Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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James D Macdonald

Re: Chess and writing

So, here are the questions what can you tell from a person's chess game about his/her writing style?

Nothing.

It's all symbolic; a way of thinking about novels.

I've been trying to explain in several ways how I think about novels -- they're like a chess game, they're like a model house, they're like a knot -- but really, only a novel is a novel.

The chess thing still and more: Put your pieces in strong positions, and combinations will arise = put your characters in interesting situations, and story will arise.

And again: studying openings will teach you openings; studying endgames will teach you chess = analysing first chapters will teach you first chapters; analysing climaxes will teach you plot.

If something I say makes no sense, leave it be. Maybe it means something to someone else. Maybe the next thing I say will mean something to you.


Take what's useful to you. Leave the rest.
 

HConn

Re: Chess and writing

I will admit, the chess stuff is only slightly clear to me. If there's more to it than Jim explained in the post above, it all goes straight over my noggin.

But I'm a terrible chess player.

There's still a lot of incredibly useful stuff in this thread.

Thanks, for taking the time, UJ.
 

Stlight

Re: chess and writing

This thread has gotten my writing moving again and lots of it does make sense to me. I appreciate it and, actually, the whole board.

I asked about the chess because I thought I had an idea of how it worked. Right, didn't, but then this is the same thing that happened to my math in school, I thought it worked, at least my logic did in that one problem, but it didn't transfer. So I finally learned to ask. And, this time, I was curious about whether you could tell something about one from the other. :D

Where the chess didn't work for me the doll house did. I love them, always have and I've spent hours with them. In fact that's where I started "writing" decorate the doll house, put several appropriate sized dolls in it and start the story.

Stlight
 

James D Macdonald

Re: chess and writing

It isn't even chess in general that I'm recommending, it's one particular chess book: Logical Chess Move by Move.

It shows a way of analysing the game that I find useful also in analysing novels. Go through, line by line (move by move) and see what the author is doing. Go through your own works line by line, and see what the story is doing. Is it moving? Is it supporting future action? Are you boxing yourself in or building a strong structure?

That's another part of what I'm saying.
 

Medievalist

Re: Pandemonium Books

A line editor looks at text in the context of the entire work. The line editor will consider word choice, structure, watch for character and continuity issues, the way the story works.

The copy editor looks at the text, the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and issues of correctness. I sometimes think of the line editor as the macro editor, and the copyeditor as the micro editor.

Both of these are separate from the proof reader.
 

Writing Again

Re: Chess and writing

Line editing ... Anybody have a solution for this problem?

A long time ago I read books, studied, became fairly comfortable that I knew what I was doing when I tried to line edit my books -- Except ... Oooops -- There I go reading again and forgetting to line edit.

How do you keep yourself on target and not find you've been reading for five pages instead of line editing?
 

mr mistook

Re: chess and writing

It shows a way of analysing the game that I find useful also in analysing novels. Go through, line by line (move by move) and see what the author is doing.

This analogy has really gripped me. Not that I was ever much of a chess player, but I went through a phase, and I'm familiar with the move by move strategies.

The nice part about applying this thinking to writing a novel is that you don't really have an adversary - or if anything, the "adversary" is the reader. You keep their thoughts in mind. You hedge off their dis-interest before it can click in their mind. Every move is calculated to keep them involved in the story, which forces you to keep the story rolling.

The gigantic advantage you have as a writer, is that you can plan everything ahead of time. You don't have to write a novel *live* in real-time for a studio audience. Like with painting, or recording, you can touch it up and re-work it forever until it's exactly the way you want it to go down.

This Chess analogy also has everything to do with "show don't tell" in my opinion. What if you were to sit down to a chess board with a freind and describe the kind of ingenious game you intend to play without ever moving a peice?

They'd get up and walk away. You're not involving them.
 

Philip Fullington Ripper

Neonate seeks advice.

I'm into the guts of my first novel, being somewhere over 20,000 words (I'm aiming for the ballpark of 80-100k words -- fantasy novel). I haven't let myself edit at all. I haven't re-read much either, but I have noticed one big problem.

I spent years reading books about writing instead of writing. My head is full of a thousand people's advice, most of which I shouldn't have read in the first place, I'm sure. Anyway, having read so much, some of what they say over and over again digs into your brain and becomes habit.

When I was a child, I overwrote everything. There was not an unmodified verb in site. Every sentence begged to be a run on. Every noun demanded verbose clarification. You get the point. This drove everyone who read anything I wrote crazy. So I hit their criticism and the advice of umpteen bazillion How to Write books.

Well, that was years ago. I seem to have over corrected. I tear apart anything I have to say in my mind before it ever hits the paper. I did this long enough internally that now I *think* in bare sentences when I sit down to write fiction. I don't mean bare in the efficient sense; I mean vague and fast.

Every scene I write, my instinct is to say: Guy A walks into the room. Guy A stabs Guy B. Guy B dies. Guy A laughs and leaves the room. Next Chapter.

I'm not joking. I have to force more detail into the work, and even then, my paragraphs are on average only 23 words long. It's too fast. I need to slow it down.

Everywhere I look is advice on how to slim writing down. I don't know any advice on how to fatten it up when it's developed a serious eating dissorder.

Philip Fullington Ripper

P.S. If necessary to explain I can post an excerpt of my non-edited nonsense in the show your work section.
 

ElizabethJames

Re: Pandemonium Books

This used to be a familiar pattern . . . now we have binged off in the other direction. Must admit though, it seems easier to strip out the excess in revisions than to add more in.

Good luck.
 

James D Macdonald

How to fatten

Try this: Remember way back when, I suggested that you retype the first chapter of a novel you admire?

How's this: Take that novel you admire, and count the paragraphs in a chapter. Count the sentences in the paragraphs. Count the words in the sentences.

Now:

Take your over-brief chapter. Fit it to the outline of the other, admired book. Use the same number of paragraphs with the same number of sentences and words.

Treat this like a word game. A puzzle. See what comes out the far side. Have fun doing it.
 

reph

Re: line/copy editing

A line editor looks at text in the context of the entire work. The line editor will consider word choice, structure, watch for character and continuity issues, the way the story works.

The copy editor looks at the text, the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and issues of correctness.


That's a surprise. Most of my work history has been copy editing, and I did all those things. I'm in California. Perhaps nomenclature varies regionally.
 

Medievalist

Re: line/copy editing

Reph wrote:

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>That's a surprise. Most of my work history has been copy editing, and I did all those things. I'm in California. Perhaps nomenclature varies regionally.<hr></blockquote>

I don't think it's geographically determined, but the definition and job description depends on the employer. I figure most of the people in this thread are interested in novel publishing.

I've worked on books where there's a production editor, a copy editor, and a proofer, and on books where the copy editor/proofer/typesetter were the same person (tiny academic scholarly press, producing five books a year).

I've also worked on books where there's a production editor, a copy editor, a line editor, a proofer and a technical editor, responsible for checking and correcting the accuracy of the technical data and procedures.

And of course, the copy editor and the line editor are co-conspirators; ideally their jobs dovetail beautifully and there's bound to be some overlap.
 

Scott Janssens

Re: chess and writing

I had the privilege of seeing Jim give the chess metaphor in person. What impacted my writing the most was when he said, "each piece thinks the story is about him. If you asked this pawn what the story's about, he'd say, 'It's about this pawn...'"

It also reflects what Stephen King says in On Writing: If you put interesting characters in interesting situations then interesting things will happen. From this I learned the King and I have very different writing methods.
 

maestrowork

Re: How to fatten

Absolutely. Give each and every one of your character motivation, desire and stakes, no matter how minor they are. They should all have a life (even though the readers might not read about them). They all think the story is about them.
 

sc211

Re: line/copy editing

Ripper - I'm not sure how your descriptive scenes work, but if you were writing a first person interior monologue, or even dialogue, what you wrote in your post is very good. It's sharp, to the point, and carries the tone well.

Which kind of authors do you like to read the most - the lean Hemingway style or the more verbose repertoire? If it's the lean, then maybe that's just your way.
 

Philip Fullington Ripper

fattening

The avuncular James D McDonald,

From my perspective that advice about writing a chapter of a favorite novel is only a couple weeks old. I've done that in my past. I have not done it recently.

I don't currently own any of my favorite books, but I've ordered one. I read what friends throw at me, which is a quite random and volumous selection, akin to running through a haunted library that flings books at you from off the shelves. My own selection is abysmal, and includes only those books bad enough that my friends did not want them returned. When my order arrives, I will complete your advised exercise posthaste.

Thinking about the problem, I think that half of my problem is really my incomplete understanding of my story. Perhaps those details aren't around because I don't know or yet understand those details. More to think about.

sc11,

As I said above, the books I read are determined by the chaos of my social circle. This has spread my favorite books out over a wide landscape of genres and styles. One of my favorite fantasy novels (my story is a fantasy) had long, exhaustive sections on woodworking, which bored many to tears but fascinated me. While favorites in other genres are bare and smooth.

My taste is based more on characterization styles than prose styles, I think.

I appreciate all of your input. I'll keep trucking away and tell you how it works out.

Sincerely,
Philip
 

Denis Castellan

Re: Learn Writing with Uncle Jim

Hi everyone.

I've been reading this long thread during the past two weeks, and I just felt like I had to join in to say a big "thank you" to all the people who share their experience here.

I've been searching for that kind of thread in french (well, that was because I am french !) but I could not find any at least half as interesting as this one.

The same goes for books about the craft of writing (except for the french translation of S.King's On Writing).

So thank you mister Macdonald and everyone else for giving some of your time and please excuse me if I wrote "strange sounding" things (english is not my first language) :)

Denis
 

Kate Nepveu

Re: fattening

Philip Fullington Ripper:
One of my favorite fantasy novels (my story is a fantasy) had long, exhaustive sections on woodworking
Modesitt, I bet?

I like craft-y sections in novels too, I find it soothing. I stopped reading Modesitt's books for other reasons, but I still like reading about characters who do things (for example, Tamora Pierce's YA "Circle of Magic" series, which deals with magic expressed through crafts).
 

xander

Re: Neonate seeks advice.

Every scene I write, my instinct is to say: Guy A walks into the room. Guy A stabs Guy B. Guy B dies. Guy A laughs and leaves the room. Next Chapter.

Two bits of advice, both taken from James Alan Gardner's writing workshop this past weekend at Vericon, although the following descriptions and formulations are mine, not Gardner's, so don't blame him.

1. "Wordspace." The number of words you use to describe events, actions, and items should be roughly proportional to their importance. A long car ride that's just used to get the character from place to place should take a sentence at most. The car crash that happens in an instant but changes the character's life should be a paragraph at least.

2. Action and reaction. Stories are about people. Write a sentence of action, then two sentences of reaction. How does that make a character feel? What does it make him think about? What is he worried about now?
 

SRHowen

you may

You may want to write this draft of your novel as an outline draft. Write your bare bones draft--then go back and use the bare bones "outline" tp write the actual story.

Try to "see" it as a reader, how much detail do you need to tell the reader to make the scenes clear.

Shawn
 

sc211

Re: fattening

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was when someone said to write your story as if you were writing a letter to a friend.

That unhooked so much of the baggage from high school and college, where you end up sounding like you're addressing the school board with a grammar book up your butt. 8o You know, trying to be all proper and end up being properly stiff and inauthentic.

But in writing to a friend, to someone who gets you and who you don't need to impress, it all comes across so simply and clear and flows from both the heart and the gut.

You hear of it all the time, like A.A. Milne writing his Pooh stories for his son, Christopher, or Kurt Vonnegut writing his novels to his dead sister. In focusing on one person, you quiet the nerves of addressing a crowd and your voice becomes more natural and open.

So, Ripper, maybe you could try writing as if you were e-mailing a friend about something that happened to you. Or the way you'd tell it to friends in a bar. Then it wouldn't be "Guy A shot Guy B, Guy A left," but "And then Guy A, he hauled out this snub-nosed .35, held it right up to Guy B, like he was nothing, like he never had a chance, and blew him away. The body thumped back against the bed, slipped to the floor, and that was it. Guy A was gone."

Later you can go back and tidy it up - what's important is you got the flow of it. And in pretending you're telling it to your friends, you hit on all the right notes, the details that thunk into place as you're telling it.

And hey, Denis, welcome! Your "strange sounding" writing is better than most Americans'.
 

TashaGoddard

Hello

Phew! I finally got through reading this thread last night.

Thanks to all of you - especially, but not only, Uncle Jim - for a very informative and interesting read.

I'm 31 years old and European (specifically half Welsh, half English). I run my own business with my husband. We provide services to the publishing industry - software development, editing, proofreading and various incarnations these. Mostly, we work for educational publishers, rather than in fiction, although have edited a few novels in the past (not terribly good erotic fiction, which I stopped doing after one of them made me physically sick, and because it paid really, really badly). In theory, this could mean I have a bit of a headstart - but really all it means is that I might be able to find missing commas a bit more easily after putting the novel in drawer for a few months (certainly not before).

Anyway (this is a word I overuse in emails, letters and on posting boards - fortunately, I'm aware of this, so it doesn't tend to start every paragraph in my fiction), I used to write a lot, but had more or less a 10-year break, for no apparent reason. I had a couple of poems published in a local poetry magazine, when I was 18. But that's it. I've recently started to get back into writing and have a number of novels on the go - though some of these are only at the very initial idea stage.

My main problem is getting down to the BIC. Working for myself, I have considerably varying workloads. Sometimes, I can have a few weeks where I only need to do a couple of hours' work a day; other times (e.g. the last month) I have to work 15-hours a day or more. Last Thursday, for example, I had to get up at 4am and work straight through to 5pm to complete two jobs in time for the deadlines. I then collapsed into a vegetable-like state alternating between watching TV, reading (including reading this thread) and sleeping for a few days, before starting on the next project.

The problem is the variability of my workload and working hours, therefore. Getting up 2 hours early is already a strategy that is being used to get my actual work done. Some days I can find 5 or 6 hours to write. Some days all I can manage is a few minutes scribbling in my notebook before turning the light off and hitting the pillow. So, any tips on how to fit the BIC in (other than getting up 2 hours early)?

The other immediate problem I am facing with my writing is that I am consistently giving one of the characters (usually one of the main characters) a relative with a specific mental health disorder. There is no reason (from the story's point of view) to do this. I am clearly using it as some form of therapy (because, for the last few years, a very close relative of mine has been suffering from this disorder and it is therefore at the forefront of my mind). While I think that there could be a valid place for this in some novels (even perhaps in the ones I'm writing now - just in terms of character background) it seems to completely take over whenever I sit down and just write, write, write.

Does anyone else find something from their real life taking over their writing in this way? And, if so, do you have any tips on getting rid of it? Or perhaps I should use it instead of getting rid of it - write what you know? I'm wondering whether a) I need to write a short or even a novel with this issue at its centre (maybe just as a therapeutic exercise!) or b) go and find a therapist myself, so I can dump it on her, rather than in my writing!

As you will have noticed, I tend to ramble a lot. If I can say something in ten words, I will say it in 100 instead. Oddly, this does not always translate to my fiction writing. At least, I think so. I have yet to actually complete the 1st draft of a novel, let alone get to the stage where I edit out all the stuff that isn't needed (perhaps, when I do, I will find that I only end up with a 2000-word short story, rather than a novel!).

One more thing I want to say before I post this (rather huge) introduction, is that just because I'm an editor by trade, does not mean my posts will be free of typos and other errors. I could copy and paste this into Word and leave it sat there for a few days (or even a few hours) and then go back and edit it. I would probably find most of the errors and also cut it down to three or four sentences instead of a long ramble. But I'm afraid I save that kind of effort for my day job (and for my writing, too). This is in way of an apology for any glaring errors in the above. Please don't shout and say, 'She's not an editor! Look she should have used a semi-colon there and she doesn't know the difference between "their" and "there"!'

And hello, by the way.
 

debraji

Re: Hello

Hi, Tasha. I have an idea about your character with the mental disorder. This is what I might do:

For the first draft, leave him (?) in. While you're working through the rest of the story, keep him in the back of your mind. Can his condition, his own subplot, serve to comment on your main themes? Or perhaps you may find ways to connect him into the main story as you develop it. Give it time to develop.

Explore this more fully in your second draft. If there's really no connection, or if the whole thing just seems to distract from the overall plot, then cut it. You can always save it for another book.

I find that when I come up against a story problem, working out the solution seems to deepen the story.
 
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