So don’t cheat. Actually retype the scene, letter by letter. The words will pass through a different part of your brain. You’ll say, Oh! That’s why she put a comma there! Seriously, try it my way. Don’t cheat. You’ll be glad.
JOHN SHIRLEY
Writing Is Seeing
JOHN SHIRLEY is the author of Bleak History, Everything Is Broken, Demons, A Song Called Youth, and In Extremis: The Most Extreme Stories of John Shirley. He won the Bram Stoker for his book Black Butterflies. His nonfiction work is Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas (Tarcher/Penguin).
When I was a very young man at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, I was a fan of Rimbaud and later artistic radicals, like the surrealists. I liked their brashness and their florid manifestos. One day at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Harlan Ellison was being encouraging (if that’s the word), and asked me what my writing method was. Aglow with self-importance, I arched an eyebrow, gazed into the distance with a visionary air and said, “I eat with my eyes; I taste with my ears.”
Well, this was pretentious as all hell, and sounded silly no doubt, especially as I didn’t know much about writing at the time. However, it turns out that when I think back to the ludicrous behavior of my youth, when I wincingly consider my jejune fancies and mile-a-minute images and insights, I sometimes see, besides boyish foolishness, that I was, after all, quite right—at least about some of it. Being a bit of a misfit, I had nothing to lose, so I just tore open my frontal lobes and let the impressions pour in and the corresponding ideas pour out, with very little preconception. The results were highly uneven but sometimes, because I didn’t know I could not do a thing, I could do it. And I did. And, in fact, I was right to try to “eat with my eyes”—that is, to look around me without expurgation, with the maximum intake and honesty, with the assumption that the normal way of looking at life is muddied—and that it’s possible to see more, always more if one looks hard enough; if one gets out of the way of perception.
And this has served me. So, I advise writers to do the same: to start with the assumption that they’re not really so conscious as they think they are; not so perceptive as they think they are. To make a conscious, deliberate effort to look at things they are used to and see them in ways they are not used to. Try to see the extraordinary in the mundane—not necessarily the fantastic, but the deeper reality. It is there if you look for it. Don’t use drugs to open your perceptions—just open them.
Look around anywhere, really look, and you can see new characters, possible stories. Be a Sherlock Holmes of characterization. What does that stranger’s distinct choice of clothing mean? Does that man’s reddened knuckles and the bruise on his sad wife’s cheek mean what I think it does? Look closely at her and make an educated guess. How about that man, in the subway—his hand keeps reflexively moving toward his shirt pocket, and drawing back. Is he reaching for cigarettes? Or something else?
My feeling is that a great deal of good writing originates in good observation. It’s people-watching, sure, but it’s also watching nature; it’s absorbing urban, pastoral, and suburban settings. It’s trying to see familiar things as you never saw them before.
One key to increasing one’s observation is being aware of the degree of one’s awareness in the first place. When I’m out interacting with the world, how much am I lost in some gray study, in a daydream, or in my smartphone? To what extent am I really inhabiting myself, really seeing . . . and feeling, smelling, hearing . . . what’s there?
If I turn my attention toward my own level of awareness, I discover that typically I’m not very aware as I move about the world. I’m dreaming, brooding, or caught in haste, in anxiety, in petty fears. Which means I’m not seeing what’s around me—I haven’t got enough attention left, after all that distraction, to really look at the world I’m in. If I don’t really see, I don’t have material for convincing writing.
Verisimilitude, believability—that’s a key to persuading a reader that what you’re describing is real. Where do you get it? From observation—from observing yourself, people around you, the world around you. To get there, work on being in the moment. Step out of the usual half-aware state we’re too often in. Being “in the moment” helps you see things as they are—and it may bring you insight into the human condition.
In a way, everyone is a character in a novel. A good writer can find the human dilemma, the human condition, in any situation, because it’s always there, if you’re really looking closely. Drama is always all around us, but usually we don’t see it because we’re not paying attention.
EXERCISE
1. Go to a place that’s tediously familiar to you, the supermarket, or the post office, a place, perhaps, where you have to stand in line and normally can’t wait to get away. Deliberately use the time there to practice observing. Turn your attention to people and things around you, as if you’d never seen anything like them before. Pretend you’re from Mars, if you like. So this is what creatures look like on this planet; so this is how they behave.
The main thing is to see them freshly—telling details and truths about them will likely jump out at you. Look freshly at the place as well as the people. As a writer, any environment is a potential setting. Look closely, more closely than your default setting, wherever you are.
2. Are there people in your life who drone on, and you say, “Uh huh . . . uh huh . . .”—as you only half-listen at best? Find one! Let him drone on . . . but this time really listen, no matter how genuinely tiresome it is. Think of it as a sort of homely telepathy—in a sense, you’re actually hearing his free associations, unconscious concerns, and fears.
An example: “I told Bill I didn’t want to go to that doctor again, he always makes me wait, I don’t think his assistant likes me . . .” What does that boring, self-pitying complaint actually say? It says she is going to the doctor, so she is worried about her health; it says that it may be that the choice of doctors is in Bill’s hands, whoever he may be; it says she is a little afraid of the doctor’s assistant, generally worried about being disliked, perhaps even a tad paranoid. It’s an indirect, unconscious statement of fear, of anxiety, and considering the implications, might open up your compassion for that person, which might in turn give you insight into her. She, or someone incorporating her attributes, might become a strong character in a story.
3. Go to some place you like going to, perhaps a beach, a trail, the opera, whatever you enjoy—and try to see aspects of it you’d normally filter out, or not notice. Forget about “good” or “bad”—just look for what is. Linger in one spot and look at it more closely than normal. Again, try to see it as if you’d never seen it before . . . You’ll be surprised at how the familiar is also the unfamiliar, and how much a deeper perception of it can enrich your writerly description.
JAY LAKE
Flashing Yourself
JAY LAKE’s recent books are Kalimpura (Tor Books) and Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh (Prime Books). His short fiction appears regularly in markets worldwide. He won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, and has been a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
This is a writing exercise I originally got from short story master Bruce Holland Rogers. He didn’t exactly give it to me as an exercise. This is more a case of leading by example than deliberate pedagogy, but I still want to give credit where credit is due.
Flash fiction—defined here as short stories of 500 words or less—is a wonderful vehicle for many things. One of the most basic satisfactions of writing flash is that even the most deliberately paced writers can usually finish a story in one sitting. There’s something very nice about typing those three hash marks at the end of your piece. You experience a sense of accomplishment, and the joys of completion.
Easy to write, harder to sell, though there certainly are some good flash fiction markets out there. For our purposes, though, we’re focused on flash as a writing exercise.<
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A neat thing about flash is that it generally does only one thing. At that length, complexity is a very rare luxury indeed. So a flash piece might focus on describing a setting, or offering a bit of characterization, or the fast, witty dialogue between two characters with competing agendas. But it’s not trying to do that while balancing the other twelve or fourteen things required to build a good, solid short story.
Flash fiction is inherently a focusing exercise.
With that in mind, here’s how I use the form:
When I’m stuck on some aspect of craft, I explore that aspect in flash.
I establish a basic opening, the classic character-in-a-setting-with-a-problem. For example, “Detective Saenz stumbled over the body in the doorway.”
Then I write forward from that opening, focusing only on the aspect of craft with which I am troubled. For example, if my dialogue has been feeling wooden, Detective Saenz might have a conversation with the patrolman hovering in the hallway outside. If I want to work on my descriptive prose, he might look around the room with a detective’s eye, cataloging in great detail what he sees of the crime scene. If sensory detail is the thing I’m wrestling with, I might talk about the reek of death and how unusually warm the apartment is, and the way Detective Saenz’s skin is prickling on the arms and the back of his neck.
Then I do it again, from a slightly different perspective. Write the flash from the point of view of the patrolman in the hallway behind Detective Saenz. Write it again from the point of view of the corpse. Write it again from the point of view of the battered, blood-stained sofa. (I am a science fiction and fantasy author, I’m allowed to do things like that.)
Each pass of flash should only take you somewhere between a few minutes and an hour, depending on your natural writing speed. Try it three or four days in a row at whatever time your writing schedule permits. Use the limitations of the form’s length and the limitations of your chosen aspect of craft to focus your efforts. This can be surprisingly liberating, and provide you with some excellent self-feedback on a short time scale. It’s also useful for breaking writer’s block and building self-confidence.
After all, these are stories. You might even sell a few.
EXERCISE
Time recommended: One hour (optionally over three to four sessions).
Tools: Your usual and most comfortable writing medium.
Set-up:
• Choose your weakest or most troubling aspect of craft.
• Select a character. Suggestion: What profession or way of life did you last read about in a newspaper or magazine article?
• Select a setting. Suggestion: Where was the last book you read set?
• Select a problem. Suggestion: Don’t make this hard on yourself. Choose a problem that might legitimately be related to either the character or the setting.
• Write your opening line in a simple declarative sentence that encapsulates the above three items.
• Go where the story leads you from there, focusing on your chosen aspect of craft.
• Repeat two or three more times with variations on point of view or grammatical person or some similar structural change that honors the concept.
NICHOLAS ROYLE
Go for a Walk
NICHOLAS ROYLE is the author of six novels, two novellas, and one short story collection. He has edited fifteen anthologies, including Darklands, The Best British Short Stories 2012, and Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories about Birds. A senior lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing limited-edition chapbooks.
This exercise is designed for the writer—or writing student—who is blocked. Not necessarily completely or fatally, perhaps just a little bit blocked. You don’t know what happens next. Perhaps stuck is a better word for it. You are stuck. You have reached the end of a scene or chapter and you don’t know what comes next.
Or you might have a problem in your work-in-progress that is delaying actual progress. A problem you may not even have identified, but one you know is lurking in there somewhere.
I do this every time I’m stuck or have a problem to sort out (in my work), and it always works. I never return home still stuck. Okay, maybe that’s because you’re not allowed to go home till you’ve fixed it? No, it’s not like that. It really, really works. There’s something about the mechanical act of walking that frees up the mind and the imagination, so you may even come up with completely unexpected, lateral solutions.
Nothing else does it for me. Cycling, running, driving—these are all too fast and you are constantly encountering hazards. I know someone who can do it while driving, but quite frankly I think she should have her license taken away, because there’s no way you can do this kind of deep work while concentrating on the road.
I did this exercise with a group of about fifteen creative writing MA students, advising them to split up and walk off in different directions once they had left the center. Seven of them had been skeptical, the other seven more open-minded. One didn’t believe it would achieve anything and didn’t go. All fourteen who went came back and reported progress. Some had come up with completely new ideas. Those who had been stuck were now unstuck. All of them felt invigorated. The one who had stayed behind wished he had gone.
Works equally well for solo writers as for groups.
EXERCISE
You will need:
walking shoes (pair)
notebook
pen
Place notebook and pen in pocket. Put on shoes—make sure these are comfortable and suitable for a walk of half an hour or an hour or more. Leave house.
Walk, preferably in countryside or park, but town or city will do just as well, as long as you don’t mind people thinking you’re crazy, because you’re going to be talking to yourself out loud.
Talk to yourself out loud about the problem you face in your work, whether it’s a choice between first and third person narration or present or past tense, or you simply don’t know what happens next.
Start by talking about what you’ve got so far, how you got to where you’re currently at, and gradually work your way toward your problem. Talk it through. Work it out. Don’t come home till you’ve cracked it.
It works. It honestly works.
JEREMY WAGNER
The Art of Being Horrifically Prolific
JEREMY WAGNER is an author, musician, and songwriter. His international best-selling first novel, The Armageddon Chord, was number four on the Barnes & Noble paperback best seller list, won a Hiram Award, was a finalist for Emerging Novelists Novel of the Year, and made the First Round Ballot for a Bram Stoker Award nomination.
pro·lif·ic /pre-’lif-ik/ (adj.): (of an artist, author, or composer) producing many works
When I think of prolific writers, I think first of Stephen King. It seemed he put out five books every quarter back in the 1980s. That’s an exaggeration of course, but I remember you didn’t have to go too long before another killer King book arrived. Speaking of Stephen King and his literary output, King’s written and published around fifty novels (including seven under his pen name, Richard Bachman), five non-fiction books, and nine short-story collections.
That’s an impressive body of work for Stephen King, or anyone else. I think publishing even several books—like J. K. Rowling did with the Harry Potter series—is quite an accomplishment.
Who blows Stephen King away when it comes to writing and releasing books? Try Spanish writer María del Socorro Tellado López (also known as: Corín Tellado). Corín Tellado (1927–2009) was a prolific writer of romantic novels. Tellado published more than 4,000 novels and sold more than 400 million books!
What about nonprolific writers? Many famous authors have only produced one piece of work for eternity. Example: Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wi
nd) and Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights). One of my favorite scary authors is Thomas Harris, and he is, by definition, not prolific. He’s published only five novels in the last thirty-six years: Black Sunday (1975), Red Dragon (1981), Silence of the Lambs (1988), Hannibal (1999), and Hannibal Rising (2006). I love Harris’s work so much, but it’s frustrating as a fan when you have to wait six to ten years for another novel by the guy. It also makes me wonder what he’s doing in between novels. Is he spending his days on Miami Beach thinking of a new Hannibal Lecter book? Is he traveling the world? Is he writing under a pen name? Inquiring minds want to know!
Let’s be prolific, okay? Keep your passion for writing alive every day and create. I spoke to some publishing folks, bestselling horror authors and horror publishers kind enough to share their two cents on being prolific, and, “How many books should a successful author release per year?” Here’s what they said:
Lori Perkins (horror literary agent and editorial director for Ravenous Romance publishing): “Ebook writers publish more frequently. Our best authors do ten books a year and are making a good living from this.”
Jonathan Maberry (best-selling horror author of Rot & Ruin and Patient Zero): “I write three novels each year. Kevin J. Anderson writes six. So does Sherrilyn Kenyon. And I believe Sandra Brown and Heather Graham do seven.”
Yasmine Galenorn (New York Times/USA Today best-selling author of the Otherworld series): “I write three books a year. Don’t overkill . . . do have a few months apart . . . for genre work it’s a lot more common than for mainstream.”
Jack Ketchum (best-selling horror legend and author of The Woman): “I’d space them out, at least nine months to a year apart. Build each one as an event. Let people salivate for the next one . . . even Stephen King waits about that long between novels, though a collection isn’t out of the question . . .”
Now Write! Page 29