Write Good or Die (3 page)

For
The Price
—bargain, price, deal,
winter, ice, buried, dormant, resurrection, apple, temptation,
tree, garden, labyrinth, Sleeping Beauty, castle, queen, princess,
prince, king, wish, grant, deal, contract, task, hell, purgatory,
descent, mirror, Rumpelstiltskin, spiral…

Some words I’ll have from the very beginning
because they’re part of my own thematic DNA. But as the word lists
grow, so does my understanding of the inherent themes of each
particular story.

Do you see how that might start to work? Not
only do you get a sense of how the story can look to convey your
themes, but you also have a growing list of specific words that you
can work with in your prose so that you’re constantly hitting those
themes on different levels.

At the same time that I’m
doing my word lists, I start a collage book, and try to spend some
time every week flipping through magazines and pulling photos that
resonate with my story. I find
Vogue
, the Italian fashion
mags,
Vanity Fair
,
Premiere
,
Rolling Stone
and of course,
National
Geographic
particularly good for me. I tape
those photos together in a blank artists’ sketchbook (I use tape so
I can move the photos around when I feel like it. If you’re
more—well, if you’re neater than I am, you can also use plastic
sleeves in a three-ring binder). It’s another way of growing an
image system. Also, it doesn’t feel like writing so you think
you’re getting away with something.

Also, know your world myths and fairy tales!
Why make up your own backstory and characters when you can tap into
universally powerful archetypes? Remember, there’s no new story
under the sun, so being conscious of your antecedents can help you
bring out the archetypal power of the characters and themes you’re
working with.

Alexandra
Sokoloff—http://www.alexandrasokoloff.com

###

21. Talking Points: Dialogue

By Scott Nicholson

http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

Sometimes you just have to talk it out, even
when you don’t know what you’re talking about.

That’s why narrative fiction so heavily
relies on dialogue. It creates conflict, gives information to the
reader, moves the plot, develops the characters, and builds a sense
of place. In short, it does everything, all the time, just like
every element of your work should, whether it’s fiction or
non-fiction.

Speech denotes class, racial, cultural,
educational, and geographic differences. Make sure each character
speaks consistently. In real life, our grammar can change depending
on the company we’re keeping, but in fiction you have to keep it
simple for the reader. The character who says “ain’t” on page three
shouldn’t be saying “most certainly is not” by page 300, unless
that character has gone to Harvard during the middle chapters.

Beware of dialect. When conveying dialect, a
little is usually plenty. Otherwise, it becomes parody and you lose
the reader. For example, your Dodge City sheriff shouldn’t say,
“I’m amblin’ over yonder to wet muh whistle.” Your Southern
character shouldn’t lose all the g’s in her action verbs: enough
“fussin’ and feudin’” and your reader’s eyesight will blur. Use
colloquialisms in moderation, and let your grammar do most of the
work instead of relying on tics, tricks, and dropped letters. “We
don’t have no pumpkins,” or “We ain’t got no pumpkins” is fine, but
make sure all the characters don’t talk alike. And you might need
to only drop the effect once or twice to plant the idea in the
reader’s mind.

In my novel
The Manor
, I have a minor
character who is a Southern belle. She is educated, and therefore I
simply said she was from the South and didn’t attempt to drench her
with slang, moonshine, and magnolias. In fact, the only direct
reference to her accent is when she is mocked by her lover: “Why
don’t ya’ll get yosef gone with the wind?” She never actually says
“ya’ll” herself. I know Southern speech patterns fairly well, and
much of the effect is oral rather than literal. It’s not just
Southerners who drop the g in –ing words, and they’re not doing it
because they’re dumb, shiftless, and lazy. In fact, much of the
Appalachian speech often seen as backwoods and backward (“I’m
afixin’ to feed the chickens”) is the remnant of very formal Celtic
speech that crossed the Atlantic several hundred years
ago.

In the same novel, I have a
character who has adopted a fake British accent because he wants to
appear classy. He’s atrocious and almost a parody. He says things
like, “Bloody hell,” and “Righty right,” and a lot of the little
phrases you hear in movies like
Shaun of
the Dead
and
The
Full Monty
. It works because that’s where
he “learned” his accent. If I had used a real British character, I
would have had to work much harder, because most of my exposure to
British speech is through movies and the occasional book, which
can’t be fully trusted to convey authentic speech.

I am not a huge Lovecraft fan, and I think a
lot of it has to do with his attempts to tag rural New England
dialect. “Ye can have ye’re money back. I don’t want truck with any
kin o’ Septimus Bishop. It’s jest aoutside my door. Snufflin’
araoun.’” Lovecraft’s educated characters display few distinctive
speech patterns. It’s lazy, it’s classist, it’s just plain bad
writing, Lovecraft’s unique ideas aside.

For the opposite reason, I love Elmore
Leonard’s work. Somehow even his nasty characters seem to have a
dignity about them. This is from the mouth of a black houseman:
“Mmmm, that musta impressed him. Yeah, Jacktown have riots and
everything up there. What the man likes is to rub against danger
without getting any on him. Make him feel like a macho man. You
know what I’m saying?” To me, this reflects a streetwise voice but
one that is not generic. The line about rubbing against danger
makes it smart and Leonard doesn’t have to diminish his black
character with, “You sho’ got that right, homey.”

It’s not only spoken dialogue that can create
pitfalls. Internal monologue, and even the point-of-view voice,
must ring true. There’s a great line by mystery writer Margaret
Maron: “I is not me.” Your first-person fictional character doesn’t
have to speak the way you do. If you are writing your
autobiography, then your voice will emerge, but even then your
“writing voice” will be different from your speaking voice. For
example, a large number of people add the “th” sound to the end of
“height” when they say it, which is plain stupid, but it would be
even stupider if you spelled it “heighth” in your dialogue.

Most modern novels feature
third-person-limited viewpoints, meaning the reader gets into the
character’s head and views the world through his or her eyes. This
allows you to make the most of internal monologue. I don’t know
about you, but I talk to myself a lot inside my own head. That
voice is different than what I would be saying if I were actually
using my tongue. And if you let your characters talk to you,
chances are good they will emerge with their own individual voices
and rhythms.

You can read pieces of your dialogue aloud to
make sure they work for the ear, but remember that written dialogue
functions differently than actual speech. It doesn’t have to be
real, because real speech is filled with ums, ers, and utter
banalities. Don’t let a character ask about the weather unless
you’re writing a natural-disaster thriller. Even if you’re writing
non-fiction and using actual quotes, you’ll still have to decide
which sentences are of interest and value. Most of all, make sure
there’s a reason your characters are saying what they are saying,
and pay attention to how they are saying it. There’s enough hot air
and blabber in the world already.

Scott
Nicholson—http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

###

22. WRITE WHAT YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT, THEN
TRY TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SELL IT

By Dean Wesley Smith

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com

The myth: Agents can give good career advice
to writers.

This chapter on agents to me is the most
important of all the agent chapters. Agents thinking they can give
career advice to writers is so wrong in so many ways, it’s going to
be hard to figure out where to start first. And it disgusts me in
so many ways, I’m going to have a certain level of problem keeping
balanced on this. Fair warning. I think this myth is flat dangerous
to any artist working.

So let me start first with the “art” aspects
of writing and work to the business.

ART vs. AGENT CAREER PLANNING MYTH

Every long-term writer I know does their best
with every project. We all put our hearts and souls into every
story, into every novel, into every project. There are no
exceptions. Sometimes we hit, sometimes we miss, sometimes we love
what we wrote and can’t sell it, sometimes we love what we wrote,
critics hate it. Sometimes we hate what we wrote, critics love
it.

But, without fail, we always do our best at
the time we were writing the project. That’s Given #1.

Given #2 is that every writer should write
what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, or what they
love. From the passion comes true art. (I have started two comic
book stores and own over 100,000 comic books. When I got to write
X-Men and Spider-Man, I was writing what I loved deeply and felt
frightened and challenged to even have the chance.)

Given #3. No writer ever should think for one
moment about a project selling either before or during the writing
phase. Ever. You try writing to market, to fad, to trend, and you
might as well find another job.

So, putting all three together, you come up
with a very clear statement that I repeat over and over and
over.

Write what you love, what you are passionate
about, (or as King says, what scares you), then figure out how to
sell it when you finish.

Let me repeat: SELL IT WHEN YOU FINISH!!!

So along comes the agent myth about helping a
writer plan a career.

Now understand, I have said over and over and
over again that I have no problem with a writer hiring an agent.
But for heaven’s sake, do it with solid business practice in mind
and a clear head. Clear out the myths. You might just very well end
up with an agent you can work with for a very long time.

So back to this myth about agents. Writer
believes that some agent can help them plan their career and what
to write next. They take advice blindly from an agent who doesn’t
really know them or their work or what they love and hate, some
agent who they have not even bothered to check out (see previous
chapters and comments), a stranger who is more concerned with their
own business than what is best for an artist.

Here is the problem. Some young writer gets
excited, does all the work, learns the craft, and writes a book he
is passionate about. And then starts following the myths.

Myth: Rewriting is good, so agent tells young
writer how to “fix” the book, so young writer dumbs his passion in
his work down to what some stranger (agent) thinks might sell.
(Yes, rewriting is career advice because the agent always says
something along the lines of “I think this will sell better if you
do this and this.”)

Myth: Agent takes the book out to a bunch of
editor friends and actually gets a small advance. Author is happy
about the sale and ignores the fact that it’s not his book much
anymore. It sold, that’s all that is important. Any thought of art
is long gone at this point. His name is on the cover and he has
made it. That’s where all the thinking is for the writer.

Myth: Agent now thinks they know what the
young author needs to do, so tells them what to write next. Young
writer hates it, thinks he has already written that book the first
time, doesn’t want to write the same thing again, but does as agent
says. Doesn’t like the final product because it has no passion,
agent doesn’t like it, and off into rewrite myth they go.

What I have seen hundreds of times is that
young writers stop their careers right there. Second book was no
fun, third book was pure torture, why bother, sales were not that
good anyway, and writer stops writing. I would, too.

This myth kills artists.

This myth, combined with all the aspects of
the other agent and sales myths, force young artist after young
artist to compromise, think about selling before they write a word,
move away from passion into safe sales, and thus into losing the
very reason and passion the writer was writing in the first place.
And when you lose the reason to write, the love of writing, the
passion to write, you soon just stop writing.

It takes a very, very powerful self-belief to
stand up to these myths and just write what you want, at the speed
you want, and mail to whom you want after you are finished. Yet to
be a true artist, a true long-term professional writer, you have to
learn to stand up for your writing and your art.

Is all this easy to learn? No. Darned hard,
actually.

But to be a true artist, write what you want.
Never write to market.

PERSONAL BELIEFS vs. AGENT CAREER PLANNING
MYTH

Now, this is a fun area because when you look
at it, this myth becomes just flat silly on the surface.

You live in Outback small town. You were
raised by some combination of humans, have friends that make up
some combination of humans, believe in some combination of
religious beliefs, have some combination of writing talents, and
have a very certain combination of fears, passions, and likes and
dislikes.

In other words, you are an individual, a
one-of-a-kind writer. That’s what makes your voice unique and your
writing different from everyone else.