Why Soooo Serious?

Being a writer is complicated.  Sometimes we have a tendency to boil it down to technique or even just opportunity.  I think the most important aspect of being a writer is knowing yourself.  Like the characters in your story, you need to know your emotions, your attitudes, your weaknesses, your sensibilities, your vulnerabilities and your aspirations.

Like with characters, knowing yourself isn't about answering profile questions.  You have to examine yourself long and hard.  You have to see yourself with total honesty.  Why do you write?  Is it passion?  Is it fame?  Is it respect?  Is it money?*  Are you driven, almost compelled, to write?  What kind of writing are you attempting?  Is it right for you?  What is your sense of aesthetics?  Do you write dark thrillers full of violence and betrayal?  Do you write light romances with only the simplest plot twists?  Or do you write epic science fiction with huge space battles and galactic intrigues?  Why do you write this way?

Finally, ask yourself do you write literary fiction or popular fiction?  Do you write so people will take your work seriously?  Or do you write so that people will find your work entertaining?**  These are incredibly important distinctions.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll just put it out there: I am not a fan of literary fiction.  Obsessive navel gazing, meandering through the mundane and groveling in the dark emotions isn't my thing.  I am an entertainer.  I write stories that, first and foremost, I think are entertaining.  I write stories I hope other people find entertaining.

Are you the same?  Or do you have a passion for deeply emotional dramas?  There's no right way, here.  Writing is about passion.  Love Star Wars?  Try writing a space opera.  Love Gone With the Wind?  Try writing a historical romance.  Love you some Lovecraft?  Try writing of dark eldritch horrors.  Regardless of whether it is literary or popular, it has value because of your passion.  Readers sniff out frauds pretty quick.  Be real.  Be you.  Your passion matters.

Your plot matters, too.  Next time, let's look at a hybrid method for creating plots in: Calculated Spontaneity.

*     If you are writing for money, stop right now and step away from the keyboard.  You are in the wrong profession.

**   I'm not exactly saying these are mutually exclusive but they are usually exclusive.

The Three Monkeys of World Building

You have a blank page in front of you.  This is either the point when: You can freeze up and try to think of something you’d rather be doing, like binge watching House or “researching” every anime article ever published on Wikipedia.  Or you can begin documenting an entire universe, created completely out of the fertile imagination of your all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing mind.  Are you still prevaricating?  Read no further and here's a link you should totally check out.  Ready to create?  Read on.

Sky Moles!

If you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, there is literally a universe waiting to be created.  You will spend countless hours carefully crafting every detail.  Races?  Magic systems?  Technology?  Political intrigues?  Character backstories?  World history?  Oh, yea, you've got it down to the last whisker on that weird sky mole you invented.  Now, this beautiful world is just waiting to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.  You begin writing your novel, weaving every possible detail and revealing every little tidbit.  Right down to the last whisker ...

Or not.

Going granular with the details might feel satisfying at the time.  Launching into long info-dump monologues might answer a lot of really interesting questions.  But the reader is going to hate you for it.  The secret to awesome world building is not in what you tell, it is in how you tell it.  Moderation is key.  Answering who, what, where and why is absolutely critical for every author.  You, the writer, have to know.  Your readers don't.  The trick for world building within a story is in what not to reveal.

Here are three ideas I've called the Three Monkeys of World Building:

See no ...  Focus the reader.  Clap those hairy monkey hands over their eyes.  Only give small glimpses of your world.  You choose when, where and how the reader sees it.  Never explain the whole world.  Maintain the mystery, the mystique.  There is something incredibly powerful about the secret, the hidden and the unknown.  Know but don't show.  Your knowledge of your own world informs your storytelling.  And the reader only needs the story.

Hear no ...  Muffle the monologues.  Readers.  Do.  Not.  Want.  To.  Listen.  To.  That.  Much.  Info.  Enough said.

Speak no ...  Gag the preacher.  Some authors try to control the reader's responses to their story.  They try to tell the reader what they should be thinking and feeling.  Allegory is essentially the "control freak" version of this.  As Tolkien famously stated: "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."  Are you using a dystopian future to preach about NSA wiretaps?  Are you using steampunk to preach about racial intolerance?  Are you using your supernatural monsters to push back at gun control?  Just remember, people don't like being preached at.  Even when they completely agree with you.

So, you've created a world.  You've answered all the big questions.  Now, gently and cleverly reveal your world to, well, the world.  Just remember to tell a story.  A really, really good story.  Speaking of which, what makes a story "good"?  Let's look at this next in: The Greatest Story Never Told

One Rule To...Rule Them All?

Ask about writing and rules and you'll likely get the same answer.  Namely, there are none.  The only rule is that there are no rules.  If you listen to lectures on writing technique, you'll hear this over and over.  Writing methods or systems will often be given a caveat: These are not rules but tools.  Results may vary.  They may or may not work for you.  The motto could be stated, preferably in an Aussie accent: "No rules, just right."

Not to set a pattern here but, well, here I am setting a pattern: They are partly right but mostly wrong.

Every author, whether in fiction or non-fiction, regardless of their genre, must follow one rule.  There are no exceptions.  There is no way around it.  Few people talk about it.  Many ignore it.  It isn't a complicated rule.  In fact, it sounds deceptively simple.  Almost banal.  Just eight simple words:

Writers must communicate their stories to their audiences.

Three critical components make the rule.  Communication, story and audience.

Communication is the most vital of the three.  This is a deep subject that I could never hope to cover in a single post.  Briefly put, it is the process of putting the story that exists only in your imagination into the limited confines of mere words.  To say this is difficult is putting it mildly.  Most writers spend decades honing and refining their abilities as wordsmiths to become accomplished communicators.  Even then, words sometimes just cannot capture what is in our imaginations, which can cause all kinds of pain.  Still, we try.  How we communicate, though, is not set in stone.  In this regard, "no rules, just right" is partly correct.

This is where story and audience come in.  Because both affect the way an author communicates.

Story and audience are inextricably linked.  A story without a target audience is like an e-mail without an address.  When an author discovers a story, it is vitally important to also discover its audience.  A story about a young orphan boy who lives in a closet under the stairs will be treated very differently in the hands of different authors.  We all know what J.K. Rowling did with it.  What if it had been written by Donna Tartt?  What about Brandon Sanderson?  Nora Roberts?  Or, perish forbid, George R. R. Martin?*  If you are like me, your mind is probably popping with the possibilities.  Each author would craft a story aimed at their particular audiences.  The differences would be of cosmic proportions.

Here's where it gets back to communication.  Not interested in writing about an orphan living in a closet under the stairs?  You want to write a story about a ring and a dark lord?  You want to write for the epic fantasy crowd?  It is safe to say your epic fantasy won't be a 200-page quickie without a lick of world building.

Besides, if you want to write epic fantasy, why would you want to skip world building?  That's the best part.  We'll examine what not to reveal about your universe next in: The Three Monkeys Of World Building

*  In this version, only Ron lives in the end, albeit driven insane by all the death, misery and haunting whispers coming from an undestroyed Horcrux ...