Musings on the Writing

In Today's Journal

* Quote of the Day
* Re Steven James' Story Trumps Structure
* Musings on the Writing
* Still Offering
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

"When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, 'No, I went to films.'" Quentin Tarantino

Re Steven James' Story Trumps Structure

Writer Sebastian left a thorough comment you might want to read.

My endorsement of the book doesn't mean I agree with everything James says. If I considered buying it based only on the ten points in the comment, I wouldn't have bought it. For me, the TOC, the foreword by Donald Maass, and reading a little of the content was the deciding factor.

For just one example from Sebastian's comment,

3. Write organically - Instead of plotting beforehand, ask these three crucial questions:

• What would this character naturally do in this situation?

This is never a problem if you write into the dark (in other words, if you write truly organically). Instead of asking myself what the character would naturally do, I simply write what the character does. See the difference?

• How can I make things worse?

Nope. Get the "I" out of it and just write what happens. Don't "ask yourself" anything while you're writing. Just write what happens.

• How can I end this in a way that's unexpected yet inevitable?

Again, if you just write what happens as the story unfolds, the characters and the story will do the 'unexpected yet inevitable' at every turn.

I haven't yet made time to read this book. I still recommend it, and I still believe I will learn from it.

But as I've been saying for a long time, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS study advice (from James or anyone else) with the conscious, critical mind, then

• keep what feels right to you, then

• forget about it (DON'T consciously think about any of it as you write) and

• write into the dark

Musings on the Writing

Yesterday's Quote of the Day by Ann Lamott—“[P]ublication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.”—is probably the understatement of the decade, at least about writing fiction. It also spurred this post.

I was just telling a dear friend yesterday in an email how much I'm enjoying writing the current novel. Even on the 'slow' days.

I hope that enjoyment came through in the excerpt I shared with you yesterday. That you enjoyed writing the story should always come through for the reader. (Yesterday I didn't enjoy it at all, so I didn't keep any of it. Hence the unchanged fiction numbers today.)

If you follow my numbers, you know I've had several of those 'slow' days with this novel. It's easy enough to dismiss slow days, as I did a few days ago, with a truism like "Well, every novel writes differently."

But the truth is, even on days when writing fiction is like pulling teeth, it's still a ton of fun. Even when you end up trashing the lot of it. And it's all a part of one long learning experience.

Of the ten writing days I've spent on this novel thus far, six of those have been slow days.

So slow, in fact, that as of Day 10, the novel has yet to pass the magical 25,000 word mark. (So my average on this novel is a little under 2400 words per day, more than 1000 words under my daily goal.)

A while back I mentioned that, as a fiction writer, you actually have two roles:

• Recorder—The recorder runs through the story with the characters. S/he writes what happens, then writes the POV character's descriptions, opinions, and reactions in word and deed to what happens. Every word in the story comes from or through the POV character. That's how you render the characters' authentic story.

• Presenter—During cycling, the presenter makes sure the final product conveys the authentic story to the reader as clearly and concisely as possible.

On only one of those ten days the novel was 'stuck' a little. That was all on me, not the story. It was the result of me committing 'author intrusion.' I slipped a little and tried to take the story in a direction I 'thought' (conscious mind) it should go.

Fortunately, I recognized what was going on, scrapped what I'd written, and remembered my place as the Recorder (see the definition above) and went back to letting the characters tell the story.

The other four 'slow' days were a result of me cycling over and over and over passages (mostly of dialect) to be sure the passages conveyed what I, as the Presenter (see the definition above), wanted them to convey:

• a unique and true insight into the characters' personalities, and

• clarity without confusion for the reader

In fact, when I posted that long excerpt in yesterday's post I cycled a little more and added

I said, "Okay,

to the beginning of this sentence:

I said, “Okay, I’m 32 years old. I never married, I have absolutely no children, and my favorite color is the orangey-pink coral too.”

Well, I added it in the Substack version of the post. Initially I forgot to add it to the Journal-website version. (I corrected it later.)

And of course, I went back to the manuscript and added it too. So posting that excerpt in TNDJ actually helped me improve the manuscript too.

If you're wondering…. If I (the presenter) hadn't added those three words, the reader might have thought that line of dialogue was from the other character because of the short line of narrative that preceded that statement. (Again, it's the Presenter's job to avoid reader confusion.)

So on those days, the writing was sheer joy.

Oops! Look! There's another little epiphany:

The fun of writing equates to spending time with and focusing on the characters.

Not on what you ‘think’ they would do or say, but on what they actually do or say.

The one time I didn't thoroughly enjoy writing this novel was the day I spent a few hours focused on myself and where I 'thought' the story should go.

Hmm. Maybe take a lesson from my error?

Still Offering

Blackwell Ops 10 prologue and Chapter 1 in PDF as an example of how to deal with switching points of view. To get that, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.

Another Writing Book of Interest

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

Highly recommended by Balázs Jambor. I found this one at Ebay (and bought it) for a little over $9.

It's also available at Amazon in ebook ($9.99) and paperback ($10.99). (Free shipping and next day delivery if you have Prime.)

Of Interest

The 15+ Parts of a Book I found this illuminating and helpful.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 1100

Writing of Blackwell Ops 40: John Staple

Day 1…… 3397 words. To date…… 3397
Day 2…… 1651 words. To date…… 5048
Day 3…… 1960 words. To date…… 7008
Day 4…… 1777 words. To date…… 8785
Day 5…… 1310 words. To date…… 10095
Day 6…… 3346 words. To date…… 13441
Day 7…… 3322 words. To date…… 16763
Day 8…… 1061 words. To date…… 17824
Day 9…… 1452 words. To date…… 19276
Day 10…. 4706 words. To date…… 23982

Fiction for March…………………….. 71754
Fiction for 2025………………………. 257585
Nonfiction for March……………........ 25240
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 79170
2025 consumable words…………….. 330245

Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 2658

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 6
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 11
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 110
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 281
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.

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• On Writing Fiction

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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.