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On Getting Better: In Too Deep

By Aaron Pogue on Sunday, August 15, 2010

I’ve been bragging recently about my daughter’s early education. (Joyful, joyful! The girl is learning to read!) We’ve also been trying to teach her some other skills — things like self-control, critical thinking, and fingerpainting.

Last weekend, though, it was too hot to spend any time time learning (or teaching, for that matter). Summer has shown up in a big way this year, so we took a break from all the preschooling and spent Saturday afternoon at a friend’s house, playing in the pool with just our family.

I was surprised to discover how good of a swimmer Annabelle already was. She wore the orange floaty wings to keep her on the surface, but she was quite content to set off by herself across the deep end of the pool, kicking her little feet in water that would have terrified me at twice her age.

She had a funny quirk, though. She hated getting splashed. Specifically, she hated getting water in her eyes. Whenever it happened she would squeeze them tight shut, flail blindly to the nearest edge of the pool, and then sprint around trying to find her towel by touch, so she could dry her face. Often she spent the whole time screaming about the water in her eyes, wailing, but after a quick dab with the towel she was perfectly happy and ready to jump back in.

It was silly, and with all the progress we’ve been making I couldn’t help putting on my teacher’s hat again. I showed her how to wipe her eyes and blink away the water. I shower her how safe it was to dive and duck underneath (by doing it myself), and then I threw her up in the air and let her splash down in the water.

She was scared — good old-fashioned roller-coaster terrified — but when I wiped her eyes and she blinked them clear she was grinning. And there was one silly childhood fear conquered. She still didn’t want to go underwater, but she no longer had to jump out of the pool every time a little wave slapped her face, and that was real progress.

I wanted to make sure the lesson completely sank in, so we did that several times over the course of the afternoon…usually in the shallow end. At one point, though, I was sitting on a shelf in the deep end, she swam up to me all smiles, and I scooped her up and heaved her in the air.

And when she came down…I missed her.

She slipped through my hands and shot several feet underwater. I grabbed for her, freaking out, but couldn’t find her. I didn’t even have time to move, but it felt like hours before her floaties finally buoyed her to the top.

Her eyes were wide open, and as I scooped her out of the water I was relieved to hear her burst into tears and wailing. I handed her off to her mom (knowing she must feel traumatized and betrayed by her monstrous father), and it took several minutes — torn between tears and violent coughing — before she regained control.

When she finally settled down, Trish said, “Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah!” Annabelle said. “That was fun!”

I thought, “Oh, man! She was under too long. That’s clear brain damage.” I swam over to her and said, “I’m really sorry, Annabelle. I’m not going to throw you in the air ever again.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I’m not scared to go underwater anymore. I can just swim back up to the top!”

Writing in the Deep End

I never would have done that on purpose, but she learned a valuable lesson from getting in over her head. Apparently she did exactly what she knew to do — sealed her lips, held her breath, and kicked with her legs. And when she broke the surface, the learned that being underwater wasn’t nearly as dangerous a thing as she had thought. That discovery opens up a world of opportunities next time she goes swimming.

It’s the same with writing, or any other master craft. You’ve got to learn some basics, and it always helps to have an experience coach handy to haul you out if you flounder, but one of the best ways to really move forward is to dive into the deep end. Come back tomorrow to read about improving your writing by trying the hard stuff.

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On Story Structure: How to Design and Write a Plot Point

By Aaron Pogue on Saturday, August 14, 2010

Yesterday I explained why you need to know the plot points in your work-in-progress. If you use them right, they can make your story easier to tell and for more compelling to read.

Design a Plot Point

Like most aspects of writing, all that power and convenience while you’re writing comes directly from the amount of thought you put in beforehand. Plot points will happen organically, whether you plan them or not. They’ll be a lot more effective, though, if you implement them with deliberate design.

So, how do you design a plot point? Look at its purpose, and make conscious choices about how this plot point will fill the role I described for it in yesterday’s post.

That means you’re working to make sure the plot point is a clear, discrete event, and one that changes the direction of the plot in a compelling way. Early in your story, that might mean switching your protagonist from passive observer to active participant. Later in the story, it might mean reso9lving your protagonist’s indecision and sending him rushing straight toward resolution.

Writing a Plot Point

Most writers spend a lot of time thinking about that resolution, about the climax of the novel. But the climax is just one of several plot points, and it’s possible to bring the same intensity to all of them. To do that, though, you have to know what they are.

You also need to set them up a little. That’s how they bring the story’s action rushing toward them, and also how they help make writing easier. Since you know which direction your story is going now, you know (with your plot point) what is coming up that’s going to change that direction, and you know which direction it’ll be going afterward…with those three elements in sight, it’s a relatively simple matter to play into it.

Lean heavy on the current direction so the reversal will feel strong. Seed in foreshadowing with the protagonist bemoaning that his fate will never allow him to do such-and-such a thing (or noting with relief that, even as bad as things are, at least he doesn’t have to deal with X).

If you’re in the first act (before the first plot point), you’re probably still introducing your protagonist and haven’t ruined his life yet. Right now he’s passive, idle, drifting along, but in a few pages, aliens are going to arrive or he’s going to come home from work an hour early, or his doctor is going to call. In whatever way, everything is going to change.

That’s a plot point. And you can make it strong by writing the now in the way that best emphasizes that change once it happens. That’s where suspense and tension and foreshadowing all come into play, and they all exist to make the moment of change as sharp as possible.

Trying It Out (Creative Writing Exercise)

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopAnd if you’ve done the setup right, writing the plot point is easy. It’s like telling the climax — the funnest part of writing a story. Handle it well and you can have three to five of those per book, instead of rushing through the motions to get to one single payoff at the end.

Sound fun? Try it out! Even if you don’t have a work-in-progress ready for a plot point, you can start working toward it right now. Pretend it’s NaNoWriMo and launch into a brand new story tomorrow, but before you get started, come up with your first plot point.

Figure out the setting, the character’s normal life before your story, and then design a first plot point that’s as good as a climax, and start writing toward it. Just watch what happens, and see how fun writing early words can really be.

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On Story Structure: What is a Plot Point?

By Aaron Pogue on Friday, August 13, 2010

Yesterday I told a story about my rites of passage, about the moments in my life when I grew up. They were turning points in my personal history, and both of them significantly changed my plot.

Today I want to tell you a little bit about the ways writers capture that slice of the human condition and recreate it in their art. We use a device called a plot point, a discrete moment within a flowing tale, but to fully understand the interruption, you need to know how it fits into its context.

Narrative Arc and the Conflict Resolution Cycle

In the past, most everything I’ve said about writing plot has focused on the high-level story structure. The only real exception has been a brief look at the ebb and flow of the Conflict Resolution Cycle, which drives the story forward from page to page, scene to scene. Plot points create the bridge between those two structures — the microscopic process and the macroscopic arrangement.

Essentially, a narrative arc (whether it’s three acts or five) starts with an introduction of settings and characters, then adds a major disruption to the protagonist’s life. From there, the conflict gradually ramps up through a series of crises until it reaches a climax. After that, the character is free from the conflict (in one way or another), and the narrative tension rapdily drops down to around the place it started. Thus, in nearly every story, you could chart the plot as an asymmetric arc.

It’s also often an irregular arc. In most cases, there will be three to five major turning points in a story (generally evenly spaced at the act breaks). Some common examples include:

  • A first plot point in which the protagonist is first made aware of a developing Big Event, and that awareness sends him on a quest to fix things
  • A midpoint reversal in which the protagonist discovers he’s been chasing a red herring
  • A climax in which the villain gets gunned down, freeing our hero from the anxiety and fear that have plagued him for several hundred pages
  • A denouement in which the villain finally gets killed for real, freeing our hero from the anxiety and fear that have plagued him for several hundred pages

In each instance, the significant aspect is the change of direction. As I said, it’s all about a single point in time, within an otherwise ongoing process.

Moving Things Forward

The funny thing about it, though, is that these discrete points keep things moving the rest of the time. They pull the action irresistibly toward them, then drive it forward into the following act.

As a writer, it helps to know your plot points while you’re writing, whether or not you know any of the fine details. As you’re working your way through a scene, no matter what’s going on, you’re writing toward the next plot point.

That gives you focus. It keeps every word of your story tied to the plot, and creates a consistent, cohesive experience for your readers.

How to Design and Write a Plot Point

With that in mind, how do you go about building plot points strong enough to serve those purposes? That’s a question worth of a post its own.

So come back tomorrow and I’ll talk about how to design and write plot points to give your story memorable magic.

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On Story Structure: Buried Treasure

By Aaron Pogue on Thursday, August 12, 2010

I’ve talked before about arguments I lost to my dad (the expert debater) back in high school. I can vividly remember the last of those.

Well…not the last argument I lost to my dad (which is, God willing, still many, many years in the future), but the last argument I lost in high school. It concerned my graduation.

Thanks to Math — dang you Math! — I didn’t have any special honors or speeches to give at my graduation. And I didn’t have a lot emotionally invested in my tenure at Wichita High School Northwest. To me, it was just a stepping stone to greater things.

Given that, I didn’t feel an overwhelming need to commit to the expense, the hassle, and the time to spend a Friday night in a crowded hall waiting for people to stop talking. As far as I could tell, there was no reason for me to go to my graduation.

Dad put his foot down, though. He said high school graduation is the closest thing we have to a rite of passage — to a single moment in time we can look back on and say, “Before this I was a child. Now I am grown.”

I was talking at a recent writer’s group with a friend who bemoaned that very aspect of our society. In fact, he said he thought it was important for a culture to have a rite of passage with the very real fear of death in it. Instead of repeating my dad’s argument, I made one of my own.

“You want a rite of passage?” I said. “One that will scare the life out of you? We’ve got one. It’s closing on your first house. Sitting in that room, staring at that mountain of legal documents, and tying decades of your life to a binding contract…. Nothing else will ever make you see, quite like that, that you’re an adult now.”

That was my experience, anyway. At 22, eleven months into my frustrating years in Tulsa, we moved from a cramped duplex just north of Cherry Street into a cute little starter home less than a mile from my work. Before we even started shopping, though, I told Trish, “If we do this, we’re pretty much committing to staying here for at least five years.”

We did, and when the time came I personally reviewed every item on the (extensive) inspection report. I sat in our closing and read every word of every page they wanted me to sign. I took the whole process quite seriously.

And once it was all finished, once the house was ours, I made it my own. We invited some of those amazing friends I mentioned before for a housewarming. We made it into a dedication.

The day of our party, I went to the bank and picked up four silver dollars. Then I stopped at the wine store and picked up some refreshments for our guests, plus a little extra. I’m pretty sure I bought our first nice set of wineglasses for that night, too.

It rained. I hadn’t anticipated that, but we didn’t let it stop us. An hour into our party, I got everyone’s attention and said, “It’s time,” and we all headed out into the drizzle. At my instruction they brought their glasses with them. I brought a new bottle of wine.

We went out to the front curb, three paces southwest of the southwest corner of the house, where I’d dug a hole. I filled all the glasses, dropped a coin into the hole, and read a short prayer of dedication I’d written. We all said amen, took a sip of wine, and poured the rest out in an offering.

I was worried it would feel stupid — hokey — but I went ahead with it anyway. With the first coin, though, I could feel the power, the gravity of the ritual. We buried four coins that night, at the four corners of the house, committing our prayers in wine and rain and silver and mud.

It was a thing of my own making, but it stands sharp and clear in my memory. We worked magic that night, and loved that house as long as we lived in it.

Understanding Plot Points

I often pretend that I think the connection between one of these stories and a writing lesson seems mysterious. In this one, though, you can see it easily enough — I live like a storyteller.

This week I want to talk about plot points in story structure. Working out your story structure can feel a lot like sitting through a graduation ceremony or signing all those dense pages at a closing, but if you do it right, if you engage as a storyteller, crafting good plot points can create a lifelong memory you can share with your readers. It’s magic.

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What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Drawing Trees

By Courtney Cantrell on Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Last month, I devoted an indeterminate, yet still large number of hours to drawing trees for Julie of Julie V. Photography.

As an artist who has spent most of the last fourteen years drawing abstract, overgrown doodles and fantastical scenes replete with dragons and fairies yet lacking in flora more than hinted-at with daubs of paint, I approached this tree-drawing project as a welcome challenge. When Julie showed me the concept art upon which I would base my drawings, it made me go “hmmmm.” I was more than happy to give it the ol’ college try but skeptical about my own ability to pull it off.

I needn’t have worried. Though I remained — as always — too much of a perfectionist to be satisfied with my own sketches, Julie loved them, and so was born a tree-graphics collaboration. I sketched, she critiqued, I sketched some more, and finally we had a series of trees that met her needs for the first stage of the site project.

Until further notice (i.e. until the next stage of the project began), my brief love affair with trees was over. But the experience left me ruminating upon the clear parallel between my drawing craft and my writing craft. Gather ‘round, my dearest inklings, and I shall share with you the wisdom the aforementioned parallel doth impart.

(Technically, it should be “parallels,” as there’s definitely more than one. But I wanted to use the word “doth,” which is third person singular, not plural. So nyah.)

Outlining

Julie wanted a hand-drawn look, so I set my customary oil paints aside, took my trusty 2B mechanical pencil to hand, and started sketching. When the paper before me showed a recognizable tree instead of an amorphous form easily mistaken for the weird demon bunny from Donnie Darko (click that, and you’ll see what I mean), I switched to my black rollerball pen and inked the lines. At the same time, I added touch-ups and flourishes to stylize the tree a little bit, just for kicks ‘n’ giggles.

The first draft of a story requires a similar process. From the start of this blog and yea verily up to this very week, Aaron has mentioned regularly the benefits of outlining. When he first started talking to me about it in pre-Unstressed-Syllables days, I balked, thinking that something as analytical and dull as an outline would surely suck the creative juices right out of my fingers, not to mention my brain. But guess what? It works. I outlined my last NaNoWriMo novel, and it was the easiest NaNoWriMo I’ve completed to-date.

Thus, my tentative, penciled, non-demon-bunny tree is prewriting’s general story outline. But things get more solid when you pick up a black pen and start inking: tweaking your outline, adding a bit more character definition and, golly gee Wally, maybe even a pre-written scene here and there. Just for kicks ‘n’ giggles, y’know.

Coloring Between the Lines…Or Not

After the inking was finished, I reached for my color pens and markers and started filling in some color. Julie requested trunks and branches of reddish-brown and leaves of teal and light green. I did the best I could with the implements I possessed — but since I usually work in oils for anything not black-and-white, I had neglected to acquire a varied supply of pens and markers. Colored pencils didn’t quite do the job, either.

Practice makes better, and my second and third tries revealed a clearer vision and more skill than did the first. I had to scrap a few inked sketches, but finally I had some colored trees to my name. My stylizing lent them the hand-drawn, personal feel Julie had requested; and I had even managed to incorporate a natural, organic look. Those leaves seemed to move…thanks to “try, try again.”

The same goes for story-crafting. First drafts are a mess, and sometimes, you have to scrap them and start over. Sometimes, you can get away with backspacing (a lot). Either way, you’ll eventually be ready to fill in some color. You’ll merge Character A (that boring knight) with Character B (that irritating barmaid) and end up with a most vivid Character C (a female assassin with an affinity for bar-hopping?). You’ll delete some pesky verb-adverb combos and replace them with verbs so lively, they leap right off the page. You’ll tweak here and stylize there until your story (by now, in its third or fourth draft) sparkles with your style, speaks with your voice, and moves like a living organism.

Crossing The Line

In our minds, we creative types draw lines for ourselves that we don’t cross. “I write short stories — I wouldn’t know how to finish a novel.” “I like __________ (insert genre here) — but I have no experience with that, so I can’t write it.” “I’d love to write, but I just don’t have time.”

You just read it, my dear readers. The previous paragraph contains that one, huge, black, uncrossable line we draw for ourselves: I can’t. That phrase is the deadliest thing any creative person can say. It saps the will, drains the motivation, and kills every ounce of imagination.

Last year, a friend (who shall remain nameless 😉 ) said, “I just don’t have an epic in me.” This year, he is proving himself wrong with a sci-fi tale of magnificent proportions. At some point in the past, I told myself, “I just can’t draw trees worth a fart in the wind.” Well, that statement turned out to be incorrect, too.

Let’s cross our lines, people! Let’s dare to tackle exactly those creative endeavors we’re convinced we cannot master. The tools we need are contained within those endeavors themselves: just as the tools for my story-telling were grafted into my act of tree-drawing.

So, cross the line. Consider in which ways you’re already creating, and extrapolate. You already have the resources you need. You already know everything you need to know. Work at it until you get the demon bunnies out of the way, and see what beauty can grow.

And that’s WILAWriTWe.

(Click that link up there to see the demon bunny — buy the demon bunny movie or anything else within the same browser session, and I might get enough pennies to buy some new colored markers.)

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Programming Language: Diving into Python

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, August 10, 2010

This week I’m talking about scripted solutions and the power of programming for a writer. I know it might sound intimidating, but learning a programming language isn’t that much harder than learning any other kind language, and in the same way, some are easier than others.

I almost want to say, “Learning Python is like learning Pig Latin,” because the simplicity is almost there, but I don’t want you to take that to mean Python is a silly, hack-y little gimmick. Let’s say Python is more like learning Spanish. It’s nowhere near as challenging as learning a language with a different alphabet or declined nouns, but it’s got enough nuance that you could spend several years studying it on the college level and still have more to learn.

Even so, you could grab a Travel Guide and put in a really thorough weekend studying before a vacation to Mexico, and learn enough of it to get you from here to there in one piece. So start with the conversational stuff, and pick up the rest as you need it.

The Free Guide

I started out with no programming experience — although, as I mentioned yesterday, all my friends were programmers so I had some idea what to expect. Still, all I did was read one short book. Toby recommended it, and he insisted it would teach me everything I needed to know, so I dove right in.

Appropriately enough, the book is called Dive into Python. I started into the first chapter, and it was filled with instructions for installing the Python software. That I understood.

Then I got to chapter 2, when it really started talking programming stuff, and I was lost. Absolutely, completely, bewilderingly lost. Toby had told me this was all I needed to do, though, so I stuck it through. I did my best to interpret all the nonsense the author was throwing at me, and I kept going.

I’ll admit I had to go back and reread a chapter or two later, once I had a better grasp of it all, but that read-through was really everything I needed to know. I’ve been using (and advocating) Python ever since.

Just like everything else in the arts, you’ve got to get your hands dirty before you can really understand it. So don’t just read — practice. Install the software before you’re done with chapter 1, and try your hand at copying out the code he gives you whenever he says to.

Long before you get to the end of the book, you’ll find yourself figuring out how these little snippets of code work. Then you’ll start developing hypotheses and trying out small changes to see if they behave as expected. It’s enlightening when they don’t, and absolutely glorious when they do.

A Sample Script

Of course, the ultimate goal is to be able to make up your own programs. I’ve told you about a couple of mine, but there’s one I made in Python that some of you have been experiencing directly.

I’ve been using AWeber to handle my weekly newsletter for a couple months now, and while their list management is great, their text editor is awful. I also found myself doing the same things again and again, typing the same metadata into all my hyperlinks (with the minor substitution of the article title), and I knew for all the reasons I mentioned that something like that should be automated.

So I started storing just the little bits of text that I needed in a Google Docs Spreadsheet, and wrote a script that could pull a block of text like this

On Friday I talked about respecting your readers, and specifically focused on <a [Friday]>understanding and deliberately crafting your book’s reading experience</a>. When you consider how your story affects your readers (and what they’re offering in exchange for your storytelling), it becomes far easier to stick to some of the core rules of writing.

from the spreadsheet, then read the WordPress posts list to get the link and title like this

<div class=”post_title”>On Writing Rules: Fair Play in Storytelling</div>
<div>on-writing-rules-fair-play-in-storytelling</div>
<div>2</div>
<div>publish</div>
<div>06</div>
<div>08</div>
<div>2010</div>
<div>06</div>
<div>50</div>

and put them together to build a paragraph of HTML that looks like this

On Friday I talked about respecting your readers, and specifically focused on <a href=”https://unstressedsyllables.com/2010/on-writing-rules-fair-play-in-storytelling/” title=”Writing Advice from Aaron Pogue: &quot;On Writing Rules: Fair Play in Storytelling&quot; at Unstressed Syllables” target=”_blank”>understanding and deliberately crafting your book’s reading experience</a>. When you consider how your story affects your readers (and what they’re offering in exchange for your storytelling), it becomes far easier to stick to some of the core rules of writing.

and shows up in the newsletter like this

On Friday I talked about respecting your readers, and specifically focused on understanding and deliberately crafting your book’s reading experience. When you consider how your story affects your readers (and what they’re offering in exchange for your storytelling), it becomes far easier to stick to some of the core rules of writing.

It’s complicated, and I’m working with Sean on redesigning it into something much cleaner, but even in this form it saves me tons of time, every single week.

Writing a Script (TW Exercise)

Newsletterer is a pretty complicated script. I’ve been working with Python for eight years. I’ve written two games, tons of convenience scripts like that, and two significant applications.

I started small, though. You’ve got to. When you start working your way through the book, you’ll be copying scripts directly off the page that do nothing more than print out the words, “Hello, world!”

It’s a start, and eventually all those simple little tools and tricks fall into place, and suddenly you’re making up your own financial software and trying to figure out how to automate your biggest, most obnoxious tasks.

What’s that going to be for you? What could you automate to make your life easier? Tell us in the comments. Someone might already know a product that’ll do it for you. And if not…well, I’ll be happy to help you learn how to make your own!

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On Programming Language: The Advantage of Scripted Solutions

By Aaron Pogue on Monday, August 9, 2010

Writers are not naturally programmers. I’m certainly aware of that. In fact, I resisted becoming one for years even though all my friends were.

When I finally broke down and accepted some lessons from my friend Toby, though, it changed the way I approach everything I do on the computer. Some tasks require a lot of thought, and a little bit of execution. Other tasks require a little bit of thought, and a ton of repetition.

That goes for video games, file management, internet research, and everything else a person does on the computer. And it goes double for Technical Writing.

Management and Repetition

While Creative Writing is all about the way you say things, there’s not a lot of that in Technical Writing. The actual prose in Tech Writing is usually extremely straightforward and…well, technical.

There’s a huge demand for clarity there, though, and that means a Tech Writer spends a lot less time writing a page, and a lot more time organizing it. Specifically, there’s a lot of text management (controlling things like position and style) and repetitive writing (writing text that matches the template’s required sections as closely as possible).

The good news is that those things lend themselves well to automation. It’s the fundamental principle behind using templates and styles in the first place, and once you know a little bit about programming, you can write scripts that manipulate the text within your template and styles to update a whole document at once (instead of repeating the same set of changes again and again through every paragraph in a document.

Just as a quick example, I spent last week cleaning up a draft document I’d received from an engineer. The guy who wrote it is a technical genius, but he’s not terribly familiar with Microsoft Word, so when it came time to prepare his pages, he did what he could to make them look the way he knew they were supposed to.

A Warning, for instance, is supposed to be centered on the page, with margins inset an extra half an inch on both sides. He did that by adding a paragraph break at the end of every line (hitting Enter), and then holding down the space bar to try to position the left margin of each following line approximately where it needed to be.

The result was a mess, and when I wanted to apply styles to the paragraph (which he’d broken into a dozen paragraphs), I had to fix it. Looking further in the document, I found that he’d done that for every warning in the whole book.

So I wrote a macro that allowed me to select the whole block of text, remove all but the last paragraph break, and replace any big block of spaces to just one space. It took me ten minutes to write the macro, and then all I had to do each time I found a warning was select the whole thing, and run my script.

That still left me the task of translating his engineer-speak into good clear English, but that’s the fun! And that’s the point. Automating the easy stuff frees you up to spend more time on the challenging stuff (which is almost always more fun, anyway).

Keeping It Consistent

There’s another big advantage to learning to work with automation, and it’s one I’ve mentioned before.The whole process of automation, though, involves finding a set of consistent rules (such as, for instance, “remove all but the last paragraph break in a selection and reduce blocks of multiple spaces to a single space”), and then figuring out how to apply them.

The beautiful thing about working that way is that a script won’t cut corners or make little tweaks here and there to get the prettiest results — it will follow the exact rules you get it, in the same way and in the same order every time. That gives you an amazing consistency in your document’s design, and consistency is the  gold standard of Technical Writing.

Diving Into Python

I’ve mentioned a couple examples of scripts I wrote to manipulate Word documents, both yesterday and today, and those have all been in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). That’s a programming language built into Word, but it’s a real pain.

Oh, don’t get me wrong! It’s worth learning, for all the reasons I’ve shared in those same examples, but it’s not a great place to start. You’d be much better suited learning a real, robust scripting language, and the one I recommend just happens to very English-like.

So come back tomorrow to learn about the Python programming language, and make your writing process far more powerful.

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On Programming Language: Asterisks

By Aaron Pogue on Sunday, August 8, 2010

Last fall I walked into my first ever teaching experience, with that junior-level Technical Writing course at Oklahoma Christian University that I’ve mentioned a time or two. I faced a room full of Computer Science and Information Systems students who were all within sight of their graduation, and faced with the first English class they’d had to take since their Freshman year.

That was intimidating. It can be difficult to turn Technical Writing into an interesting topic for even the most generous of audiences, and I had no reason to expect any of those guys to be generous. I was pretty confident before I ever met any of them that they all really resented me and my profession for even existing.

I had a secret weapon, though — an ace up my sleeve — and I brought it out in that very first class session. I dropped it casually into the conversation, but I made sure they knew from the very start that I was one of them.

I’m a programmer.

Halfway through the semester I finally backed that up, with a story about asterisks. See, at my work, we do frequent updates to existing documents, providing page changes instead of reprinting and reshipping dozens of thousand-page instruction books.

Now, the industry standard for page changes, to let readers know what on the page is new material (and so worth rereading), is to use black bars along the edge of the page. We don’t do that. We use asterisks in the margins — one in the left margin at the start of a change, and one in the right margin at the end of a change.

The problem with that method is that it’s not built-in. It’s something we have to do by hand, floating a text box over the page, typing an asterisk into it, and then dragging it into place. That’s a lot more work than just checking the “Show Change Bars” option in Microsoft Word and letting it take care of everything for us.

Worse yet, we’ve got some publishers further down the release cycle who are real sticklers for the appearance and placement of those floating text boxes. It’s not uncommon for a time-critical document to get approved by every subject matter expert and supervisor and manager in the process…and then get bounced back to us for correction because someone thinks the asterisk is a little bit too far to the left.

When I first learned about that situation, it seemed absolutely ridiculous to me, but I was told, “That’s just how things work here.” I wrinkled my nose, turned to Google to brush up on my Visual Basic for Applications, and then spent an afternoon writing a Word macro.

Now our branch has its own custom tool. When we’ve made a change on the page, all we have to do is highlight the changed paragraphs, and click a macro button on the toolbar. It automatically generates the two text boxes, styles the asterisks perfectly, and positions them within a hundredth of an inch exactly where they’re supposed to be.

The Advantage of Scripted Solutions

It’s a lot faster than putting in the text boxes was before, but much more importantly, it saves us lots of returns. We know that every time, with less effort, we’re getting it perfect.

I’ve talked about that before (and will again), but good automation can turn a hefty initial investment of time into huge rewards down the line — rewards in efficiency, in productivity, and — most important of all — in consistency.

Come back tomorrow, and I’ll tell you about the programming language that reads and writes so much like English that I couldn’t resist learning it, and the major advantages programming has provided to my writing.

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On Writing Rules: How to Maintain Verisimilitude

By Aaron Pogue on Saturday, August 7, 2010

This week I’m talking about inviolable writing rules (and ranting against the storytelling in The Da Vinci Code). Yesterday I provided a list of rules that I said you should never break, then I admitted that most books break at least one of those, and I closed by saying, “Well, fine, you can break any or all of them, but only do it early in the book.”

And I said all of that waffling is a simple lesson to learn, and an easy thing to get right in your own storytelling. I still believe it, too. At heart, all you need to know is one basic storytelling principle:

The premise.

Premise and Verisimilitude

I spent some time yesterday introducing the concept of a “premise,” but I don’t think I ever named it directly. It’s a standard aspect of fiction, though. A premise is essentially just a list of the rules that govern the way things work within your storyworld. It can be as simple as “magic works” or as complicated as “Pigs can talk and they desperately want to be Marxist revolutionaries.”

For the most part, your premise can be anything you want. There’s nothing wrong (just to pick an example completely at random) with telling a story in which the historical Constantine behaved in a way entirely different from the way we know he behaved, and in which Roman religious culture was completely different from everything we know about Roman religious culture. In fact, there’s a whole genre for stories like that. It’s called “alternate history.”

The Da Vinci Code isn’t alternate history, though. Or…well, it’s not alternate history until 2/3 of the way through the plot, and by then it’s too late. When I sat down at the beginning of the first act ready to discover the rules of this particular story, they involved the unlikely-but-given-for-granted plausibility of a world-renowned curator, a cryptography specialist stupid enough to think anagrams were a secure or remotely effective form of communication, and a murderous cabal within a well-known charitable society.

I know people who take real issue with all of those things. It’s pretty flimsy material for a story, but it’s fiction. All of that is fair play. It’s also all exposed in the first act. I put on my “willful suspension of disbelief” hat, accept that this is the premise the author’s story is based on, and then we move forward with the understanding that in every other way this story takes place in a world just like Earth as we know it.

It’s critical to get that out early, though. Why? Because you respect your readers. I’ve said several times that no writer is beholden to write a particular style, and no reader is required to enjoy reading a particular style. There’s a wealth of different tastes out there, on both sides of the page, and that’s a good thing.

As a writer, that means you have to be prepared to accept that lots of readers won’t like your story, simply because they don’t appreciate the type of story you tell. There’s nothing wrong with that.

It becomes a problem, though, if you try to trick them into reading a story they don’t want to by hiding the things they’re going to object to. That’s why timing is such a big part of the definition of premise. If you spring a game-changing revelation on me two-thirds of the way through a story, you could easily change a book I’m reading into one I would never, ever put in the time to read. That’s bad form.

We’ve got a name for it, too (and it’s a good one).

Deus Ex Machina

I know, I know. “Always with the dead languages with this guy,” huh? But we’ve got another one of those inviolable writing rules rearing its head here, and it’s all part of the same discussion.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “deus ex machina” (or the common foreshortened version, “deus ex”). I’ve even talked about it here before, and my advice at the time was to keep all your big revelations constrained to the first act.

If you didn’t understand why (or what exactly I meant by that) the first time around, you certainly should now. That’s exactly what I was talking about above. Revealing rule-breaking “premise” material late in the story is deus ex machina. That’s precisely what the phrase refers to.

Most of the time you don’t hear “deus ex” explained that way, though. It’s much more common to get a big list of examples: the unlikely and inexplicable arrival of a hero to save the day, a sudden and apparent violation of physics that conveniently resolves a tricky plot complication, or the ever-popular option of giving your character hitherto unmentioned magical powers late in the story.

If you’ve established a premise that supports the sudden revelation, that’s fine, but if you throw it in out of nowhere, you’re going to lose readers over it. The most popular examples are ones that miraculously save the protagonists from an otherwise inescapable fate, but the same goes for changes that sweep in to rescue an otherwise unworkable plot. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a conflict or a resolution, if a new development late in your story changes the rules of your world, it’s sloppy storytelling.

I’ve ranted about Dan Brown more than a little, but he’s certainly not the only (or even worst) offender. Can you think of any other good examples? What about in your own writing? What do you do to avoid breaking the inviolable rules of storytelling?

Thinking through questions like that can be one of the best answers to that last one, really. Because all of us writers are readers, too. In the end, it comes down to respect for the reader’s experience, so spend some time thinking about how you like to be treated by your favorite authors, and put in a little effort extending that same kindness to your readers.

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On Writing Rules: Fair Play in Storytelling

By Aaron Pogue on Friday, August 6, 2010

Okay, first things first, I keep forgetting that I’ve got readers who have never taken a Creative Writing class. If you missed out on that (and, I guess, Latin classes too), then yesterday’s post ended with a much more mysterious cliffhanger than I intended.

And, worse, I’m not actually going to get into detail on “verisimilitude” until tomorrow. Today’s still just background.

So, out of a basic respect for you, my readers, I’ll cut through the suspense and just say that “verisimilitude” means “realisticalness.” Also, I really love saying that word. “Realisticalness.”

In actual writing terms, it’s a bit more nuanced, focusing not so much on realism as on–

Ack! See what I did? I almost started on tomorrow’s blog post. But I know you’re all a bunch of rebellious anti-establishment types, so it’s pretty important I explain the why before I start telling you what it is you must always, always, always do.

The Reader’s Experience

I talk a lot around here about Audience Analysis and Negotiating a Connection, and that’s critical to making effective Technical Writing. When it comes to storytelling, though, it’s way, way, way more important.

Why? Because storytelling isn’t just about effectively conveying information. The whole point of storytelling is to create an experience for your reader.

That’s sometimes referred to as “the contract between the writer and the reader.” Every reader picks up a book with certain expectations about the experience, and the writer has an obligation to meet those expectations (or do something truly amazing to justify any of them that get broken).

As I said yesterday, this isn’t a matter of style. It’s a matter of readability. In order to invest the time — not to mention the mental and emotional energy — into reading your book, your reader needs to be able to trust  that they’re going to get something usable out of that exchange.

They can’t reasonably expect a perfect story, or a narrative voice perfectly matched to their personal preferences, but they can (and should) expect a story that works. Some of the elements necessary to make a readable story include:

  • Trackable chronology
  • Consistent characterization
  • Reliable narration
  • Recognizable rules of nature

Willful Suspension of Disbelief

There’s my list, and I’ve been saying all along that these rules aren’t flexible, aren’t negotiable. You can probably think offhand of stories that violate all of these rules, though — good stories, that provided an excellent reading experience.

That’s a fair objection, and that’s where our monstrously long Latin word comes into the picture. “Verisimilitude,” in Creative Writing means, “sticking to the rules you’ve established.”

Essentially, verisimilitude is the jailhouse of good fiction, and every book comes equipped with one Get Out Of Jail Free Card. That card has a big fancy name of its own, too: “the willful suspension of disbelief.”

That’s really where the contract between writer and reader comes into play. Every reader understands that a work of fiction gets to have its own rules. As the writer, though, it’s your job to establish those rules, make them internally consistent to your book (or series), and present them to your readers as early and as clearly as possible.

The further we get into the story, the less acceptable these little changes are. If we find out in chapter seven that our academic is also a highly-skilled knife fighter (in a scene where he just happens to need to fight with knives), that startles us out of the story. It shatters the “suspension of disbelief” we set up based on the story’s introduction, and leaves us with plain old-fashioned disbelief.

How to Maintain Verisimilitude

Breaking verisimilitude breaks books. The good news, though, is that it’s not too hard to get it right. As long as you understand the elements in play (and you have any respect for your readers at all), you can usually nail it every time.

And you know what? I have respect for your readers, and (as I said yesterday), I love explaining things in excruciating detail. So let’s get that whole problem taken care of right away, okay? Come back tomorrow, and I’ll tell how to maintain verisimilitude.

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