Bupkis and not

I've written about writing advice before, and it's an interesting thing. A lot of writing advice (like any advice) is bupkis. Sometimes it's even detrimental. At the same time it can be useful. Confusing? The reason is simple. Most writing advice comes from a writer's personal experience which is limited. Even the most experienced writers can only tell you what they've experienced.

But taken at it's root, most advice can be helpful.

For example, I've heard many writers say, "Your first book is always terrible. Get over it. Write the book and then move on to the next one." or "You have to write a million words before you're any good."

At the core, this is good advice. It says: "Writing is a skill that takes time to learn." and "Keep moving forward."

The truth is that your first book may be terrible in some ways, but throwing it away isn't always the answer. The trick is to keep improving your skills. You have to write a first book. Otherwise you could never write a second, third, fourth, and so on. Through writing, you will naturally improve. But even if you write a hundred books, you could still get stuck in some terrible habits and you wouldn't necessarily be a better writer.

So yes, you should keep writing. But it is possible that your first book is actually brilliant in some aspect. What you need to do is keep learning the skills of writing. One way to do that is to write more books. Another way is to do specific exercises to improve different aspects of your writing. I personally started out writing scripts which made me focus on plot and dialogue. Those are two of my strengths. Description? That's an area where I'm constantly struggling to improve.

One final key is to find someone to help you recognize A) where you need to improve, and B) what good writing is.

Having a good mentor, writing group, editor, teacher, or critic can help you recognize where your weaknesses are. Reading successful writing, essays, writing manuals, blogs, podcasts from professional authors or editors, all of these can help you learn what good writing is (Which is highly subjective in many cases and genre specific). It is essential that you find some way to evaluate your writing and create a pathway to bettering yourself.

Your first book may be amazing, but it probably needs work. It probably also needs work that you can't give it right away because you as the author probably need some work yourself. Listen to writing advice to find the best path. Try it out, and then discard the advice that doesn't work for you. Because even though writing advice can be bupkis, ignoring everything might be just as bad.

Good luck, and keep writing.

Color By Numbers

I've just been reading The Making Of A Story by Alice LaPlante. I borrowed it from excellent writer, Steven Bohls. I feel comfortable recommending this book to any aspiring writer. She's got some great things to say about writing. I don't agree with everything she says, but most of the points I disagree on are probably more about how she presents an idea than what she's actually saying. She also includes writing exercises and samples to read which illustrate the points she makes. For example, where she says narrative, I would often use the word story. It's not world shattering.

One exercise that I found very interesting is to describe yourself by statistics. For example:

1. Times I've been in serious automobile accidents - 3
2. Times I've walked away from serious automobile accidents with no injury whatsoever - 3
3. Number 1 vegetable my hair has been compared with - the carrot
4. The number of jobs I've had since receiving my bachelor's degree 5 years ago - 9
5. Number of those jobs that are related to my degree - 2
6. Number of times I've been struck by lightning - 0
7. Percent of the time that I'm grumpy with my kids - 62
8. Percent of the time that I feel bad about how grumpy I am with my kids - 80
9. Number of countries I've lived in - 3
10. Average number of times I get seriously sunburned each year - 3

As you can see, even though I'm just giving you numbers a story starts to emerge. You start to put things together. You don't know me, but you start to get a picture. And by picking out the statistics, I've guided the picture that you'll see.

So I'm going to suggest this exercise to you. Take a location, character, or relationship from one of your projects and see if you can come up with 10 statistics for them/it. Try not to be too obvious (1 nose, 2 eyes, etc.) But dig deeper and I'm sure you'll have a better understanding of the thing or person you're describing.

Plots, Naughts, and Connect the Dots

Ok, so I want to get this out of the way first. There are no naughts in this post. I just liked the rhyme.

When I had my idea for my first stage play, I started with a few points that I wanted to hit in the story. Actually, I started with a concept and built story points, conversations, scenes, and snippets of dialogue. Then, because I kept thinking up new ideas, I put those ideas in a vague chronological order.

So I had a bunch of scenes and conversations that I knew fell somewhere in the timeline. I even knew what order to put them in. I just didn't know what to do with them after that. So I started writing.

For me, this was a learning experience. Writing became a game of connect the dots. I'd write a scene from my idea sheet, and then I'd look to see which scene was next in the timeline. Then I'd just write something to fill that space if I felt like a transition was needed. Sometimes I'd just write the next point. Sometimes there was almost an entire act before I got to the next point.

That was an early form of my outlining process that still helps today. Writing as connect the dots. It helps me to think of it that way.

What are some analogies that help you in writing?