All That's Written

The Writing Process Part 3, the Beginning

This series of posts are to be understood as works of fiction. None of the persons, places or situations referenced herein are based on real life persons, places or situations, and any similarity between these mentioned and real life instances are completely coincidental.

And so, now we have the beginning. A good beginning is important, it will establish the rest of your story. But what is a beginning? Where do you begin?

To quote the famous Lewis Carroll: “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” But enough silliness, let’s begin in earnest with this.

When I sit down to write a story, I’m often puzzled as to where I should begin. If I so chose I could write out the main character’s whole life, starting from birth onward. But then there’s all this boring stuff before you get to the story that you’d want to skip (first words, watching TV, that vacation to the beach in which Julia's hair caught on fire, etc.). That won’t do. But where to begin?

You begin at the beginning. Your story has a certain point when it launches, the first in a series of connected events. That’s your beginning, and you have to make sure your audience 1) understands it, and 2) is interested in it. You can’t start midway of the epic battle that changed the course of the war and started the post-apocalyptic setting of your story, or if you do the reader has to be able to pick it up and easily understand what’s going on. I sometimes find when reading that the point in which the writer chose to start me off doesn’t make a lot of sense till I’ve read the first few pages, then go back and re-read. Please don’t do this, at least not if I have to read your book.

But keep it interesting. Starting three days before the battle that changed the war so you can understand why the battle happened, covering the battle in detail, then showing the events just after would make an interesting first chapter, but it would have to be done well. Starting before the war might be the subject of a sequel, but not a beginning. It’s really up to you all in all, you know your story better than I do.

If you feel compelled to start in a confusing place for the reader for the sake of the story, go right ahead. I would much prefer you start at a place in which the reader can understand and then fill in the confusin bits later once your reader has reality with the story, but the choice is yours. Making a point of comprehension will be better for your readers and better for you if you want me to write one of thyose kudos recommending your book on the back cover (i.e. I won't.).

That being said I have a number of confusing plots that will probably violate this once they are published anyway, so who's counting?

Anyway, there are a few things you want to establish with your opening. For instance, the main character. How does he think? What are his actions, his motivations, name, etc.

Another is the overall mood of the story, I mean you could write the opening of the story in a different style than the rest of the book, but would you want to? I wouldn’t, again up to you. If it were up to me I’d establish the feel of the story then and there.

And you also have to establish the scope of the story. Is it an account of how the civilization fell or how the relationship broke apart? Well, your beginning should focus on setting all that up for the reader also. You can have the book expand in scope later, such as Shogun where it starts with a ship pilot's desperate efforts to find safe land in a storm till eventually he's...no, know what? I'm not going to ruin it for you, suffice to say he's involved in bigger things by the end. So the scope of your story can change, but it starts at the beginning.

The beginning is where you get your readers from. You have a few pages to a chapter, tops, to get your reader interested. So it’s got to count and it’s got to pull them in. You probably have the most wonderful plot and the most breathtaking ending the literary world has ever seen, I beleive it, but you do want the readers to get to that part, right? Ok, so you need to write your opening with a view towards getting your reader interested in sitting down and reading it.

Now the best article on how to do this is one by L. Ron Hubbard, called ”Suspense”.* Read it and listen to what he has to say, he says it way better than I ever could. Another good article on beginnings in general is the one referenced in the last post by Orson Scott Card. You should read both of them.

All in all, if it doesn’t feel right to you, you can always do it over. That is one of the most important guide lines for your work, if it doesn’t feel good enough for you then it isn’t good enough. And the only other more important rule is, is it good enough for your readers?

CME

Note: This post is something of an opening for the two next posts, the Middle and the Ending. The question is, what have I begun and will my readers forgive me?

*http://writer.lronhubbard.org/page52.htm

The Writing Process Part 2, The Outline

This is the second in a series of posts about the writing process. These posts are not to be confused with fact, which would fall under non-fiction. Since it is very clearly understood that I almost never write non-fiction it shouldn’t be hard to correctly interpret this work.

When you have your idea for the story you’re about to write, it is now time for the outline.  Aren’t you glad there are so many steps between you and actually writing the story?

The outline is just a basic look at the story, its characters, what the plot’s about, maybe a chapter by chapter list. You do it so you can get the whole story down and know where you are going, and not get lost midway and wind up with a lot of plot-holes.  It is a snapshot of the whole world you are about to create.

It might go like:

Story: Web Log Midnight

Basic Idea: A man begins innocently down the road of blogging and slowly degenerates down into insanity. Hilarity and tragedy ensue.

Main Character: Chester Ellington, the hero and only character the readers ever meet, he is at the beginning a very normal and nice person with an amazing ability to write and at the end he is insane.

Chapter 1: He's calling his friend and saying he's starting a blog, his friend thinks he's insane.

Chapter 2: We read some of his blog. He usually writes about music or his life, job, friends, etc.

Chapter 3: He's missed some appointments and his friends haven't seen him for a bit, one calls and asks what's up. He says his attention has been on a lot of stuff going on in his life, plus this blog...

Chapter 4: We see more blog posts. The blog posts are getting better, he writes them with an intensity and dedicates a lot of time into each one. Also the posts are becoming more and more frequent, as he descends into the first bit of his madness.

Chapter 5: He breaks up with his girlfriend, a teary goodbye on both of their parts which is bitter and more than a bit ironic because it is done over the phone. Despite the fact that it's so teary he's being an asshole and doing it over the phone because of his preoccupation with writing, managing and promoting the blog.

Chapter 6: Now the insanity shows up in the blog itself a bit. He begins to write about blogs, as a blog is supposed to be about your life and his life is now almost completely blogging. He is making a lot of money doing this and decides to quit his job. He phones his boss and quits.

Chapter 7: Now he's blogging constantly. Hygiene, sleep and normal eating periods have been thrown out the window completely. He creates a website just so he can use it to direct more traffic to his blog. The only time he calls anyone is to order pizza or to tell everyone he knows about this blog.

Chapter 8: And, finally we have a strange shift of story. All of a sudden it's now through his friend Jason's viewpoint. He calls our main character Chester but gets no response. He's heading that way anyway and decides to drop by. He goes in with a spare key which is above the door and finds Chester dead at his computer, from a lack of food and sleep that finally did him in. End of story.

See, the best thing about an outline is it helps you clarify your story right from the get go. I actually had no idea what I was going to jot down for chapters 5 through 8, but as I went through the words came out.

So, a written outline can help you clarify the story, and it can also help you remember bits and pieces of it. You may forget how this or that part was supposed to go and, (refers back) aha! The cannibals were going to attack after the plane flies by without seeing our heroes, got it!

You don't have to stick to your outline 100%, actually you don't have to stick to any percentage of it. Orson Scott Card wrote the opening of Ender's Shadow four times before he found the right way to do it, scrapping the old and starting anew each time.* So you think the story should go in a different direction, so change the direction! Damn the outline, go ahead!

Now, I will leave you with one last thought, and that is this: you don't have to write an outline at all to write a story. Some people just don't, they prefer to figure it out as they write, and to write a bit and, hmmm, write some more, and well what if the earthquake happened just then, then write some more...you see they just roll with it. It's a matter of preference, do you like to have it all figured out or do you like to run with the story? That one's up to you.

Me you ask? I like both, I'll often write an outline but I also like just running with the story. I do a sort of hybrid of writing an outline and then generally disregarding it till the story is finished. Good fun, eh?

CME

Note: This post was written without the use of an outline. And now the author must retire due to unforeseen complications involving three cookies, loud speakers, a crash, and the number 6.

*http://hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/1998-10-29.shtml

The Writing Process Part 1: Inspiration

This will be the first in a series of posts about (you guessed it) the writing process. I’m not the first or the most qualified to speak on the subject. Then again, this isn’t really going to be a dissertation on how to write, this is my experience with the writing process. My only hope is that I leave you at best a little bit more informed, and at least a little bit more amused. With that said, let’s get started!

Before you write you need something to write about. You need an idea. So that’s step one.

This is the same as regular conversation, actually. You get an idea and you say it to the person. You don’t just go on jabbering without any point (I hope) but you have something to communicate. So it is with writing.

Inspiration is a very funny thing. It strikes at odd moments. You are sitting there with nothing on your mind or your bored or your out for a walk or whatever and suddenly inspiration comes knocking. Wham! Where did that come from?

That’s how it is for me, I’m not doing anything and I get an idea for a story. Specifically it most often happens when I’m doing something unrelated. I once got an idea for a story while looking up a word in a dictionary; actually I think that happened twice. Another time I got an idea for a story looking out at a city at night. I wrote a poem inspired by my glasses being broken and how different it was without them.

There was one time when I was just sitting there and a poem started writing itself in my head, and I had to write it down. Well I would write down a bit and I hardly had to think before the next bit came to mind. After a bit of editing and retouch it was done, all in all it took about twenty minutes. I got an award for that poem; that was one of my favorites. But to this day I had no idea what inspired that poem, it was just out of the blue!

So you need an idea. And I'm not just talking about getting some great story in mind, what's the idea behind the story? Why tell that story? Now don't get all introverted and defensive as to why your story should be told, it's a really good one. I'm the first to think so. But it needs a point, a purpose, something to make it worth while for the reader.

You can have the greatest plot ever, just an intricate masterpeice, but just a plot, no message behind it. And no one's going to read that, just no one. That's not just opinion (well yes it is, but shush), think and see if you can come up with one really great story that didn't have a message behind it? Uh-huh, told ya, story needs a message.

So how do you get inspired anyway?

As a writer you aren’t limited in your scope of what you can write about. There aren’t any limits. Why, I have confidence that you, this very minute, could sit down and find something and have it inspire you, no matter what it was. You could pick out something, anything, in the room and write a story about it, just get the plot and the message behind it and have it be a really good one and it wouldn't take you any time at all to do. You could do this, your imagination’s the only limit and imagination muscles were meant to be stretched every once in awhile!

Some of my favorite things to do to get inspired:

1. See some really great art! Nothing like it, get your hands on some real awe-inspiring stuff. Just take your breath away kind of works. A really great painting, or a song, or a story, whatever it is. Obviously you don't steal the other person's work, but you can get some really great inspiration this way.

My favorite story is Alice In Wonderland. Great story, all about a world completely created by a little girl which has the most fun and insouciant attitude I've ever seen. Wonderful stuff, I apply that attitude to life, of creating my own world based on my ideas, because it makes life more fun and encourages me to use my imagination when I write. The story inspires me to create, on and off the printed page, and so I call it my favorite.

2. Get a good night's sleep! Ever had a dream, bizzare as it was, that gave you an idea? Or maybe during that point between waking and sleeping you suddenly get some inkling of a story line or something. Even more so, just writing on a full night's sleep can be a wondrous thing. Have you tried writing when you're dead tired? Yeah, sometimes you get inspiration striking at the weirdest times and you gotta sit down and write it out. Then again, after a good night's sleep you get the rest of it easy in your head and you find you can write it out clearly. Fully rested = clear head = good story = more pay for you as a writer!

3. Talk to your friends! Important, if your mind's all in a twist and you can't get your fingers to hit the keys then you gotta cheer up! Sure you could push through it, grind out the wordage till your gears get loose again. Then again, why suffer? If you have some friends who are writers, or even just friends, then go have a get together. This is great if you don't have any story on the drawing board, you can walk away with six or seven of em!

4. Take a walk! My personal favorite, by far. You get so much space this way, just go for a walk and look around. I'd say most of my ideas have come from this. There's nothing I like more than a good walk to clear out my universe and make it my own, especially at night.

In summary, go out, get inspired, get a good idea, make a story out of it. Hope I've inspired you.

CME

Note: This blog post was inspired by numerous great artistic works, a good night's sleep and the author's self-imposed deadline for updating his blog.

Grammar is Arbitrary!

This post, if they read it, will step on the toes of a lot of Grammarians, Linguistics Majors and English Professors.  But it’s fun to write anyway, so here goes.

Grammar is, essentially, arbitrary.  It has its place in formal communication and non-fiction writing, but in fictional writing and spoken communication it becomes, to a degree, arbitrary. That’s important; it’s not completely arbitrary, only to a degree.

Grammar: Noun

1.    The study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed.

2.    These features or constructions themselves.

3.    An account of these features; a set of rules accounting for these constructions.

Therefore:

1.    Assists communication in general to the degree it establishes a language and makes that language usable.

2.    Are useful to the degree they aid communication.

3.    Are useful to the extent they can be understood and to the degree they aid communication.

Now, I like grammar, I hate when I find I’ve written something that sounds like gibberish. As a matter of course I write with the best grammar possible.

However, we are dealing with fictional writing here, and there are times when Billy Joe is going to exclaim:

“Frank! Git the hos owt hea and rite quick! Little Jimmy been struck by a wolf an half bled hisself to death!”

Ok, ha ha, the characters in a story can or cannot use correct grammar, depending on what the author is trying to show about that character. And there are regional differences of language to take into account, accents, etc.

Well, what about the narrator? The writer has every right to go, himself, into character and throw correct and proper grammar out the window. You as a writer will use a different style to write a western than you do a romance (if you happen to write both westerns and romances), and the grammar you use will change, such as:

But Jenny couldn’t have…she couldn’t have been there last night.  He just couldn’t believe it…how could she?  His mind was numb, how…how could it…it couldn’t…how…

He finally managed to speak, a low and tortured plea,

“I-I c-c-can’t…Jenny…NOOO!!!!!”

Well!  That is a dramatic little piece of romance/suspense (I hope) that perfect grammar would have ruined!  For instance:

But Jenny couldn’t have been there last night.  Hank just couldn’t believe it.  His mind was numb in trying to conceive how.

He finally managed to speak, in a low and tortured plea:

“I don’t understand. Jenny,” he broke off mid sentence, “NOOOOO!!!!!”

Ugh. A reconstruction of the whole thing is necessary to convey it with proper grammar.  You see the problem, a distortion of the events, albeit slight, was necessary to communicate it! This is grammar getting in the way of communication, in which the author is trying to convey the present scene as perfectly as possible, but were he to use correct grammar he would have to nix a part or all of his idea. That’s a crime! That’s a perfectly good idea you’ve got there, why let grammar get in the way?

Now, I must say you need a very good grasp of the rules you are about to break to make it work. There’s no excuse for bad grammar! Being ignorant of a grammatical rule and breaking it; well let me tell you I would be as mortified as any Grammarian.  For instance, there is a rule about not using a conjunction to start a sentence, unless it is being used for emphasis or to make a point.  Example:

Benny didn’t know where or when he would get his revenge, how long it would take or if he could achieve it. It was impossible; he would never see them again.

But he made a vow that no matter how long it took, he would find them. Despite the odds, no matter what obstacles he was met with, HE WOULD FIND THEM!!

And, the counterpart using bad grammar:

Benny didn’t know where he would get his revenge. And he didn’t know when he would get his revenge. Or how long it would take, or if he could achieve it. It was impossible. And he would never see them again.

BUT, he made a vow that no matter how long it took, he would find them. And despite the odds, no matter what obstacles he was met with, HE WOULD FIND THEM!!

That’s exaggerated; nobody breaks the rule that much. But after reading 100 pages of someone misusing their conjunctions it sure feels like it, and you put the guy’s book down and think “What a hack!” Believe me, the editor thinks so. It’s an important point, if you’re going to break a rule of grammar you have to know that rule inside out. You have to know what you’re trying to communicate and know it well.

That’s my maxim in writing, "You can break any rule, as long as you know the rule your breaking."

CME

Note: Eleven grammatical and/or spelling errors were brought to the attention of the author before they were fixed (including two in the making of this note). No spell checks, dictionaries, or other human, online or printed sources of grammatical information were harmed in the making of this post.

The Experiment

There we were. There were eight of us, all seated around these two tables we’d pushed together. I sat at one side, Forrest at the other. Forrest looks around and says something on the order of "Ok everyone, this is the game. We're going to, all of us, write a story together."

Instant uproar! "Oh, that won't work!" "But writing is supposed to be an individual thing!” etc. Interestingly both of these statements turned out true later, but let's continue.

So, we started an experiment. We wanted to find out if a group of writers could write a story together, and we wanted to know what they would turn out if they sat down and tried it. So, we tried it.

First, we had to decide how it would be done. All of us writing the thing in unison? Disaster, instantly struck down, we’d never agree and we’d have three viewpoints all deciding what was next. Nix. One person writes one section then the next person? Well, see we'd already tried that, one person does a paragraph then passes the story to the next person. Fun, but it didn't produce much of a story and we wanted to try something different.

"Well, how about one person is in charge of one aspect of the story and the next person handles another aspect?" That was clever old me. This got some agreement, not total agreement but after about ten minutes of discussion we actually moved on to the next thing. Progress! We'd begun!

Second, what's it gonna be about? After hearing several suggestions (all at the same time) we decided to put it to a vote. We started going through the genres, 1 for mystery, no votes for air story (as in war planes and such), and no votes for romantic (8 people writing a love story?  Ugh!). Sci-fi got two votes if I remember right, western got half the votes (if you're wondering at this point, anyone can vote as many times as possible). Marine story, unanimous! Well, some people were half-heartedly voting for this one but they did vote, so with that we had a winner.

Now we went in for a bit more clarification on the subject of the thing. Would it be a submarine suspense story? An above water story? Some kind of sci-fi water civilization story? Well sci-fi/water got a nope. Underwater wasn't too popular. Above water was the deal, and somebody suggested a kind of aquatic/western deal. Approval!

So, with about half (maybe) of the group in relative complacency and the others at least not voicing their objections we had figured on an Aquatic story written in a kind of western style where each of us eight peoples would write each a different aspect of the story. So far so good.

Now we start getting some dissent. “What now?” “You know I don't think this is going to work.” “How was the thing you went to the other day?” Basically, actually confronting sitting down and doing it was going to be tough, on all of us. We started wondering if it would be better if each of us controlled a different aspect or each of us controlled a different character. Who would control the main character? Then we started debating whether or not the idea could work in the first place, and the conversation broke up into about three separate conversations. Back to square one.

Then Forrest saved the day! Why not have one world where there would be seven characters (each controlled by one of us) and he would be the one over all in control of the rest of the world, though we could give him ideas at any time.

We were skeptical, role-playing? However, this was by far the most popular suggestion and it allowed us to each have a story and character of our own while contributing to an overall story. So, we got down to work.

Forrest started explaining the basics of the world he had invented, we were able to get out a basic map and basics on the different races and such. We got it all pretty well worked up by the end, then people had to be leaving. But, the important part is that we got more work done in half an hour then we had in the previous hour and a half, and this was going to be a group story.

Conclusion: Experiment successful or un-successful? Yes and no. Writing a group story is a fun thing to try and undertake if you want to know what a headache feels like or it's been too long since your last one. Was our compromise a success? We’ll see. By the end of this we’ll either have seven stories or seven headaches.

CME

Note: I only just realized that this post is going up on September 11th.  Perhaps some of my favorite literature out there would be the documents that shaped the birth of this great nation, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Pledge of Allegiance.  I think everyone should take some time to read them and think on how they, as individuals, can project the greatness of this country into the future; through their individual lives, their involvement in the community and the broader actions one can take which affect this country and the world as a whole.

Additional Note: I just re-read the short writings I displayed as "correct". They are not very good. They were written just off the cuff and for the purpose of the blog. Sorry!

Why write?

My name is Christopher Eberhard. Whenever I introduce myself to people, I say that I’m a writer. When you introduce yourself to different people, you may change your introduction just slightly to whatever they consider most real, whoever the person you’re talking to. But for me, whatever else I say, and whoever I say it to, I tell them I’m a writer.

So what does that mean? I know a fair amount of people who say this of themselves (that they’re a writer), for some it’s true for some not. Well, here’s why I say I’m a writer.

 

I write.

 

Yeah, yeah, there is more to it than that. I have a job with an independent internet marketing site, realwebmarketing.net. I’m learning the ropes. I could go on with this and make some money, internet marketing, and I could do this for a living. For some that’s enough. For me, it’s not enough. I’m young and restless so someone with more experience can dissuade me of my stupid notions but here I am saying it anyway. Money isn’t enough for me.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to money. I want to make money, by writing. I want that to be the thing I do in life. Still, I really just want the money so I can comfortably keep writing, so why am I writing in the first place?

 

Simple, I like to create. I like to create another world that others can step into. I like making a new viewpoint that challenges how a person thinks. I like making an inspirational work that has the power to uplift. I know I can do these things.

 

That’s exciting for me, and that’s why I write. I can’t help but strive towards this; the urge to create these things is borne in me too deep.

 

I also want to help other writers write. You know, if you got started in a business where other people who were already successful at it lent a hand to you and helped you out with the basics and encouraged you to keep trying, that would be a very good scene. I want writing to be like that, I want to encourage others to write and receive that encouragement. I think we’d all benefit if the arts were more accessible to the common man. Imagine if you could be successful in one of the fields of the arts, singing, writing, dancing, acting, painting, etc., would you do it? The arts should be for everyone.

 

Good idea? Well good, this blog is my first action in this direction. Read it, hear what I have to say about it, and let me know about your thoughts on this business of writing.

 

CME