A place to discuss the craft of writing: tricks, philosophies, styles

[StillStunned]

fewer and fewer people who will get PG Wodehouse references

What the well-dressed man is wearing? Prize for Scripture Knowledge? Rosie Banks?

 

[Dearelliot]

I slept through most of my English/Grammar classes, and I'm not a wordsmith by any means, can't remember words and I need the Power Thesaurus. So...for me it's a little harder, I have to write and rewrite...and rewrite. I use Grammarly for the damn commas, and I appreciate the help I get here on Lit from those who know.
But I love to write, I love my characters and love to guide them through a story. They sit on my shoulder and read along as I write, whispering in my ear..."Wait a minute! I'd never do that."

 

[onehitwanda]

https://storage.googleapis.com/hippostcard/p/e1effa3f57121061be24d4950955d4c7.jpg


When I started writing, I didn't really know all the rules. In fact, I thought a lot of the rules were old fashioned, outdated. Style was what counted, and style trumped rules.

And I was mostly right. But when I look back at my early stuff, I often cringe, not because it's badly written, particularly, but because I can see how it could have been better. Because the fact is, you need to know the rules before you can break them successfully.

The illustration above is a painting titled Portrait of the Artist's Mother. It is an example of what was considered good, by the rules, portraiture in the late 19th Century.

The artist is Pablo Picasso. Before he broke all the rules, he had learned them.

Picasso and Dali are the two I always think about.

 

[StillStunned]

Picasso and Dali are the two I always think about.

And Mondriaan. A very accomplished painter before he ventured into abstract art.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I can't imagine not putting in Easter Eggs - it's like a little reward to myself. As far as I know not one person has spotted one yet as there are no comments about it. I am aware that a lot of stuff I throw in is very obscure, and these days there are fewer and fewer people who will get PG Wodehouse references. I enjoy a lot of the research for the references, too - like finding out who had the best selling 78 in the UK in 1911.

This is exactly the type of stuff I do.

For example - in my story for the On the Job reference, I researched the phases of the moon for the exact date the ship was going to be in a certain part of the world, latitude and longitude wise, so that when I said "...It was a bright night, the stars were high and clear in the sky, and the moon was full." if somebody looked up the date and time and asked for the moon phase, the moon was full and just barely waning that night.

Nobody is that OCD (well, probably not) but that's the kind of stuff that I like to get right in there because it helps me feel like I've done my homework and made the story more real.

 

[8letters]

First off - make sure you are consistent with your character names. I read a story today where the mom's name was Jenny for the first 2 1/2 chapters, then, in the middle of the third chapter, it became Karen, and then it alternated between Jenny and Karen until the mom left the story. It's an incredibly glaring and irritating mistake.

 

[8letters]

Secondly - you can call this advice or a plea or whatever - please don't make your plot a straight line. In so many stories I read, I can read the first half of the first page and then skip to the final sex scene and not miss anything. Please, give your characters an arc and throw in some plot twists to make reading beyond the first half of the first page worthwhile. Oh, and start your story with an interesting scene that puts obstacles before the characters that they must overcome before they hop into the sack.

Please don't do
Alice and Bob meet at a party. Alice has massive tits, and Bob is hung like a horse. They are immediately attracted to each other. At the end of the story, they fuck.

Please do
Alice is rushing across a hotel to get to her presentation at a conference. She physically runs into Bob and drops all her papers. Bob kneels down and helps her gather all her papers while talking very politely with her. Alice thanks him before rushing off to her presentation. When the presentation is done, she realizes that in her folders is one of Bob's, and it looks very important. At the end of the story, Alice and Bob fuck.

 

[HordHolm]

What the well-dressed man is wearing? Prize for Scripture Knowledge? Rosie Banks?

I've just stuck Eulalie Soeurs in a WIP.

 

[MelissaBaby]

A few months ago, in another thread, someone said that they had run some of my stories through AI for analysis, because they wanted to figure out how to write like I do. (I told them I was uncomfortable with that and they were gracious and said they would not do it anymore.) AwkwardMD made the very astute observation that, rather than use AI they could just ask me. I responded and said that my one piece of advice to anyone who wanted to learn from my writing was that they cultivate empathy.

I’ve thought more about that and I realize that it is in fact the key to everything I do, not just as a writer, but as a wife and a friend, in my work and in how I try to live my daily life.

That wasn’t always the case. I started writing seriously at a time when I was trying to pull myself up from the lowest ebb of a troubled life. I had a Tumblr account and I wrote essays about substance abuse, about incarceration, about my relationship with my mother, and about the entanglement of my sexuality and my addiction.

That last point is why, when I got up the courage to turn my experiences into a somewhat fictionalized memoir and present it to a wider audience than the couple of hundred people who followed my Tumblr, I brought it to Literotica. I didn’t know anywhere else that might publish it.

I titled it My Fall and Rise. People often flip it to the more common expression, “rise and fall,” but the story is not about the fall. It’s about the rise. People who fall and don’t rise seldom get to tell their stories. I hoped that if I told mine, made this public allocution, my demons would have less power over me.

As I was writing, I assumed it was a one and done. But the process of writing, of expressing myself; finding the right word, conveying the right emotion, was affirming, empowering. And while the story didn’t reach a lot of readers, many of those it did reach were the right readers. I received comments and DM’s and emails from people telling me how much my story was like their own or how it helped them better understand someone close to them. And I found other writers here, who encouraged me to nurture my talents.

But of all the reactions I received, one comment stood out. It staggered me when I read it and it stays with me now, almost eight years later. The commenter said that My Fall and Rise was “the story of a young woman who feels empathy for everyone else, but has to learn to have it for herself.”

I recognized that truth. Empathy without self regard can be dangerous. It can become, “It’s my fault he hits me.” It can become, “I’m not worthy of their love.”

I read that comment and I realized that by writing my story, I had found it within myself to let go of guilt and regret.

I continued to write and it became one of the most important things in my life. Yes, I’m aware that some might say, “Well, you just found another addiction,” and there may be a kernel of truth to that, but I also found a man who loved me unconditionally. I found that I was capable of going to college and succeeding. Eventually, to find a career that fulfills me.

I described my second project, Mary and Alvin, as “the biography of a relationship,” but more than anything, it was an exploration of empathy. I spent the next three years with those characters, and I put them through many of the situations we encounter in our lives, from falling in love to losing those close to us. There were births and deaths and family fights and nights singing together around the campfire. And every word of it came from a place of empathy for each character, whether it was the leads or someone they met in an incidental encounter. That’s the heart of my philosophy of writing, a standard of “character care” I have tried to maintain ever since.

Cultivate empathy by actively observing and listening to those around you, whether they are your significant other, your rival at work, or the worker at the drive through window. Try to imagine how they see themselves. Remind yourself that they have hopes and concerns and dreams like you do, that they are the center of their own universe. Try to understand them, and if you can’t, try to understand why not.

Will doing that make you a better person? Yeah, probably, but that ain’t my concern. I’m here to tell you that it will make you a better writer. When you apply the fruits of all that observation to your characters, they will come alive in your heart, then in your words, and then in the minds of your readers. AwkwardMD has said that my characters “shine” and I don’t know just what she means by that, but I think she senses the empathy that went into their creation.

Cultivate empathy for your readers. They are not just customers or consumers. Think of your interaction with them as a shared experience. Somewhere, right now, a young couple are sharing the hot parts of one of our stories to turn each other on. Someone is reading a tender romance to their lover of many decades. Someone is reclined on their couch, shedding tears as she recognizes your character's sorrow, while another reader is sitting at the corner table in a coffeehouse, smiling gleefully at the clever turn of your plot.

You are there with them. Respect that. Honor that.

Cultivate empathy for yourself. This is often the hardest to do, as I well know. Write to express yourself, or write just for kicks. Whatever brings you satisfaction. It’s not a competition, there is no objective standard of success. As someone said earlier, if you write, you’re a writer. Take pride in that. Treat yourself to an ice cream or something.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I think that's the longest post I've ever made here...

 

[NotWise]

I think that's the longest post I've ever made here...

Nice piece, too.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Nice piece, too.

Me? Or the post?

 

[NotWise]

Me? Or the post?

No first-hand experience with you. We'll have to get in touch with your husband.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I think that's the longest post I've ever made here...

Also one of the most profound. Kudos, Melissa.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

Cultivate empathy for your readers. They are not just customers or consumers. Think of your interaction with them as a shared experience. Somewhere, right now, a young couple are sharing the hot parts of one of our stories to turn each other on. Someone is reading a tender romance to their lover of many decades. Someone is reclined on their couch, shedding tears as she recognizes your character's sorrow, while another reader is sitting at the corner table in a coffeehouse, smiling gleefully at the clever turn of your plot.

I love this, and I agree that this is exactly what I imagine when folks are reading some of my stuff.

At the same time, I have a hard time finding empathy for some of the folks who write nasty stuff in comments. I know they probably need it the most, but I know I’m not a saint, lol.

 

[HordHolm]

I think empathy is a very under-appreciated quality pretty much everywhere, though sometimes we do see it in the most unexpected places.

One element of empathy I think goes along with the points @MelissaBaby was making, though a step or two behind, is the idea of kindness to readers. Part of that kindness, I think, is having enough technical ability to make the reading experience smooth. That needn't mean knowing every style book inside out, and rigorously applying every grammar rule, but it should mean giving enough clarity that the reader doesn't have to re-read something three times just to work what in the f is going on.

I have been thinking about this, and one point I would make is to try to rein in run-on sentences. I can be as (if not more) guilty of this as anyone - a legacy of academic writing. But once I began to correct other peoples' academic writing for publication it began to drive me crazy. Academics (not all, but many. Most, perhaps) have a horrible tendency not to let sentences end, ever. And to embed sentences within sentences within sentences until I'm reaching for the neurofen. These days, when I get a piece to edit I'm reading with a big ol' bag of full stops to spread like bounty over the work. Sentences don't have to be two clauses long, and no more or the wrath of the editor shall descend, but please, no more than about four, and even then please use sparingly. There's nothing like starting a new paragraph, either...

I'm not suggesting that embeds and run-ons are a particular problem here - in fact, my reading experience points to this being far, far less of a problem here than in academic writing. But it is still something to bear in mind.

 

[Bluesea00]

A few months ago, in another thread, someone said that they had run some of my stories through AI for analysis, because they wanted to figure out how to write like I do. (I told them I was uncomfortable with that and they were gracious and said they would not do it anymore.) AwkwardMD made the very astute observation that, rather than use AI they could just ask me. I responded and said that my one piece of advice to anyone who wanted to learn from my writing was that they cultivate empathy.

I’ve thought more about that and I realize that it is in fact the key to everything I do, not just as a writer, but as a wife and a friend, in my work and in how I try to live my daily life.

That wasn’t always the case. I started writing seriously at a time when I was trying to pull myself up from the lowest ebb of a troubled life. I had a Tumblr account and I wrote essays about substance abuse, about incarceration, about my relationship with my mother, and about the entanglement of my sexuality and my addiction.

That last point is why, when I got up the courage to turn my experiences into a somewhat fictionalized memoir and present it to a wider audience than the couple of hundred people who followed my Tumblr, I brought it to Literotica. I didn’t know anywhere else that might publish it.

I titled it My Fall and Rise. People often flip it to the more common expression, “rise and fall,” but the story is not about the fall. It’s about the rise. People who fall and don’t rise seldom get to tell their stories. I hoped that if I told mine, made this public allocution, my demons would have less power over me.

As I was writing, I assumed it was a one and done. But the process of writing, of expressing myself; finding the right word, conveying the right emotion, was affirming, empowering. And while the story didn’t reach a lot of readers, many of those it did reach were the right readers. I received comments and DM’s and emails from people telling me how much my story was like their own or how it helped them better understand someone close to them. And I found other writers here, who encouraged me to nurture my talents.

But of all the reactions I received, one comment stood out. It staggered me when I read it and it stays with me now, almost eight years later. The commenter said that My Fall and Rise was “the story of a young woman who feels empathy for everyone else, but has to learn to have it for herself.”

I recognized that truth. Empathy without self regard can be dangerous. It can become, “It’s my fault he hits me.” It can become, “I’m not worthy of their love.”

I read that comment and I realized that by writing my story, I had found it within myself to let go of guilt and regret.

I continued to write and it became one of the most important things in my life. Yes, I’m aware that some might say, “Well, you just found another addiction,” and there may be a kernel of truth to that, but I also found a man who loved me unconditionally. I found that I was capable of going to college and succeeding. Eventually, to find a career that fulfills me.

I described my second project, Mary and Alvin, as “the biography of a relationship,” but more than anything, it was an exploration of empathy. I spent the next three years with those characters, and I put them through many of the situations we encounter in our lives, from falling in love to losing those close to us. There were births and deaths and family fights and nights singing together around the campfire. And every word of it came from a place of empathy for each character, whether it was the leads or someone they met in an incidental encounter. That’s the heart of my philosophy of writing, a standard of “character care” I have tried to maintain ever since.

Cultivate empathy by actively observing and listening to those around you, whether they are your significant other, your rival at work, or the worker at the drive through window. Try to imagine how they see themselves. Remind yourself that they have hopes and concerns and dreams like you do, that they are the center of their own universe. Try to understand them, and if you can’t, try to understand why not.

Will doing that make you a better person? Yeah, probably, but that ain’t my concern. I’m here to tell you that it will make you a better writer. When you apply the fruits of all that observation to your characters, they will come alive in your heart, then in your words, and then in the minds of your readers. AwkwardMD has said that my characters “shine” and I don’t know just what she means by that, but I think she senses the empathy that went into their creation.

Cultivate empathy for your readers. They are not just customers or consumers. Think of your interaction with them as a shared experience. Somewhere, right now, a young couple are sharing the hot parts of one of our stories to turn each other on. Someone is reading a tender romance to their lover of many decades. Someone is reclined on their couch, shedding tears as she recognizes your character's sorrow, while another reader is sitting at the corner table in a coffeehouse, smiling gleefully at the clever turn of your plot.

You are there with them. Respect that. Honor that.

Cultivate empathy for yourself. This is often the hardest to do, as I well know. Write to express yourself, or write just for kicks. Whatever brings you satisfaction. It’s not a competition, there is no objective standard of success. As someone said earlier, if you write, you’re a writer. Take pride in that. Treat yourself to an ice cream or something.

I fully agree with you. 100% . Actually I am just having coffee now.

 

[StillStunned]

I've decided to stop referring to a "muse", and instead call it the Plot Bunny. Like the Easter Bunny, it visits you to leave little gifts, although sometimes you stumble across them in strange places.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

1 ~ Learn the rules. As MelissaBaby said on page 1 (and can not be said better so I will just repeat), the best writing bends and breaks the rules. If you do not know the rules of setting, plot character, rising action, climax, all that jive, how will you know all the best moments to bend and/or break them or by how much?

2 ~ Characters are more real when they act for logical reasons. Readers will connect to the characters more easily when this happens. This is motive. Make your plot driven by the motive(s) of the character(s). Avoid excuses for spectacle. Want your characters to fuck in public? Give them a reason to that's more than just a kink for public sex. Make them fuck in front of exes for jealousy/spite or something. Give a good reason for the car chase, the fuck scene, for the big 'splosion that makes sense for the characters to get into or put themselves into that situation for that spectacle to happen.

3 ~ Don't stop when you're stuck. Jump around your plot chronologically and fill in the gaps later. If you are more of a pantser and jumping around is difficult for you, then edit/proof what you have. Just be doing something to get it closer to the finish line, especially if it is a longer story.

4 ~ Getting better is a choice. "The more that you write, the better you will get," is not exactly true. Your experience will give you a choice - to either improve, or to keep writing at the same level quicker and quicker and with less and less effort. There are many writers who write tons and never improve because they are happy with churning out the same stuff over and over in their sleep. If you want to get better, you must push yourself to try new things, new challenges, and it will always be an effort to break that new ground. If you want to be really good, the sweat never ever stops. The sweat only stops when you decide that you're good enough - it is a choice! And to be perfectly clear, there is no right or wrong here, just don't kid yourself.

5 ~ Stripped down to it's core, writing is simply conveying emotions to the reader through the page. The connection is made when the reader picks up and feels the emotions that you put down. If you are not feeling those emotions when you write, what are the chances that the reader will? Not likely. If you want the reader to cry, come up with ideas that might make yourself cry. If you want the reader to get pissed off, come up with ideas that might make yourself angry. If you want the reader to jump for joy, come up with ideas that fill your chest and make you want to shout (this is why literally, I love to write in solitude, no one will look at me funny if I suddenly jump out of my chair and sing "Wooo!" - yes, I do).

6 ~ You are creating a reading experience. The library is an amusement park and all of the books are rides. You are building a ride. You can never truly ride your own ride to full enjoyment because you know all of the twists and turns. So always remember that no matter how exciting your writing experience is, you cannot share it. You can only give a reading experience. The reader will not, cannot, and should not be expected to - care about how you wrote it, how long it took, how much sweat and tears went into it. The reader is just going to read, freely, wildly, no expectations. Try to give the reader the best reading experience that you can. Put it out there and let whatever happens happen.

7 ~ Learn where you are writing from. You will be writing from either your heart or your ego, almost certainly a combination of both. We all do. It's perfectly natural. If poor feedback, harsh criticism and a general lack of applause and scores discourages you from writing or hurts your inspiration, that is a sign (a dead giveaway actually) that your ego is involved more than you might want it to be. The heart only loves to create and to give. The heart is always inspired. The ego is only interested in selfish success. If you find that your ego is getting in the way, you can choose to push it further to the side and if you still love to write, you will write from the heart and the inspiration will start to flow again. Love and fear are opposites. Love is all-knowing (or at least has access to the all-knowing), and fear is an absence of knowing, so they are opposites. The heart taps into and gives from infinite pure love. The ego is finite, so it lives in fear. So write brave. Write fearless.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If you get stuck on a problem with the story you're writing, look around for a second problem and see if you can trick the two of them into taking care of one another.

"I want to write a sex scene in the Eiffel Tower but I have no idea why Johnny, backwoods farmer guy, would be there" plus "Mary feels too much like a doormat who's just following Johnny's lead" becomes "Mary gets it into her head to drag Johnny to Paris".

Of course there are plenty of ways to solve those two problems separately. But sometimes things like these turn into mental blocks where every solution I can come up with feels wrong, and then pitting those two blocks against one another and letting them solve one another somehow feels much more right. It also keeps the story feeling tighter: instead of having to introduce two new things to solve those two problems, one thing takes care of both.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

What a great thread to bookmark for future reference. A lot of great advice in here!

Less advice, but I'm always impressed by authors who inspire me with their clever turns of phrase. Those that can spin words without it feeling too showy. Those that can control the flow of their story while still imbuing their prose with style and personality.

 

[yowser]

I responded and said that my one piece of advice to anyone who wanted to learn from my writing was that they cultivate empathy.

Cultivate empathy for your readers. They are not just customers or consumers. Think of your interaction with them as a shared experience.

You are there with them. Respect that. Honor that.

Elegantly said, thank you.

I'm glad you mentioned empathy for the readers, a key piece to the whole business. The story-teller/listener, writer/reader relationship is ancient, one of those timeless marvels. I'm glad you said 'respect' too, an important aspect of this connection.

This complex relationship of writer and reader is symbiotic. Both sides have a stake in the telling. For me the best tales are one in which the writer demonstrates respect for the reader, and this is reciprocated by the reader's willingness to let the writer spin out the tale.

In the first case, the writer shows respect in multiple ways. Not being a wise-ass, or smarter-than-thou in presentation. There are exceptions to this, but the writer then has to be so virtuosic that the readers are willing to be played with and pawns in the adventure. But if the tale seems more designed to demonstrate the writer's brilliance or superiority, how smart and adept they are with the language or plot building, that usually means talking down to the reader, and it makes for a lousy feeling and poor communication.

The writer shows respect by leading the reader along carefully. The path(s) should orderly and well groomed, readers shouldn't be looking down at their feet worried about tripping up. Sound spelling, grammar, and clear prose let the reader feel they are in confident hands.

The reader shows respect by continuing to engage in the story, but this respect needs to be earned. The reader may have to think, and sometimes deal with difficult or complex narrative along the way, and that's fine if the effort is rewarded. The writer is saying 'are you with me?' and the reader says 'yes!' They're partners.

And readers, inevitably, bring their own lives to the story. They will notice things the writer perhaps didn't intend to convey. They will interpret characters in their own way. All of this is fine, and it's best if everyone realises this.

Remove respect from either side and you have a deficient experience, one worth improving as a writer on the next effort.

My salute to readers everywhere, who complete the circle, make our work whole.

 

[AG31]

Like a movie, like a film, very visual, uses all the senses.
Lots of observation, tiny details, what I call grace notes.

Underlines are mine.
I agree with most of your points, but I disagree a bit with these two, at least regarding your two most recent stories. In each I was struck by the power of ONE tiny detail that opens the story. In one, it's the crunching of stones (visual, somatic, and audial) as the MCs proceed down a walkway. We know nothing else about the setting. In the other, it's the detailed visual (and somatic?) description of a little piece of hardware. Again, we know nothing else about the setting except it's a hardware store. This intense focus prepares us to direct intense focus onto the characters being described in the story, again, with almost no attention to setting.

I didn't review any of your older stories to see how often this technique is used, but it was interesting (exciting?) enough to prompt me to post 2 or 3 threads here in AH.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I didn't review any of your older stories to see how often this technique is used, but it was interesting (exciting?) enough to prompt me to post 2 or 3 threads here in AH.

Those two stories are each 750 words, but illustrate the point, perfectly. I think if you read any other story of mine, you'd find a similar emphasis on tiny details, and the longer the story, the more the senses are deployed.

May I suggest you read the three vignettes that begin The Floating World, you'll find many similar small details. The moment (movement) a clock hand makes when it ticks; the passing of time observed in a shadow moving on the floor; the observation of the skin of a girl's belly, or the dark dusk of hair on her arm.

As an aside, "all the senses" comes from several comments about various stories, making me realise I did that. But I never deliberately think, it's time to invoke another sense now, it's much more an subconscious thing, bringing the senses into play.

 

[AG31]

Those two stories are each 750 words, but illustrate the point, perfectly. I think if you read any other story of mine, you'd find a similar emphasis on tiny details, and the longer the story, the more the senses are deployed.

May I suggest you read the three vignettes that begin The Floating World, you'll find many similar small details. The moment (movement) a clock hand makes when it ticks; the passing of time observed in a shadow moving on the floor; the observation of the skin of a girl's belly, or the dark dusk of hair on her arm.

As an aside, "all the senses" comes from several comments about various stories, making me realise I did that. But I never deliberately think, it's time to invoke another sense now, it's much more an subconscious thing, bringing the senses into play.

Ok, fair enough. But I still think the practise of using one intensely described detail in the opening of the scene, to get the reader in the intense focusing mood, is a tool that can be used to great advantage.