Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

[vrabinec]

Originally Posted by Brickie

I've done NaNoWriMo the last couple of years - my first attempts at writing any sort of fiction since writing stories in Primary School.

That was the thing that I really got out of doing that - when you've set yourself a target of 50,000 words in a month (1,667 a day) and told everyone you know about said target, you can't worry too much about quality. You bang it out and fix it later.

So now I've got a big word document, about 100,000 words long. Time to start with the editing... :-o

I tried the NaNoWriMo thing, but only got out 20,000. Still, it helped get me rolling on a work I'd put aside for almost a year in favor of blogging and other not-for-pay writing. Good luck with yours.

[Ken Schneider]

Definition of, "Write badly, but write."

Practice makes perfect.

If we want to draw those lovely pictures we learn how and practice what we learn.

If we want to better golfers we practice hitting balls and playing.

Should we want to be better metal detectorists, another of my hobbies, we learn how our machine works, what the sounds mean, and learn from others so that we can better enjoy what we do.

If you want it bad enough, go get it.

Just like your momma said, and we've seen over the last seven years, anyone can be president.

[lfraser]

I will print out the Permission and post it forthwith.

There are times when the only way I can keep myself writing is when I allow myself to just write however I can, no matter what comes out. Suprisingly, when I later read what I've written, it's often far better than I thought it was while I was sweating through the writing. It seems to be more distilled, more purposeful and less purple, than the "good day" writing that happens when I think I'm really on my game.

It occurs to me that the most intruiguing ideas - often ideas that become central to the story -- come most often when I'm slogging and struggling through a day where my only goal is to write something, and never mind the aesthetics. I might only write one page, but a lot of the time that's the page that turns the corner for the piece I'm working on.

I suppose that shouldn't suprise me, really. All of my professional (non-fiction) writing has been done at the snail's pace of one to two pages a day at most. I guess that's just the way I write.

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

I feel like I've gone all the way around "permission to write badly" and back again to where I started.

5-year NaNoWriMo vet, here. Sh1tty rough draft, check. Only of late I've found myself stuck trying to rewrite things--I start getting overwhelmed by the amount of crap-i-tude that the rough draft embodies. And then I've started having a hard time with first drafts, because I'm already envisioning the hell that is getting immovably stuck on the edit.

It ain't fun!

Tomorrow I pledge a fresh round of attempting to finish-edit-redit-submit, but does anyone have any advice on this particular permutation of frozen perfectionism?

[retterson]

The only thing that works for me:
1. Print it out with plenty of white space for editting.
2. Read through it entirely one time (resist urge to go back to the keyboard).
3. Make small edits on the page.
4. For things that need a wholesale rewrite, I mark the section and make notes (I don't have the patience to long-hand long sections).
5. Then head back and do the edits on the computer (and do whatever tweaks happen as you go). Note: this method actually ends up giving you two edits for the price of one.
6. Print it out with plenty of white space for editting . . .

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

For me, I need to read the entirety of the story once through to give myself that Big Picture from which I can then go back and smooth things out. Tweak characters, scenes, etc.

The Big Picture may change a few times as the story takes over, but I find that the comfort of having the whole thing in my hands in front of me helps a lot.

Maybe it's the sense of having something physical that's mine and needs help that provides the motivation to overcome the inactivation inertia. Dunno.

That's how I do it. Not saying it's a method that even works for me.

[blacbird]

Originally Posted by Ken Schneider

Definition of, "Write badly, but write."

Practice makes perfect.

This is soooo true. I've become really good at bad writing. I write more badly now than I ever could have when I started.

caw

[Bartholomew]

Originally Posted by blacbird

This is soooo true. I've become really good at bad writing. I write more badly now than I ever could have when I started.

caw

huk huk huk.

[James D. Macdonald]

Nicole -- read your printout, out loud, marking in the margin the places that you'll have to come back and fix.

And/or:

Write a flowchart from your cruddy draft. See the overall shape.

You will need to get the entire work into your mind.

Also -- have you aged 'em in your desk drawer yet?

[batgirl]

Nicole, I don't know if this would work for you or not, but what I did once previously was to jump through the manuscript, either skimming or just pushing the side-bar-thingy down and stopping randomly, then micro-fixing a page or a few paragraphs so they didn't make me twitch or cringe. After I'd done 1/3-1/2 of the doc that way, I read through and revised the whole thing. What helped me was that I knew I'd be hitting decent prose soon, like plums of goodness in an evil pudding, so it was easier to work in long stretches.
But I'm a tweaking reviser, not a wholesaler. If something major is off, I cut the whole section out and start over. So it depends how you work.
-Barbara

[Lilybiz]

Nicole,

Do you work with an outline? If not, you might try writing an outline based on your draft.

Then edit, using the suggestions everyone's given you, and cut out all the stuff you don't like. Use the outline as a skeleton for your new draft: plug into it the stuff you're keeping, and let it remind you where to rewrite things you need to replace.

[bsolah]

Originally Posted by retterson

5. Then head back and do the edits on the computer (and do whatever tweaks happen as you go). Note: this method actually ends up giving you two edits for the price of one.

This happens to me too. Pity my printer's broken, so I'm stuck for editing for the moment. I could do on screen edits, but they're painful and less productive.

I may well try the reading aloud thing.

[Lynn Sholes]

I revise and revise. With a co-writer it means more eyes on the draft, but it also means twice the revision because we each see it again over and over. Even at the end, when the deadline is in my face, I know it is never as good as it could be.
Who was it that said it takes a million words to get all the crap out?

[Ken Schneider]

Originally Posted by blacbird

This is soooo true. I've become really good at bad writing. I write more badly now than I ever could have when I started.

caw

You're so bad.
Welcome, Lynn.

[Lilybiz]

Originally Posted by bsolah

I may well try the reading aloud thing.

You must! It's the best, a way to find things you'd never find otherwise. A great tool.

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

Thanks, everyone. The one suggestion out of all this stellar advice that's ringing most true to me right now is to write with an outline/flowchart. I've never before really needed outlines to complete a first draft of a story, but I can remember times when in very specific cases coming up with a storytelling structure got me moving again--turned it from the impossible task of creating clay from void into a more pleasing and plausible fill-in-the-blank.

I think I'm going to turn to structural devices as a regular process, rather than a special case fix, at least for now. Someone said "Get the big picture"--I think I've been losing sight of the big picture lately and just getting stuck in "how am I going to get this scene out of my head and onto the paper?" or "how the heck am I going to fix this stupid paragraph?"

To Try Tomorrow...

[J.S Greer]

Originally Posted by James D. Macdonald

That's my attitude. If the topic has worth, it'll stay on the first page. If it doesn't -- people who are interested can still search while other, more interesting, topics move to the head of the line.

Fair enough.

[James D. Macdonald]

The goal isn't to write badly -- the goal is to ignore the saboteur in the back of your head that's trying to stop you by saying "This is lousy! Give up!"

[Lilybiz]

Originally Posted by NicoleJLeBoeuf

Thanks, everyone. The one suggestion out of all this stellar advice that's ringing most true to me right now is to write with an outline/flowchart. I've never before really needed outlines to complete a first draft of a story, but I can remember times when in very specific cases coming up with a storytelling structure got me moving again--turned it from the impossible task of creating clay from void into a more pleasing and plausible fill-in-the-blank.

I think I'm going to turn to structural devices as a regular process, rather than a special case fix, at least for now. Someone said "Get the big picture"--I think I've been losing sight of the big picture lately and just getting stuck in "how am I going to get this scene out of my head and onto the paper?" or "how the heck am I going to fix this stupid paragraph?"

To Try Tomorrow...

My husband outlines like crazy. He drafts his outline over and over again, until it's perfect. He uses an entire wall to put it up where he can see it. He's meticulous--color-coding A plot vs. B & C plots in one draft, then in the next draft he color-codes where his MC is active vs. passive, etc. This is just his outline. He makes sure everything's working before he writes a draft, which he says is like just "unfolding the outline." By then he's already written several scenes, because he can see them like anyone else can. He plugs them into the outline and "unfolds" it. His first drafts are like most people's fifth or sixth.

His outline will go through 15 or 20 drafts before he's ready to write, but by then he knows all his characters' motivations, all his plot points are in order, and his loose ends are tied up.

I'm not as patient as he is. I wrote my first draft just to get it on paper. It's full of junk, but there's stuff in it I wanted to use. So I took his idea and wrote an outline to put up on the wall. It changes as I go along, but I could see where I could cut, where I needed filling in, etc.

I can also see where I'm going!

Next time, though, I'll be more meticulous and outline more carefully. Slow and steady wins this race.

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

Now that's, um, detail-oriented, aerteP! I can't swear I've ever gotten quite that fixated. But...

Very recently I played with the Celtic Knot thing in order to give myself some ideas about where my NaNoWriMo novel might go, and while I did get some insight into character dynamics from it, I also got a little distracted making curly shapes with Adobe Illustrator. Also got stuck a little trying too hard to adhere to what the artwork was doing. The trick, I think, is to abandon a tool once it has served its purpose (cf. Buddhist anecdote about carrying rafts around). My attention got refocused on how the characters' actions affect the goals of other characters, which was good. But sticking with it too long, I risked getting obsessed with "No! Blue line goes over green line, so I have to have another scene in which..." which was bad.

The best specific example of structure saving my butt that I can remember is a story I was writing on deadline (college assignment) that just wasn't coming out. My premise was not turning into a story. Once I made the decision that I'd have one scene per day of week, suddenly not only was deciding what happened in those scenes easier, but I had some extra thematic weight materialize along the way to do with Good Friday and Easter Sunday and Going Back To Work On Monday. So.

The story I'm working on now has a structure already, a sort of fairy tale 3-repetitions/variations-of-basic-action thing, and I think it's been bogged down in my head by Too Many Ideas. I've set it in my home neighborhood, full of setting details and childhood memories to pillage, and I've got about three different directions the "how does it work" of the what-if can go. I think outlining it on paper will help me better define the story and so cull out the ideas, memories, and details that don't serve it.

[Lilybiz]

Yeah, well, Freud would have loved us.

[paritoshuttam]

Sample this:
"Sooner or later, he had to get out into the cold, mean streets, but right now, he was not getting out of his cosy bed."

My confusion is, is it ok to use "right now", or should I use "right then" in the sentence above? On similar lines, in a narrative passage in the past tense, should I use "that day" for "today", or "the previous day" for "yesterday"?

The writing sounds stiff-y when I avoid using "now" or "today". My grammar is getting all messy.

- Paritosh

[retterson]

Originally Posted by paritoshuttam

Sample this:
"Sooner or later, he had to get out into the cold, mean streets, but right now, he was not getting out of his cosy bed."

My confusion is, is it ok to use "right now", or should I use "right then" in the sentence above? On similar lines, in a narrative passage in the past tense, should I use "that day" for "today", or "the previous day" for "yesterday"?

The writing sounds stiff-y when I avoid using "now" or "today". My grammar is getting all messy.

- Paritosh

IMHO: "Sooner or later, he had to get out onto the cold, mean streets [and do what?], but for now, he wasn't going getting out of his warm, clean sheets."

I think it should be "for now."

[allenparker]

Jim wrote:

"That's my attitude. If the topic has worth, it'll stay on the first page. If it doesn't -- people who are interested can still search while other, more interesting, topics move to the head of the line."

Although I am just a bear of little brains who likes to eat hunny from a jar, I see the jar half full.

Any topic that weathers such a lengthy time in the forums as this one has, should be scrutinized for its content. If the content is universal, timely, and filled with useful information so that the forum would suffer severely from the demise of the thread, you stickyize the thing.

The point is that threads fall from temporary importance for saeveral reasons. Often, the reason is that another thread is momentarily a hot topic and needs to be found at the top of the list for a short time. Other times, you may have a bountiful array of useless threads that occupy the top spots.

In any event, this thread serves a purpose to many people on AW and parts unknown to the AW world.

Just a thought from the palatially sticky hunny futon... awp.

[Dawn R]

Originally Posted by James D. Macdonald

You can't make a vase if you don't have the clay on your wheel.

Thanks Uncle Jim. I needed that. Am going to print it out and pin it on the wall right in front of my computer.

[lfraser]

Originally Posted by NicoleJLeBoeuf

Thanks, everyone. The one suggestion out of all this stellar advice that's ringing most true to me right now is to write with an outline/flowchart.

This advice has really helped me, too.

I spent much of the last two days outlining the first half of my novel, and by putting each chapter into a discrete section and analysing exactly what I see happening in each, I managed to tighten up the story line considerably, clarify where I was going, and understand what motivates each of the main characters.

Where it helped the most was in discovering where my logic and plotting were faulty and where I had written long segments for the sake of the prose and not because the segment was appropriate to either the character or to the plot. When you summarize a chapter in two or three paragraphs, any lack of forward movement quickly becomes evident.

Now that I've done the summary, I'm finding it much easier to delete prose I wanted to hang onto just because it read reasonably well.

Thanks.