The Confabulator Cafe

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  • Subplots: Sexy Enough to Deserve Your Time

    Here’s the thing about subplots. They don’t have to be your best friend, but you should treat them like your best friend’s hot sister. Nobody’s asking you to spend a lot of time getting to know her.  (But let’s be honest. Would they have to ask?) Just make sure the time you do invest is quality.  It’ll totally pay dividends in the end.

    Be good to your subplots. Show them you understand their complexities and you know their worth. Make them believe that their development is as important to you as the other plots that occupy the majority of your day. You wish that you had more time to devote, but it wasn’t meant to be.

    You and your subplots are star-crossed lovers. Victims of circumstance, meeting in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps in another life you’ll have more time for each other. Maybe the universe will do you a solid the next time around.

    But rather than bemoan what the fates have given you, it’s better to seize this moment, this day, no matter how brief. Cherish the time you have together and make it something special. If time is the enemy, then ally yourself with memory. Write a story worth remembering. One that outlives its own fleeting arc.

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  • Now Boarding: Subplots

    If a story is a train track, a subplot is the trestle. The main plot takes you where you need to go, from point A to point B and all destinations in between. But without the subplots, it would never make it over the valleys that inevitably manifest during a story arc.

    Some people define story as characters acting within a setting. I’ve never totally bought in to that, but I do believe that characters generate subplots. Whether you are a pantser or a plotter, your characters have histories and quirks that lead them in certain directions, giving birth to subplots.

    A good subplot tells us things about characters that we need to know in order to strengthen the main plot. It helps develop three dimensional characters, and encourages showing rather than telling.

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  • Diving into Subplots (Week Ending July 14)

    Last week the Cafe heated up (perhaps because it was so hot outside) with a debate about that old nemesis of writers everywhere: writer’s block. This week shouldn’t be as contentious, as we take the Cafe regulars into a discussion of basic writing mechanics to tackle subplots.

    We all know a good subplot to a story when we see one, but how do writers weave them in to begin with? How important are they? And what does it take to make them stand out?

    The writers here at the Cafe have put away their dueling pistols and sworn off their blood feuds long enough to discuss — in their own inimitable style — their thoughts on inserting a good sublot into a novel. We hope you enjoy the discussion, and pray it will not lead to more chaos.

    Until next time,

    The Cafe Management

  • What is the longest thing you have written?

    Writers know it’s not the size of the story that matters, but how effectively we tell it. Usually a story is however many words/pages/paragraphs/sentences that it needs to be. Sometimes, however, we do aim for a particular word goal. As you have seen on this website, once a month we aim to write a story in 1,000 words. In November, we all try to write at least 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month.

    It’s true, we know that size doesn’t matter, but sometimes we like to brag about the longest thing we’ve ever written.

    Ashley M. Poland

    I’m not a very prolific writer, so the longest thing I’ve written is just (kind of short) novel length: a little more than 65,000 words. I still can’t decide if this is just something about me as a writer, or indicative of the sort of plots I tackle.

    Sara Lundberg

    With several 50,000ish word stories under my belt, last year I decided I was going to attempt my first full-length book; a 50k word novel is really more of a novella. It took me three months of writing pretty much every day, but in the end, the draft ended up being 107,000 words. It may be longer or shorter once it’s edited, but it is the longest thing I’ve ever written.

    Kevin Wohler

    I’ve written one complete novel that was around 80,000 words. This was about 15 years ago, and it wasn’t very good. Since then, I have tried to write a couple of novels, but petered out before finishing. My most recent attempt from November’s National Novel Writing Month was over 50,000 words, but remains unfinished … for now.

    Paul Swearingen

    The longest piece I’ve written so far is a post-apocalyptic YA novel of about 76,300 words, entitled You Can Believe It. I tried to keep it shorter. I really did – I killed off at least two characters prematurely and was forced to resuscitate them by members of several writing groups. They insisted that I was imposing cruel and unusual punishment on those poor characters – kids, actually – and to bring them back to life immediately. And so I did. And so the novel stretched on about 20K words longer than I’d planned. And so it’s my first experimental Amazon KDP Select novel, which I may pull the plug on after the minimum three months in the program, unless it suddenly catches on and does well

    Jack Campbell, Jr.

    Kill Creek Road is right around 75,000 words. That is by far the longest thing I’ve written. I bought in to the traditional model of writing education. I wrote a lot of short stories in the name of learning the craft before I attempted a full-length book. I am writing a second novel titled Heaven’s Edge. It’s a hard-boiled science fiction concept that I am trying to map out for three books, Heaven’s Edge, A Halo’s Slip, and To Hell and Back. If it goes the way I am expecting, all three books will be on the short side for novels. I’ve written a few full-length screenplays, including a sequel to Kill Creed Road, but I couldn’t tell you what the word count’s are. They are all around a hundred pages. Overall, I  still consider myself a writer of short fiction, but I find myself thinking more about longer works.

    Christie Holland

    The longest thing I’ve written was my last completed novel.  I started it during National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, but by the time I finished it, it was over 90k.

  • Writer’s Block-head

    There are two kinds of writer’s block that I know of, both with the same root. In one, I don’t know enough about my subject to be able to write coherently about it. In the other, I don’t want to write about my subject. The commonality is that I need to do more thinking before I start writing.

    For the first, I’ll start with pad and pencil, and begin free writing everything I know about my subject. What is the story I’m trying to tell? Where are the data gaps? Can I explain around the gaps or do I need to do more research? Does the logic flow smoothly from data to conclusion? If not, do I need to gather more or different data, or do I need to change my conclusion? Do I have the proper references for each fact I assert? My ignorance, once properly documented, is turned into a To Do list of questions to answer, niggling details to attend to, T’s to dot, and I’s to cross.

    If I’m just having a hard time sitting down to work on a piece, it’s often because the back of my brain, which is much smarter than the rest of me, hasn’t quite finished hatching the egg. I can push-start the process by writing the parts that I do know. Physical motion, such as taking a walk to get the blood pumped out of my ass and back into my brain, often helps to grease the cognitive cogs. I will stalk around, muttering darkly, explaining my thesis to myself as though I am a particularly stupid child. Once I am heartily sick of that, I can usually sit down and it’s as easy as taking dictation from myself.

  • Writer’s Block Is a Choice

    It seems like there’s two brands of writer’s block: there’s “My muse has not graced me with her presence,” and there’s, “I have no ideas.” Maybe there are more, but we’re going to focus on these two.

    The short version is: I think both are a bit BS.

    I can understand factors in every day life that take up mental energy. Sometimes my space is cluttered and dirty, and I can’t focus. I can understand being busy and distracted.1 I can understand needing a break from the process. I can even understand staring at a story and being like, “This story is impossible. I need to work on something else today.”

    The choice not to write is valid; you can decide today is a day that you need to preserve your energy for other tasks, or spend time with your family. But to then say, “Oh, I would write today, but you know — writer’s block,” is bullshit. It’s an excuse that you’re painting as a reason.

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  • Blocking the Action

    It may take a lot of coffee to work through Writer's Block. Are you prepared for that? Picture from here.
    It may take a lot of coffee to work through Writer’s Block. Are you prepared for that? Picture from here.

    Writer’s Block is the invention of a scribe who couldn’t turn an assignment in on time, who had too many other things on his mind (yeah it was a man who invented the cop-out, go figure), or was just plain lazy.

    Well, maybe not. Maybe being blocked is real. Maybe. But there are ways around it, over, under, through it and the determined writer has to be prepared to find those ways. Most of those ways are constituted in actually doing the work.

    Anxiety is what it is. One isn’t necessarily ‘blocked’ but rather is anxious about either the work or something associated with it. Overcoming it is basic problem-solving:

    1- What do you want?

    2 – Why can’t you have it?

    3 – What are you prepared to do to get it?

    Being blocked is when the writer gets to the second question and says “I don’t know!” and that’s where the cop-out is. Right there? See it? I. Don’t. Know.

    Block is continued when the writer doesn’t have any idea of how to overcome the anxiety that has afflicted him. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do to get what he wants, which is to Write. So instead of calling bullshit and working through the ‘block’, some writers crawl into a bottle (liquor, pills, whatever) and go down for the count, making the anxiety worse.

    The best cure I’ve found for being blocked is to actually write. Not what I want to write, but something else, something light and fluffy and not at all related to what I should be working on. The old brainbox is stuck on something, some problem, and it’s all rooted in the subconscious. Time to dig our your Freud, kids, and examine what’s in your head. For instance, I’m writing this post in early June because I’m stuck at a point in my novel where I need to solve a problem that’s going to get out of hand if I don’t think it through a little better.

    So yeah, writer’s block is real and has been studied and studied and studied by people smarter than you or me. Being blocked is no excuse. It’s a cop-out to say “I’m blocked so I’m not writing.” That’s an unacceptable response to your craft if one is a serious writer. A lack of inspiration is one thing and also easily solved by a writer who wants to write: go somewhere and open your mind.

    You need stimulation but don’t go overboard. You still need to sit down and write. Remember the recipe for a good story: butt in chair, fingers on keys.

    You’re not blocked. Get to it. Go.

  • It’s Never Just Writer’s Block

    In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the classic meandering semi-fictional work from the 60s, narrator-author Robert Persig tells a student suffering from writer’s block to start writing about one brick in one building on her town’s main street.  The student comes back to him transfixed, with pages and pages of writing about that brick, and the next, and then the whole building and whole downtown and EVERYTHING, and the curse was lifted!  She was no longer blocked and could write ecstatically.

    Alas, if only writer’s block was really that easy to overcome. The question this week asks if there’s such a thing as “writer’s block,” and I suppose my answer to that is “no.”  I don’t believe there’s an actual psychological condition that hinders a previously productive writer from working.  It’s something of an excuse, something of a myth–you can always write about that first brick, right?

    Except when you can’t.  And at those times,”writer’s block” is a convenient shorthand for whatever is wrong. Depression, for one, cripples creativity and pretty much everything else too.  It certainly blocks writing for some people (and usually for me). I know many great writers managed to keep going through depression–indeed, rumor has it that Shirley Jackson, among others, actually wrote herself out of depression–and I admire this feat, but that’s not how it usually works for me.  Depression accompanies self-doubt, this suspicion that my words and ideas are worthless and don’t even deserve the data space on my computer.

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  • Knock ’em over

    Does writer’s block exist? Yes, absolutely.

    Can it be defeated? Again, absolutely.

    As a Municipal Liaison for NaNoWriMo, I often act as coach for fellow writers that are struggling to keep up the minimum pace necessary to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Sometimes they’re just moving slowly, but other times they’re not moving at all. And some of them are moving backwards. Over the years I’ve gleaned lots of interesting tricks to break through writer’s block, whether it’s the morass of slow writing or the whiplash snap of a complete block, doesn’t matter: I gots tricks.

     

    One of the best tricks I’ve ever learned was shared with me by Dave deHetre. His answer to writing, not just during NaNo, but during the entire creative process, is to promise yourself to commit to writing 500 words every day. 500 words is an arbitrary number, but it’s a good one. It’s more than just a paragraph or two, but not necessarily an entire scene or a complete chapter. 500 words can be written in 10-30 minutes by most writers, depending on how smoothly and effortlessly the words are flowing. And 500 words can often serve to break through the logjam of writer’s block, and lead to many more words to follow, and at a much greater pace. (more…)

  • Fisticuffs at Dawn! The Writer’s Block Duel

    One of these girls believes in writer’s block. The other does not.

    I think it’s hilarious that the existence or non-existence of writer’s block gets people’s panties in such a tight little bunch.

    Unlike a lot of people, my feelings about it are lukewarm, maybe tinged with amusement.

    Is there a magical curse that blocks the flow of a writer’s creative source, sucking him dry and preventing him from writing anything but total and utter crap? No. Of course not. But writers are a superstitious lot. We have to be. Making stuff up is what we do.

    But.

    There are always going to be days when we pull out every single word onto the page like a fishhook that’s been embedded deep in the skin. It’s not always manic rivers of prose flowing from lightning-charged fingertips. (more…)