Before there's a book, there's an idea. Many ideas seem to pop out of nowhere. Good. Write them down and think about them later. But the productive writer is also intentional about creativity, doing things (as Dean Koontz once put it) to "strain out good story ideas from [the] boiling soup of the subconscious mind."
A writing friend recently shared with a bunch of fellow scribes that she was seriously stuck on the brainstorming aspect of a new project. She gave me permission to write about it. This author needed to solidify her idea and start writing because she had a thing called a “deadline.” But, she said, “the story and the characters are seriously playing hard to get.”
“Would love any brainstorming tips and tricks if you have them!” she said. “How do you start building your story and characters? And how do you feel productive and intentional when brainstorming is such a creative, often stubborn—at least for me—process?”
It's a great question. Here is what I wrote to her:
I wonder if part of the deal is what so many of us have expressed over the years with each new book, that it seems to get “harder.” And the reason for that, I believe, is that with each book, you improve your craft and your standards go up. You understand what goes into writing a whole book (all the constituent parts) and think, “Man, I've got to do all that again! And better!” So every idea in the brainstorming phase gets tested, when it should be a time for getting as many ideas as you can without judgment.
I do the following at the beginning of any project.
Will Connelly is an associate at a prestigious San Francisco law firm, handling high-level merger negotiations between computer companies.
When Will celebrates by picking up a Russian woman at a club, he finds himself at the mercy of a ring of small-time Russian mobsters with designs on the top-secret NSA computer chip Will’s client is developing.
Now, with the Russian mob, the SEC, and the Department of Justice all after him, Will has to find a way to save his professional life and his own skin before the wrong people get the technology for mass destruction.
The next phase of the project depends on how you like to approach things: Are you a plotter (one who outlines a story) or pantser (one who works instinctually, without an outline) or something in between? (See "The Perils of Pure Pantsing" in chapter six.)
My own practice is to go immediately to the “mirror moment,” as it influences everything else. (See “Reflections on the Mirror Moment,” chapter three, for more on this topic.) In a mirror moment, a character, right in the middle of the story, is forced to reflect. This becomes critical to understanding the character’s inner need.
Now, I know there are some dedicated pantsers out there for whom any kind of preplanning brings out a case of hives. They just want to start writing, and that's okay ... so long as they realize that they’re basically brainstorming the long way round. Some contend that this is the best way to find original story material. I would say it is only one way. They will still have to do a lot of editing and a ton of rewriting. The process I've described here is a faster and, to my mind, more efficient way of getting to an original story line that you will be excited to write.
Calliope, the muse of epic poetry and story, is a fickle goddess. She drops in depending on her mood, tickles the imagination, and then takes off to party with Aphrodite. Homer famously called on the muse at the beginning of The Illiad and The Odyssey, and she deigned to answer the blind poet. But many another author, cold and alone in his garret, has cursed her for not showing up at all.
So what do you do, scribe? Wait around for a visit? Implore Zeus to flex some muscle and order his daughter to your office or Starbucks?
No! You don't have time to waste. You've got books to write. So I suggest you take the initiative and prod the capricious nymph of her scornful lethargy.
How? Play games. Set aside a regular time (at least one half hour per week) just to play. The most important rule of play is the following: Do not censor yourself in any way. Leave your editorial mind out of the loop and record the ideas just as they come. Only later, with some distance, do you go back and assess what you have.
Here are ten of my favorite muse-goosing games:
This game can be played at any stage of the writing process, but it is especially useful for finding ideas. Train your mind to think in what if terms about everything you read, watch, or happen to see on the street. I'm always doing that when waiting at a stoplight and looking at people on the corner. What if she is an assassin? What if he is the deposed president of Venezuela?
Read the news asking what if about every article. What if Tom Brady is a robot? What if that Montana newlywed who shoved her husband off a cliff eight days into their marriage is a serial husband killer? Or a talk-show host?
Make up a cool title, then think about a book to go with it. Sound wacky? It isn't. A title can set your imagination zooming, in search of a story.
Titles can come from a variety of sources: Poetry, quotations, the Bible. Go through a book of quotations, like Bartlett's, and jot down interesting phrases. Make a list of several words randomly drawn from the dictionary and combine them. Story ideas will begin bubbling up around you.
Early in his career, Ray Bradbury made a list of nouns that flew out of his subconscious. These became fodder for his stories.
Start your own list. Let your mind comb through the mental pictures of your past and quickly write one- or two-word reminders. I did this once and my own list of over one hundred items includes these:
Each of these is the germ of a possible story or novel. They are what resonate from my past. I can take one of these items and brainstorm a whole host of possibilities that come straight from the heart.
Let your imagination play you a movie. Close your eyes. Sit back and “watch.” What do you see? If something is interesting, don't try to control it. Give it a nudge if you want to, but try as much as possible to let the pictures do their own thing. Do this for as long as you want.
Music is a shortcut to the heart. (Calliope has a sister, Euterpe, goddess of music. Put the whole family to work.)
Listen to music that moves you. Choose from different styles—classical, movie scores, rock, jazz, whatever lights your fuse—and as you listen, close your eyes and see what pictures, scenes, or characters develop.
If Shakespeare could do it, you can too. Steal your plots. Yes, the Bard of Avon rarely came up with an original story. He took old plots and weaved his own particular magic with them.
Listen: This is not plagiarism! I once had a well-meaning but misinformed correspondent wax indignant about my tongue-in-cheek use of the word steal. In this world we live in, there are only about twenty plots (more or less depending on who you talk to), and they are all public domain. You combine, rework, and reimagine them. You don't lift exact characters and setting.
All genres have conventions. We expect certain beats and movements in genre stories. Why not take those expectations and turn them into fresh plots?
It's very easy to take a Western tale, for example, and to set it in outer space. Star Wars had many Western themes (remember the bar scene on Tattooine?). Likewise the Sean Connery movie Outland is High Noon on a Jupiter moon. The feel of Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man characters transferred nicely into the future in Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. The classic TV series The Wild, Wild West was simply James Bond in the Old West—a brilliant flipping of a genre that has become part of popular culture.
When zombies got hot a few years ago, I pitched my agent the idea of a legal thriller series with a zombie as the lawyer-hero. I figured most people think lawyers and zombies are the same anyway. Kensington Publishing Corp. bought it and it became the Mallory Caine series under my pen name, K. Bennett.
James Michener began “writing” a book four or five years in advance. When he “felt something coming on” he would start reading, as many as 150 to 200 books on a subject. He browsed, read, and researched. He kept it all in his head and then, finally, he began to write. All the material gave him plenty of ideas to draw upon.
Today the Internet makes research easier than ever. But don't ignore the classic routes. Books are still here, and you can always find people with specialized knowledge to interview. If your pocketbook permits, it’s a good idea to travel to a location and drink it in. Rich veins of material abound.
By its nature, an obsession controls the deepest emotions of a character. It pushes the character, prompting her to action. As such, obsession is a great springboard for ideas. What sorts of things obsess people?
Create a character. Give her an obsession. Watch where she runs.
Dean Koontz wrote The Voice of the Night based on an opening line he wrote while just “playing around”:
“You ever killed anything?” Roy asked.
Only after the line was written did Koontz decide Roy would be a boy of fourteen. He then went on to write two pages of dialogue, which opened the book. But it all started with one line that reached out and grabbed him by the throat.
Joseph Heller was famous for using first lines to suggest novels. In desperation one day, needing to start a novel but having no ideas, these opening lines came to Heller:
In the office in which I work, there are four people of whom I am afraid. Each of these four people is afraid of five people.
These two lines immediately suggested what Heller calls “a whole explosion of possibilities and choices.” The result was his novel Something Happened.
The main lesson: Don't let the inconsistent Calliope rest on her mythic derriere. She's a muse, after all. This is what she's supposed to do.
The most important rule for writers to follow is never allow any of your main characters to act like idiots in order to move or wrap up your plot! (See chapter three.)
However, there is another rule that is of equal import. While this topic concerns mainly thrillers, it can be applied to any genre. The overall premise of the thriller must be justified in a way that is a) surprising and yet b) makes perfect sense.
This is not easy. Otherwise everybody would be writing The Sixth Sense every time out. Not even M. Night Shyamalan is writing The Sixth Sense every time out!
So what can we do to up our chances of getting our novel’s ending right?
Readers will accept almost any premise at the start. They are willing to suspend their disbelief unless, or until, you dash that suspension with preposterousness. In other words, the readers are on your side. They're pulling for you. You have entered, therefore, into an implied contract with them. They suspend disbelief, and you pay that off with a great ending.
I often hear writers say things like, "Oh, I've got a great premise. I don't know how it's going to end, but it will have to end sometime. And if I don't know how it's going to end, then surely the readers won't guess!"
That is called, in philosophical discourse, a non sequitur (meaning, "it does not follow"). I can name one big-name author whose last book was excoriated by readers because it had a great setup and hundreds of pages of suspense, followed by an ending that was absolutely ridiculous. I won't name said author because I believe in the fellowship, and I know how hard this writing stuff is to pull off.
Nevertheless, I've heard said writer say (he/she/it) does not worry about how something's going to end until (he/she/it) gets there. And said author has paid the price for it.
A thriller, mystery, or any book that majors in suspense does not begin with the hook, the body, or the lead character's introduction. In your story world, it always begins in the past with the opponent’s scheme. (Note: This is not where you begin your book. It's what you, the author, should know before your book begins.)
Erle Stanley Gardner plotted his mysteries with what he called "The Murderer's Ladder." It starts with the bottom rung and runs up to the top. There are ten rungs:
10. Eliminating overlooked clues and loose threads
9. The false suspect
8. The cover-up
7. The flight
6. The actual killing
5. The first irretrievable step
4. The opportunity
3. The plan
2. The temptation
1. The motivation
So what you need to work out first is the motive for the scheme. This is in the heart and mind of the antagonist. He is then tempted to action, makes a plan, looks for opportunity, etc. When Perry Mason gets on the case, with the help of detective Paul Drake, they look for clues along the rungs of the ladder, the place where the villain might have made a mistake.
The point of all this is that when you build your own ladder for the villain, it will not only help your premise make sense, it will give you all sorts of ideas for plot twists and red herrings.
This is an exercise I give in my writing workshops. It's simple yet powerful. At some point in your plotting, whether you are an outliner or a pantser, you should pause and put your antagonist character in a courtroom. He is representing himself before a jury and must now give a closing argument that attempts to justify why he did what he did.
This step helps to round out your opponent, giving him added dimensions and perhaps even a touch of sympathy. It also keeps you from creating the dreaded moustache-twirling villain. No stereotypes, please.
I see a pantser in the back row, raising her hand. "Yes, ma'am?"
"I just can't write that way! I have to discover as I go along!"
"And you know what you'll discover? That you have to force an ending onto all that material you've come up with. So you'll go back and try to change, mix, and match, only to discover there are too many plot elements you can't alter without changing everything else around it, so you'll end up compromising at the end. Sometimes it will work, but even popular writers who do it this way only bat around .400 on their endings.
If you follow those three steps, your pantsing writer's mind will still be able to play, but it will play with a purpose."
"But ... but ..."
"But me no buts! This isn't easy, you know. If it was, celebrities wouldn't hire ghostwriters when they try to cash in on the thriller market!"
Make sense? Have you ever found yourself backed into premise implausibility? Follow these steps, and it won't happen again!
In the pantheon of prolific writers, one name stands virtually above all the rest. Isaac Asimov was the author of over five hundred books. He wrote science fiction and nonfiction, and books on math, science, the Bible, Shakespeare, and some of the most famous speculative fiction of the twentieth century.
How did he do it?
He had no life.
I say that only partially in jest. Asimov himself admits that writing was so much a part of who he was and what he did that it limited his socializing. Being so prolific, he once wrote, is “hard on one’s wife.”
He was always writing, he said, even when he wasn’t writing. By that he meant his mind was working on the writing, always tossing up ideas, sometimes unbidden.
Now, the idea of working on more than one project at a time may be completely against your DNA as a writer. I've known several writers who say they simply cannot concentrate on more than one book. My feeling is that it's just a matter of habit. That if they gave themselves enough time and practice, they could certainly do it.
I want you to begin by thinking of yourself as an entertainment enterprise, like a movie studio.
There are three things that a good movie company has to do: They have to decide which properties to option, which to develop, and which to green-light. You, to be a prolific and productive writer, should do the same.
You first have to decide what concepts you are going to put into the development process. Spend a half hour to an hour every week on pure creativity. Play games, use writing prompts, and intentionally think up stories. One of the most prolific and successful authors of our time is Dean Koontz. Early in his career he did this kind of thing all the time.
He made up titles. Just titles. Every now and then one of those would trigger a whole story idea in his head, as I’ve previously mentioned.
He wrote just first lines. Intriguing first lines that popped into his brain. Dozens and dozens of these, until one would grab him and make him wonder what to write next. And that’s what he would write next, just to see where it would take him.
Follow Koontz’s pattern. Eventually you will have a list of ideas and concepts that you can keep in a file. Every now and then, go over these ideas and determine which ones speak to you, get your juices flowing.
I take the ideas that I want to develop further and put them into another file I call “front burner concepts.”
I will spend some time developing these ideas. I might begin a “white-hot document” (i.e., writing as fast as I can), where I do a free-form collection of thoughts and ideas related to the concept. I might start putting down ideas for characters, plot developments, twists and turns. Doing this with a couple of different ideas allows me to have various projects in development just like a movie studio would.
Eventually comes the decision to green-light a project. This is when I get serious about developing a new book, novella, or story.
All of this is subject to change, of course. Just like a look at daily rushes tells a studio boss a film project isn't going well, I could put a project into what they call turnaround. Remove the green light and assess it later. My goal is to have two or three green-lit projects going at any one time.
The best movie companies try to nurture at least one labor of love along the way. This is a film that is financed not because of hopes of great, big returns, but because somebody in the company just thinks it’s worth doing.
A lot of these kinds of films were made in the golden age of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of the best American cinema of all time was smaller, personal projects. Films like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Paul Mazursky’s Bloom in Love, and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.
These projects started to dry up in the late 1970s, when Hollywood went home-run crazy, always aiming for megahits like Jaws and Star Wars.
But every now and then another of these personal films will sneak into theaters, catch on, and become reminders of what love can do for labor.
So I advocate that you have one labor of love project in your back pocket. It’s a project you can work on with verve and abandon, without a lot of thought about marketing and sales.
Why would you do that if your goal is to make money writing books?
Because a labor-of-love project will make you a better writer. The mere act of writing this way loosens you up and stretches your muscles.
In fact, a good practice is to write like wildfire, first thing in the morning, on your love project. Do three hundred, five hundred, or a thousand words on it. You’ll find that when you go to work on your main project, you’ll be in the zone and you’ll have more confidence.
You can even use a journal for this if that’s your preference.
Most important, try to write fast, without too much muss or fuss over style. The idea is to loosen your mind and imagination.
There are a lot of ways to fail at something.
Like the new boat owner who was filling up his pleasure craft with fuel for that first time out and mistook the tube meant to hold fishing poles for the gas tank. After completing his work he started up the engine.
The gas fumes ignited and blew the boat owner into the sky. He came down in the drink and was rescued, but the boat was a goner (yes, this is a true story).
You can be just as creative in finding ways to avoid writing your novel. In fact, you may be (unintentionally, of course) doing some things right now that will keep you from actually finishing a book—or finishing a book that has a chance to sell.
If you want to make sure you finish (and sell) your novel, here are seven things you’ll need to avoid:
Writers love to go to their favorite writing spot with their laptop or notebook. Perhaps your location of choice is a Starbucks. You sit down with a cup of coffee and hold it with both hands, sipping slowly. Invariably you end up keeping your fingers away from the keyboard. You’ll glance out a window, waiting for a skein of geese flying in V formation. If no window is available, you’ll observe the other patrons and make sure they can see your expression of otherworldly concentration.
You are waiting for inspiration. It must come from on high and fill you like fire.
Until then, you refuse to write a word. If you’re tempted to start working without inspiration, you might open up Spider Solitaire immediately. You tell yourself this will relax your mind so inspiration can pour in.
Of course, sitting in a coffee shop to be seen and to wait for inspiration is contrary to what so many writers actually do. They don’t wait for inspiration. They go after it, as Jack London said he did, “with a club.” They follow the advice of Peter De Vries, who said, “I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.”
There’s no secret to writing a novel: write, and work through minor problems quickly, then work through major ones after the first draft is completed.
Do things like this:
The great pitcher Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.”
It’s good life advice, and you should apply it to your writing.
If you want to fail, constantly worry about how bad your book might turn out to be. Pause every thousand words or so and think, This is about the worst piece of crud known to man. Where did I put the bourbon?
This is sometimes known as the “inner critic,” and constantly looking over your shoulder will feed him.
If you think about those doubts long enough, they can even develop into fears. Jack Bickham, a novelist who was even better known for his books on the craft, put it this way:
All of us are scared: of looking dumb, of running out of ideas, of never selling our copy, of not getting noticed.
We fiction writers make a business of being scared, and not just of looking dumb. Some of these fears may never go away, and we may just have to learn to live with them.
Most writers learn not only to live with doubt and fear, but to defeat them. How do they do that? Mostly, they simply pound away at the keyboard.
They concentrate on the words in front of them and kick that inner critic to the curb.
They train themselves to do this via writing exercises:
Ignoring the craft applies to whether you finish your first draft or not. It’s the cry of the artistic rebel who will go to the grave denouncing rules, techniques, and anything that gets within a hundred yards of structure.
This does create a very good feeling, like you’re the king of the world. You can completely ignore all of the storytellers who came before you (be sure to call them hacks or sellouts). But the fact is that in doing so, you’ll most likely fail to place your book anywhere.
Writers who sell their books and build readerships take the craft of writing seriously. They study it without apology. They have people give them feedback—editors, critique groups, trusted and objective friends—and they read countless novels and examine what’s going on in them.
They analyze successful stories. They ask questions when reading and use their findings to help strengthen their work. For example:
These studious writers will be spotted reading Writer’s Digest and books on writing. They apply and practice what they learn, and through the wonder of trial and error find themselves growing as writers.
Here’s a surefire way not only to create a novel not worth reading, but to scuttle your career as well. Decide that arrogance and defiance are your two weapons of choice to bulldog your way to publication.
When you have a manuscript rejected, do not treat it as a personal insult. Don’t think of editors and agents as nasty creatures who love saying no, who sit at their computers laughing Bwahahahahaha as they fire off their favorite thing: the impersonal form letter.
And definitely do not carry all this to your social media sites and publicly rebuke. By name.
Those who break through and obtain a career believe that they can recover—even learn—from rejection and use it as motivation to write better.
Remember the admonition of writer Ron Goulart: “Never assume that a rejection of your stuff is also a rejection of you as a person. Unless it’s accompanied by a punch in the nose.”
Yes, recognize that rejection hurts. But it’s part of the process and always will be. Remember to do the following:
Now let’s talk about one of the biggest mistakes a novelist can make: chasing the market. You might be tempted to study the best-seller lists, try to identify a trend, and jump on it.
There’s a saying in publishing that the moment you spot a trend, it’s too late to join. By the time you finish writing something you think will be popular, because it’s popular now, that ship will have largely sailed.
Follow the advice of that saying and experiment with something new, something agents and editors look for: a fresh voice.
Writers need to be market conscious. Know that publishers are in this business to make money; they need a return on their investment in a new writer.
But good writers still manage to bring something new to the table, namely their own heart and passion filtered through a craft that enables readers to share their vision.
Yes, vision. Every genre needs it. As superagent Donald Maass says in The Fire in Fiction: “What the hell are you trying to say to me?”
To develop a fresh voice try this:
Even with the boom in e-books and the ease with which anything can be “published,” writers should avoid taking the easy way out when trying to publish. Not everything you write is worth putting out as a self-released e-book.
Falling back on self-publishing for anything you write removes the kind of pressure that you need to succeed. Combining this ease with the chip-on-your-shoulder attitude will create a horrific double whammy.
Your goal should be to build a strong foundation in the nontraditional realm of digital and independent publishing—to find surefire ways to vet your work:
If all else fails, and you still find yourself struggling, just remember this: Never stop writing.
Remember the examples of those who persevered and eventually found an agent or got published, like Kathryn Stockett. She wrote and edited The Help over a five-year period, then got three-and-a-half years’ worth of rejections from agents—sixty in all. It was agent sixty-one who took her on, and the rest you know well.
Published authors will tell you it’s all about perseverance—the one characteristic all successful writers share. They’ll tell you as long as you’ve got a computer and keyboard, or pen and paper, you can write. And as long as you write, you have a chance to get published.
Author David Eddings said, “Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don’t have calluses on your soul, this isn’t for you. Take up knitting instead.”
Some time ago I cheekily posted on my group blog, Kill Zone, the three rules for writing a novel. The post produced a spirited discussion on what is a “rule” and what is a “principle,” but by and large there was agreement that these three factors are essential to novels that sell. The rules are as follows:
Here I’d like to discuss some writing advice writers would do well to ignore.
Where does such advice come from? I have a theory that there is a mad scientist in Schenectady, New York, who cooks up writing advice memes and converts them to an invisible and odorless gas. He then secretly arranges for this gas to seep into critique groups across the land, infecting the members, who then begin to dispense the pernicious doctrine as if it were holy writ.
I now offer the antidote to the gas.
Verdict: Baloney
This meme may have started with Elmore Leonard, who once dashed off a list of “rules” that have become like sacred script for writers. If his advice were, “Don’t open a book with static, flat descriptions,” I would absolutely agree.
But here is why the rule, as stated, is baloney: Weather can add dimension and tone to the opening disturbance. If you use it in that fashion, weaving it into action, it’s a fine way to begin.
Look at the opening of Bleak House by Dickens. Or the short story “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away” by Stephen King. Or the quieter beginning of Anne Lamott’s Blue Shoe. All of them use weather to great effect. Here’s a Western, Hangman’s Territory, from Jack Bickham:
The late spring storm was breaking. To the east, boiling blue-gray clouds moved on, raging toward Fort Gibson. To the west, the sun peered cautiously through a last veil of rain, slanting under the shelf of clouds and making the air a strange, silent bright yellow. The intense, muggy heat of the day had been broken, and now the early evening was cool and damp, and frogs had magically appeared everywhere in the red gumbo of the Indian Nations.
Eck Jackson threw back the heavy canvas under which he had been waiting. His boots sank into the red mud as he clambered out of his shelter between two rocks and peered at the sky.
If you think of weather as interacting with the character’s mood and emotions, you’re just fine to start with it.
Verdict: Baloney
Starting with dialogue creates instant conflict, which is what most unpublished manuscripts lack on the first pages. Sometimes this rule is stated as “Don’t start with unattributed dialogue.” Double baloney on rye with mustard. Here’s why: Readers have imaginations that are patient and malleable. If they are hooked by dialogue, they will wait several lines before they find who’s talking and lose absolutely nothing in the process.
Examples:
“TOM!”
No answer.
“TOM!”
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!”
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room . . .
—Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
“Any thoughts that you’d like to start with?”
“Thoughts on what?”
“Well, on anything. On the incident.”
“On the incident? Yes, I have some thoughts.”
She waited but he did not continue. He had decided before he even got to Chinatown that this would be the way he would be.
—Michael Connelly, The Last Coyote
“Name?”
“Robert Travis.”
“Occupation?”
“Mining engineer.”
“Place of residence?”
“Seventh Base, Jovian Development Unit, Ganymede.”
“Reason for visiting Luna?”
“I’m checking on performance of the new Dahlmeyer units in the Mare Nublum fields. We’re thinking of adapting them for use in our Trendart field on Ganymede.”
“I see ...” The port inspector fumbled through my papers. “Where’s your celemental analysis sheet?”
—Dwight V. Swain, The Transposed Man
Verdict: Spam (a step up from baloney)
If backstory is defined as a flashback segment, then this advice has merit. Readers will wait a long time for backstory information if something compelling is happening in front of them. But if you stop the forward momentum of your opening with a longish flashback, you’ve dropped the narrative ball.
However, when backstory refers to bits of a character’s history, then this advice is unsound. Backstory bits are actually essential for bonding us with a character. If we don’t know anything about the characters in conflict, we are less involved in their trouble. (Read Koontz and King, who weave backstory masterfully into their opening pages.)
I’ve given writing students a simple guideline: three sentences of backstory in the first ten pages. You may use them together or space them apart. Then three paragraphs of backstory in the next ten pages, together or apart. (See “How to Handle Exposition and Backstory,” chapter four.)
I’ve seen this work wonders for beginning manuscripts.
Verdict: Baloney
Sounder advice is this: Write who you are. Write what you love. Write what you need to know.
Verdict: Stinky baloney
A few literary savants out there may be able to do this thing naturally, without thinking about technique or craft, and those three people can form their own group and meet for martinis.
Every other writer can benefit from time spent studying the craft. I’ve heard some writers say they don’t want to do that for fear of stifling the purity of their work. Some of them get a contract and their books come out in a nice edition that sells five hundred copies. And then the author gets bitter and starts appearing at writers conferences raging how there is no such thing as structure and writers have wasted their money attending the conference—that they all should just go home and write. (This has actually happened on several occasions that I know of).
Here is some advice: Don’t be that kind of writer.
I was going through some old files the other day and came across this little scrap of paper from several years ago. I remember it well. I was on a trip to talk with my publishing house at the time, Zondervan. I was preparing the pitch for my next project, and as I always try to do, wanted to get it into pristine form.
I had an idea that had been chugging around my brain for a while. It was based on two things: First, an uncomfortable encounter with someone from my past who was insistent on edging back into my life. Second, the plot of one of my favorite novels, The Executioners by John D. MacDonald (basis of the Cape Fear films).
I put those two items together. This is a great method of coming up with plot ideas, by the way. Dean Koontz has been a master at this. For instance, Midnight, one of his best thrillers, is a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Koontz even references those titles in the book itself, to “wink” at the readers who recognize the plotlines! But all the characters and the setting are new, original creations. That’s how it’s done.
Anyway, I was in the hotel room in Grand Rapids and jotted down this note:
How far will a man go to protect his family? For lawyer Sam Trask, it's farther than he ever thought possible. Because when an unwelcome presence from his past comes calling, bent on the destruction of his family, Sam must leave the civilized corners of the law and journey into the heart of darkness.
Not bad for an on-the-spot jot on a Holiday Inn notepad. The concept was the basis of my novel No Legal Grounds (2007), which became a bestseller and is still one of my favorite thrillers.
The reason: concept. If you don't make your concept solid and simple from the start, you're likely to wander around in soggy bogs and down random rabbit trails. You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.
A self-centered Southern belle is forced to fight for her home during and after the Civil War, even as she fights off the charms of a handsome rogue who looks almost exactly like Clark Gable.
To get back home, a Kansas farm girl has to kill a wicked witch in a land full of Munchkins and flying monkeys. Aided by a scarecrow, a tin man and a lion with issues, she faces dangers aplenty along a yellow brick road.
A simple summary like this is your anchor, your floodlight in the darkness. It will keep you focused and writing scenes with organic unity.
In real estate, it's location, location, location.
In fiction, it's concept, concept, concept.
Make sure you know yours before you start writing.
A friend alerted me to an interesting infographic posted on Goodreads1http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/424-what-makes-you-put-down-a-book . The subject: Why readers abandon a book they've started. Among the reasons listed you’ll find:
But the number one reason by far was slow, boring.
Makes sense, doesn't it? With all due respect to Somerset Maugham, I believe there is at least one “rule” for writing a novel, and that is Don't bore the reader!
So if I may channel my favorite commercial character, The Most Interesting Man in the World, I would say to you:
Find out the things readers don't like, then . . . don't do those things.
Thank you.
Let's have a look.
This probably refers to pedestrian or vanilla-sounding prose. Unremarkable. Without what John D. MacDonald called “unobtrusive poetry.” You have to have a little style, or what agents and editors refer to as “voice.” To help you develop voice, try reading outside your genre. Or read poetry, as Ray Bradbury counseled. In other words, get some good wordsmithery into your head. This will expand your style almost automatically.
Thriller writers are especially prone to this. I remember picking up a thriller that starts off with some soldiers breaking into a guy's house. He's startled! What's going on? Jackboots! In his house! Why? Because, it turns out, the captain wants him for some sort of secret meeting. But I thought, why send a crack team of trained soldiers to bust into one man's suburban home and scare the living daylights out of him? Especially when they know he's no threat to anyone. No weapons. No reason to think he'd resist. And why wake up the entire neighborhood (a plot point conveniently ignored)? Why not simply have a couple of uniforms politely knock on the door and ask the guy to come with them? The only reason I could think of was that the author wanted to start off with a big, cinematic, heart-pounding opening. But the thrills made no sense. I put the book down.
Every plot needs to have some thread of plausibility. (See chapter one for avoiding implausibility in your premise.) The more outrageous it is, the harder you have to work to justify it. Leaving plot points ignored or creating something that’s implausible will only pull your reader out of the story. So get to work.
The trick to writing about a character who is, by and large, unlikable (i.e., does things we generally don't approve of) is to give the reader a characteristic that is likable. Scarlett O'Hara, for example, has grit and determination. Sherlock Holmes is arrogant, but has a right to be—he’s always the smartest one in the room.
Then give readers at least one reason to hope the character might be redeemed at the end. Ebenezer Scrooge displays a heart when he sees his younger self, and then old Fezziwigg. Maybe that heart can be realized again!
The biggie. There is way too much to talk about here. I once ran a three-day intensive workshop all based on what I call “Hitchcock's Axiom.” When asked what makes a compelling story, Hitchcock said that it is “life, with the dull parts taken out.”
If I was forced to put general principles in the form of a telegram, I'd probably say:
Create a compelling character and put him in a “death match” with an opponent (the death being physical, professional, or psychological) and only write scenes that in some way reflect or impact that battle.
The principle is simple and straightforward. Learning how to do it takes time, practice, and study, which should never stop.
1http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/424-what-makes-you-put-down-a-book