Bradbury, and Nuances Matter
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* Nuances Matter
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"A writer outlining a novel has a beginning and an end. He’s working toward that end, but after beginning he has to create a lot of stuff to get there. Too often, at that point, he’s no longer writing and is just producing filler.
"The problem? The author is bored ... because he knows exactly what is going to happen, when it will happen and to whom it will happen. He knows the ramifications of every action of each character.
"He also knows he has 30,000, 60,000 or more words to slug through before hitting the fun and excitement of writing that slam-bang ending. The author’s boredom is reflected in his work." Dan Baldwinhttps://fourknightspress.com in his
The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
The whole point of the Challenge is to have fun and grow as a writer. There is no cost. The only requirement is to write at least one short story per week.
During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:
Balázs Jámbor "The girl who got lost in the library" 2800 Fantasy
Vanessa V. Kilmer "A Knife Like That" 3028 Coming of Age
Christopher Ridge "The Devil's Trill" 2752 Horror
Harvey Stanbrough "Twelve Stories in a Bus Station" 4140 Moody
Dave Taylor "A New Day Yesterday” 4,032 Sci-Fi/horror
Congratulations to all of these writers!
Nuances Matter
That is, the reader's emotional reaction and the level of that reaction to what you put on the page as you write a story matters. And that's all down to how you present it.
So it stands to reason that the more you know or learn or recognize about the nuances of the language and presentation of the story, the better.
This particular nuance is a tiny thing—parallel construction—and I suspect (hope) many of you already know it. For others, it will be next-level stuff. In this case it speaks to reader comfort. (Comfort is an emotional reaction.)
In my current novel, in a chapter titled "How It Always Starts," I originally wrote the following passage. In it, the character is explaining the structure of the message he's just received from TJ Blackwell. As in all of my examples, the numeral represents a first-line indent:
The second line named the primary target and told me there were twelve others. The minus-one at the end meant I should leave one alive, presumably so he could spread the word and keep others from forming Howell’s kind of militia, whatever kind that was.
The third line named the reason for the hit. Whether TJ includes that line at all is hit or miss. He probably considers it a nicety, like tossing a bone to a dog between meals. But it isn’t necessary that I know the why of the assignment, only the who and the when.
In line four TJ named the town nearest to the target.
Did you catch the inconsistency? I wrote
The second line....
The third line.... and then
In line four....
Obviously this isn't a huge, earth-shaking problem, but it might rattle some readers, and that's reason enough to change the last paragraph of the passage so it begins with
In the fourth line....
At this very moment I'd bet that some of you are shaking your heads and thinking, or maybe even muttering, some version of "That doesn't matter. The reader will know what I mean."
That's partly true: The reader probably will know what you mean, but why risk introducing even the slightest bit of confusion or discomfort when you don't have to?
Take your time in presentation. Present the story clearly and with as little ambiguity as possible.
Of Interest
Making Real Money as A Full-Time Fiction Writer The straight scoop in a great post. I recommend saving this and rereading it once a month or so.
Audiobooks, Non-Overlapping Readers, and Concept art A summary plus a video (about an hour long).
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 670
Writing of Blackwell Ops 38: Paul Stone
Day 1…… 4071 words. To date…… 4071
Day 2…… 2711 words. To date…… 6782
Day 3…… 3434 words. To date…… 10216
Fiction for February………………….. 52038
Fiction for 2025………………………. 173393
Nonfiction for February…………….... 19160
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 51140
2025 consumable words…………….. 218023
Average Fiction WPD (February)…….. 2263
Average Fiction WPD (Annual)……..… 3210
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 4
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 8
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 108
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 278
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
Dan Baldwin is SOOOO right! (As are you, Harvey!)
I saw your line about confusing the reader, I immediately thought about the way my hubby sometimes lists things, "1. This thing. 2. That thing. C. This other thing." Yep! not always, but it happens. Which goes to the old saying, "Life can be unbelievable, but fiction has to make sense."
There was a whole video (and other blogs) about the problem with "Tiffany". Many people think it's a modern name, but it's not, it's been around since the middle ages. And "Epiphany" which is what the name derived from has been around even longer. There are some other words like this, where if you put it in a middle ages or dark ages story, the readers will tell you that it's an anachronism, even though it's not. And it will confuse them and throw them out of the story. So you might have to avoid the words that are like that, or names that are like that.
Thanks for the shout out UH!!!