Researching Your Writing

"Write what you know."

I thought this was an interesting bit of wisdom in the writing community. "Write what you know." Think about it for a bit.

I understand the thinking. How can you write about life in a jail if you haven't been in jail? How can you relate to a person who has had bariatric surgery without being a bariatric patient?

At the same time, I think this would make for some boring stories, too. Does this mean that a male writer can't have a female protagonist (or what does it mean if he does and does it well)? What about science fiction, where I really doubt that most writers of sci fi have actually been on a starship?

I bring this up because my story's "new ending" had taken a turn for a real-life town that I haven't been to. I've been to the state it's in, but not that specific town (that's like comparing a backwoods home in the mountains of New York to downtown...New York, I suppose). I can relate only to some aspects of the area in that I've experienced the climate and some of the differences someone from the northeastern states feels in a wildly different part of the country...put it that way.

But that means that I'm incorporating details that are real without ever being there. I've been trying to get as much as I can through researching the towns. Fortunately I live in the age of the Internet; there are videos of the town online, Google Earth helps me with directions and lay of the land, and there are some pictures and images through Google Image search. It's really helped with details of things like mileage, road descriptions, and even the description of a parking lot.

I still can't help but wish that I could actually visit the site and incorporate those experiences into the story. But then again, leaving it somewhat vague keeps from bogging readers down in details that are unnecessary.

The only other solution would be to make up details and create my own places much like Springfield for the Simpsons or Silent Hill being based on Centralia, PA. I don't like that as much. Speaking as someone who went to visit Centralia after finding out some of the background of Silent Hill, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, despite finding just about nothing there if for no other reason than enjoying the, "I was there!" experience when I see it in the news or on TV. There's an almost visceral connection to a place like that, a place that you hear about or interact with virtually then experience in real life. It's similar to the thrill of participating in discussions and interacting with your favorite podcast hosts, making them more real and you feel less disconnected when they say your name and know that this faceless voice is speaking to you.

That's part of the reason I incorporated this particular location into the story. Even if it never sells, never gets published, I know that if I wanted to (if this is the ending I actually keep, that is) I could go visit these places. I could interact with them, and know that out there this place exists, hopefully as I describe them.

Does anyone else out there write like this? Or do I have the wrong idea, and should I just stick to those things that I have more direct experience with?

Knowing When It's Just Not Working

I recently cut about 15,000 words from my first draft. I was working on the scenes leading to the climax ending and I realized that it was getting harder and harder to make progress on the story.

I realized that the story was straying too far from plausibility, which is really saying something for a science fiction story. It was becoming a chore because I was trying to steer it back "on track", and I didn't like where it was going.

At some point I just decided that it wasn't going to work. There was no saving it, and I didn't feel like waiting until I was editing it to rewrite that whole section of work. So I chopped it off and started again, proposing a "what if?" scenario to steer the ending into a new direction.

Does this violate my rule about not editing while writing? I don't think so. I believe it's foolish to keep plodding forward on a plot that just isn't working; I'm using my enthusiasm for the story as it unfolds as a gauge to how well (or poorly) the story is going. This wasn't a matter of tweaking some wording or adding some choice adjectives. It was a matter of seeing that the storyline was going way off script, and fixing it by cutting off the bad part and starting over a from a few steps back.

Doing this threw me off a little, of course, since I'm wwinding back and forward to spare a section of story that did still fit while figuring out what details I thought I had and now don't. It would also be silly to have a character or detail reappear after never being introduced because I used my delete key overzealously.

Anyone else have to cut out large sections of a story to re-steer it into a better direction? I'd have a hard time believing it is that rare of an occurrence!

Details: How Much is Too Much?

TMI. Too much information. Too little information?

How much detail should you include in your descriptions used in your story?

Part of this is, no doubt, a part of your personal voice and style. As with so many things in writing, there doesn't seem to be a clear-cut rule except when it comes to extremes.

For example, you probably wouldn't want to read a story that consisted of paragraphs sounding like, "Bill got in his car and drove to the store. He picked up groceries. He then left the store and got into an accident. He was depressed."

On the other hand, I'd grow bored reading something that sounded a lot more like, "Bill, dressed in his pleated khaki pants and favorite leather belt and his oversized button up shirt coupled with a satin red tie, ran in long elegant strides to his blue 2005 Honda with a smatter of filth on the windshield and worn windshield wipers. He pushed the unlock button on the black keyfob and the locked clicked open with a musical chirp in the key of F. Bill lifted the handle and swung his size 38 rear end into the well worn leather seat, inserted the key into the starter and turned it one-quarter turn for the three seconds necessary to allow the engine to catch. He paused and listened to the sputter of the spark plugs igniting the fuel mixture in his 98,000 mile-worn engine..." At this rate, somewhere in chapter seven he might be finally able to purchase his groceries and I'll be slogging through his pondering of monosodium glutamate.

I've found one author who advises new authors to be more sparse in their descriptions. I wish I still had the link to the author that I read this from; he basically said that when you don't fill in the blanks for every detail, the reader will automatically impose his or her own ideas to fill in the story, and make the story more their own. Describe the bare minimum detail about the heroine; if her breast size and fingernail length aren't important to the story, don't discuss it. The reader will not miss anything you don't describe, and the only things they need to know are things that pertain to the character as an intrinsic detail and things that pertain to the plot or distinguishes the character from other characters.

In other words...less is more.

Perhaps this is a lot of "duh" for other people. The way I'm wired, I need to consciously remember this detail when going through the work. As I rework my story, I'll be asking myself, "Is this important for the reader? Is this a detail that can be omitted without harming the story? If so, it gets chopped.

From what I can tell (and from stories I typically enjoy) the story should flow from point to point without meandering side trips into details that are mundane or have nothing to do with the story. Unless something is going to happen because of that detail, do I really need to know that your hero had a broken wrist when he was seven or is a huge fan of Applebee's riblets? Don't get me mired in background. Get me entrenched in the story, because the story is the thing!

Maybe other people have other viewpoints or insights on this. If so I'd love to hear from you. My first draft is coming along; I'm wrapping up the ending, then I'll give it a quick once-over rough rough edit and then read it to see if there's something resembling a decent story woven into whatever makes it to the page at that point. I'll be reading it with an eye on details that aren't really needed, and for spots that could use some better details and information. I'll be looking for a story that makes me want to keep reading; the less of a chore it is to review, the better I'll hope the story is.

If you're an author or have experience in writing I'd love to know what you think of the amount of details necessary to a make a compelling story. Please share!

Writing Rules I Live (Or At Least Write) By

I've not compiled this in a single post anywhere to my recollection, so I thought I'd put this down now for others.

First, some obligatory disclaimers. I'm an aspiring author. I have not been officially published. I have had an essay or two published in a collection, but I don't really count that since I wasn't paid for the work and the publication itself struck me as being vanity-published more than anything else; it was framed as a contest, winners were published, and on reflection they're getting content with little to nothing for the author outside of ego stroking. I count that as vanity publishing. Maybe others would have other opinions on that.

Second disclaimer: I'm a firm believer that there is no single how-to in publishing or writing novels. If there were a set of rules that you could check off in over to achieve a lucrative career in publishing your novels, I'm sure it would have already been published as a how-to book and there would be no need for people to call themselves wanna-be writers. They'd just follow the steps and collect checks.

So with that in mind, I'll tell you my current "rules to writing," in no particular order, I am currently following to create a manuscript.

Rule One: sit your behind in front of a keyboard and type. Very important step. A writer is a writer because he or she writes. Dreaming of writing makes you a wanna-be writer. I've graduated from wanna-be writer to wanna-be published author. Why? Because I'm writing.

Rule Two: write consistently to achieve a set goal. By goal, I mean a daily word count. I inevitably have some days where I don't make my count. Things happen. Life happens. Things get in the way. I have a family that needs attention as well as a day job. Sometimes that word count just ain't gonna happen. But these are rare days. Usually once every two weeks or so by my reckoning. My initial goal was 500 words a day. I've since found that I tend to get a little over a thousand words down in an hour under the right conditions, so I usually manage to get that thousand words down, far exceeding my goal. I've had several days where I managed to get 1,500 to 2,000 words.

Rule Three: I'm allowed to suck. I totally stole that from Mur Lafferty. But I need it. It gave me the permission to overlook my insecurities about writing in order to find the courage to follow my first rule...sit down and write. It ties to the next rule...

Rule Four: You can't edit a blank page. I think I heard this somewhere but I don't know the attribution. The words, however, stuck in my head. Crap or not, you can't polish the story unless you have the story down first to edit. And as it turns out, yes, you can polish a turd. I remember this episode of Mythbusters whenever I doubt that my story is good enough to keep working on.

Rule Five: If the doubt tells you to quit altogether, ignore it. Doubts are cheap, and they're found in swarms, especially if you feel you need validation in doing something new with little experience or education in the field of writing. There are always reasons to quit. I need just a few good reasons to keep going.

Rule Six: Carve some time to yourself for writing. I try to work by myself for an hour a day. I hide in the bedroom with a laptop. I make sure I take my lunch hour and type away at the desk. I've taken my laptop with me to Barnes and Noble to sit in their comfy chair with a lapdesk (I happen to have one our B&N no longer sells so I can kind of "prove" I'm not pilfering it from their sales displays) and just type away. I needed to find an environment in which I can half-focus on my story with minimal distraction.

Rule Seven: No editing. I backspace and fix obvious spelling errors. I will fix things that just bug me as they're on the virtual page. But I do not go back and rewrite scenes and pages of work. If I do that, I'll end up spending days, or weeks, or even months trying to get a "perfect opening" or making the entire novel a masterpiece magnum opus. The idea is to get a story out there on the page that can be fixed as needed, then shop it around to agents. Editing can be done after the initial draft is complete. I keep getting a strong urge to rewrite the opening and every time I end up reminding myself of this rule! It can be hard to see obvious blemishes in your baby and have to wait until later to fix them, but the danger of getting "stuck" in fixing the story and never actually finishing the story is way too big for me to hazard this road.

Rule Eight: Tell the story. Grammar, structure, etc...those can be fixed later (see Rule Seven). The important thing is to have a story! Tell your story. The mechanics can be revisited later. The story is the thing. The story is the thing. The story is the thing!

Rule Nine: Keep notes. I don't keep copious notes, but I do keep enough to go back and spruce certain things up. I keep notes on full names of characters as I introduce them in the story (you don't want to change a character midway through because you forgot if you used Matthew or Mathew as the given name...makes search and replace more difficult as well.) If you add a particular plot point or device in the story, you probably don't want to forget about it. In my case I'm keeping a text file with my notes in the same folder as the file containing the story.

Rule Ten: Make backups. I'll wager most writers now are using those new-fangled computers on which to write. Computers fail. Hardware is stolen, damaged, or data gets corrupted. Do yourself a favor and get a USB flash drive. Edit your work, and immediately save it elsewhere. Personally I have my notes and current draft on my main computer and on a USB drive, and the version on the computer gets backed up to three external hard drives. If my house burns down I may lose the draft, but I still am protected against most failures of hardware and most incidences of corruption. If you're laboring over a 100,000 page manuscript plus notes plus editing time...isn't the investment in some external storage for copying your work periodically really just a drop in the bucket? It's insurance against losing your work. I see no reason whatsoever to feel bad for 90% of writers that have data loss that destroys their work in progress when the ability to make copies is cheap and simple. "I don't know how" is not really an excuse anymore. If you're talking about writing as anything more than a hobby, then making backups of your livelihood is just part of the cost of doing business!

Rule Eleven: Write consistently to keep the ball rolling. If you decide to take a break, suddenly you forget what your protagonist was doing, or you forgot some detail that was important at the time (how did your hero pull a knife on the antagonist when he strapped on a gun before leaving his apartment?). It can be argued that these belong in the notes; they probably do. My way of working means that if it's an immediate detail I normally remember it the next day, while notes are made for things that will keep popping up or will be important a week from now. Taking a break of a few days in a row means you probably have to really push yourself to get back behind the keyboard and write again, just like skipping the gym a few days means needing that pep talk to get dressed to work out, shuffle to the car, drive to the gym...writing has enough challenges. You don't need to force yourself into a pep talk to do something you should be enjoying.

Rule Twelve: Write while you enjoy it. If you enjoy your story you increase the chances that your reader will enjoy it. I think that when it comes to fiction (or non-fiction, I suppose) you end up pushing some of your enthusiasm for the subject or story onto the reader. They pick up where you lose interest, and they know when your heart just isn't into it anymore. A good story should draw in the writer as much as the reader. If it fails to do so, you need to reevaluate the plot points and see why you're not caring about the protagonist and his or her journey through your created world.

Rule 13: Progress is progress. I have a goal of 500 words a day. I actually have come to expect 1,000+ words a day. There are some days where I fall short...like, a couple hundred words are all I manage to tap out before I have to call it quits for one reason or another. But that one or two hundred words are one or two hundred words more than that manuscript started the day with. I can't beat myself up over that. There are good days and bad days. The important thing is to keep making progress and keep getting a little farther ahead. As a result there are actually very very few days where I've made zero progress on the story, and I've had a few days that were only a couple hundred words and I have had a few days where I really surpassed my average by a significant margin. If I fall short one day...make it up later. I can't dwell on my shortcomings or I'll never finish the first draft!

I'm not a published author. I'm on the first steps towards trying to achieve that goal. I may fail miserably, and you can take my rules for what they're worth. In my world they have helped sustain me through many a doubt and many a fear, and I've written over one hundred thousand words with these rules in mind. I'm sure that as I go along I'll need to modify or add to these rules. For right now, at this stage in the game, I'm sticking to these. What do you think? Are there rules you use or rules you think should be altered here?

Writing Yourself Into a Corner

My current word count: 103,157, according to OpenOffice.

The topic: writing yourself into a corner. Ever have that happen?

I was aiming for around 100,000 to 110,000 words. That seems to be an approximate target for scifi novels, and while my story doesn't really involve spaceships it does seem to fit that kind of genre.

As you can see I've already blipped over the low end of the target range.

The thing is, I was coming up on what I thought was going to be the final scenes. Then I sat back and thought about how the main character and the antagonist were going to play it out; I discovered that no matter how I sliced it I didn't like the quick and dirty ending I originally sort of pictured.

This is something that probably depends a lot on your style of creating your story, though. I had only the roughest outline in my head of what I wanted to have happen. I don't have it broken down, as some people do, into a rought skeleton on which to hang more details and layer more details until all that needs to be done by the fifth time through is to add some adjectives and voila...done!

I've heard of other writers that will picture how they want the story to end, write that scene, then rewind and work up to that point. Not me!

Nope, I started with a "wouldn't it be cool if..." then started writing. My wife looked at a part of the early first draft and right off the bat said, "This opening is horrible..."

And she was right. I know what I need for an opening paragraph, an opening sentence, and my first draft's opening was truly sucktacular. Why? Because I had an extremely nebulous idea in my head of what I wanted to story out, and I sat down and just started typing until the idea started getting traction and headed the way of something resembling a story. As a result, the opening wanders, and has little to do with grabbing reader attention. The first half of the first chapter was more an exercise in gaining focus and introducing characters.

I think this is called "organic writing".

At this point I'm over my 100,000 mark and realizing that the ending will take a little longer than anticipated.  That's okay! I thought about what I was going to do, I have a tentative idea of what to do for a resolution. And it will be longer than anticipated.

Why? A few reasons.

One, this is a first draft. The ending may not work, the middle may have parts that don't work, and I may have issues with continuity in my first draft that I haven't even caught yet. Apparently there are times where parts of the story make perfect sense to me because I actually wrote the parts that make sense in my head, and not in the document. It happens. That 100,000 word count may quickly drop when I have to hack and slash parts out as well as redo scenes and details. It only takes about four pages of text to disappear to lose 1,000 words (as I recall the rough estimate is 250 words is about a page of text).

Second, I could change things. Like Paula B. left in a comment to the previous message, there could be ten or more rewrites in store. If the ending (or middle or beginning) doesn't work, I may need to rewrite entire chapters. This could dramatically alter my word count in one fell swoop of the delete key, and my word count is largely meaningless at the moment.

Third, page length is a guideline. Now, ignoring the word count entirely is a bad bad idea. No agent or publisher is going to accept an unknown author with a 300,000 word novel just because you think it's "da' bomb", and they probably don't care if you think they don't know what they're doing by passing up your work. But when you get a rough guideline of 100,000 words for a scifi novel and you come in at 120,000...well, they'll either tell you they'll take it on the requirement that you chop out 15,000 or so words, or they'll...probably tell you to chop out some of the words. If it's a good story, if they think it'll sell, they'll buy it if it's close to their guidelines. The important thing is the story. Grab them, entrance them, woo them...if they can't put down your manuscript, chances are you'll sell it to them, even if it is over (or under) size.

I'm not saying my story is the next big thing. I would hope it is, but let's face it...odds are stacked against me. A first story, from an unknown, still learning as he goes along. That's a really long shot. But if I focused entirely on reality then I'd quickly conclude this isn't worth the effort, and quite frankly I want to make a go at trying to be successful at something like this. So I have to focus on the possible positives as well as the likely negatives!

So what do I do now that I've written myself into a corner where my word count is steadily climbing and my ending is getting a little longer than I liked?

I keep writing. I write until there's something resembling a decent ending, then I give it a quick scan to fix up the beginning, alter some details here and there, give it the roughest coat of polish possible. Then I give it to someone else and see how much they recoil and how much effort it takes them to plow through it to the end, if they make it that far. I get feedback. I rework things that aren't working for them. I get this feedback early so I'm not agonizing over details in a chapter that will have to be tossed out completely.

Most importantly I keep going. I wish I could remember where I first heard, "You can't edit a blank page," so I could give proper credit where it's due. It's true. I can't stop and ponder forever what to do with the ending or wait for the perfect ending...I have to keep going, or I'll shelve my project and just never come back to it. So I just keep asking myself what should happen next, then I go with it. I know I could change it later if I have to.

I guess I'm saying that in my naivete there's no such thing as truly writing yourself into a corner. You just keep writing. Ask, "What should happen next given the current circumstances?" and you write it. Then you ask it again. And again. And again. If inspiration strikes later, you'll go back and fix it. But first, get the story down so you'll have something to fix!

Goals and Writing

My word count stands at 98,896 on the first draft.

I had been hoping to finish my first draft in November, spend December editing and rewriting, and then celebrate the New Year by starting my agent/publisher search and collecting my rejection notices.

Well, I still have a few more bits to go on the first draft. I'm thinking I'm very close to my final scenes as I have them laid out in my head, but I obviously didn't quite make my "Done In November" goal.

This brings me to goals in writing. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't make it, obviously, but I can't let it keep me down. I have, however, been keeping to my previous goal of 500+ words per day. Almost every day I have added over 1,000 words to the first draft. For me, with my schedule, that's very good. There have been only a few days where I have skipped adding to my manuscript, and if you average out my progress I have still managed to keep ahead of my goal by a decent margin.

Writing a book, or attempting to write a book in my case, takes discipline. Wanna-be writers have a huge bag of excuses at their disposal to derail writing that Great American Novel. I have plenty of them; I lack time, I lack talent, and the odds are greatly stacked against new authors trying to break into the market, the effort isn't worth it for the amount of money the vast majority of authors make from months (or years) of toil...

...and it's all true, for the most part. Or at least in some way valid.


So I started setting goals and evaluating how to meet those goals, and admitted that it takes a certain amount of discipline to meet those goals. I cut time out of the TV time to be replaced with "placing my butt in the seat and the hands on the keyboard". I don't have a home office space so I will take a laptop into the bedroom with a lapdesk so I have a slightly quieter space to try focusing a little better on my story.

My most basic goal is to make some advancement on the story each day, be it a 100 words or 1,000 words. I have good days and bad days, but I've had very very few days where I don't add something to the first draft.

I use these goals to keep me motivated through the doubts and fears. I don't have an English degree, I didn't even really like my English classes in school. I don't know if anyone would like my story; they very well might not. I fully acknowledge that this is a first attempt at writing anything more complicated than a long email and as such it will very likely not be anything near what the masters on the shelves at Barnes and Noble have written.

On the other hand, Anne Coulter and Glenn Beck have had books released as well.

So I plug on, focusing on my goals more than my fears. If I never get published, I'll have pride in knowing that I tried, and that I gave it an honest effort in addition to the pride of having made my goals and stuck with them.

If you want to achieve something in life you need to create goals to help measure your progress. If you don't make a milestone, you reassess and move on, continuing to make progress. Only fail yourself by giving up on your goals...so...I've failed to finish the first draft in November. I'm now going to try focusing on finishing it up as soon as I can into December so I can start editing and rewriting, and still at least try to start the query process in January. It's not too late to meet that goal yet...