the first lessons we learned about dialogue in screenplays because this lesson translates well to novel writing as well.

Don't use filler words.

"So", "um", "well", "uh", anything like that. You've probably cut them out of your dialogue in the middle, but look at the beginning of your lines.

"So, I was walking down to Walmart the other day..."

"Um, I guess I could go with you."

"Well, there was a gun under the desk."

"Well," is a great way to give yourself some extra time to think about what you're going to say before you say it. We do it all the time when we're speaking. But it doesn't help your story. Go through every line of dialogue and if it starts with "Well," simply cut the "Well," and leave the rest. The same goes for the other filler words. Try this little trick out and see if it snaps up your dialogue.

"I was walking down to Walmart the other day..."

"I guess I could go with you."

"There was a gun under the desk."

The feeling of the lines change. They're snappier. Now that you cut your filler words out you can use them to add a sense of indecision or hesitation because they'll stand out.

"Well, have fun writing...I guess."

Romantic

I don't know about all writers, but I certainly get delusions of grandeur(I was going to give you a link to Han Solo saying this in Return of the Jedi, but I can't seem to find any straight up clips from the film on YouTube...I shouldn't be surprised). I could see myself sitting pretty atop the New York Times best seller list, or debating whether to sell my movie rights to Warner Brothers or Disney. I might have even imagined an interview on a talk show (it didn't turn out that well).

I don't think we should be surprised if we have these thoughts. As writers our goal is to make money by thinking up creative scenarios that are not always linked to reality.

And who knows? Maybe some of those romantic visions will come true. Nothing's wrong with having goals. But we're accustomed to starting a story where it gets interesting. So much so, that perhaps we forget that the back story really does have to happen before the story can. Let's take a look at what that back story includes.

For most writers a successful career comes by writing....and lots of it. The best comparison I've heard is that getting published is like getting a master's degree. It takes a lot of work, and most people take 7-10 years. I'm not here to tell you that it's not possible to finish sooner, I'm just telling you the average from published writers talking about their own lives.

You may think that you have the skills to write a salable novel right now, but don't downplay the profession. If anyone could pick up writing and pump out hit novels overnight then we'd have a lot less reason to pay for books.

Now, just to make sure that I'm not a complete downer, I'd like to remind you that you do have some skills. Maybe you're good at plotting out stories. Maybe you're great at dialogue. Maybe you're only so-so at everything, but you can do it all.

Writing takes practice. So if you want to write a book, then write a book. In fact, you should probably write two or three. You'll learn a lot, and you will likely write some good stuff.

So start writing and keep writing. When you look at the bottom line, that's the only way to be a writer.

Oh, and then you will need to learn how to revise...