I'm a fair-to-middling writer. I'm technically proficient enough to tell a story from beginning to end. As a Writer, though, I am an absolute failure. I don't know how to plot! Here is an excerpt of a rejection I got recently:
'I found the plot too linear and the resolution unsatisfying and predictable.'
I agree 100%. I was crossing my fingers and hoping for the best, knowing full well that the 'plot', such as it was, was weak, and boring. Everything made sense-being of a less than whimsical turn of mind, this appealed to me-but the story didn't surprise me. I am in love with ideas for stories, but my story-telling is awful.
This is what I would consider my fatal flaw. There is an excellent chance that this lack of imagination/skill will prevent me from ever publishing at anywhere near a professional level. However, I am also a big fan of relentless self-improvement, so hope springs eternal.
How have you/will you overcome your own personal flaw? Classes? Reading books about writing? Workshops? All of the above?
Dialogue - solved mostly by not using it. I tell myself I'll write complete dialogue driven stories to get over it, but never seem to get around to that.
I also tend to skip over adding things to a story that are outside of my main focus, unfortunately this turns out to be what others think are important like sometimes stuff like character development or actual endings.
My biggest flaw is not having a consistent, regular daily writing session. My job is stressful, and sometimes I just want to veg when I get home from work. I need to have a regular daily session. It should be like clockwork, like a bowel movement.
How do I break this? I'm going to force myself to do it. Recognizing the problem is the 1st step, attacking it the 2nd step.
I'm writing tonight, no matter how stressed I am. Dammit.
Chopping and rechopping - I'll fuck with one sentence for an hour if that's what it takes for it to "look right."
I recently started freewriting my outlines rather than trying to put out a perfect first draft. That extra step has actually saved me a lot of time in the long run.
@Brandon: Would you clarify what you mean by freewriting your outlines and explain how that frees you from obsessing over the first draft?
Unstable confidence is my flaw. Some days I think what I write is dead on, the next day, I read it and think, "this is amateurish shit."
Usually I feel that insecurity when I'm tired or down. Or after I've read a great work of literature and I compare my own work to it in my head.
To correct that insecurity, I'll get a good night's rest and come back at my writing the next day. I'll also read a few pages of Dan Brown or some other writer whose writing is poor but has done well. Then I think, hell they got published, I can too.
I am an obsessive outliner (at least for novella+ length work - Scrivener is the absolute tits - corkboard, index cards, etc etc) - for me the outline lets me move fast through the 1st draft. I use a heavily modified version of good ole HP hovercraft's essay 'Notes on Writing Weird Fiction' to outline, just because I am a masochist.
But if i have the beginning and end plotted out, I can just write here to there without getting bogged down in 'where do I go from here?'. I'm sure this method is not for everyone (hell, based on past results, it's not even right for me), but it's something to consider.
Is it bad if I also suffer from everyone else's neuroses as well as my own? Last night I managed to carve out 2 hours of writing time (at the expense of sleep), meanwhile being on Ops duty for work. I spent 1.5 hours of that rewriting 1 godamn paragraph. When I was done? I looked at it and said 'jesus, that sucks' and deleted it. Good times.
Even if I think I know the ending to a story, I try to never think about it, never actually plot it out, only if to half-surprise myself because that ending to the story pretty much makes the entire thing. Maybe it should be the most intimate thing, or the most raw thing, probably not by anyone else's standards but still, I think there should be a little bit of legitimate magic in the ending. That's to say, though, I fear that plotting too far ahead, whether I do it myself or not, is not the greatest thing. I think this is context to the above post, if not then I am drunk.
@Brandon: Would you clarify what you mean by freewriting your outlines and explain how that frees you from obsessing over the first draft?
I get the idea down. No frills. It's almost shorthand. It looks like random gibberish but to me it makes sense. So basically I'm looking at a detailed outline instead of a broad outline. It removes the issue of "Where is this going?" and "What is happening now?" questions. I used to figure that stuff out as I went along, and it made for a much slower process. I think Out of Touch took me about ten months to write. The book I just got done with (same approximate length) took a little over three, and it's all because I stopped chopping/rechopping and scaled back my participation in forums.
I think my main problem is coming up with an idea.
It's one of the reasons I liked Thunderdome so much -- I was forced to come up with and write an entire story in a week. It spawned some of my best ideas. When I come up with an idea from scratch, I wind up either scrapping it entirely or using just tiny elements.
I use Scrivener to outline all of my work, too -- Scrivener is literally the most helpful writing tool I've ever had. But I rarely stick to the outline, and let the story weave itself. I'll go back and edit the outline to reflect what I've written so my revisions are easier, but damn if Scrivener doesn't make coming up with ideas a hell of a lot easier. It gives you a road map from where you want to begin to where you want to end.
EDIT: I kind of do what Brandon mentioned. My first drafts read like I'm telling a friend a story. Once I've gotten the skeleton of the story out of the way, I feel less pressure and can let myself go in the story. That was a problem for me for a long time.
My writing flaws are the lack of confidence in my work and the lack of peer reviewing my work. I have an extreme fear of showing other people my work scared that I'll get laughed at or judged as person. There was a bad incident in elementary school where I presented a story about shooting people and the exageration of exploding limbs. The class never looked at me the same since.
That was milleniums ago now I feel I have more confidence in my 'skills' as a writer than I did before but I still dread even thinking about showing another soul a glimpse of my writing. I might break that habit by joining the workshop here...in time.
@Brandon: Thank you.
Storytelling (so ditto, Jeff ... or do you prefer Jeffrey?).
I can write a plot, but it's too linear and predictable. This should be easy to fix. Seriously. But I have yet to crack it. Once I finish a story, I should be able to go back over and revise it so that I mislead the reader into believing one thing and giving them something else that makes perfect sense and surprises them at the same time. I've read a bunch of books on how to write plots, but none of them have given me the insight I need. Heck, I know what I need, but I haven't been able to do it.
My most successful stories (i.e., handwritten rejections from editors that say something like: Oh, so close) had "slapped on" endings. I get to the end and an idea pops into my head right at that moment and I slap it on. Stories that I know the ending and diligently work towards it are returned with form rejections.
Criminy. It ain't that hard.
My big problem is not know what people will like. I write hoping someone will enjoy reading the work and it seems to go, "Yeah that stuff you worked on for weeks? Whatever I guess. That stuff you slammed out in 20 minutes to connect the two parts you liked, that was awesome!"
I think my biggest problem is that generally nothing happens in my short stories. Some people talk and then they stop. Often a bathroom is involved. There isn't much of a plot line. No obvious beginning, middle, and end.
I consider plot my main problem too. I don't plot things out first. I start soemthing that is a bit of a story, and see what happens. My plots usually hing on a value or a subtle thing, not something dramatic. I'm experimenting with more dramatic plots, but it's not what I'm good at writing. Dialogue comes easy for me. I'm not saying mine is good, but I fall naturally into dialogue when storytelling. It moves the story along so fast.
Another problem I'm having now is listenign to talk about craft and trying to follow the rules. There is the show not tell rule, which i LOVE, but I just read a short story that had no dialogue and was all tell, and was awesome... so I don't know. I guess trusting your instincts on a story is hard when you are learning and haven't been published. It's like painting I guess, learn the rules then break them all the time.
Love the thread. It's good to hear what others say about this. Thank you.
The problem with a linear story is more than likely from the plot points. Some people call plot the backbone of the story, but I like to think of it as the engine an idea needs to get moving. You can't plot with 'and then' plot points; Point A, and then Point B, and then Point C, etc.
If plot is the engine, then characters are the fuel to advance the plot, and characters are unpredictable as Hell.
Plot should be logical, yet unpredictable. How do you do that? You use 'but' and 'therefore' plot points; Point A happens, but Point B happens, therefore Point C happens, but Point D happens, etc. Each 'but' and 'therefore' should be logical yet unpreditcable. The 'but' part is a wrinkle from the opposition, the 'therefore' is the decision the main character makes to straighten out this new wrinkle. Each 'but' should become progressively worse until your character is forced to make a giant 'therefore' choice, or until your main character fights the opposition's 'but' back with a bigger 'but' of his own.
(Trust me, I'm fucking rolling right now. This stuff is how you do it, but damn it's so fucking funny right at the end there. ...a bigger 'but' of his own... Hahahahaha! Sorry.)
'And then' plot points are logical yet predictable, and very linear. 'But' and 'therefore' plot points are logical yet UNpredictable, and can make a plot line appear to be very nonlinear.
Don't spend too much time thinking about the plot points, because you can get bogged down in the gears of plot making and spend all your time fucking up your head trying to make it work like a Swiss watch instead of writing. Just think in 'but' and 'therefore' instead of 'and then' and that should get the ball rolling.
GaryP - Jeff is good. :) Dang, I wa hoping you would say '...but then I read a magical book and now I write solid gold!'. Ah, if only.
Sorry, Jeff. Hopefully we'll both figure it out soon.
Nancy Kress relates this story about her writing. She said she didn't start selling regularly until she started incorporating two separate elements in her plots. You take two things ... let's say aliens and dog training ... and then you put them together. So these aliens take over the world. A post-apocalyptic woman gets sucked into one of the alien craft along with a dog she was going to take back home and eat. The aliens want her to train the dog. Turns out, the ship has a bunch of dogs. She has to train them to be like guide dogs for the aliens or they'll kill her. There's more to the story than that, but that was her storytelling breakthrough.
Dean (shut up) Wesley Smith suggested this writing exercise. Find a published story that you really like. Now write your own story using the published story as the structure for your story. Your story should follow very closely to the structure of the published story. This can help you in pacing, structure (of course), storytelling, etc.
This isn't the magic key to creating a dynamic plot, but it works for me.
Take one line, one character, or anything that inspires you, and let it weave itself into a story. The prologue to my current Workshop submission was inspired by one line of dialogue. It was a quick story written for myself to relieve the pressure to write something based off that line and it evolved into the prologue to a novella. I wrote an entire story about pigeons who can talk because I randomly thought, "What if pigeons could tell you what day you would die?"
The most important thing I learned about linear plot is that you can't fight your story. I outline obsessively, but if it changes, it fucking changes. You don't fight your inspiration. If it's shit, it's shit. More times than not, your instinct will be better. It's why what you pound out in twenty minutes can be better than what you pored over for hours. That's what I tell myself when the story evolves, at least.
"The structure was off and the connecting threads weren't strong enough and I fell into that trap Amy Hempel warned me about: Wanting to publish more than wanting to write well." -Rob Hart
That is my problem. My solution is to start on my first novel so I'm not hung up on stacks of unedited short stories. Plus if you want to be a novelist, you should be putting more time to novel writing than shorts right?
Should you put more time in a novel right off? I'm thinking short stories are the way to get to a novel, yes? To publish a short story woudl be the first step.
That asks the question of whether the goal is to work your way up in publishing or to write.
In my opinion, it's about the story. If it takes 2,000, 20,000, or 200,000 words, you'll know.
I'm a big believer in follow your heart. Forget the story, forget being good, forget being bad, forget getting published, forget the reader, and forget yourself. Just ask, "What do I want/need?" If what you have is that then yay, supper. If not change it. Once you have that you can tweak for any of those other things, but without that why bother?
Should you put more time in a novel right off? I'm thinking short stories are the way to get to a novel, yes? To publish a short story woudl be the first step.
Well I've had a considerable amount of short stories published so it's gave me a different mind set.
I think my real problem is doing re-writes though. I just freaking hate doing re-writes. It's like pulling teeth.
I have to pick just one? There's so many. Ugh. Mostly, I write too damn fast. When I get on a tanget, it just rolls out in a huge disorganized mess. 2-3k later I have to hack it with a machete and cut at least half if not two thirds of what I've written because it's either redundant or too much of a tangent. If I don't do this rapid fire burst though, nothing gets done. I just need to figure out how to refine it so that I'm spending less time vomiting out redundant lines.
Commas are the big one. I fu## up some punctuation. Working through a punctuation guide at the moment, I think I've actually gotten worse since then.
Re-writes. I get something down, hack at it, edit it, etc. and then I draw a blank. Unless I throw it to the wolves, it just sits because no matter how bad it is, I rarely come up with any good revisions until someone points out the obvious. Speaking of which, I need to get on some reviews.
Over focusing on one character to the exclusion of anything else, including the story. If this were a crime, I'd be locked in solitary confinement until they came up with a worse punishment than execution. Every once in a while, I look back at some of my earlier stuff and cringe. Some of my worst offenses will never see the light of day.
I have read that you should write what you know the most about, not try to conjure what you know nothing about, such as your vocation, where you live etc. Of course I have a problem with that. I cannot seem to let the words ride freely. It seems like a chore,however if I write something short, spur of the moment, I seem to make a point and sometimes it is even profound. my goal at this time is to collaberate and place in sequential order what I want to say. so far it has been futile and frustrating. I have not attempted to continue what I started it seems rather complex.
Thanks Rach - I'm not sure that we are doing anything wrong, just strong in one area more so than plot. I love to have these conversations though.
I have read that you should write what you know the most about, not try to conjure what you know nothing about, such as your vocation, where you live etc.
This is such an over-used (and mis-used) sentiment that shouldn't be taken literally. I'd love to be able to delete that 'write what you know' idea that people beat writers over the head with.
Write what you care about. If it's interesting to you, even if you don't know much about it, you'll more likely than not start putting energy into researching it. Then you're exploring, discovering, and actually learning.
Figure out what matters to you and use that as your 'theme'. Look at all the works of Shakespear that have been re-written over and over again in literature and movies. The setting and characters change, but the underlying theme is the same.
sound advice.
What Grigori said. How many science fiction writers have been to the moon or beyond? How many horror writers have come face-to-face with zombies, werewolves, or evil little children (well, maybe that last one)?
It's all about passion. And if you don't know anything about the subject you're passionate about. Learn.
They say "write what you know". Well, if you don't know about a subject, research it, learn it, then you "know it" and can write about it. Right?
Or make it up as you go and convince people it's true.
I honestly believe that "write what you know" is good advice, but I think the common interpretation -- that you should only write about your life, etc -- is wrong. I took it to mean that you shouldn't write about something you can't understand. I'm sorry, but I hate it when men write about battered women. I hate it. I know that men can be abused too and can research enough to write it authentically, but it rubs me the wrong way.
I always took "write what you know" to mean that you should always know the subject. It's exactly what Clutch said. It's why Jodi Picoult is so goddamn successful. She lives her stories, understands them inside and out because of the amount of research she does. She's Palahniuk to the extreme. She lived with the Amish for three weeks to write Plain Truth.
I always assumed that 'Write what you know' was a way of saying 'In order to get *started* writing, write about someone like yourself or an experience you're familiar with'. If you're interested in writing, surely you can tell yourself one of your own stories. Of course, once you have a few (hundred/thousand/etc) hours of writing behind you, you have the tools to tell other people's stores - vampires, giant telepathic tapeworms, et al.
I'm sorry, but I hate it when men write about battered women.
Exactly. I, in turn, hate it when women write about mathematics or the experience of driving responsibly.
OH SNAP.
<--- this guy is this guy ---v
@Jeff
Did you read Jon Gingerich's essay on the spiraling narrative (click here)? I'm going to give that a try on my next short story and see if that helps with my plotting.
Thanks GaryP - I have not read any of his articles, but I will give them a shot. On first blush, they look very meta and intelligent - let's hope my caveman brain can actually understand what he's talking about, let alone use it to improve. Cheers!
Thanks GaryP - I have not read any of his articles, but I will give them a shot. On first blush, they look very meta and intelligent - let's hope my caveman brain can actually understand what he's talking about, let alone use it to improve. Cheers!
shaky plots, bad morale, character tropes. I have a load of problems,. time will sort them out
Jeff -- that's definitely one of the better ways of interpreting the phrase. It's something to motivate you to get started when you first decide you're interested in writing.
Utah -- Does being good at math make me a man? I was fairly well-known for backing into things when I had my first car, though. So one out of two makes me a... hermaphrodite?
My weak spot is wishing people actually wanted to publish my shit.
I'm trying to develop a messiah-like self-confidence to counteract my lack of publication credits.
The best part of that video was "hitler's dick!"
So one out of two makes me a... hermaphrodite?
Not necessarily. Have you ever dabbled with steroids? That could explain it.
My weak spot is wishing people actually wanted to publish my shit."
Yes.
Yes, it's a weakness? or yes, it's shit?
Yes--- I agree. It is neither a weakness or shit. It's not a weakness because it drives me to improve. It's not shit because it is valid.
Never steroids, but walking in pumps all day can easily simulate the effects of roid rage, so there's that.
I can accept that. Though I would never attempt to write it.
