#dow18

you know those posts that are like, “remember when we used to read books and now we all have no attention span because of the internet.” then there’s the very contrived advice that’s like, “if you want to be a writer you have to read”??

well i think they’re completely true but they also really suck, and we of the youngish adult writers of 2018 have it pretty hard, especially those of us in fandom who enjoy reading fanfic more than original fic because it’s mostly tagged properly and possesses the emotional catharsis we’re looking for, pretty much guaranteed.

that said, i think it’s really important -- whether you write fanfic, ofic, or both -- to read traditionally published work, in part because it can help better inform your fanfic, but also because it will help develop your writing overall. and if you’re interested in ofic, it’s pretty much a necessity to read.

so, i just graduated from an MFA program in creative writing, and contrary to popular opinion, the MFA does not actually teach you how to write. it gives you space to write, and mostly, it teaches you how to read as a writer.

so here is everything i’ve learned about reading as a writer over the past two years:

you do not have to read anything you don’t want to read

part of the problem with “read everything you can!” advice is that there is a lot of stuff out there, and a ton of it doesn’t jive with your interests. moreover, there’s a kind of pressure to read the Classics just to say you’ve read them when in fact a lot of them are boring, irrelevant, and dare i say overrated. so here is me giving you permission: you don’t have to pick up Hemingway or Faulkner or whoever else to be a good writer. life is too short to force yourself to read dead white dudes.

if a book doesn’t grab you by the first 10%, put it down

this is what has helped me more than anything else as a reader, because i found i would commit myself to a boring book and then never want to read it, so i would stop reading for months at a time. so, when you pick out a book, go to the last page and check the number. promise yourself you’ll read 10% of the book. 400 pages? read to page 40 and ask yourself, “do i really want to turn the page? if i put this book down, would i want to pick it back up again later?” if the answer is no, return it to the library or wherever you got it. try the next book in your pile. your TBR list is long; be merciless. 

but if you want to make it look like you read the book...

commit to 25%. then go to the wikipedia article, read the plot summary, and fast forward to the last 10-15 pages. bam. you’ve more or less read the book. bonus points if you watch the movie, too. so if you’re really committed to reading Ulysses or whatever but you don’t want to slog through it, you can digest enough to be able to hold a conversation about it in a few hours and move on with your life. you can even pretend you enjoyed it and found it a formative reading experience that helped shape your understanding of the work of fiction, really, absolutely groundbreaking, etc etc. this is especially helpful if you find yourself anywhere in the literary sphere because other writers will expect you to be familiar with the canon. 

read selfishly and take tools from everything you read

when you read anything, even the stuff you don’t like, ask yourself, “what tools can i take for my own writing?” let’s say you really love the plot structure -- write it down somewhere so you remember to try it out for your own story. if you love the lyricism of the sentences, find a few sentences you really like and jot them down by hand, inspect what about them makes you love them so much. steal aspects of characters you admire, pacing, conflict, stakes. steal as much as you can without stealing the words themselves. you can even use this for things you don’t like by rephrasing the question: “what is it about this story i would like to avoid in my own work?” pivot every single thing you read to be about you and your writing. take notes. mark up and highlight your book if you have to. reading as a writer is not a passive activity but an active one. you’re not being entertained, you’re learning. so let published works teach you. 

carve time out of your day to read

at 7pm every day, i put my phone down and pick up an actual physical book. this is my personal preference -- i have no beef at all with ebooks, but honestly, i get so tired of staring at lit screens all day, and paper books without the distraction of my phone is such a nostalgic feeling for me, back when i was 14 and the library was my second home and if someone wanted my attention they had to call me on a landline. if you had the same upbringing, dedicating some time to read a physical book will do you wonders. if ebooks are your thing, it’s still important to schedule reading time for yourself, not as an obligation to uphold, but as something to do that’s good for you and that you enjoy. 

write letters to your favorite authors!!

seriously. if you love a book, let the author know. they will not be annoyed or upset. they will be thrilled. it’s a good way to network with other writers, and it’s a great practice of literary citizenship.

when someone recommends a book to you, ask why

this is something i’ve only recently learned to do, as someone who gets book recommendations pretty much constantly. if the person knows you decently, i don’t think it’s out of line to ask, “what would i specifically like about this?” because then that will tell if you if the person is only recommending it because they like it, not because they think you’ll like it. if the person knows your writing, it’s fair to ask, “how is this book in conversation with my work?” so you have a head start in the kinds of tools you’ll want to take from it. 

follow your aesthetic instincts

as a writer, honing your aesthetic will always be one of your highest aims, which means constantly seeking out writers whose aesthetics you admire and analyzing what it is you admire about it. “aesthetic” is kind of a vague term, but it refers to your overall vibe -- the things you write about and why you write about them. my aesthetic is more or less “midwestern class warfare meets sexual identity crises with a lot of dark humor,” so i tend to look for other writers who share facets of that aesthetic and i inspect what’s working for them, where they publish, what their influences are, etc. i try to read both within my aesthetic but also far outside of it too. for example, i love historical fiction but i know i’ll never, ever write it. but i appreciate the aesthetic, and i can take tools from it like dedication to detail, internal conflicts, etc.

read short fiction (please)

this is my personal plea. short stories are a great way to find authors whose work is in conversation with yours, so that you can then go check out their novels with a good idea already of what you like about them. short stories are all over the internet via literary and genre mags. they’re a much smaller commitment than novels and tend to have just as much emotional impact (if done well) as novels. more importantly you’ll always have recs for your friends, and it’s a lot easier getting someone to read a 6k story you enjoyed than a 60k novel.

resources

don’t have time to read but like to listen? try the new yorker fiction and writers’ voice podcasts

like marking up books but don’t want to buy them new? check out thriftbooks (my favorite site on the internet -- the link here will get you 15% off!)

finished a book you like but don’t know what to read next? try what should i read next

want to stay apprised of the goings on in the modern literary community? subscribe to the lithub newsletter and arts & letters daily, two newsletters i’ve been subscribed to for years 

as always i’m glad to answer any questions! happy reading!

as someone who gets very easily distracted, i have several:

the aesthetic of your space is very important -- make your work space pretty. make sure you want to be there. take a pic and instagram it if you have to. place your snacks in an appealing shape on a pretty plate. use your best mug for tea. get the lighting just right. if you don’t have a pretty place to write at home, go to a library or coffee shop. 

turn off the internet -- this one sucks because sometimes you have to research stuff. but save it for later. if you get to something you have to google, write RESEARCH THIS LATER and move on, or keep a list of stuff to look up later.

keep a timesheet or make a schedule for yourself or set a timer -- i use toggl. i did this all of june and it really helped me see where my time went, and i found that because it felt like “work” (not in a bad way), i took it more seriously than i do when i’m goofing around on the internet between writing vaguely shitty expository paragraphs. yesterday i told myself i would spend an hour on a story i was struggling with and i ended up finishing it, so this method works pretty well for me. i also recommend forest which is a timer app that gives you a pretty lil tree at the end!

put your phone in another room -- this one kind of horrifies me but i have to do it. so i put my phone upstairs in my bedroom and i go downstairs and turn off the internet and write, because if i don’t i’ll glance at my phone every other sentence, even if it’s on Do Not Disturb.

write on paper -- i’ve done some research on digital ethics and basically every device connected to the internet is designed to bring your attention to apps and ads that generate income for other people. there is no avoiding this anymore except to go back to basics. so every once in a while i’ll try to write a story on paper, which i know i’ll need to transcribe later so it makes it that much easier to write kind of shittily just to get it on the page, and every time i’ve done this i’ve managed to write a whole heck of a lot more than i anticipated. buy a pretty notebook and a nice pen and sit outside and write something without a glowing screen nearby -- it might be hard at first but the longer you do it, the better at it you’ll get.  

TINY SNACKS -- when i’ve reached part of a story i really don’t want to write, i buy myself a lil bag of candy and whenever i write 100/500/1000 words or whatever goal i set for myself, i eat one. i know food isn’t supposed to be a reward but it works so i do it. if you don’t want to do this with food, you could use a short tv show or youtube series to watch or a book/fic to read. sometimes if i don’t have candy i promise myself fanvids.

due dates with accountability partners -- some people join big bangs or challenges to set due dates for themselves, but i prefer having one friend that i agree to trade work with on a specific date, so i have to work to that date so i’m not the asshole who doesn’t have work to send. then we give feedback on each other’s work and revise. 

this is a fabulous question!! creative writing pedagogy is my absolute favorite topic.

if you want a one-stop answer, the triedest and truest method of discussion is the Admired Prose assignment. the way it works is that one person brings in a piece of work they really enjoy, something short or an excerpt of something longer, and you read it together, and then discuss it. 

once you’ve all read the piece, the person who brought in the work can discuss what they like about it, and you can go from there. 

if you’re stumped on how to keep the conversation going, you can always resort to some of these questions:

how is the conflict working in this piece?

what are the stakes and how are they developed?

who is the protagonist (if any) and what do they want? is there an antagonist? if not, where is the tension in the piece coming from?

how does the resolution effectively conclude the work?

where is the story set and how is the setting developed?

what is your favorite sentence and why?

what risks is this piece taking?

and the most important question of all: what do you plan to take from this piece that you can develop into your own writing?

of course, there’s a bit of homework involved, in that everyone has to be willing to bring in a piece of writing on their assigned day. obviously this assignment can be adapted to fit poetry and experimental/hybrid forms also.

when you’re discussing craft, i think it’s always best to use a story as a foundation for the discussion, otherwise the conversation is easy to spiral either out of control or hopping around saying “well what i do in my writing is...” which can be helpful but maybe not always the purpose of discussion. here are some other craft topics to consider:

urgency and stakes

conflict

character development

setting and imagery

voice

dialogue

structure

pacing

here are some meta topics to consider, which is to say, you don’t necessarily need a piece of prose in front of you to discuss them:

where to submit for publication/how to get published

career paths for writers

how to give effective feedback

literary citizenship

the pros and cons of risk-taking (my personal teaching philosophy is very heavy on risk. i like asking students pretty consistently: what risks are you taking with this and why are you taking them?)

writing process/building good habits/maintaining health and stability while being a writer

transformativity and derivation (how can we read more effectively to better improve our writing?) 

what makes “good writing” versus “bad writing” 

genre constraints and hybrid forms (how to write beyond words -- i like bringing in magazines and scissors and glue sticks and having a collage day) 

i also highly recommend reading Audre Lorde’s “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” and using that as a launching point into developing a writing identity, which is to say: what is the work you’re doing as a writer? 

this can really be anything. beginning writers might say, “i want to become a better writer,” which is always good work to be doing, and hopefully through discussion and practice that desire can be narrowed down a bit more concretely, as in, i want to be read, i want to be published, i want to learn more about who i am, i have questions about my life and experience i want to find the answers to, i want to express and share myself with others. or maybe it’s something very specific like, i’m interested in diverse representation in YA fantasy. i’m exploring empathy through villainy. 

some people think you don’t have to know the work you’re doing, and to an extent i agree, but writing -- and sharing that writing -- is a means of participation in a greater discussion of the human experience, so to me anyway, it’s important to know what you’re saying.

i hope this helps. i could go on and on and on based on what level of skill you’re working at, but these are the fundamentals that i think can help writers across the board.

also i have to say, i think it is so super cool you’re starting this after school thing, and i really hope you keep me posted on it. i’d love to hear how it goes. of course i’m also happy to discuss/answer more questions if you have them.

first, thank you so much! i’m glad to hear my characterization resonates.

you are right on the nose with “i don’t know if my character is doing this because they would or because my plot dictates it.”

the first way to subvert that problem is by doing away entirely with plot, and focusing only on character. no one reads a story for its plot. they only ever want character and setting.

to know a character, you have to fill out five points of a star.

the character star

(not to be confused with the character triangle, which is an expository tool)

their highest priority

their deepest desire

their biggest fear

what breaks them

what mends them

a character’s highest priority is something like family, friendship, ambition, courage. it’s what they love about life and admire in others. it’s something passive and intrinsic in who they are.

desire is twofold: internal and external. it’s the single most important question you need to answer before starting a story. what do they want and why do they want it? is it something external – physical, tangible? do they want something to happen? or is it internal, to mend a broken heart, or find their reason for living?

fear is the second most important question. if desire is what a character is running toward, fear is what they’re running from. every character wants something, and every character is afraid of something. you can think of each character as a coin. often, the opposite of what a character desires is what they fear. if a character wants to find love, their fear would be loneliness. if a character wants success, their fear is failure. 

these first three points build who a character is already. the last two are speculative. when you build a character, you can use their priorities, fears, and desires to figure out what exactly it would take to bring them to their lowest point, and then, how they behave when they’ve met their biggest fear. a character who values fame falling into obscurity. a character seeking wealth succumbing to poverty. once you’ve answered this question, you now know the climax of your story (if a happy ending) or the resolution to your story (if a sad one). conversely, what mends them is going to be your resolution (for a happy ending), or your climax before a downfall (for a sad ending). 

where the idea of “plot” comes in, then, is offering tools or obstacles for your characters to reach these points. once you have these 5 things figured out, the character will move on their own, and it’s your job to lay the tracks of their path so they get to their intended destination.

conflict develops when a character has multiple priorities, desires, and fears, and they butt heads. that’s when stories get complicated, and characters feel real. a character who prioritizes morality yet is drawn by the desire for dark things. a character who is afraid of falling in love, yet deeply wants it. a character who puts on a happy face, but repeatedly self-destructs.

you brought up tw so i’ll use that as an example of going through this process.

bellamy:

priority: family, which has developed his entire sense of self

desire: maintaining familial harmony while longing for someone who will disrupt it

fear: losing his family, and therefore himself

what breaks him: the realization that, without a family to protect and support, he doesn’t know who he is. his lowest point is utter aloneness in which he self-objectifies and completely disconnects from his own emotions.

what mends him: finding who he is, and letting himself learn to love in a way that doesn’t force him to sacrifice his newfound sense of self

clarke:

priority: curiosity, knowledge, understanding

desire: figuring out her sexual identity, feeling loved and valued after a lifetime of neglect

fear: the belief that she’s not worth being loved

what breaks her: offering all of herself to someone, only to be rejected, affirming her worst fears

what mends her: allowing herself to love and be loved again

in the case of tw also, i could fill out another star for clarke and bellamy’s combined love/hate relationship of arkadia and wanting to get away, and their relationship to the idea of “home.” the more desires a character has, the longer your story becomes in order to fulfill or deny those desires, to face and overcome, or get destroyed by, their fears. 

i feel like i have a lot more to say about characterization in terms of building history, relationships, voice, etc. but i hope for now this offers you a new tool in thinking of character development! 

there are a lot of disciplines that require you to target your weaknesses and turn them into strengths. writing isn’t one of them. with writing, you should target your strengths and work the shit out of them. lean into everything that feels good and right all the time, reject everything bad (after some consideration, perhaps). life is too short to accept bad advice. 

good advice and feedback will make you go “oh shit i hadn’t thought of that, that’s a great idea, i want to try it!” bad advice will make you self-conscious, uncomfortable, and feel bad about your writing. reject this advice. you can know it, and understand it, but it’s also okay to say, “that advice might be good for other people, but it’s not right for my work.”

right now i’m working on a lesson plan on narration for my CW class and i thought i’d share a portion of what i’m planning to go over with my students.

one of the the biggest overall weaknesses i see in writing happens at the sentence level, as in, i see many writers struggle putting “strong” sentences onto the page. conversely, the sentence-level advice i’ve seen that tries to counteract this weakness is often prescriptive. that is to say, it tells you what you should and shouldn’t do without any regard to context. 

one such prescriptive piece of advice is Show Don’t Tell. for the uninitiated, Show Don’t Tell means that you should render an experience on the page rather than explain it. Show Don’t Tell is perceived as a dichotomy: you’re either showing, or you’re telling. Showing is always good and Telling is always bad. Showing is strong, Telling is weak.

but that’s not true on any level. first, there are many circumstances where you could choose to Tell and it is absolutely the right choice for the sentence. conversely, sometimes Showing is exhausting and potentially boring to read, and negates important internality (and voice!) of your narrator. i recently had a student who used Show to such a degree that i never had any idea what was going on, because he never Told a single detail, even to provide necessary information for the events that were happening. his writing was overall very strong, but i was lost. i told him it felt a little like walking into a grocery store without a cart, and having to balance all these items, these Show details, with nothing to put them in. you need Tell (a cart) just as much as you need Show (stuff to put in it).

second, Show Don’t Tell is a spectrum entirely reliant on perspective, which is where we get into the very difficult art of crafting a single sentence.

i was working on a story earlier today that i’m writing in very close third person. that means my POV character is She and the reader has complete access to the thoughts and feelings she has toward her environment. i came to an emotional high point between two characters, and wrote this sentence:

She can feel his heart pounding under her palm.

i erased it. i invoked a few prescriptive Rules i’d learned: Show Don’t Tell; Active > Passive Verbs; and When the Action is Hot, Write Cool. all of these come down to the same thing: in high-stake moments, create a wider distance between the reader and narrator. step further outside the mind rather than closer to it. 

so i typed:

His heart pounds under her palm.

both of these sentences are solidly on the Show end of the Show-Tell divide, and in fact traditional writing advice would dictate that by all means, the second sentence is “stronger” than the first. but i disagree.

before i get into why, let’s take a step further back. let’s say i wanted to move closer to Tell. i have a lot of options. there are so many reasons someone’s heart might be pounding, and someone might have their hand against that heart. to Tell is to strip the reader of their interpretation. on one hand, as a writer sliding back and forth on the Show-Tell divide, you might not want any room for interpretation, and therefore the potential for misinterpretation. on the other hand, maybe you’ve developed the context of the moment so thoroughly that you’re comfortable allowing the reader their interpretation, and you’re confident it will reflect your intention for the scene.

in this case, i’ll whittle it down to the exact meaning of the sentence:

He’s nervous.

there are a few reasons i wouldn’t choose this sentence over one of the above. first, it doesn’t reflect the point of view. we have no idea who the narrator of this sentence is, and more importantly, we have no idea how she knows this information. does she think it? is it mere speculation, or is she absolutely certain? if the latter, what’s happening, or what is he doing, to convince her of it?

so, we’ll nix that sentence and move a little further down the divide. 

She can tell he’s nervous.

now we have a little more context. we are solidly in the mind of one person, she, and we know that because she is having a thought/feeling. despite all writing tips and tricks you’ve ever read that tell you this is a “weak” sentence (because it Tells), i have no problems with it. i think it’s a fine sentence. here’s why:

it possesses internal voice and implies speculation and unreliability.

it has a conflict in it, which is to say it is a sentence that establishes a status quo and upends that which it establishes. the status quo is non-nervousness, non-speculation. we’re upending it by introducing nervousness and the speculation thereof. it innately encourages us to move to the next sentence.

sometimes there are no physical cues to Show nervousness. sometimes you can just feel it. maybe my narrator is highly intuitive. maybe she’s so close to him she just knows when he’s nervous. or maybe she’s completely wrong.

or it could be that after this sentence i’ll clarify what that looks like. maybe i’ll combine Tell and Show together so the reader has both a cart and a few items to put in it. 

She can tell he’s nervous. He fidgets and plucks at a hangnail. 

in a different scene, i would have nothing against opting for this Tell sentence and its corresponding Show detail. but in the scene i’m writing, where he is not actually fidgeting and plucking at a hangnail, i want to push further down to Show.

here was the sentence at my cursor:

His heart pounds under her palm.

by all means it’s a decent sentence. it implies POV, though a little ambiguously, because it’s her palm and she is actively feeling his heart beneath it. it has a visual, active verb: Pound. not Flutters. not Beats Steadily. not Thrums. you can see this happening, her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. it possesses conflict: the word Pounds establishes the status quo (a normal hearbeat) and upends it (now his heart is beating faster). 

the focus of this sentence, though, is not on her. it’s on him. context, voice, and POV all play a major role in deciding which sentence to choose. if i wanted a greater, more objective distance between my reader and our narrator (or in this case Writing Cool if we’re going by Gwartney’s Action Hot, Write Cool rule), and a closer distance between my reader and the action of the present moment itself, i would choose this sentence. 

but i don’t want that. i erased the sentence above and went back to my original.

She can feel his heart pounding under her palm.

the emphasis of this sentence is no longer on him, nor the action of his heart. it’s on her, and the fact that she can feel it. i’m choosing to keep us closer to the narrator’s perspective and further from the action. i’ve decided that it’s more important to wrap the action of this moment up in her perspective -- to put this detail in a cart, if you will. i’ve chosen the “weaker” sentence in order to convey narration, to keep us closer to her mind rather than his body, to show this action through a window rather than straight-on, because that is how i choose to render this particular experience on the page. 

none of these sentences are, by themselves, better or worse, stronger or weaker, than others. these sentences illustrate a choice you the writer have to make over and over again, sentence by sentence, in order to support and develop the voice, tone, and conflicts you’ve established, regardless of the prescriptive advice you might believe.