Month: May 2023

Today, let’s look again at reframing our relationship with creative work, particularly when the work does not go the way we wish.

When we encounter creative obstacles, it’s easy to fall into the poor-me trap. Nobody understands our work. You have to know an editor to get published. Why do other writers always get lucky?

Unfortunately, complaining and making excuses make it harder to learn from the experience. We insist that we are having the wrong experience – when our work is rejected, when we get a bad review or peer critique – when clearly, the right experience – publication, great reviews, peer praise – was what we expected and deserved.

It’s natural to complain and kvetch. I do it frequently. I’m quite good at it. But sinking into a bad mood prevents us from seeing how we could improve.

Instead of complaining about a bad experience, acknowledge that you’re having an experience. Reframing your problem as a neutral event might help you see ways you could have prevented the experience or identify methods for avoiding the bad outcome in the future.

As an example, when you receive multiple rejections in a row, what do you need to learn? There could be a number of reasons:

• There are issues of craft with your story that preclude publication. You might need to learn about plot, dialogue, description, or editing. Maybe you need a writing group or class to help you figure it out.
• There are issues with your manuscript. Even if your story is well received, issues such as misspellings, typos, or bad formatting could result in a rejection. Are you rushing to submit your work or taking the time to make sure you present your story in the best possible light?
• You submitted to the wrong forum. Regardless of quality, not every story is a good fit for every publication. Did you research which magazines or websites publish the type of story you write? Did you find venues that publish previously unpublished writers?

You can apply this turnaround to all kinds of creative obstacles:

• Are you not getting enough from your writing group?
• Do you often start stories but never finish them?
• Do your stories tend to fall apart at the mid-point or fall flat near the end?

Be open to the learning opportunities that your writing presents. When you sit down to write today, remind yourself to welcome them.

The character change arc is a tenet of modern fiction. With some exceptions, a novel’s protagonist undergoes crises and evolutions throughout the story, emerging at the end with lessons learned, as a better version of himself.

The journey is less interesting if your protagonist changes very little or if she does not resist the change. Today, let’s think about that resistance.

In the real world, people don’t change simply because you ask them to. Ask any married couple. Anyone who marries with the premise that their spouse can be changed is in for a disappointment. If that worked, divorce rates would be negligible.

There are reasons for that. Laziness and inertia are two. Unless there are serious consequences, the path of least resistance is the easiest traveled.

Further, for many of us, our sense of self was a hard-won trophy. As someone who was raised in a religious cult, I fought hard to assert my independence and my sense of what is right or wrong for me. I was abused by the best; peer pressure and spousal nagging don’t work on me. I know who I am. I built myself, brick by brick. Abandoning my sense of self, my internal guide of right and wrong, my judgments and opinions, seems impossible, not to mention unnecessary.

For others, trauma, punishment, or bad examples influence how they act in the world.

Considering your current WIP, why is your protagonist resistant to change? Did your hero watch his father fail at his vocation and take away a lesson on how life is? Did your heroine fight to assert herself and her personality, and does she now see any suggestion to change as a personal attack? Did your main character build their personality around being the Provider, the Protector, the Joker, the Black Sheep, the Mother, or the Martyr? How hard did they have to fight to become who they are?

The character arc requires that your protagonist go through some kind of change. What they believe at the outset must fail them. The consequences of not changing must be more terrible than the fear or belief that has stopped them from evolving before now.

But that all starts with who they are at the beginning and the reason they don’t want to change or don’t feel like they have to. The stronger your protagonist fought to become the person they are when your novel starts, the greater the conflict when outside influences force them to change and the greater the payoff when they evolve.

I don’t usually lift the daily quotes from A Year of Living Consciously. I’m already riffing off the lessons and talking about how I apply them in my life and writing, so I don’t want to get too greedy. However, today’s quote is too good not to share:

“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.” – Walt Whitman

A few days ago, I posted about taking healthy responsibility for your creative work and outcomes. That means owning when you screw up or fail to meet your commitments to yourself, but it also means recognizing the actions that created your successes.

Taking responsibility also means how you react to problems. Even when you take all the right actions that should lead to success, life doesn’t always go our way. Sometimes the right actions lead to disappointing outcomes and sometimes crap happens through no fault of our own. However, we can choose how we respond to difficulty or creative setbacks and turn them into learning opportunities and successes.

Whatever you’re dealing with – personal success, failure, or an outside mishap – an important question to ask is “What can I do now to create the outcome I desire?”

Think about this question as you approach your creative work today, especially if you are working on tasks that aren’t directly creative but support your work, such as blogging, posting on social media, answering relevant email, sending invoices, or submitting queries. You might enjoy these tasks or you might hate them. Regardless of your feelings, I presume these tasks must be completed.

When you’re working today, be conscious of the tasks you’ve chosen and why. What do you get out of the task? If you dread it or are behind on your deadlines, ask what actions you’ve taken to create this scenario.

And of course, ask what you can do to create the outcome you desire.

Building on yesterday’s post, let’s consider the element of truth and how it affects character and dialogue.

In an earlier post, I talked about truths and lies and how writers can go deeper into examining a character’s relationship to the truth and other characters. The Great Lie is a common narrative device. A character tells a lie or holds onto a secret, and the effort to conceal or discover drives the plot and action. In that post, I recommended that writers also consider the repercussions of lies and secrets. When someone lies, they create a narrative that is about more than the lie itself. The act of withholding – no matter the importance of the secret – can color a character’s attitude, disrupt their goals, and drive a wedge between them and others. Even when the lie is only tangential to the plot, the act of maintaining it should alter the course of the story.

This thought can also help you craft indirect, and therefore more interesting, dialogue.

When we think about lies in fiction, we jump to the Great Lie, the untruth that will ruin lives or reputations. Crimes, affairs, and politics all prompt Great Lies, but in the real world, people tell small lies all the time.

We tell the white lie when someone asks how they look or if you like their singing voice. We tell the polite lie when a store clerk asks about our day, even though we’re mad that we’ve been waiting in line too long. We tell the social lie when we tell an acquaintance that life is good, when it’s anything but.

We tell these small lies to smooth our social interactions. We tell bigger lies because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. We might tell the Great Lie if we don’t want to lose someone’s trust or get into legal trouble.

Think about all the lies people tell without realizing it, the minor untruths we wouldn’t call lies at all. Go through the dialogue in your current work and highlight all the places where your characters are lying, even where it’s a minor social lie.

Is everyone always saying exactly what’s on their mind? You might have an opportunity to mix things up to create more interesting dialogue. Does one character obfuscate more than others? That might give you a clue to their personality that you missed.

Lies are sand in the gears of our relationships. Look for places in your story to create those obstacles and generate conflict, and you might find that your dialogue starts to pop a bit more.

Dialogue is a challenging story element, but crucial to get right. I’ve read hundreds of articles and books about crafting dialogue for prose, film, and the theater and it remains a tough nut to crack.

Experts generally posit some form of this goal for dialogue: It should be interesting and natural-sounding, reflect the character’s voice, create conflict, and move the plot forward. But also be compact and choose every word purposefully.

Yeah, that’s easy.

What I’ve found in my reading is that it’s much easier to avoid bad dialogue than it is to write great. You can find a ton of advice on what not to do. Characters shouldn’t repeat each other’s names or start sentences with “As you know…” You should excise fluff and filler, such as characters introducing themselves or commenting on the weather, even if we do this in real life.

But specific how-to advice on writing memorable dialogue is sparse. Do you need help structuring your story? Follow the three-act structure or Save the Cat or the Hero’s Journey. Need advice on description? Less is more but be sure to pick specific concrete language and describe your world as your character would. There’s even practical advice on writing humor, which is entirely subjective. You still have to do the work on plot and description and everything else, but you can find methods that work until your skills evolve.

Unfortunately, there’s no similar game board for writing interesting dialogue (or I haven’t found it yet). No one can tell you how to start a sentence and where to drop in an expletive or metaphor. There’s no formula saying great dialogue consists of one long sentence, three short sentences, and a fragment. You can’t math your way to interesting conversations.

So, how do you get from:

“As you know, Bob, I’ve had a hard time since divorcing my wife, your sister Evelyn.”

To:

“They should have put you in a glass jar on a mantlepiece. Where were you when Paul was suckling at his mother’s teat? Where were you? Who was nursing you, poor Eli? One of Bandy’s sows? That land has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It’s gone. It’s had. You lose.

Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I’m so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that’s a straw, you see? Watch it. Now, my straw reaches acroooooooss the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I… drink… your… milkshake! [sucking sound] I drink it up!”

• from There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson

Shrug. Like Cher once said, if it came in a bottle, everyone would have a great body. We would all write like Quentin Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson or pick your favorite writer or filmmaker. It takes practice, both listening and writing.

Nonetheless, some insights can help us create natural-sounding dialogue, but for that we leave the world of writing advice and we examine human nature.

In A Year of Living Consciously, which I am using as a guide for my Year of Writing Consciously, Gay Hendricks points out that when we speak – even something innocuous – we have intention behind our words. When we listen, we also do so with intention: a preconceived notion, bias, or plan to respond.

In Hendricks’ example, the simple question “How are you?” means something different every time we say it. Consider what you mean when you say “How are you?” to someone you are meeting for the first time, to a friend you haven’t seen in a while, or to a close friend whom you know is going through a hard time. The same three words have a dramatically different intention depending on who you’re talking to.

To your struggling friend, you’re expressing concern and providing them the opportunity to talk about their problem. To a casual acquaintance, you’re inviting a quick catch-up on events that have occurred since you last spoke. To a stranger, you probably said “How are you?” by rote, intending merely to be polite. You aren’t really asking about their health or well-being, and it would be awkward if they gave you the details.

We also listen with different intentions. It’s a common challenge in relationships. Often, we don’t listen as much as we quietly (or not) wait our turn to speak. What the other person has actually said is almost irrelevant.

Consider this idea if you’re struggling with dialogue and conflict, as I do. My dialogue tends to be direct. I (probably) avoid the major pitfalls, but my characters almost always say what they think. They respond tit-for-tat to what other characters say. It’s not terrible, but it’s not particularly memorable. If my dialogue were a tennis match, it would be two reasonably good players batting a ball over the net back and forth. Great dialogue is akin to two competitors trying to score points. And naturally, one of those is more fun to watch.

Take a look at your dialogue and ask what your character is inviting when they speak. What is their intention? Do they want information? Does your character want to trick someone or start an argument? Do they start one conversation so they can eat up time and thereby avoid a different, more difficult, topic? Perhaps they’re disinterested and not seeking any response at all.

When your characters are listening, what is the intention? Is your protagonist listening for a lie? Is a character waiting to start an argument? Imagine having a conversation with a reliable co-worker and one you consider lazy. With the former, you might be listening for advice or a project update. With the latter, you might be listening for an excuse or a mistake.

When your character is listening to someone else speak, do they expect to agree or disagree with what that person says? Consider this statement: “This task isn’t worth doing.” Using the co-worker example, you might assume your trusted co-worker has a good reason for their comment, but you’ll assume the lazy person simply wants to get out of doing work.

Characters at cross purposes – with different intentions and desires – create conflict. Imagine saying “How are you?” to a stranger, who launches into a litany of their personal problems. You’d feel trapped. Conversely, how would you react if a good friend responded only vaguely to the same question? What if you knew that friend was ill but declined to discuss it with you or even pretended he wasn’t? You might feel rejected and wonder if your friendship had been damaged.

Conversation is more than what your characters are saying. Dialogue also contains their intentions. Listening is also part of dialogue. What a character is thinking or doing when not speaking influences what they’ll say next.

There’s no simple formula for writing great dialogue, but understanding human nature and thinking is one avenue to crafting more natural-sounding conversation. Go beyond the eavesdropping approach. That’s a great start, but examining the human desire and intention behind our words can help you develop character voice and conflict, and craft dialogue that’s more interesting than a verbal lobby.

Building off yesterday’s post, today I want to consider how to reframe the toil and difficulty of writing into something more joyful and fulfilling.

This turn-around is as easy and as difficult as changing your mindset. When you change how you think about a task, a challenge, or a setback, you rewrite your own story. You shift from a person to whom things happen to a person who actively engages with and owns their creative choices and work.

Think of some of the challenges you face in your writing life. Maybe you’re stuck in the middle of a story and don’t know how to write your way out. Perhaps editors and writing peers point out the same weaknesses in your work and you don’t know how to fix them. Often, people are harsh or discouraging. Sometimes simply sitting down to write – whether or not you have a blank page in front of you – is a chore.

Practice reframing your view of whatever you find difficult. Change your interpretation and you might discover that your attitude shifts as well and your problem becomes not only surmountable but minimal.

Instead of saying:

• It’s 8 o’clock and now I have to write.
• I can’t figure out what to do with this story.
• My dialogue stinks.
• My writing group criticizes my work.
• No one will publish my work.

Say:

• It’s 8 o’clock and now I get to write.
• I can experiment with what to do with this story.
• If I work on my dialogue, I can improve this story 50%.
• My writing group wants to help me become a better writer.
• I haven’t found the right editor or audience yet.

You’re a writer. You control the words on the page and you can also control the words you think. Rewrite the parts you don’t like and you’ll feel your energies shift.

Another day, another choice. Consider these two statements and see how each feels to you:

• I commit to having a good time when I’m engaged in my creative work and community
• I commit to joyless suffering and to discovering how much discomfort I can endure

I’ve written about finding the joy in writing before. While there is some truth to the negative adages about creative writing, too many creative people take them as gospel.

“You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.” – Ernest Hemingway

“I hate writing, but I love having written.” – Dorothy Parker

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.” – Virginia Woolf

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.” – Isaac Asimov

Yes, three of these quotes are humorous and all are hyperbolic, but they also point to a philosophic vein that says anyone who pursues creative arts must be angry, depressed, or crazy, especially if they want to be any good at it. And modern students of writing often quote them without humor, as though their predecessors were providing advice on living, rather than commiserating about the occasional difficulty we experience in our creative pursuits.

And that’s not even taking into account that we live in a capitalist system that believes nothing is worthwhile unless it generates income for shareholders. Is there any hobby or expression that we can’t make joyless toil by converting it into a money making scheme?

Writing shouldn’t feel like we’ve gone ten rounds in a boxing ring. You’re not Rocky. You don’t have to take punches and come back for more.

Choose to have a good time when you’re writing.

Here’s another choice between commitment and counter-commitment:

• I commit to hiding
• I commit to revealing, rather than concealing

Are you fully committed to being a creative human and to fully expressing your creative self?

We have lots of reasons to hide. Maybe you’ve been shamed or humiliated when you’ve tried to share your creative work. Maybe you’ve been harshly criticized or told you’re not good or worthy enough. Someone may have told you that you aren’t allowed to write a certain kind of story on a certain topic about certain kinds of people or experiences. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, maybe you’re afraid of upsetting someone or ruining a friendship.

Maybe this doesn’t apply to you. Good! Go you! We all deserve to express our creativity in any way we choose and should never feel shamed or embarrassed about talking about what we love. Whether this belief came easily to you or you had to struggle with it, good for you! You earned it.

However, this sometimes applies to me. If this applies to you too, take some time today to consider why you’re hiding your thoughts, desires, or talents.

Repeat after me: I commit to revealing my creative self, rather than concealing.

When we take responsibility for our creative choices and work, we find that we have power to control our outcomes and make any changes necessary to bring us closer to creative happiness and fulfillment.

Today, practice taking responsibility for your bad habits or what’s not working well. Have fun with it, and you might discover that your bad habits are kinda silly.

Here are some examples:

• I’m really into procrastination these days.
• I made sure I didn’t finish that story I was working on before I started a new one.
• I arranged to be too busy to go to my writing meet-up.
• I enjoy talking negatively about my goals and skills.