The Confabulator Cafe

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  • 46,000 Words, Give or Take

    I used to despair that I would never be a novelist, because I can’t write lengthy, epic novels. And I’m not using despair lightly — we’re talking all the gnashing of teeth and melodrama that comes with being, um, a freshman in high school. Okay, now I don’t even take this story seriously, but hear me out.

    I cap out at about 56K, maybe 58K on a good day. And I mean, 58K would be a seriously verbose novel for me. I’m more likely to complete a story in about 30K – 35K. This is just how I roll, apparently, and I don’t know why. I’m still editing my second novel, so maybe I’ll have that moment where I understand why. But in the mean time I’m okay with this limitation. I believe that I can tell a good story in under 60K. And you know why?

    Douglas Adams.
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  • Open to the Bad Signal

    Bad Signal by Warren Ellis; cover by Jacen Burrows

    I graduated high school in the mid-1980s, went to college and dropped out because girls and booze were way more interesting and I thought I was going to be a rock star.

    The rock star thing didn’t work out but I had a helluva lotta fun making music and playing shows. I wish I’d never left college, though. Having a degree would have been helpful in a couple of situations in my day job/career. That said, I never stopped trying to improve my knowledge base. I never stopped learning.

    I read a wide variety of science texts and followed politics and though I don’t have any aptitude for math, I learned how to be pretty good at the things I need to know to run a business.

    You get that information so that when I tell you that I learn from everything I read, you understand that’s exactly what I mean. I read for enjoyment as much as for how a writer does what he or she does. Sentence structures and word choices are the obvious things. Any author that can increase my vocabulary is one that I will never forget and will likely read again. China Mieville is a current favorite; Elmore Leonard is another one who I’ve learned a great deal from; Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen King, and Neil Gaiman all top the list of writers I’ve learned from.

    Mieville made it okay for me to use the word ‘and’ to connect ideas. (He also taught me to think about everything that can possibly be connected to what I’m writing about.)  Leonard taught me how to streamline my thoughts. Burroughs renewed my sense that it was okay to go for high adventure. King’s insights, in particular throughout his spectacular On Writing, taught me that it was just fine to reach for the heights and that it’s ultimately okay if you don’t reach them every time, but that shouldn’t stop one from trying again and this time going higher. Gaiman brought me back to fiction after spending a long time away from it and I was encouraged to take what I loved about comic books and start writing stories that encompassed all my interests.

    But the the writer who’s taught me the most is Warren Ellis. He’s only got one novel out, Crooked Little Vein, but it wasn’t from his novel that I learned so much. It was from his Bad Signal emails (which he began sending out in 2001 but that I didn’t pick up until 2003). In those emails, he talked about everything that interested him and how he could apply it to his writing or if someone else liked the idea to go with it themselves.

    I did just that. Ellis is halfway responsible for me starting up my serialized novel The Long Range. He mentioned in one email (forgive me I don’t have time to look up the date, but it was around 2004 I think) the idea of creating stories in the same way that bands create songs. (I’m probably remembering it wrong, but this is how I remember it. Sorry if it’s wrong.) I took that idea, rolled it around in my head and decided that what I wanted to do was write a series of seemingly disparate stories of at least 6000 words each that would interconnect to tell a larger work. Something that mashed up comics, music, TV and anything even vaguely episodic. There were thirteen stories there and I only missed my deadline once in the entire year I did it.

    That project led me to try my hand at writing a novel and then trying to do it in 30 days. I’m talking, of course, about NaNoWriMo and from there I’ve written more and more and even been published since then. Ellis discontinued the Bad Signal in January 2010 but I’ve got every one of them I received. I can go back and read them at my leisure. Ellis has been a huge influence on me in terms of my writing (and even my love of whiskey), but is he my favorite writer? No. He’s just my favorite teacher.

  • When does the work, work?

    When I read a book or article that really works, I try to sit down and analyze what made it effective.  Sometimes it’s a matter of style.  I discovered that my favorite writer, Richard Powers, achieves his effectiveness in descriptive passages by layering lengthening clauses, one tucked inside the next, unfolding to a final expression of expansive impact.  Another writer I admire, Jeff Sharlet, wrote a couple of terribly effective non-fiction works by correlating a lot of previously unconnected information.  Another book did not manage to make the new connections explicit, and it was not as effective.

    A couple of times, when I find a sentence that encapsulates its theme particularly well, I tear it apart to learn from it.  I don’t diagram it formally, but I do analyze its grammatical content.  I try to write another sentence using identical structure, to see where it takes me. I examine its relationship to the preceding sentence, and to the following sentence.  This practice sometimes is rewarding with my favorite writers, but it can be equally rewarding for sentences and paragraphs by hack writers, in blogs, in random acts of literacy.

  • Brady Russell

    “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
    — George Bernard Shaw

    The writer who taught me the most is a friend of mine named Brady. We go way back. I first met him in the lobby of middle school when we were both waiting for rides home. We started talking about comic books. Ever since then we occasionally have conversations about our creative projects (and also about comic books.) I guess twenty years of semi-regular conversations about how we write have added up to some useful information.

    Brady has managed to work full time and be a relentlessly productive writer for years. He just self-published an ebook titled Dream Her Back.

    He creates a twice-weekly web comic, Eat the Babies, and he also somehow finds time to blog now and then for several different websites.

    He and I have had many conversations over the years about creativity, but one sticks out as particularly memorable for me. That is when Brady told me about the idea of trying to write for one specific person. It doesn’t matter who, he explained, and they don’t need to know. This was a suggestion he picked up from reading Kurt Vonnegut’s forward to Bagombo Snuffbox. He insisted this was an idea worth trying.

    To be honest, I did not understand how this practice could be helpful until I tried it. Turns out that this is a tremendous tool for forcing a piece to have an even tone to it. Don’t judge the effectiveness by this blog post, however because it is too meta.

    Of course I had heard about the concept of a “target audience” before. All through middle and high school that term was rammed at us in every Language Arts class. Truly, I felt like a target. But until Brady suggested it, it had never occurred to me to pick one single individual as my target audience. Maybe this is common sense to other people, but since neither one of us were creative writing majors it felt like hard won wisdom.

    I use it nearly every time I write anything now in order to keep focused on what to say and how to say it. Sometimes this is easy. When I have an editor to work with I know that my editor is my intended audience and I can keep my tone consistent by crafting each sentence for them personally. Other times it is not so easy.

    If I am working on a personal project with no guidelines, due date or editor, those are the times I have to use my creativity not only for writing, but also for putting constraints on myself in order to keep from going in too many directions at once. In these cases I have to really stretch my imagination and reach for someone to keep in mind as the intended reader.

    If you want to try it yourself, here are some suggestions on how to pick an intended reader. Remember, this person never needs to read your piece in real life. This is strictly a mental exercise in order to keep your writing focused. Who should you pick? Former teachers are handy, assuming they were any good when you were in class with them. Family members are useful to keep in mind, since one often has fondness for them and they are usually willing to read the finished piece anyway. You can also pick your favorite author, or a friend who is also a writer. But watch out it can easily get meta.

  • Grammar: One Novel at a Time

    At some point in my life, I’m sure I was taught grammar. It seems like it would be one of those things teachers are required to impart as you are funneled through the scholastic system. To be honest, other than gerunds in sixth grade, I don’t remember any of it. I’m not even sure what a gerund is, but that’s because we killed him off.

    What I know of grammar, I learned from reading, so if I do it well, it’s because the authors I read had a firm grasp on it–or a really good editor. It’s why I like to believe that I can write with—fairly—decent grammar, but couldn’t begin to tell you what part of speech a word is. Other than the obvious ones like verbs and nouns. Over time, I learned to trust my natural instinct when it comes to sentence structure. So long as I don’t overthink something or make a typo, I’m likely to get it right on the first try. I’m pretty good at pointing out when something is wrong, but I’d never be able to tell you why. It just is. (more…)

  • I Smell a Learning Opportunity

    This is the most bullshit you'll probably ever see in one place. Impressive, no?

    This week’s question was tough to tackle. My first response was kind of a bullshit answer. I’m going to share it with you anyway.

    Bad writers teach me so much about what not to do. I’ve learned about awful dialogue, poor story arcs, ugly sentence structure, and shoddy character development. On the other hand, good writing disappears, and I’m so invested in the story that I don’t even notice the writing itself.

    But like I said, that’s the bullshit answer. I’ve learned plenty from some of my favorite authors.

    From Maggie Stiefvater, I learned that I will never be able to write prose that’s so beautiful the sentences dance across the page like a…well, like a beautiful dancing something that I don’t have the ability to write.

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  • Let’s Talk

    I think one of the most challenging aspects of writing is dialog. It has to sound natural, but not as natural as a normal conversation. It has too many “ums” or “buts” or interruptions or awkward pauses. Nobody wants to read that. There’s also the question of how much dialog to use. Some authors use it sparingly or not at all. It’s easy to overuse, as well.

    Dialog is important to me because I’ve always been one of those people who thinks of the perfect thing to say in a conversation hours after the fact. A witty retort, or a profound punchline, a clever segway or a thought provoking question. I always want to go back to that person and be like “hey, remember when you said this? Bam!” and hit them with my brilliant line. (more…)

  • Don’t give it away. Make them pay.

    Mark Twain
    Mark Twain. Despite what you may have heard, he didn't always dress like Colonel Sanders.

    Over the years, I’ve collected a number of great quotes from writers teaching the craft. One of my favorites, from Mark Twain, comes in handy now and again:

    “I never write ‘metropolis’ for seven cents, because I can get the same money for ‘city.’ I never write ‘policeman,’ because I can get the same price for ‘cop.’”

    For a writer being paid by the word, it’s a good economic argument. We should be more judicious with our vocabulary choices, avoiding a ten-dollar word when a shorter one will do.

    Writing isn’t just about conveying an emotion or telling a story. For some, the lucky ones, it’s a business. We make our daily bread based on the words we write, and it’s difficult to give them away for free.

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  • Can You Hear Me Now? Damn!

    Once you start down the dark and twisted path to becoming a professional writer, you are well and truly screwed as a reader.

    Gone are the days when a story was just fun on its own.  Now your eyes are forever critical, trying to work out the literary magic trick you just experienced.  You still get to smile and nod at the occasional story, but instead of saying “wow,” you’re more likely to whisper “you tricky, talented bastard.”  Then you feel that bloom in your chest that’s equal parts appreciation and envy.  You’d like to get a chance to meet the author so you could both shake her hand and push her down the stairs.  Both are meant as compliments.

    Because you are a covetous and ambitious egotist to whom recognition is the equivalent of crack, you deal with those feelings of envy by stealing the craft of your heroes.  You imitate technique and tone and structure, trying to pass it off as your own.  You will fail . . . at first.  But you have to keep going.  At this stage, the amount of frustration you feel will have a direct correlation to the level of self-awareness you possess.  It is helpful at this point to have one or more friends who will punch you in the ego from time to time.  Just keep it fun.  No permanent scarring.

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  • Raised by Giants

    “…we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they…not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part…but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.” – John of Salisbury, paraphrasing Bernard of Chartes

    Writers are readers, so I have been told. Indeed, every writer I know reads with an insatiable appetite for the written word in all its flavors. You can learn a lot from the writers of the past. They allow you to sit upon their broad shoulders and learn from their experience.

    There are many things to learn in writing. I’ve quoted Hemingway before that we are all apprentices in a craft with no masters. That is true. You could write from the first day of your literacy to the last day of your life and you will never know everything.

    You can write a million words, and still a million more will be waiting. All you can do is learn and write.

    That being said, different writers have given me different things.

    I’ve mentioned Ray Bradbury’s book Zen in the Art of Writing several times as being a major influence on me. Bradbury has a love of writing that is infectious. You can taste the love in his writing. But there are also things to be learned in that book. First, you have to write. There is no other way to be a writer than to write. Second, just because you don’t know what to write, doesn’t mean you can’t write. Sometimes I use a technique I learned from Bradbury. I will open a new document. I put a word or two where the title would be, and I just start writing about it. Eventually, a story begins and I follow it. There is no planning or outlining. There are fingertips to keys and stream of consciousness guiding them. This has been very effective for me in the past. Your brain knows what to write, as long as you don’t get in the way of it too much.

    I am extremely interested in dramatic and writing theory. Three act structures, protagonists, antagonists, the relationships between subplots and character arcs. It is really sickening, in some ways. If I can get my hands on a writing book, I read it. John Garner has a collection of them.  The Art of Fiction, On Moral Fiction, and On Becoming a Novelist all sit on my desk. Aristotle’s Poetics has been a required tome for screenwriters, but all writers could learn something from his notes on dramatic theory.

    Some of that stuff gets absorbed into my psyche, and I begin to do it naturally, without thinking. But some of it comes during the re-writing phase. Does my protagonist change? Do I have a strong conflict with my plot constantly driving to answer the story question? Do my sub-plots add to my story by complicating things further for my protagonist, or do they distract from my major plot, or even overwhelm it? I have to ask myself all of this and more. Re-writing is a very conscious process, and you have to bring your logical brain in to it, even if it hurts.

    Sometimes it does hurt. It seems like there are a million rules out there about how writing is supposed to happen. The thing to remember is that you don’t have to use all of them. The number one truth in writing is that if it works it is correct. Every rule has been successfully broken at one time or another. The important thing is that you pick up enough technique and theory that you become a dangerous weapon. You are James Bond. You have a million fancy gadgets to utilize, but you must complete your mission, and you must get the girl.

    A writer is like a puzzle. You see all these pieces laying on the table, and they don’t appear to be in any sort of order. But when you piece them altogether, you get the big picture. Some of my big influences are some of my favorite writers, but that doesn’t really matter. They just have to be another piece that fits into the puzzle that is me.

    All the great writers, even all the bad writers, lift you up and carry you farther than you might have gone on your own. Jump up on their backs and maybe you will see something new. Try something they tried, and then take it farther. Break rules, bend theory, or use them religiously. Just make it work.