Posted by aidan in writing advice, writing process, writing tools | 7 comments
Lateral Thinking for Writers
The term lateral thinking was invented by Edward de Bono in the 1960s. The basic techniques of lateral thinking involve coming up with new ideas by looking at problems in a different way and by introducing random thought stimulation.
Douglas Adams once talked about how he had got stuck writing The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. The heroes had just been thrown out of a spaceship and he needed a way of rescuing them. Given the sheer vastness of space it was exceedingly unlikely that another spaceship would be passing by in time to save Arthur and Ford. Adams couldn’t think of a plausible solution so he decided to think of it in terms of judo, where you use your opponent’s strength against them. He used the extreme unlikeliness of a rescue scenario to his advantage and invented the infinite improbability drive, which became a major plot point in the story.
De Bono has written lots of books about the subject that outline a variety of methods for generating ideas.
One of the best books I’ve read on the subject is Michael Michalko’s Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques.
Although many of the examples are aimed at business (how do I think of new ways to market my widgets?) they can be easily adapted to generating new story ideas.
One of the simplest techniques is introducing a random idea and seeing how it relates to your story. For example, randomly choosing a word from a dictionary. How does this new word relate to your story?
Brainstormer is a web site and iPhone app that provides random word prompts for writers.
For example, let’s say you were writing a story about a magic sword and wanted to come up with some new ways to make the sword intersesting. (Stormbringer: the sword that drinks souls, The Misenchanted Sword that once it has been drawn has to kill someone before it can be sheathed).
You spin the dials on Brainstormer and get: Adultery, Americana, dwarf.
Hmmmm… A sword that changes size based on the wielder? A sword that ended up in a kitsch shop? A sword that guarantees its wielder will fall in love with the spouse of anyone they kill with the sword?
Another spin produces: Self-sacrifice, Viking, downtown city.
More ideas there.
Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold wrote a great article for the Internet Review of Science Fiction called Tapping the Idea Vein.
They give the situation of taking two words and juxtaposing the ideas associated with them:
Look around the room you’re in right now. Play Sesame Streetin your head. “One of these things is not like the other…” Perhaps something in a photograph or picture on the wall, set alongside the messiest object near you. A picture of a cow and a toner cartridge, for example.
What’s the story there?
Cows symbolize agrarian civilization, food, domestication, leather goods, milk, the American family farm, fertility. A toner cartridge is color (or the soot-black lack thereof, and by extension, Manichean dualism), disposability, the Gillette model of razor marketing, the democratization of print publishing. Now we have two sets of concepts to pair together:
Agrarianism Color Food Blackness Domestication Dualism Leather Man-made materials Milk Marketing innovation American family farm Print publishing Fertility Disposability Story titles leap out from this list. “Black Milk.” “Fertile Leather.” “Disposable Fertility.” Likewise ideas, or at least their building blocks. For example, a story set on a book farm. Characters who follow a dualistic religion founded on food groups.
Another technique is reversing the problem. Perhaps you have a story where the hero’s wife is kidnapped. A simple reversal would be to have the hero kidnapped and have his wife rescue him instead. Or perhaps the hero decides to have his wife kidnapped. (Fargo). Or perhaps the hero is happy his wife has been kidnapped. (Ruthless People). Or maybe she hasn’t been kidnapped but someone keeps sending him ransom notes. (The Big Lebowski). Or maybe he finds his wife has kidnapped someone.
Some topics have been written about so often that it’s very hard to generate any new ideas. Vampires? The Simpsons had reverse vampires that could only come out during the day. Try reversing some of the stereotypes. Vampires are usually portrayed as suave and sexy (Dracula, Interview With the Vampire, etc.) or as monstrous (Nosferatu), but how about fat, white trash vampires? (Fat White Vampire Blues).
Using lateral thinking can be an excellent way to generate story ideas and solve plot problems.
Read MorePosted by Ben in writing advice, writing life, writing process | 3 comments
raison d’ecrire
I’ve finished my first (and second and third) draft of my novel. The first draft took me about 3 years, the next two a few months, and I know I’m not there yet, I’m not at that finished product that I would feel confident in submitting. In fact, I may not be able to get there at all.
I’ve written YA novels before and found that, right or wrong at the time, I didn’t need to redraft a lot. I wrote them, I sent them off soon after, worked with an editor and they were done. Short, sharp, satisfying. For a while. Now, I look back and wonder if I spent enough time on them, if I couldn’t have worked harder on redrafting to a standard that will keep me content to look back at those books and be happy with them. Or is that a pipe dream? Am I always going to look back and see the errors, inconsistencies and literary solecisms in my work ?
This time around, with a manuscript the same length as my previous three novels combined, redrafting is essential. Quite frankly, I’ve overwritten the beginning and underwritten the ending in my rush to finish it. I know what the problems are, I’ve had some feedback from readers that ranges the gamut from compelling mastery (yes, that was from family) to finding it difficult to read (someone more objective). The problem is, and will always be, resisting that intense urge to finish it, wrap it up in a bow and send it off right now. Common advice publishers, agents and established authors give aspiring writers is to rewrite more; you’ve spent all that time writing the first draft, so why not spend a little bit more and polish it up?
So, looking down the barrel of three years of working on a single project, I start to wonder if it’s even of a standard that will be acceptable in a professional market, even after the rewrites. What if it isn’t? Can I accept that it was something that I used to further hone my skills? Can it be a stepping stone to (fingers crossed) future success? To be honest, that’s bloody hard to accept. I don’t have that many books in me and this one took a lot out. To think that all those hours won’t result in a shiny new novel in my hands is very hard to take. And I’m not talking about money (not only). I’m talking about the recognition and reinforcement and validation that comes from having your work accepted by other professionals. It’s easy to say that I write for writing’s sake, for the story, for the act of creation, for the achievement, but I don’t. I write to create stories that others will enjoy. Money may follow, but it hasn’t yet, and may never, so I can dream of it, but I think I have proven to myself that I’m not writing for money.
These are common themes for authors, I would guess. And for artists of all kinds. They are the core of why writing novels can be so demanding. It’s easy to see the final version of a story and be in awe of an author being able to write something so good. In reality, he or she probably didn’t. It was built up, a layer cake of work that resulted in the final version.
So, on that note, in an attempt to aspire to a certain level of quality, I redraft.
Read MorePosted by aidan in reviews, writing advice | 0 comments
Writing the Breakout Novel
I recently finished reading Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel.
Maass is an author and literary agent and the book has lots of practical and useful advice on how to make your book more readable.
The book concentrates on the key parts of successful books: premise, stakes, setting, characters, viewpoint and themes.
Salon recently published an article on a reader’s advice to writers. This was a response to the recent Guardian article on writers giving writing advice. The Salon article contained some similar ideas to those in Maass’ book, such as making your characters want something.
http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/02/23/readers_advice_to_writers/
A few commenters on the web site criticised this advice, accusing the article of just promoting formula fiction.
Similar accusations have been labelled at Maass’ book.
But this is missing the point. Even if you’re writing the most literary of books, it helps to make your characters and settting more interesting.
Maass doesn’t advocate writing cliched books. He argues against the idea that anything that is widely commercial successful is badly written. While some recent bestsellers might not have the most engaging of characters, at the very least they’re able to maintain the tension and conflict enough to keep a lot of people interested.
The book was published in 2001 and while the overwhelming majority of advice is still relevant for writers, it’s interesting to note where the book has dated. When talking about how to make thrillers exciting and convincing Maass writes:
Easiest of all to make convincing are military foes, geological disasters, bad medicine, serial killers and courtroom justice. These threats are better understood, more widely documented and are more commonly experience [sic] by the public. You or I could fall victim to any one of them. In contrast, we are not terribly likely to be hurt by drug cartels, Middle Eastern terrorists or militia-type isolationists. As sources of potential disaster, they do not inspire visceral fear.
The book also has a couple of amusing typos:
Janellen and Bowie’s love transcends pubic pressures, a strength that Lara and Key must learn.
One of the suggestions for trying to find the focus of your book is to imagine that for one reason or another you can only write 10 pages on your novel. What part of your novel would you choose to write about? Then condense these 10 pages down to a single page and Maass suggests you might have a better idea of your novel’s key themes.
Read MorePosted by aidan in writing advice | 0 comments
Advice on Writing Query Letters
The Top Ten Query Mistakes
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2010/02/top-ten-query-mistakes.html
What You Need Before Your Query
http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-you-need-before-you-query.html
The Batch Querying Theory
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/02/batch-querying-theory.html
Querying When You’ve Written a Trilogy
http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2010/01/writing-series-and-trilogies.html
Non-Fiction Book Proposals
http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-is-book-proposal-for-nonfiction.html
Query Shark: How To Write Query Letters…or really, how to revise query letters so they actually work
http://queryshark.blogspot.com/
Posted by aidan in writing advice | 1 comment
Ten Rules For Writing Fiction
The Guardian asked a bunch of writers to give their rules for writing fiction.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
4 writers.
1 long haul.
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