"When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; then the service it will do you is twice as good." -- William James
In other words, when you've decided to go for it, just go for it. Don't second-guess yourself and don't worry about your results from moment to moment. Your'e in it for the long haul.
Some long hauls are longer than others. My "Writer's Block" screenplay took 13 years to get made (as "The Real Howard Spitz") Another one, "At Sea," got ripped off and still hasn't been produced (at least not my version); when it is made it'll overshadow that 13-year wait.
The Fall 1975 issue of Paris Review featured an interview with novelist John Steinbeck. He won the Pulitzer Prize and was a Nobel laureate, and The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are still required reading in many English and literature classes. I'm sharing six tips from that interview (culled by the excellent Brain Pickings blog), with a few additional comments by me. This is the last of six:
"If you are using dialogue--say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech."
This was also advised by Kurt Vonnegut in the previous series of tips. As well as saying it aloud as you write it, get somebody else to read it aloud as you listen. Ask them not to act too much. If you don't have a willing friend, use your computer's text-to-speech function. The voice will be somewhat robotic but it will still be worthwhile to hear the words spoken. Doing this is even more important for people writing screenplays or plays.
(Mark Twain had advice for writers, too, as did Anton Chekhov, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Austen, and many more. You'll find it my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from your favorite bookseller.)
The Fall 1975 issue of Paris Review featured an interview with novelist John Steinbeck. He won the Pulitzer Prize and was a Nobel laureate, and The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are still required reading in many English and literature classes. I'm sharing six tips from that interview (culled by the excellent Brain Pickings blog), with a few additional comments by me. This is number five of six:
"Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found out that it is out of drawing."
I'm not familiar with the phrase 'out of drawing,' but I know what he means. This is the same advice as "murder your darlings." A scene that stands out may be wonderful in itself but by standing out it detracts from the rest. This was also mentioned in the tips by Kurt Vonnegut that preceded these posts. It hurts to do this, but do it we must.
(There's more advice on writing, from Jane Austen through to Martin Amis, in Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from your favorite bookseller. It makes a great present, too.)
"Freedom is cumulative. One choice made with an element of freedom makes even greater freedom possible for the next choice. Each exercise of freedom enlarges the circle of oneself." - Rollo May
I think this applies to what we write as well as to the rest of our lives. When you refuse to self-censor based on what others might think or whether something is more or less likely to sell (do we ever predict that correctly?) you make your circle of freedom smaller.
The Fall 1975 issue of Paris Review featured an interview with novelist John Steinbeck. He won the Pulitzer Prize and was a Nobel laureate, and The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are still required reading in many English and literature classes. I'm sharing six tips from that interview (culled by the excellent Brain Pickings blog), with a few additional comments by me. This is number four of six:
"If a scene or section gets the better of you and you still think you want it--bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there."
If you still want the scene but are still unsure of how to write it, asking the following questions can be useful:
* What does each character in this scene want?
* In this scene, what is each character afraid of?
* What's the difference between what the character says or does and what he or she would like to do or say?
* What is each character's emotional state at the start of this scene?
The Fall 1975 issue of Paris Review featured an interview with novelist John Steinbeck. He won the Pulitzer Prize and was a Nobel laureate, and The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are still required reading in many English and literature classes. I'm sharing six tips from that interview (culled by the excellent Brain Pickings blog), with a few additional comments by me. This is number three of six:
"Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn't exist. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person--a real person you know, or an imagined person, and write to that one."
It's important NOT to think of specific persons, too, sometimes. Some authors think "My mother's going to read this!" and it creates a block. When the time comes, you can tell your mother not to read it. Anyway, she's probably read Fifty Shades of Grey, so just get on with it!
(Great advice from great writers, along with tips on how to apply it to your own writing is what you get in my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from your favorite bookseller.)
The Fall 1975 issue of Paris Review featured an interview with novelist John Steinbeck. He won the Pulitzer Prize and was a Nobel laureate, and The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are still required reading in many English and literature classes. I'm sharing six tips from that interview (culled by the excellent Brain Pickings blog), with a few additional comments by me. This is number two of six:
"Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material."
Many writers have trouble resisting the temptation to rewrite rather than going on. Often this happens as you re-read the previous day's work in order to decide what comes next. One solution: print out the previous day's work and step away from the computer and read it--without a pen in your hand. Without the tools necessary to rewrite, the temptation is eliminated (and it should be easier to avoid doing it when you step back to the computer as well).
(Writing advice from the best classic and modern authors forms the core of Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from your favorite bookseller.)
The Fall 1975 issue of Paris Review featured an interview with novelist John Steinbeck. He won the Pulitzer Prize and was a Nobel laureate, and The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are still required reading in many English and literature classes.
Here are six tips from that interview (culled by the excellent Brain Pickings blog), with a few additional comments by me. First:
"Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised."
The idea of filling 200 or 400 blank pages (or 120, for screenplay writers) is so daunting to many people that they never do write page one. In addition to focusing on one page at a time, as Steinbeck suggests, remember that you don't have to start at the beginning. If there's a scene somewhere else in the story you feel more ready to write, do it. Sometimes I'll write in a patchwork like that and in the rewrite make sure it all fits together.
(Writing advice from the classic and modern great writers is what you'll find in my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from your favorite bookseller.)
Years ago, Kurt Vonnegut wrote an article sponsored by the International Paper Company, on how to write with style. He intended it mainly for writers of non-fiction, but the tips apply equally to novelists or short story writers. I'm featuring one per day; this is number eight, the final one. The sketch is his self-portrait.
For really detailed advice...
For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, I commend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White. E. B. White is, of course, one of the most admired literary stylists this country has so far produced.
You should realize, too, of course, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.
Years ago, Kurt Vonnegut wrote an article sponsored by the International Paper Company, on how to write with style. He intended it mainly for writers of non-fiction, but the tips apply equally to novelists or short story writers. I'm featuring one per day; this is number seven of eight.
Pity the readers
They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it after having studied it all through grade school and high school--twelve long years.
So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify--whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.
That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Consitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.
Years ago, Kurt Vonnegut wrote an article sponsored by the International Paper Company, on how to write with style. He intended it mainly for writers of non-fiction, but the tips apply equally to novelists or short story writers. I'm featuring one per day; this is number six of eight.
Say what you mean to say
i used to be exasperated by such teachers [the ones who urge you to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago], but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say.
My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable--and therefore understood.
And there went my dreams of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.
Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.
Years ago, Kurt Vonnegut wrote an article sponsored by the International Paper Company, on how to write with style. He intended it mainly for writers of non-fiction, but the tips apply equally to novelists or short story writers. I'm featuring one per day; this is number five.
Sound Like Yourself
The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin and employs a vocabulary as ornamental as a monkey wrench.
In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.
All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.
I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.
"We must make our experiments. We must make mistakes. We must live out our own vision of life. And there will be error. If you avoid error, you do not live."
--Carl Jung
It's possible that nobody will want to publish what you write.
You can publish it yourself.
It's possible that nobody will want to buy your self-published book.
You can give it away.
It's possible nobody will want to read the book you give away.
What they mean is that she received vile threats, but a quick reading makes it sound like she sent threats. Often reading something like this out loud makes you aware of the undesirable ambiguity.
Most computer systems include a text to speech function that will allow you to have a synthesized voice read what you write. It does sound rather robotic so it won't give you the nuances in dialogue, for example, but it's still useful.
Years ago, Kurt Vonnegut wrote an article sponsored by the International Paper Company, on how to write with style. He intended it mainly for writers of non-fiction, but the tips apply equally to novelists or short story writers. I'm featuring one per day; this is number four.
4: Have the guts to cut
It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra. so to speak. [This refers to a metaphor in tip number three.] But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new or useful way, scratch it out.
Jurgen adds:
This is another version of "murder your darlings." If a sentence, paragraph, scene or chapter doesn't harmonize with the rest of the work, you have a choice: cut it out (or rewrite it), or keep it and rewrite everything else.
