The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Story Notes
The good story note is honest.
It may be full of praise or mangled with brutality, but an honest story note during a writing workshop is going to help the writer more than empty compliments from the sides of your mouth. If it’s great, tell them it’s great and tell them why. If it’s not-so-great, tell them that, too, and tell them why you think it isn’t the hot story they thought it was. Of course, one tries to be tactful when delivering “bad news,” but don’t let tact replace honesty. Ask any coach who’s had to bench their star player, counselor who’s worked with a feuding couple, any surgeon who has had to tell parents their child didn’t make it. They’ll tell you. There are ways to tell someone bad news in good ways, so long as they revolve around honesty.
The bad story note is a lie.
If you have the time to make up lies, you have the time to practice writing better stories. Don’t waste the writer’s time or yours. Some folks will say that’s all anyone is looking for - the little lies which help us live our lives a little easier. Someone can tell you a lie to make you feel better but at the end of the day, the story you’re writing is junk, the lyrics you’re singing are cliché at best, and those pants still make your butt look big. Honesty piles like a mountain of solid, reliable rock. Lies pile up like, well, insert your own metaphor here - hopefully, someone will be honest and tell you if it works or not.
The ugly story note is left unsaid.
You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Nobody does. I understand that. But this isn’t Kindergarten t-ball and this isn’t middle school dating and this isn’t your mother’s hot dish you’ve been secretly loathing for thirty years. This is writing, and writing is art, and art is all about creating something so someone else is free to feel or react or respond to it. Keeping it inside, or keeping it ambiguous doesn’t inform anyone. Saying, “Good try, you’re coming along, keep at it, don’t stop now!” are all wonderful, but “This needs work, you took a step back here, try again, what you’re doing sucks!” are all wonderful, too, from a certain point of view. No one wants to hear what they’re doing needs work, but toddlers don’t want adults telling them not to touch the stove, either. Eventually, someone gets burned, and hopefully it’s a lesson learned.
~nm
Technorati Tags: story notes, story comments, writing workshop, tact
Storytelling Tips via Ira Glass
My friend, Zach Ward of Dirty South Improv sent out a link to four short, sequential videos featuring storytelling tips from Ira Glass. Glass is specifically addressing those who do radio and video podcasts, but his thoughts apply to storytelling, overall. Everything he says, like the best advice, is a no-brainer - something we already know but forget we know it - and it’s nice to hear it from such a cool guy working in the industry.
Here’s a quote from the Glass videos I really dig: “You’re gonna write a lot of stuff and it’s going to go nowhere and you should be happy about that. If you’re doing that, you’re doing it right. If you’re not failing all the time, you’re not creating a situation where you can get super-lucky.” This speaks to me as someone afraid of not only failure, but public failure. Ah, back to fear and creativity again; it’s a running gag in these here parts. But it’s true. Fear of doing something which will fail keeps me from doing the volume of work I should be doing. This means what I do create runs a larger chance of failing because I’m not producing enough to learn from mistakes and get better. What a tangled web we weave…
I especially like the “super-lucky” concept Glass uses. He proposes if one puts themselves in a routine of creating output, if one sets standard timetable goals and perseveres through whatever isn’t working and continues to try, eventually they will hit on something which really clicks. It’s true, we all know when we’ve got something that cooks, man, just cooks, and suddenly the long journey there makes it all seem worthwhile.
~ nm
Technorati Tags: storytelling tips, ira glass, creativity, zach ward
Resistance is Self-Fueled Futility
Earlier this week, I referenced writer Steven Pressfield. In the preface of his every-writer-should-read-this-book book, The War of Art, he tosses this theory at the reader: “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.” I’m inclined to agree.
Here I am, on a beautiful sunny day, cooped-up in my home office, grading a final batch of essays so I can enter semester grades. I should be outside on my patio, reading a book for research. I should be at my laptop, writing the rest of my current screenplay project’s Act II. I should be editing a short story to send off to a magazine.
But I’m not. And I don’t blame the essays I’m grading, I blame the way I handle my approach to writing. It doesn’t take much to hold one back from what should truly be important. I can’t write now - I have to clean the house, and that means at least the office, maybe the kitchen, and there’s nothing wrong with actually making the bed every now and then. I can’t write now - I have to run an errand, and another one, maybe pop in next door, too. I can’t write now - I have to feed the fish, then watch them, then readjust the gravel at the bottom of the tank, and really, when was the last time I cleaned the tank, you know it’s probably due for a good cleaning, and maybe I’ll treat myself to a new fish today, so I’d better get to Sea Level and pick up some more platys.
What if a writer told themselves this, instead: I can’t clean the house now - I’m in the middle of a chapter, and it’s flowing so well, and this character needs my attention, better tie their relationship to this location, and there’s a magnificent verb, and I better make sure I finish another ten pages before I do anything else.
Now that’s the attitude of a professional. At least, the attitude a professional may wish they had.
~nm
Technorati Tags: writing approach, professional attitude, steven pressfield
The Art of Coming From Nothing
I struck up a conversation with a fellow writer at the Caribou Coffee in Hopkins last night and we spoke about writing every day and the book she’s working on. She explained her writing process for this new book is different than anything she’s experienced before. Instead of hammering out details and then getting into the story, she has been, in a sense, making it up as she goes along. Characters and their story arcs are simply coming together in surprising ways, and she’s enjoying the sense of discovery. On one hand, it’s a scary way to approach a project, to not have a plan. Still, she must be doing something right - she has an agent or two interested in reading it.
Her story made me think of Elmore Leonard’s approach to writing and how much I envy his process. Leonard starts with a setting or a character and simply writes. Eventually, an odd assortment of characters begin to populate the setting, or the first character’s story arc begins to crossover with a handful of other characters, until there’s a perfect web of storytelling. For example, Out of Sight begins with Jack Foley in prison, then flashes to federal marshal Karen Sisco driving to prison. They’re both established, as is the world of crime and the law, and then boom - they come together and the story goes from there. I envy Elmore Leonard’s process because he has such trust in his writing to just dive in and swim.
I’m an outliner. I’m a plotter. I’m a planner. I like to know what’s coming, both in life and on the page. The only place I let myself be comfortably immersed in complete surprise is on the stage when performing improv. As for writing, well, there’s a reason my scripts have treatments before I write the first word, and why my short stories have a brief list of bullet points to hit before I get too far. That reason, I fear, is a lack of trust in my own ability. Fear and a lack of self-trust will always hold back the artist - that and several other silly bits of nonsense, if you ask Steven Pressfield.
Flash fiction both intrigues me and scares me. I try to use flash for my Scrawlers stories, but when it comes to something longer, I tend to plan it out a little bit. That said, there’s nothing more satisfying than writing something and suddenly find a new twist or connection or surprise I didn’t see coming. Perhaps if I find a way to relish in those moments more, I won’t be so afraid to let the entire writing process mirror that feeling of welcomed surprise. Perhaps I need to be more like the writer I met last night and embrace a new approach. After all, agents are looking at her work right now, not mine…
Want to read some Elmore Leonard and do it on the cheap? One of my favorite online stores is bookcloseouts.com - they have several Leonard titles in hardcover, paperback, and even audio cassette ranging from $1.49 to $7.99, my favorites in that bunch being Tishomingo Blues (Don Cheadle is supposedly starring in / directing the upcoming film version) and his latest (until its sequel, Up in Honey’s Room, comes out tomorrow) The Hot Kid.
-nm
Technorati Tags: fellow writer, elmore leonard, plot, improv, flash fiction
Scrawlers welcomes RSS
If you’ve visited Scrawlers recently, you may have noticed some little symbols next to story and author names.
These symbols represent RSS feeds, a convenient way to be notified of Scrawlers updates. You can copy the RSS links into a feed reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines. It’s really convenient to follow things like blogs and other dynamic content through feed readers.
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About
Brought together by mutual interest in creative arts and web development, Minnesota duo Barry Hess and Nathan Melcher founded Scrawlers.com in 2006. Scrawlers marries creativity with a web-based outlet for aspiring writers and The Scrawl blog seeks to add fuel your creative fire.
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