Does Your Story Write Itself?

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Writing stories, someone once said, is like raising a child. You, the author-parent, set out with dreams of where you want to story to go, what you want it to accomplish, who it's going to meet, and how it’s going to “turn out.”

But stories, like children, have minds of their own.

They take detours. They explore dangerous places. They bring home uninvited guests.

What’s a good author-parent to do?

I’m currently trying to figure this one out. Three-quarters of the way through the second revision of my novel-in-progess, The Power Club™, a new character has entered the story.This character was in earlier drafts, but he just didn’t fit into this one, so he was omitted.

But, suddenly, there he is again.

By bringing back this uninvited guest, my story is starting to assert its independence.

Sometimes, this can be a good thing; other times, not. Writers should always be in control of their stories. A grad school professor once told me that when a story “writes itself,” it's a sign the author hasn't thought it through carefully. 

And yet sometimes those unexpected detours and uninvited guests can be the best thing about the story.

Back when I was working on my comic book, Gold Dust, I introduced a minor character who appears for one panel. A short time later, when I had the opportunity to write a story for an anthology that was never published, I decided to use my minor character. At this point, I still had no idea who she was or her motivation.

But as I was writing the story, she told me who she was—and her background and setting worked well with the end-of-the-world story I was telling.

(And, yes, I am being purposefully vague.  There’s always the hope of publishing that story some day.)

Characters, of course, don’t actually talk to writers—though it doesn’t hurt to believe they can. Writing usually involves your subconscious working itself out through your characters.

The lesson I took from this was to let my stories live and breathe.  Let them explore their world, but hang back and make sure they don’t stray too far. 

Naturally, this entails judgment and guesswork. How do you know when a story is straying too far from its original purpose? You don’t—though repeated practice can develop your sense of what might work and what definitely will not.

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the “uninvited guest," but I’ll let him stick around for awhile and see what develops.

What about you?  What do you do when your story writes itself?

If you like this article, you may also like:

• "How to Stop Procrastinating: Trust the Writing Process"
• "Arguing with Sharks: Overcoming Your Writing Fears"
• "Letting the Fiction Take Over: How to Turn Your Reality into Fiction"

Why You Can't Write for "Everyone"

Image by orkomedix via Flickr

Okay – technically, you can write for everyone.  But should you try?  That is, should your target audience be every living soul on the face of the planet?

Beginning writers often make the mistake of saying their target audience is everyone. And, on the surface, that seems wise. Who would want to exclude potential readers? And don’t the most successful works of fiction (e.g., Harry Potter) have broad appeal?

Well, yes and no.

In the first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry is 11 years old. Mid-grade novels are usually written for children a year or two younger than the protagonist; therefore, J.K. Rowling’s intended audience was aged 9-10. Certainly, the cover and interior illustrations were designed for that audience, and Rowling even adopted her gender-neutral nom de plume to appeal to boys.

It happened that the world Rowling created was so magical and Harry so universally identifiable that the series appealed to girls, teens, and even adults as well as 9-10 year-old boys. But that outcome is rare.

Instead of targeting “everybody,” writers should focus on a narrow audience.

Who do you envision as your primary readers? Men? Women? What age range? What socioeconomic status? Do you see your readers having a religious affiliation? A political one? What would their interests and hobbies be? What music, TV shows, sports do they follow? What is their level of education?

The better you know your target audience, the better you’ll know what likely appeals to them and what likely turns them off.

This does not mean your characters have to be carbon copies of some imaginary reader who is male, 35, lives in the suburbs, goes to a Methodist church, votes Democrat, roots for the St. Louis Cardinals, and has a B.A. in architectural design.   In fact, you might want to avoid using such overly specific details in your story unless they are important.

But no character or story can appeal to every reader.

No, not even Harry Potter. When authors say their book is targeted to everyone, it usually means they haven’t given their audience much thought. 

Unless you are writing exclusively for yourself, you should consider who is going to see your book on the shelf or online, whose eye is going to be attracted by the cover design, and who is going to pay money to read the words you have worked so hard to craft.

Have you narrowed down your audience?

Related articles

• Spells and Charms: Harry Potter and the Power of Positive Thinking (psychologytoday.com)
• Book Review: Harry Potter - A Global Business Phenomenon by Susan Gunelius (blogcritics.org)

Excerpt: Power Club Chapter 1: "A Special Club" [part 2]

For Part One, go here.

 

* * *    

           “Watch where you’re going!”

            Damon’s bike skidded to a halt.  He looked around, but he couldn’t see anyone.  Just a strange cloud, like a pillar of smoke from somebody burning trash.  But the voice had almost been in his ear.

            He had never been to this part of the district before.  This neighborhood was two blocks up the hill from where he lived, but it didn’t look much different from his own neighborhood.  White clapboard houses and brick bungalows dotted neatly kept yards with trees and street lights all around.  In one of yards, a woman raked leaves and two small children played.  They didn’t act as if they’d heard anything.

            Rattled, he started to say, “Who are you?” and “Where are you?” at the same time.  It came out as “Woo are you?”

            “Ha!  Dumb kid can’t talk.”  This time, the voice was right in front of Damon.  It was a kid’s voice, deep and nasal.

            “I’m not dumb!” Damon shouted.  The woman and two children looked at him.

            Damon felt as he wanted to crawl into the nearby sewer.  He started to pedal away, but the bike wouldn’t move.

            “You can’t go,” the voice said.

            It felt as if someone were standing in front of him and holding onto the handlebars, but there was no one there, only the cloud, which grew thicker and thicker, until it transformed into a grinning face.

            “You’re not supposed to use your powers in public,” Damon said.

            “You can if you’re one of us!” another voice said.  Damon looked up to see a boy with bat-like wings connecting his arms to his body.  The boy flew around and around.  “Don’t you know about the special clubs?”

            “Special clubs?”

            “The district lets kids form clubs so we can learn to use our powers,” said the cloud-face which expanded into a blocky boy, much bigger than Damon.  “Don’t you have a special club in your neighborhood?”

            “No,” Damon said.

            “That’s too bad,” the cloud boy said.  “‘cause if you’re part of a special club, you can use your powers in public.  The district lets you do whatever you want.”

            “Why would they do that?” said Damon, skeptically.

            “Who knows?” said the batwing boy.  “Maybe they’re training us to be an army of some kind.”  He landed next to Damon.  He was tall and thin, his face contorted into a goofy smile.

            “Or maybe they just want to see what we can do,” said the cloud boy, “so we can work together as a team and get rid of the weak kids.  What’s your name?”

            “Damon.  What’s yours?”

            The batwing boy's goofy grin turned into a scowl.  “You don’t get to ask us our names!  This is our neighborhood.  You don’t belong here.”

            “Yeah,” said the cloud boy, “and since we can use our powers in public and you can’t, that means we can do anything we want to you.”

            Damon felt a chill go down his spine.  He looked over to the yard where the woman was raking leaves, but she was pushing her two children inside her house.  

            “Now,” said the cloud boy, gripping the handlebars of Damon’s bike, “give us your bike.”

* * *

            Five minutes later, Damon ran all the way home.  He had put up a fight, but it was no use.  Even if he had been allowed to use his darkspace, it would have come too slowly.  The cloud boy had puffed his cheeks and blew Damon right off the seat of his bike.  Damon tried to fight back, but it was no use against a boy whose bat wings could pummel Damon from all sides.  Damon took off only when the cloud boy said he was going to call in some other members of his special club.  Besides, there was no point in fighting them.  Damon would simply tell his mother that two boys had stolen his bicycle.  Mom would call the district police, who would take care of it.

            Damon’s house stood on the corner of 92^nd and Felcher Streets.  The two-story looked like a mansion compared to the smaller houses on the same block.  Its triangle roof arced down on both sides of the north-facing side while the east side of the house jutted out from the overhang.  A semi-circle porch stretched from the front door all around the east side and overlooked a concrete retaining wall that bordered the sidewalk like a garrison.  One of Damon’s friends said the house looked like a castle.  Damon liked that idea and, even now, he pretended he was a knight who had been accosted by highwaymen.  He would tell “the queen” what had happened and she would send for reinforcements.

            Damon leaped up the five stairs leading the back yard and zoomed past his brother, Eldon, who was playing with some friends.  The younger boys shouted at him, but he paid no attention.  He did not want them to see him in this condition.

            “What happened?” his mother asked with alarm when he entered the kitchen. 

            Rapidly and out of breath, Damon told her everything.  When he had finished, his mother took a paper towel and began to blot his cut lip.  “Hold still,” she said.

            “Mom!” he said.  Where are your priorities?  The bloody lip can wait. “Call the police so they can get my bike back!”

            “Don’t worry about your bike.  Your father and I will buy you a new one next spring.”

            “MOM!!”

            She lowered the paper towel and sat back in her kitchen chair.  “You said that the boys were part of a special club?”

            “That’s what they said.”

            “Well, they were probably right.  Remember when we first moved to the district and your dad’s car was stolen?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, it wasn’t really stolen.  It was destroyed by someone who could collapse metal on itself.  When your dad reported it to the police, they said that sometimes kids who belong to special clubs are allowed to do things like that so the district can see what they can do.  The district gave your father a new car, but he had to promise not to say what had really happened.”

            Damon thought this over.  The new car was smaller than the one he had been told was stolen.  It had only an AM/FM stereo, not a CD player.  It didn’t even have electric windows. 

            “Anyway,” his mother was saying, “if you keep quiet about this, maybe the district will buy you a new bicycle, too.”

            “No way!” Damon said, convinced that the district would probably get him a smaller bike. “I want my old bike back.”

              “I’m sorry, honey,” Mom said, brushing his hair in a way that told him there would be no reinforcements.  The queen just sat there and wiped blood from her knight’s lip, which stung when she touched it.  Damon felt like he had been stripped of honor. 

            “I want to join a special club,” he said.

            “There aren’t any in this neighborhood,” she replied curtly. 

            “Then I’ll start one.”

            “You’re too young.  Besides, why do you want to start a club?  Just go outside and play with your brother and his friends.  Forget about the bicycle.”

            But Damon could not forget.  He lived in the district because he had to, because he had a special power.  But he couldn’t use that power in public—unless he joined a special club.  Damon said nothing more about it, but secretly he decided that if a club ever got started in his neighborhood, he’d be the first to join.

Excerpt: Chapter 1: "A Special Club" [part 1]

  Another excerpt from my novel, The Power Club™.  Very few people have seen this chapter.  Let me know what you think.          

           “Damon!  Don’t do that in public.”

            Damon started at the sound of his mother’s voice.  She had been standing over at the cash register of Anilora’s Grocery Store, talking to Anita, the elderly lady who owned the store with her husband, Loren.  Damon had been way over by the pop cooler, chatting with Brandon, a boy he’d just met.  Brandon had said, “If you show me your power, I’ll show you mine.”

            So Damon exhaled, and the darkspace came.

            The boy freaked out—sometimes they did—and tried to run away, but he couldn’t see where he was going.  As soon as Damon’s night vision kicked in, he could see the boy fumbling his way past the cooler and the potato chip rack.  Damon laughed—he didn’t mean for it to be funny, but it was.

            And then he heard his mother’s voice. 

            He closed his eyes and inhaled.  The darkspace vanished.

            “I wasn’t doing anything!” he protested as his mother marched over to collect him.  “I was just showing Brandon—”

            “And was Brandon showing you his power?”

            Damon glanced at the other boy, who lowered his head and snickered.  Damon realized he’d been tricked again.

            “You don’t even have a power, do you?” Damon accused the other.

            Sheepishly, the other boy shook his head.  “My sister does.  She can see through metal.”  He then took off, leaving Damon to face his mother alone.

She planted her hands on her hips.  “Damon, you know you’re not allowed to use your powers in public.  You don’t want the district police to send you to Alaska.”

            Damon was too old to fall for this.  Only the worst kids, the ones with powers they couldn’t control, got sent to the special facility in Alaska. 

            “What’s the use of having a power,” he protested, “if I can’t use it?”

            A familiar cackle roared from near the cash register.  Anita, who was much shorter than Damon’s mom and bent over, came out from behind the counter.  “My Hector used to be the same way,” she said in that lilting drawl that indicated she was about to take over the conversation.  “He used to be able to levitate things, you know, and he just had to show off.  One day, the district police gave him a choice,” Anita said, looking directly at Damon so he couldn’t possibly miss the point of the story.  “Either he could stop using his power or have the null operation.”

            “What happened?” Damon said, eyes wide with terror.  The null operation was a strictly voluntary procedure that kids with powers could undergo when they were older.  The operation permanently stripped away a power.

            Anita looked down at Damon with a hang-dog expression.  “What do you think?  Hector had the operation.  He lives in Portland now with his wife and kids.”

            Damon let out a breath of contempt for the injustice of it all: Being forced to lose one’s power was the worst thing he could possibly imagine.  He had never met Hector, but he felt empathy for him.

            “But you and Loren stayed?” Mom asked.  Everyone knew that when a “special child” lost his or her power, the family was forced to leave the district.

            “We were the only grocery store in the district then,” Anita said wistfully.  “That was before the mall was built.  The district let us stay because they wanted kids like Damon to grow up in a normal neighborhood.”

            Damon winced.  He hated the notion that things were done in the district just for him and for other kids like him.  It reminded him that he wasn’t “normal,” after all.

            “Tell you what, Damon,” Anita said, turning to retrieve something from the counter.  Damon knew what it was before she turned back.  Sure enough, she bore a jar full of flavored candy sticks.  “Mind your mother, and I’ll let you have one of these.  Is root beer still your favorite?”

            Though Damon was too old to be bribed in this fashion, he didn’t want to hurt the old lady’s feelings.  Besides, free candy was free candy.  Even so, he carefully hid the root beer stick among the bags of groceries as he carried them out to the car, just in case Brandon or some other kid was watching.

Excerpt: Prologue—Child of Darkness (Seven Years Ago) [Part 1]

The following is an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, The Power Club™.  

“Denton.  Denton, where are you?”

            His mother invaded his darkspace.  She had never done that before.

            “Denton.  This isn’t like you.”

            Maybe that’s because my name isn’t Denton.  It’s Damon.

            He knew perfectly well that his name was Denton, but he hated it.  The kids at school teased him, saying he was going to grow up to be a dentist.  “Damon” sounded cool. 

            “Denton, stop it this inst—” His mother’s voice was cut short when she bumped into the table by the bed.  She instinctively reached out to grab the lamp before it fell.  Damon could see her in a weird gray light, like watching a black and white cartoon.  If he didn’t focus on his mother or an object such as the bed, he wouldn’t be able to see anything either, except for the light from the hallway, which stopped, unwelcome, at the door 

            Damon liked it in the darkness, even though it was colder than outside.  He felt safe here.  Kids couldn’t make fun of him, and his parents couldn’t make him move.

            “You’ll like the new neighborhood,” his mother said as she felt her way around the bed.  “It’s full of kids just like you.  Some might be able to fly or be really strong or run really fast.  You’ll make friends.”

Damon crouched in the corner beneath the window, his eyes stinging from tears.  He pulled his knees tighter to his chest, making himself very small so his mother couldn’t find him.  I already have friends.  Jim doesn’t mind if I have a special power.  Annie and Robbie like it.  

He recalled how much fun they’d had last summer, running through Annie’s back yard.  The darkness he’d created was so big that it covered half the size of the yard—about fifteen feet, Robbie said.  All the kids were hiding inside and running around screaming, bumping into each other.  Everyone thought it was fun until Ryan, who had just moved into the neighborhood, joined them.  As soon as the darkspace surrounded him, Ryan became scared and ran toward the alley.  Damon yelled for him to stop, but the smaller boy wouldn’t listen .  As soon as Ryan disappeared from the darkness, Damon heard a terrible screech.  Heart pounding, he closed his eyes and said the magic words, “Go away!”  The darkspace vanished, and Damon opened his eyes to see Ryan, pale and wide-eyed, standing in front of a car that had stopped inches from him. 

Ryan’s parents raised a stink with the city council, and, before long, the whole town knew that Denton Neumeyer was one of the “special” children who belonged in the district.

            A man from the city council came by and talked to Damon’s parents.  He was thin, bald, and wore a suit and tie, like a detective on TV. 

            “I don’t want to move,” Mom told the man.  “My son is not a freak.”

            Damon’s father looked down at his hands and shrugged.  In his flannel shirt and blue jeans, he looked somehow smaller than the other man, even though he was much bigger.  “Maybe we should move,” Dad said.  “After all, we don’t know if Eldon—”

            “My baby is perfectly normal,” Mom interrupted, caressing the four-year-old on her lap.  Then she looked at Damon.  “And so is Denton.  Both of my boys are normal.”

            The man glanced at Damon, and Damon felt like a criminal.            

            “It’s a very nice place,” the man said.  “I’ve got pictures.”  He reached into his briefcase, but Damon ran from the room and crawled under his parents’ bed.  There he hid in a darkspace until he heard the man leave.

For more excerpts, see the Blog Archive in the column on the right.

7 Things I Have Learned About Revision

Last month, I completed the first draft of my novel-in-progress, The Power Club™.  I have spent the last three weeks revising it, and I figure I’m about two-thirds of the way through.  Here’s what this process has taught me:

1. Write every day.

Writing every day builds momentum.  It keeps you from starting, stopping, starting, stopping . . . a process of cold starts that is bound to kill creativity. 

2. Keep a regular schedule.

A blog post I read recently said that you can become a professional writer by writing for three hours a day.  I decided to test this theory by revising for three hours a day.  This means that for most of that time (see below), my butt is planted firmly in my chair, my computer is on, and the latest chapter is up.  If I’m not actively working the keys, I’m either re-reading what I’ve written or reading comments from my critique groups.  I AM NOT doing the laundry, fixing lunch, checking email or engaging in other time wasters that kill writing.

3. Write at the same time every day.

I haven’t always kept the same schedule, but most days I’ve started writing at 10 a.m. and finished at 1 p.m.  Sometimes, I’ve begun early (and finished a corresponding amount of time early); once I began and finished an hour late.  But writing at the same time every day forces a mental discipline on me: that time is set aside for writing and nothing else.

4.  Use an egg-timer to take scheduled breaks.

I’ve discovered that, after 45 minutes of continuous writing, I begin to revise the same sentence or passage over and over.  Having a consistent break time means I don’t have the luxury of niggling.  When that egg-timer goes off, I stop typing for ten or fifteen minutes.  THEN I get to fix lunch.

5.  Revising is not drafting.

You’ve already written a rough draft to get your ideas down on paper.  Now it’s time to look at it again and see how it hangs together.  Revising may very well mean that you will be rewriting huge chunks, as well as adding and deleting material.  But it could also mean that you got certain passages right the first time.  In other words, resist the urge to rewrite EVERYTHING.

6. Treat writing as a job

. . . which it is, even if you’re not being paid to do it (yet). 

7.  Keep track of your progress.

Keeping track of your word count or page count can actually encourage you to keep going as you see how much you’ve already accomplished.  I’ve revised an average of six or seven pages per day, which does not sound like a lot, but, over three weeks it’s built up to about 135 pages or 30,000 words.

The process I’ve described above may or may not work for you.  I’m not even sure it works for me.  As I become more proficient at novel writing, I may spend more hours revising.  (And, if you don’t have other considerations such as a regular job, a family, or a life, you may want to work even longer.)  But for right now it works for me, and I’m pleased with how my novel reads.

You’ll figure out the revising regimen than works for you.  The important thing is to begin and don’t stop until you’ve finished.

What is your revising regimen?

What's Your Story Really About?

Image via Microsoft Office

What is your story really about, anyway?

This question can scare writers, particularly if we’ve finished a draft and we’re still not sure what we’re trying to say.  While there are many reasons why a story does not feel complete to us, one common problem stems from the writer's difficulty with two very risky but fundamental aspects of writing: self-discovery and self-disclosure.

Writing as Self-Discovery

Every time a writer puts fingers to keypad, she reveals part of her soul, her mind, what makes her tick.  This can be scary since most human beings don’t really have a clue what makes us tick and discovering truths about ourselves can make us uncomfortable.  

Sometimes, we’re not ready to address aspects of our own lives, so it’s hard to get our characters to do the same.

Yet self-discovery is one of most valuable reasons to write.  If we can illuminate ourselves as well as our readers, then we've more than done our job. 

Writing as Self-Disclosure

Most writers resist revealing too much about ourselves even to our closest friends, let alone to strangers who may read our work. However, even if the story is pure fiction, it can say a lot about you, what you think, and how you see the world. 

Yet self-disclosure is often what makes stories memorable.  Stories connect with readers when they touch on universal human experiences – those that show us how, despite our individual foibles and quirks, we’re not so different from each other after all.

 

While it’s good not to disclose too much of yourself to the reader, all writers should be willing to afford readers at least a pinprick glimpse into their souls.  If you are afraid of self-disclosure, you may be preventing your story from revealing the truths it needs to address.

Embracing the Journey

Here are five suggestions to help you on the journey of self-discovery and self-disclosure:

1. Don't begin your story with a “Big Idea.”

Most ideas have been done before anyway.  Instead, begin with some deep-seated need, question, or desire of yours.  Something unresolved from your past is always a good starting point, but it doesn’t have to be a traumatic event.  Write down ten things you remember from your childhood, for example, then pick one or two and play “what if?”

2. Let your story begin with you but take on a life of its own.

Writing fiction is different from writing biography.  You don’t have to be accurate.  You can let your imagination wander into the territory of Might Have Been.

3. Be willing to expose part of yourself to the reader.

Get your mind out of the gutter.  I don’t mean "expose" in that way.  Be willing to be vulnerable, to be taken as silly, or even to embarrass yourself.  Honesty wins over readers more than feigned super-competence.

4. Weigh the risks.

What is to be gained by revealing yourself?  What will you truly lose if reader thinks you’re nuts?  Chances are, you won’t lose anything but you’ll gain devoted followers.

5. Find a role model.

I often find my role models in fields outside of writing.  In his book, Flowers in the Dustbin, for example, James Miller describes how The Beatles refused to release a surefire hit, “How Do You Do It?” as their first single, preferring instead to be known for their own songs.  This was a gutsy decision for four lads from the sticks (e.g., Liverpool) who had just signed a recording contract – a decision that could have backfired and sent them back to the sticks with nothing.  Indeed, when their first single, “Love Me Do,” reached only # 17 in the UK charts, it looked as if they should have listened to their experienced elders.

But The Beatles’ gambit paid off when their second single, “Please Please Me,” topped the UK charts and set them on the course of reinventing music history – all because four English lads weren’t afraid to look foolish.

Determining what your story is about can be daunting, but give yourself the fearless courage to embrace both self-discovery and self-disclosure.  Only then can you determine what the truth is that both you and your readers need to know.

What do you think?  How do you know when your story has revealed itself to you?

Mark Twain Rule No. 2: Each Part of a Story Should Be Necessary

Image via Free-Stock-Photos.com

More writing advice from Mark Twain's seminal critique, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses":

 . . . the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale and shall help develop it.

As with Rule No. 1, this rule sounds obvious, yet many writers violate it.  One reason is because much of popular entertainment—comics, TV shows, some films—consists of ongoing serials in which plot lines lead to tangents or unresolved conflicts or characters who contribute nothing to the overall story.  I was never a fan of Lost, but when I listen to friends discuss the series, it seems to typify this approach: Make it up as you go along and keep the audience coming back for more.

The problem is, the audience feels cheated if the story doesn’t actually lead somewhere or if the various episodes of the story contribute nothing to its advancement.  

Fans who feel cheated either abandon the series or take out their wrath by blasting the story (and the writer) on message boards!

It Doesn’t Matter How Cute It Is.  Does It Fit?

One of the challenges writers face is that we often don’t know at first how a scene advances the story.  We write character bits that we think are cute, insightful, or funny.  We introduce an ominous character who we’re certain will become a major antagonist later on.  Or we bust a gut to write a difficult scene, so we want to keep it.  And we delude ourselves into thinking that because the scene is cute or insightful or funny or because the character is ominous or because we’ve busted our gut the reader will forgive us if it doesn’t exactly go anywhere.

But extraneous scenes or characters can slow a story down, derail the plot, and leave even the most faithful readers scratching their heads.

Beware Elves with Guns

Back in the 1970s, writer Steve Gerber introduced a subplot into the Marvel Comics series, The Defenders.  Known notoriously as “the elf with a gun” subplot, it involved—over the course of several issues—an elf ambushing ordinary people and murdering them.  Gerber apparently meant for this subplot to build into a confrontation between the elf and the titular heroes of the book, but it never happened.  He departed the series, and it was left to his successor, David Anthony Kraft, to (humorously) dispose of the elf—who never even met the Defenders!

(And, yes, I know that several years later, the elf storyline was revisited by a different writer and resolved.  Let’s just say that some things—even dangling subplots—are best left alone.)

Most of us don’t have to worry about leaving a series before we get a chance to develop our subplots.  Our characters begin and end with us.  Still, writers sometimes write a scene that seemed necessary at the time.  Only later, when we revise the story or when our critiquing groups read it (or, heaven forbid, when our audience reads it) does the scene lay there like a puppy that's forgotten how to perform a trick.

Building a House of Cards

How do you know if a scene isn’t advancing the story?  

If you find yourself repeating information, or if the characters are doing the same thing they did in an earlier scene, it's usually a tale-tell sign that the scene is going nowhere.  (There's an exception: Sometimes you want the characters to repeat the same actions to show that they are in a rut.)

Writing a story is like building a house of cards.  Take out one card and the entire house falls apart.  If you can take out a scene without hindering the story's progress, leave it out.

What do you think?  Have you ever written a scene that went nowhere?

Banishing Writer's Block: 7 Tips to Get Unstuck

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What Marvel Comics used to call the "Dreaded Deadline Doom" has descended upon me. It's Friday morning, and I'm bereft of content (which sounds I need a high-fiber diet or something).

I could blame it on having to grade 26 freshman comp papers (plus 14 more to go) this week, on having to make other deadlines for writing groups, or on general summer lethargy, but I won't. Instead, I'll direct you to one of my "greatest hits".

This article originally appeared at Banishing Writer's Block: Tips on How to Get Unstuck | Suite101.com http://www.suite101.com/content/banishing-writers-block-a130575#ixzz1PY4jyOLJ.

Writer's block can come on suddenly or slowly, and it's never pretty. Yet writers can get unstuck by following a few simple and daring steps.

A writer sails through her story. She has a clever idea, an exciting build-up, and a character who is going to set the world on fire. Then, midway through the first draft she realizes something: She has no idea what happens next.

She scurries back to her outline and reads what she had planned to happen. It sounded good when she wrote it, but now it reads like a kindergartener's plot! What was she thinking? Who told her that she could write in the first place? Maybe she should just throw it all out and start over. Maybe she should just throw it out, period.

If you find yourself assaulted by such thoughts, first realize that you are not alone. All writers have to deal with writer’s block sooner or later. Writer’s block—that feeling of suddenly reaching a dead end in the middle of your story—usually comes when the writer has expectations of himself that are too high, or expectations of the story that are not well thought out. Sometimes it comes from fear—the fear that one misstep will send the story plunging into a creative abyss.

If you find yourself getting stuck, here are a few suggestions to help stay the course: 

 

Take a Short Break

1. Go for a walk. Getting fresh air and physical exercise helps me feel better and makes it easier to tackle a writring problem with gusto.

2. Put the project aside for a few days. Getting away from the project can yield a fresh perspective on it. The only catch is that you have to come back to the project at some point. Having a "resume date" can make sure that the project isn't shelved indefinitely.

3. Discuss the problem with other writers. Sometimes, talking the problem out will help you arrive at a solution, and the perspective of other writers can provide a new slant on the story. One word of caution: Other writers may try to solve your problem for you or offer solutions based on how they would write the story. This is well and good, but understand that you are not asking fellow professionals for advice. You are merely using them as a sounding board (which may sound mercenary, but it's not. We all need a sounding board from time to time. They're usually called friends). When unsolicited advice is offered, listen politely but reserve all creative decisions for yourself.

Use Short, Crappy Writing (On Purpose)

4. Break the problem down into smaller problems. Writer Anne Lamott said that a writer needs two things to begin, one of which is a short first assignment. You can shorten your task by breaking the story down into acts and then into scenes. Focus on what must happen in each scene and how each scene contributes to the overall story. (Hint: If a scene can be removed without damaging the overall story, it should be removed.) You can do the same with your characters. Ask yourself how each character contributes to the overall story. (Hint: If a character doesn't make a significant contribution . . . well, astute writers can guess the rest.)

5. Write a crappy draft. The other thing a writer needs, according to Lamott, is a crappy first draft. (Well, she didn’t write “crappy," but this is an all-ages website.) This will be a draft that no one will see but you, and nothing is set in stone until the final draft is written (and sometimes not even then). Giving yourself permission to write badly liberates you from the fear of failure.

6. Skip the troubling section and come back to it later. Who says that every scene has to be written in sequence? Films are not shot in sequence. Comics artists often draw later parts of a script first. Writers can do the same.

7. Kill the main character! Again, nothing is set in stone. But by doing the unexpected, you can make the story exciting for yourself again. Back in the 1980s, DC's Suicide Squad comic book suddenly became much more interesting when central character Rick Flagg was killed off and replaced by secondary character Amanda Waller.

Whatever the cause, writer's block can be an opportunity to examine your story in greater depth, decide what is really important to it, and weed out the deadwood.

Above all, don't give up.

How do you deal with writer's block?

Source:
Lamott, Ann. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Pantheon, 1995.