Your story lives within you. Write with it rather than about it.
–Martha Alderson of Plotwhisperer for Writers and Readers
“Don’t talk your story out. Write it.” I heard that a lot during my participation in many writing workshops, but not so much like the almost broken mantra, “Show. Don’t tell,” regarding the development of scenes.
Of Mantras, Writing, and Knowing When to Tell… Read More »
“Every piece of writing is a bootstrap affair whereby you use the crisis of the next sentence to get to the one beyond.”
–Kris Saknussemm ( Write what you know–and be sorry) The Writer Magazine May 2010, author of the novels, Private Midnight and Zanesville
The word bootstrap usually conjures ideas of a man-child walking in the snow for miles on his way to school, alone and persevering against the elements.
How many times have we heard a parent or grandparent extol how the challenges he endured as a child made him the adult he presently is?
Many jokes center on the extrapolation of one’s difficulties that either did not exist to the degree described or simply sprang from tales spun to inspire awe and respect.
And yet writer, Kris Saknussemm aphorism touches on an all too apparent truth that many of us writers miss or choose to avoid.
Of Bootstraps, Climbing and The Eye… Read More »
“There are writers and there are authors. Writers seek to write, and they seek to write better and better with every book. Authors seek only to be published, and they seek advances to match their egos.”
–Elizabeth George in Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life by Terry Brooks.
Elizabeth George offers this word of advice on the third page of the Introduction in Terry Brooks’ book on the craft of writing. That is what Brooks focuses upon in the tightly written book of 197 pages Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life. Clearly his words have left an impression on me. This is my third blog on his book and I’ve yet to finish it.
Of Terry Brooks, Magic, and The Writer vs. The Author… Read More »
Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at every moment it is being created.
–Toni Morrison (Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise by Tavis Smiley)
These words gripped me the first time I read them. That was over a week ago. In the days since, I have repeated and shared them with others.
Each time I speak them their meaning, the truth of purpose and process of what I do as a writer, the depth of impression left by the work I do, enlarges.
As writers we are constantly remaking ourselves through the words we write, the stories we tell, the plots we weave and unbraid.
The Writer, Narrative, and Evolution… Read More »
Author, poet, novelist, and writing teacher, David Mura states: “Identifying what compels you to write, reveals the reason we are driven to write each or our works.”
To complicate things, I find that not only is the reason that I write multi-faceted, it also evolves and shifts at various intervals in my life.
I initially began to write because I wanted to read stories of characters with whom I could identify with by culture and race.
On a deeper level, I wanted to read about characters who shared not only my race and culture as an African American woman of the American South, but of a middle class background, who in many ways could appear quite Waspish, but was not.
Men, Women and The Taboo of Love and Romance in Marriage… Read More »
The stage of renewal in a story offers a second opportunity for rebirth. Unlike the crisis, the scenes of renewal focus on the inner life of the major character.
Through the action of deciding and choosing to share the good news of her or his triumph in both word and deed, the protagonist now heads down a road, the path and events of which are shaped and influenced more by internal changes than those physically committed.
Renewal signals the time in a story or novel where the central character surrenders to the nuclear fall out, so to speak, of her or his actions.
He or she has carried out the physical task set forth by the changes and upheaval leveled at the outset of the story.
At the peak of action she or he dueled her their enemies and/or central antagonist.
In the wake of triumph she/he has made decisions reflective of their survival and the wisdom granted by having battled through the crisis.
Of Peeling Onions, Surrender and Writing from The Zone… Read More »
The area of a novel that follows climax brings renewal. Yet writing this part of the story gets tricky.
Rolling towards the finish line authors can easily lose control of the narrative. We must remain upon the horse of our story.
Climax has delivered a delayed and second crisis a second form of transformation, what some might call the aftershocks of the major earthquake of the peak crisis bringing everything to its head.
In this way novels can be seen to have three major crises or turning points from which others hurricanes or twisters of change spin off.
First comes the initial shake up, the initiating problem that rises from the dilemma rooted in back-story. Then comes the arc of action where the protagonist meets with her or his archenemy, that from which she or he has been running or pursuing the length of the story.
Then comes the crisis.
Of Swords, Inner Demons and the Waters of Renewal… Read More »