Standing Out: Writing that breaks the rules

When clarity is at a premium, dull writing has it's place. I do not want instructions on how to use a parachute to be a great read. I want them to help me survive the drop from an airplane.

But, in a world full of distractions, fiction, opinion pieces, speeches, and manuscript queries, need to hook readers and keep them engaged. Take, for instance, the cover letter for a job. The Web is full of templates with logical structures. The advice to make your letter stand out centers on using keywords, focusing on capabilities, mentioning contacts, and being specific to the opportunity (rather than taking a generic approach).

Here's the opening of the last job letter I wrote:

Tuning phrases with an IBM VP while federal agents pulled the corporate jet apart for an hour was just part of 24 hours of no food, no sleep and no breaks. A major speech in front of skeptical clients dictated my flying to Toronto for a polish, then editing and reworking material on the flight down to Miami and finally rehearsal and revamping of charts into the morning. But the speech sold the idea of e-business and got good press.

It doesn't fit a template, but it's relevant -- providing a sense of my experience and how I work. It's not crazy. I did not provide a resume marked off to be folded into an origami swan. Within the body off the letter, I had the keywords for the job and explained why the job and the organization interested me. But I designed my letter to be intriguing and to stand apart from those of other applicants. I got the interview and the job.

Fiction writers know how important hooks and voice are to catching a reader's attention, but they can forget. The amateur manuscripts I read (and some in print, too) often seem to be manufactured from a model aimed at delivering required information within the first pages. In some cases, you could map the chapter of one book onto the chapter of another point by point. In the effort to get it right, the story is forgotten. The elements -- including the hook -- can feel contrived.

How do you write work that stands out?

• Relax -- Reliance on the tried and true is based on anxiety. Ironically, the more you want the writing to achieve your aims, the more you are likely to fall back on formulas, formats, and rules that promise success. Take a deep breath and put that all aside, at least at the beginning.
• Have fun -- Telemarketers are encouraged to smile as they make their pitches. Supposedly, you can hear a smile over the phone. Likewise, the emotions you have as you write usually come through.
• Be bad -- In both senses. Be willing to write poorly as you compose, and to risk revealing your dark side. The former can be fixed. The latter may be what the reader is looking for.
• Tell a secret -- Truth or dare, baby. Write what you don't want the reader to know. If they'd lean in to hear it, you might have something worth keeping.
• Cut -- The most common thing I see in manuscripts is the true voice emerging around page 15. It's almost always worth listening to.  But after all those pages of throat clearing, prettied up language, and "what the reader needs to know," how many readers are still around?
• Play -- Mess with the order. Run a scene past the ending. Slip in some poetry. Write from a different point of view. Do things that delight you even though they may be cut. Even if the experimentation doesn't make the final copy, it influences everything else for the better.
• Trust your reader -- Don't explain everything. Imply. Hint. Wink. Do something you know you won't get away with. Yes, some readers won't get it. Those aren't your readers.
• Make it different -- If it reads like everything else, change it up. You make it stand out by making it yours.
• Check for clarity after it's done -- When you are happy with your work, let someone else read it and ask them if anything confused them. You might also ask if they wanted to put it down at some point.
• Review -- Now you might want to pull out your formats and templates and rules. Chances are, you'll find your writing does the job. It may even include, in its own way, everything that's "required."

Obviously, fiction, which must provide an emotional experience, can take advantage of this advice to stand out. So can memoir. And queries. So should the bio you include with queries. Electrify, defy, annoy, disgust, charm, and arouse. Don't bore.

Writing Fast - The Jungle Red Writers discussion

Hi, all
I'm guest posting this week on Jungle Red Writers, entering into the discussion of the benefits and pitfalls related to writing faster.

HTWF #200! Best Advice on Productive Writing

In just over two years, I’ve posted 200 entries to this blog. To mark this milestone, I’d like to celebrate some of the advice I’ve gotten that has helped me become a more productive writer:

Write, Don’t Think – Isaac Asimov spoke at my university back when I was about twenty years old. He said that aspiring writers should rush the pages through the typewriter as quickly as they dared. It took the deadlines of radio, almost a decade later, for me to get a good understanding of what he meant. It didn’t mean composing in stream of consciousness mode or getting sloppy. It meant writing without long pauses, without searching too long for a word, without questioning myself too much, and without ducking away for research.

Don’t Confuse Writing with Writerly Things – Kristan Higgins offered a key insight on a time waster. When you write regularly, it should be actual work on the manuscript. This is especially important in a world where promotion, networking, and other career-oriented activities can fill writing time. But it also applies to other activities (such as research) that can eat up writing time.

Screw Them – Harlan Ellison said this less politely, but blowing off the naysayers or even using anger toward them as a prompt to write more and better can be helpful. It might even be worthwhile to post a note in big block letters in your writing area or someplace else (refrigerator?) you’re likely to see it often.

Take Notes in Full Sentences – I never met Ray Bradbury, but this suggestion of his has been an amazing timesaver for me. I no longer waste hours trying to figure out I meant by short phrases and individual words marked down on the back of receipts.

Voice Shows Up When You Write Fast – This might not be the exact phrasing, but Liz Pelletier said something akin to this when I attended a workshop with her this summer. I think it’s true. Too often, labored prose reads like someone other than yourself or comes out in a bland anonymous voice. (Perhaps one that would please your high school English teacher.) Going full throttle releases something new, and that is a (sometimes disturbing) expression of the inner you, unfiltered. It accepts risks.

I wish I could give credit to some of my other productivity standbys – using a timer, writing a goal sentence the day before, replacing a word that won’t come with “bagel,” and many more included in these pages. With each of these, I’ve either forgotten the source or come up with them myself (probably reinventing the wheel). 

... I've also gotten terrific advice that's less directly involved with productivity, such as guidance on character development and structure and choosing topics and refining ideas. Not to mention much needed encouragement. Writing is truly a community activity, with many generous hands contributing.

But I’m glad I can take advantage of this post to credit a few people and thank them for advice I’ve both benefited from and been able to share with readers and students.

Fish Out of Water: Worldbuilding contemporary stories

Hi, all. I did an entry (associated with my upcoming course) for the Savvy Authors blog. Here's how it begins...

Science fiction and fantasy writers have no excuse for not making every page compelling and original. They have a universe (or multiverse) of possibilities. If you’re writing a contemporary story, it can be a lot harder to find ways to discover points of interest in setting that are filled with the commonplace and familiar. But you can borrow techniques from speculative writers to make even the most humdrum locale imaginative and enticing.

For more, go to the Savvy Authors site.
http://savvyauthors.com/blog/index.php/fish-out-of-water-worldbuilding-contemporary-stories-by-peter-andrews

Notes to Yourself: Collecting treasures for your writing

I like the quirky. The unexpected. The anomalies. Fun facts were made for me, and they spice up any novel I read. Often that means that I spend long hours hunting down details online, and chasing down the truth and its context.

I suspect many readers love to stumble across oddities, corrections to misperceptions, and bits of overlooked reality. Putting them into your writing can add spice and build trust with readers.

Many people run across the peculiar without any effort, just as some people naturally see life differently and are born humorists. For other people, it's an occupational hazard. Visual artists look for details and reframe reality. Scientists observe the world around them with an array of tools and techniques. Historians visit strange worlds on a daily basis.

If you don't have these advantages, don't despair. You can still collect a treasure chest of gems for later use. Develop your own approach, or try these:

Find surprises -- Build your powers of observation intentionally. One exercise is to look around you, right now, and find something you never noticed or you can't explain. If you are sitting in a familiar space, this might be difficult, but it's not impossible. It doesn't need to be a thing, it can be the shape of a shadow, the pattern of dust on a tabletop, or the sound of a motor.

Or, you can make it easy on yourself by sitting in a natural setting or a park. I have a bird feeder, and I've gone from identifying its visitors to discovering new things about the behavior of the different species that stop by. Sitting in a train station, the food court at a mall, or the stands of a sporting event can provide surprises, too. People will amaze you, if you actively pay attention.

And don't hesitate to use all your senses. Close your eyes from time to time and see what you discover. The important thing is to find one notable observation each day.

Collect details -- In addition to writing down surprises (in full sentences), don't forget to makes notes on things that catch your interest that you overhear, find in Web searches, or come in your wanderings. Write down questions, insights, and whatever engages your sense of wonder.

These may have nothing to do with current projects. You may never use them in a story. But they will be a treasure chest to draw upon (often years later) as you write. And you'll discover odd connections that will inspire you. To make these even more effective, develop a way to sort these so you can find them easily. As a start, try animal, vegetable, mineral, behavior, history, patterns, and behaviors.

Pursue questions and ideas -- If you want to enrich your collection, learn a little more about a nugget that fascinates you. Find an article or an opinion you can attach to it. Even better, mention it to other people and see how they react. If you tell friends Napoleon was average height, some will be delighted to learn this, and others will declare war. For a few, this will trigger an idea that surprised them. Add this to your collection.

Reflect on what it means -- Everything you collect has something to say about you and what matters to you in the world. Otherwise, why would you have selected it? See if you can figure out why it appealed to you. As an advanced exercise, try to connect the dots of several observations.

Apply judiciously -- Okay, here's the tough part. Don't take a shovel full of fun facts and dump them into your manuscript. This will drive your readers crazy and kill your story. (I've seen this happen most often in historical novels and science fiction. These writers just can't bear not to share. Too much information -- indeed.) Be selective. Make sure any added facts fit the story. My preference is to only add them in an organic way, when they occur to me in the draft stage.

Of course, keen observation, research skills, generating questions, and keeping organized notes are excellent capabilities across the spectrum of writing activities. By filling your treasure chest with gems, you become a better writer. Not a bad side effect.

Reading to Write: Mining the best for ideas and approaches

Stephen King wrote, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." Many of us write because reading opened up a vital dimension in our lives. Some of us took up storytelling after reading less than successful efforts and deciding we could do better.

I enjoy being sucked into a new tale, just one more fan. But, as a writer, there's more. Reading regularly keeps me tuned in to the form, inspires me, and challenges me. It provides different perspectives on content, style, and language. My normal practice is to alternate between classic and contemporary works and to sample unfamiliar genres and new writers, which allows me to explore my own limits.

A lot of what I learn seeps in automatically. My brain seems to grab nuggets and classify them without my being conscious of them. Later (and it can be decades later), I'll hit a problem in my writing, a light will go on, and I'll wander over to a bookshelf. Barely knowing why, I'll snatch a book off, open it to a specific page and find a terrific example of a writer solving my problem. I don't have definitive advice on how to make this happen for you if it's not, but I suspect reading a lot and reading attentively are part of the process.

I also have deliberate approaches to reading for better writing. Here are five suggestions:

Analyze your genre - Find several books (preferably brief) you've already read and enjoyed in your chosen genre. Reread them one after another, and take notes. As you find interesting elements record them and note the page numbers. What are the turning points? What are the payoffs? Describe key characters. And, as you go along, keep looking for commonalities. What you want to do is distill out guidance on what readers of the genre (you audience) will expect in terms of elements, characters, and pacing.

Learn how emotion is evoked - Whenever you read to learn about writing, it is critical to keep track of your emotions. It can be valuable to note what you are feeling page by page, but, as a minimum, mark down surprises and big emotional turns. And go back again and see if you can determine how the writer did that. Write down what you learned, along with a specific reference.

Explore pacing - One of the best compliments you can get as a writer is for a reader to say it's a page-turner. Take a novel that carries you along and mark it up. Look for hooks and changing stakes (which tug you along) and backstory and narrative (which slow things down). It is helpful to actually highlight these in different colors so you get a visual sense of the structure.  Look at them in detail to see what lessons the author is offering. It's also useful just to note how the lengths of scenes and chapters change as the book progresses.

Learn from mistakes - Many works I read (yes, classics, too) include failures. Why does a good writer go bad? How would you redo it? Do you make the same mistake?

Write like your favorite author - Here's a useful exercise that will take some time. In longhand, copy out an especially effective part of a book, preferably a whole scene you wish you'd written. Take the gist of that scene and, without referring back to it, rewrite it using the same voice and pacing, but different words. Compare the two. Finally, take a comparable scene in your own work and rewrite it using your favorite author's voice and pacing.

For all the analysis I do, I still get lost in wonderful works. It would break my heart if I couldn't disappear into novels, and I think I'd lose something as a writer. Don't spend all your reading time looking for the man behind the curtain. Experience the joy and wonder. But, as a writer, dedicate part of your reading to learning from master storytellers.

Narration and Backstory Blues, Part 2

Commercial fiction needs to be overwhelmingly moment-to-moment, with just enough narration and backstory to add texture and to maintain clarity. The temptation is always to provide too much, which creates a great excuse for readers to put the story down.

For some, pacing comes naturally. I've noticed that people who gossip and tell jokes seem to just know when to drop in information that becomes more important, to slip in asides that put people off guard, and to add commentary and reflection that directs or redirects the audience.

Of course naturally here doesn't necessarily mean genetics. Culture plays a part. One of the most magical occurrences in my life was when a roommate woke me up in the middle of the night and spirited me off to the backwoods of Virginia for storytelling and moonshine. Many (U.S.) Southerners are brought up in an environment of storytelling, and they seem to weave tales effortlessly.

For the rest of us, it may be work. One effective method is to mark all the digressions, descriptions, explanations, and reminiscences in your text and eliminate them all. If the story still makes sense without them, you may be done. Or you may add back in a few to season the mix.

More likely, you will find that some of them are essential to understanding the story. Add these back in. Ideally, a reader tells you this. (It is far too easy for the writers to see every bit of backstory and narration as vital.) When these pieces are resurrected consider two things:

First, do you need every word? Less is more here. Cut any backstory you need to the absolute minimum needed for clarity and texture. Avoid the temptation to keep it all.

Second, does this piece occur as late as possible in the text? The longer the readers wait for revelations and explanations, the more likely they'll seize on them. Put the material in late enough in the work, and there will be no sense of it slowing the story at all. The words will be snapped up and gobbled down.

I'll add one more proviso: The need for, and tolerance of, these relatively static elements depends upon the genre. Some readers look for more sensual elements and a more stately pace. Rushing them along is a mistake. So read widely in the genre you're writing in. And, when in doubt, make your story slightly more spare in narration and backstory than your favorite works.