On Creative Writing, Linda A. Lavid [read ebook pdf .txt] 📗

Finally one summer I took on the challenge, stuck with a minimum of 250 words and kept track of my daily progress. Some days I easily surpassed the quota. Writing daily keeps the story fresh and continuous. Start out small if you like - one hundred words. Double that and you’ll have a novel-length manuscript in one year. It’s crucial to choose a word-count quota that is doable and measurable. Be realistic and don’t set yourself up for failure. I also found Ernest Hemingway’s advice helpful - keep water in the well. In other words, once you’re done writing for the day, have a sense of where you’ll be picking up the story the following day. For illustrative purposes, this paragraph runs 138 words.

Analyze Story X. Immerse yourself in a novel or short story that you wish you had written. I believe subconscious formatting occurs when a person reads and the more one reads, the better she is able to write. There is also a state of natural selection and what you hold up as your favorite book or story, most likely reflects the kind of writing you want to take on. Immersion into a story is done by reading it, speaking it, and deconstructing it. To deconstruct, write an excerpt in longhand and pay careful attention to words, sentences, paragraphs. As you develop craft, this book/story will hold many answers to your questions, i.e., How does the author handle description, backstory, transitions? My Story X is Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride. I still marvel at how she plays with tense, description, characterization. I have referred to this book endlessly in learning how to write. For example, when my characters were doing an inordinate amount of walking and turning and looking, I referred to a random page of Atwood’s Bride and found some fixes. By the way, I do not write like Margaret Atwood … yet.

Before we hone in on craft, I have a commentary on writer’s block. For years, writer’s block was my nemesis. Whenever I felt stupid or lazy or tired, whenever I couldn’t find the time or made excuses or gave up, I had writer’s block. However, now I see the situation more clearly. Writer’s block is simply a lack of craft, of not having the basic concepts of writing in place — something this book addresses.

Now it’s time to turn the page.

~ 1 ~

Plant the Seed ~ Story Goal

Fiction is the truth within the lie.

— Stephen King

Our lives are full of creation. Awake or asleep, we forge ahead forming, adjusting, trying it one way, then another. Creativity is embedded in who we are. And fiction is an extension of this creativity. No two stories will ever be the same, just as no two lives are the same. Every writer, every person, brings their unique perspective and talent to the party. I bristle whenever I hear there are no new stories; that everything written, has been written before. Yes, there are general themes, but their execution will always be unique. Ask Manolo Blahnik about shoes, Valentino about dresses. But I digress.

So what in you craves expression? Maybe it’s unfinished business you want to work out or a bit of human nature to explore. Having an idea for a story is very exciting. Your mind rushes with thoughts, images, and words fill the page. My God, you think, this is easy, this is effortless. I’m a genius. And maybe you are. On the other hand you may be experiencing the first blush of wondrous inspiration, an interlude of sweet bliss. How wondrous it is, but oh so fragile. Now I’m sure some writer in the history of mankind wrote a brilliant work on inspiration alone. However, this has not happened to me or to any writer I personally know.

So you have an idea for a story. That’s a very good thing. And maybe you even have a few pages of dialogue, some narrative, exposition. Wonderful. You’re swimming in calm water but decisions have to be made and the sooner, the better - First, who is the story about?

“Well,” you say, “it’s about this girl and her mother and - “

“Stop. Who? Which one?”

“Both,” you say. “It’s a mother and daughter story and the conflicts they have.”

“Hmm … How about some specifics? What’s the daughter’s name?”

“Mary.”

“What does Mary want?”

“She wants to get away from her mother.”

“What’s stopping Mary from getting away?”

“She’s been brainwashed. She isn’t strong enough. Her mother is overpowering.”

“Does Mary have the means to get away? Money, car, job?”

“No. They live together. Her mother supports her. Her mother holds all the cards. Mary’s helpless.“So the story is about a woman named Mary who wants to be out of her mother’s home and away from her mother’s controlling ways, but she doesn’t have the means or the confidence to leave.”

“Yes,” you say. “Exactly.”

“I love it!”

Every great story is about a character struggling. Every great story mirrors our lives as we too struggle. If strife was not a human condition, it wouldn’t be the fabric of storytelling. To start a story in earnest, ask and answer these three questions in one declarative sentence: Who is my story about? What does this character want? What is stopping him from getting what he wants?

The declarative sentence from the above example is: The story is about a girl named Mary who wants to be out of her mother’s home and away from her mother’s controlling ways, but she doesn’t have the means or the confidence to leave.

Story goal. This declarative sentence is also called the story goal. Think of story goal as the magnetic north. From page one until the end of your story, the story goal will be your homing device. It will keep your novel or short fiction piece focused and can even be used for publishing and marketing purposes. With a little tweaking you already have a blurb for your back cover and press release!

Every story breaks down to this essential statement. But how can one sentence sum up a novel length story? Consider Wally Lamb’s 800 plus-page novel, I Know This Much Is True: An angry, resentful brother feels obligated to keep his schizophrenic twin out of harm’s way. In Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: A man under suspicion must solve a murder that is shrouded in ancient Christian ritual. In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: An aging professor is obsessed with a troubled girl.

Let’s go back to Mary and her mother.

“Who is Mary’s mother? What’s her name?”

“Her name is Adele,” you say.

“And what does Adele want?”

“Adele has what she wants. She wants Mary to be dependent on her. She wants to keep her that way.”

The problem with this story goal is that it is reactive. Adele doesn’t really have to do much except react to Mary when Mary tries to free herself. What this means is that the entire story can easily be told from Mary’s perspective. On the other hand if Adele (who) wants to keep Mary at home so that she can control Mary’s inheritance (what Adele wants), but Mary’s uncle sees the ruse and is going to intervene (what’s stopping Adele), Adele has a story goal. However, this story goal undermines Mary’s story goal since Mary is not so helpless after all - her uncle is on her side. Be careful with an over abundance of characters and tangled story goals since they can easily complicate matters, confuse the reader and dilute the main storyline.

When writing a story goal, use present tense and consider what your protagonist wants and what’s stopping him. The point of having a story goal is to stay focused and remind yourself at every sentence, paragraph, page and scene what the story is about. Whenever you get stuck, review your story goal. This may hold the key. You may have strayed from the story goal or not defined the story goal well enough. Changing the story goal can change the entire trajectory of the story and if you’re well into the narrative this could mean substantial rewrite. Ugh. A story goal impels the story. It defines character, her want, what’s stopping her, and is the basis for the opening scene.

Opening scene. An opening scene illustrates the story goal. In the case of Mary and Adele, the first scene could be an argument between mother and daughter or a manipulation of daughter by mother. An opening scene should introduce the main character, present her dilemma and begin the forward trajectory by placing her off balance. Where and how a story opens is critical, because that’s when the reader gets hooked. No matter what kind of story you’re telling - mystery, romance, science fiction, literary - the first sentence, paragraph, and page must have punch in clarity, tone, emotion, and conflict. There’s no warming up, no meandering allowed.

To illustrate how stories start, here are a few opening sentences. Consider how they draw you in and the questions they raise. How evident is the story goal?

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta

-Lolita/Nabokov

The story of Zenia ought to begin when Zenia began. It must have been someplace long ago and distant in space, thinks Tony; someplace bruised, and very tangled.

-The Robber Bride/Atwood

While Pearl Tull was dying, a funny thought occurred to her. It twitched her lips and rustled her breath, and she felt her son lean forward from where he kept watch by her bed. “Get …” she told him. “You should have got … “

-Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant/Tyler

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable.

-I Know This Much Is True/Lamb

In these short introductions, a reader is beautifully oriented. We are told who the story is about, whether the point of view (POV) character is in the first or third person, and given just enough information to keep us (or at least me) reading. The beginning of your story should start with action, a problem, or some punchy dialogue.

Point of View. What you may notice about these stories is that they are about the travails of one character. This is not an accident. A tighter more riveting story will usually be told from one perspective or POV. Again, this reflects the human condition since we experience life from one perspective. The most common styles of POV are expressed in first person or third person subjective. Both these styles are limited to being inside a character’s head, either in the I form or the He/She form. The I form is a bit more constricting but intimate. The He/She form allows for more narrative but there’s a distancing as well.

Refer to Story X. What POV style does your author use? Are there multiple POVs? If so, do they have their own story goals?

Tense. Just a brief word. When I first began writing, I struggled with tense. Most stories are written in the simple past - he ran, I thought, she wished - even though the story action is happening in the present. At first this may seem jarring but with practice, the use of past tense will become second nature. Tenses, generally, should not be mixed. I suspect this happens because we often use multiple tenses in our daily lives. Again, sticking with one tense is easier the more we write.

Vunderbar. Where are we now? We are writers with unique talents who write daily. We have a story goal, a POV character, and