Skip to content

Storytelling

By Aaron Pogue on Thursday, February 11, 2010
Know your story structure! (Photo by Phoxie Photo)

Know your story structure! (Photo by Phoxie Photo)

Last summer I started a Facebook Group for all my writer friends, because I saw National Novel Writing Month fast approaching, and I knew I was going to be doing a lot of cheerleading, and I really only wanted to say any given thing one time. In a lot of ways, it was a precursor to this blog.

Now I find myself waist-deep in a manuscript markup, with an entry in my posting schedule labeled, “Structure of a Story,” and it suddenly occurs to me, “I’ve said this before!” So I popped over to Facebook and dug it up. If you’re in Mightier than the Sword, you’ve already heard all this from me before. Then again, this is some of the most important information for a storyteller to get figured out, so it might be worth reading over again.

Anyway, at some point, we’ve got to move the discussion from, “How do you make a really great sentence?” to “How do you make a really great story?” There’s lots of milestones along that path — descriptions of setting, descriptions of events, compelling dialogs, scenes, chapters, acts, it goes on and on. But before you can really make much progress on any of those intermediate things, you’ve got to understand your ultimate goal — you have to understand exactly what a story is.

I’ve consistently found that the most popular definition of “story” for writers is “a description of events with a beginning, middle, and end.” Most new writers get irritated at that for being too simplistic a description, but that set of elements maps directly to something called the Conflict Resolution Cycle.

The Conflict Resolution Cycle

A story generally follows a single main character, known as the protagonist. (A story dedicated evenly to a large group of characters is called an “ensemble piece,” and the group is generally treated as a single protagonist. The Conflict Resolution Cycle is generally a lot clearer when you have a single protagonist, so we will approach it from that perspective for this discussion.)

In short, the Conflict Resolution Cycle is this:

  1. A Big Event disrupts the protagonist’s life, creating Conflict
  2. The protagonist seeks to get rid of the Conflict to restore the previous normalcy to his life, but doing so requires that he overcome Obstacles along the way.
  3. Eventually, in a scene called the Climax, the character overcomes the final obstacle which allows him to achieve Resolution so that his life can be comfortable once again (at least in the sense that the story’s Conflict is resolved).

Step one of the cycle contains two components. The first is a Big Event that introduces the story’s Conflict. The second is the Conflict itself, which persists throughout the story. Conflict might be self-doubt, or depression, or a crippling injury — these things impact the character’s life and drive his actions, but they aren’t really story-worthy on their own. For a story, you need a beginning, a middle, and an end. To achieve that, you’re looking for the Big Event.

The Big Event

Big Events aren’t hard to come up with. Maybe he proposes, or she finds out she’s pregnant. Maybe he gets fired, or she finally gets that promotion she’s looking for. Maybe alien warships appear over his townhouse, or the arcane magics her tribe has used for eons suddenly, one day, stop working.

Murder mysteries make it easy, because the Big Event is someone dying, which disrupts the life of the detective until he can figure out whodunnit. That’s your whole Conflict Resolution Cycle in a short, easy formula. Someone dies, detective overcomes obstacles to figure out who did it, and once he knows (and justice is done), his life returns to the normal it was before the mystery.

Looking back over that list of possible Big Events, it bears saying that it doesn’t matter whether the Big Event is good or bad – only that it disrupts the protagonist’s life. A wanted marriage proposal can do just as much to disrupt someone’s life as a nasty breakup. Both start with a big event, introduce change (conflict) that drives the character’s behavior, and is eventually resolved (one way or another) which allows a return to normalcy.

This is the heart of your story. A lot of writers want to lay a clear foundation, and show what a character’s life was like before the Big Event. It doesn’t hurt anything for you to write that down, because it helps you, as the writer, understand the character you’re inflicting these things on. Some of that material may even come into play in flashbacks or dialogue, but the actual story starts with the Big Event. As long as you’re still learning, just plan to have the Big Event happen somewhere in the first three pages. If you don’t get to it by then, consider your first page prewriting and take it out of your story. Keep doing that until you hit the Big Event within three pages. Page one is better. First sentence is best.

Overcoming Obstacles

The popular refrain “get in late, get out early” is built upon the Conflict Resolution Cycle. Start the story with the Big Event, and end it as soon after the Climax as possible. There’s your beginning and end, and the middle is everything that happens in between. This middle portion is called “Overcoming Obstacles,” and it allows the character a chance to impact his world, even as he is being impacted by it.

In a Murder Mystery, the first obstacle is a lack of information. Someone’s dead, and the protagonist has no idea who’s responsible. That’s an obstacle, and the character responds by gathering information.

Or perhaps you want to add some spice to your genre novel so the protagonist is retired, and the first obstacle isn’t his ignorance but his reluctance to get involved at all. He has to get past that, though, before he can restore his life to normal.

It is important, as a writer, to present obstacles in a believable way. If the retired detective can just refuse to take the case, and his life goes back to normal, that’s the most reasonable path for him to take to complete the Conflict Resolution Cycle. Obviously, it makes for a pretty poor Murder Mystery, so if you want your character to go through the story you have to present both the Conflict and the Obstacles in ways that force the character to engage. Make the victim a close family member of the detective, or give him an obsessive personality that forces him to take the case.

Of course, these principles apply no matter what genre you’re writing in. Always keep in mind that your protagonist’s goal isn’t to have an interesting story, it’s to return his life to normal. It’s your job, as the writer, to set up an environment and a cast of characters that will become an interesting story, even as they pursue normalcy. Most of that interesting stuff happens in the middle.

In a way, every obstacle is a mini-story. The obstacle itself interrupts the protagonist’s pursuit of Resolution, so it acts like a Big Event. He overcomes the obstacle by finding ways to deal with it, and once he does, he’s able to go on with his quest. These mini-stories are usually presented in the form of scenes – either one cycle per scene, or half of a cycle per scene, such that the protagonist encounters and explores a new obstacle in one scene, and then finds a way to overcome it in the next. Usually, the solution of one obstacle becomes the root of the next obstacle.

So the detective might gather enough clues to figure out who his most likely suspect is, but that suspect is also his boss. He’s overcome one obstacle – ignorance – and run square into a new one – the political impossibility of accusing his own boss. When he tries to overcome that obstacle by finding proof, he discovers his boss couldn’t have done it – resolving that conflict – but finds out that someone even more important did do it – a new conflict.

That’s the cycle, and it keeps spinning along like that through your story until your protagonist can overcome some final obstacle that lets him freely pursue his resolution.

Resolution, of course, is another matter altogether. I’ve more than used up my word count, so I’ll save that discussion for next week. In the meantime, focus on finding the story within your plot, and recognizing the highs and lows as your protagonist moves along.

Filed in For Fun | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

A Matter of Voice

By Aaron Pogue on Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Passive voice will have been murdered by this article (Image courtesy peteSwede at Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Weak verb forms will have been murdered by this blog post (Image courtesy peteSwede at Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Per Shannon’s request and a promise made yesterday, I wanted to include a brief refresher on what, exactly, passive voice is. I might throw in some stuff about weak verb tenses, too, toward the end.

But passive voice! That’s the topic at hand. Before we can get there, though, we need a review of even more rudimentary grammar: subjects and objects.

The subject of a sentence is the thing acting. In simple sentences, it’s usually the first noun phrase. To make it easy, let’s consider the sentence,

Dave shot Adam.

Dave shot Adam! It was just a BB gun, but still, what a jerk. Anyway, “Dave shot Adam” is a simple sentence consisting of a subject “Dave,” a verb phrase “shot,” and an object “Adam.” The subject of a sentence is the thing acting, and the object is the thing receiving the action (or being acted upon). I could say, “Dave fired three rounds” or “Dave shot at the sky” and in both cases Dave remains the subject, the verb remains active, and the object changes to a different noun phrase.

Some verbs don’t require objects, so you could have a sentence like “Dave jumped.” When it comes to active and passive voice, though, we’re only concerned with sentences that do contain a subject. That’s because you create passive voice by moving the subject’s position.

So instead of “Dave shot Adam,” we keep the information the same, but rearrange the word order. It becomes,

Adam was shot by Dave.

That sentence uses more words to convey the same thing. In other words, it’s diluted. It’s weak. You can trim out some of the extra words by changing it to,

Adam was shot.

But that’s still passive voice. You’ve cut out the actor, removing some of the most interesting information. Now, of course, it’s possible that your whole focus is on Adam (not Dave). That’s usually what prompts people to write passive voice sentences in the first place, and why they get so bent out of shape when English teachers or know-it-all bloggers start telling them to reshape their sentences.

Usually, though, you can still make your sentence stronger by switching to active voice. Keep Adam as the first word in the sentence, but make him the true subject by swapping out verbs. “Adam took a BB to the chest,” “Adam ignored the welt that Dave’s unprovoked attack brought up.” Or, to keep it simple,

Adam died.

“Helping Verbs” Help Weak Verbs

The easiest way to spot passive voice is the helping verb, as you can see in the difference between “Dave shot Adam” and the shortened phrase, “Adam was shot.” There’s also usually a preposition thrown in, like the “by” in the phrase “Adam was shot by Dave,” but I’m not really expecting all of you to be able to automatically spot prepositions every time they show up.

You should know what a helping verb is, though, and you should consider it a red flag. Any time you see “was shot” instead of “shot,” “is helping” instead of “helps,” “could have been plastered” instead of “plastered,” you’re dealing with a weak verb phrase.

That’s not to say it’s always a passive voice sentence. We use helping verbs to set up passive voice, but we also use them to manage complicated verb tenses, such as the incomplete and perfect. If I say, “I was going ,” that’s incomplete past tense. It indicates that at some point in the past I was doing this thing, but it doesn’t create a solid sense of a single action. “I went to the store,” though, creates a precise visual image. Something happened.

Just like passive voice, incomplete and perfect tense verbs can be perfectly grammatically correct. They serve a real purpose in the language, but they don’t convey a strong, concrete image, which is usually something you want in your writing. As I said yesterday, I recommend that you use at least one strong verb phrase per sentence, and that you make it the most important action in the sentence.

Adam was walking through the door when Dave shot him.

There’s two verb phrases there, and the first one contains a helping verb (“was walking”), so it’s what I would classify as a weak verb. It’s also the least significant information in the sentence, and I made sure to follow it up with a strong, active voice, simple tense verb phrase.

That’s really the way complicated verb tenses should be used — to set up simple verb phrases. Often any given sentence will mix and match pretty heavily,

I had gone to the store where I bought a thousand potatoes so I could make soup while I was hiding from the storm.

The important thing to remember is that — no matter your intent, no matter how perfect your grammar — your readers are going to pay the most attention to the strongest action in the sentence. If you want to communicate clearly, then, you’ve got to understand that, and work to make sure your sentences say what you want them to say.

Filed in For School | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Laundry

By Courtney Cantrell on Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Courtney Cantrell's weekly writing advice.

Courtney Cantrell's weekly writing advice.

That’s right. You heard me. Laundry. Did you know laundry has lessons to teach about writing? I didn’t–until a particular inconvenience of apartment life thrust my preconceived laundry notions into tumble-dry-high. You like that apropos imagery? Yea verily, I thought so.

Laundry is my second-least favorite chore. (Vacuuming occupies the top of my Hated Chores List and will do so until someone invents the cleaning mice of Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles.”) Since I live in an apartment that comes complete with no washing machine hookup, I must avail myself of the unheated/unairconditioned laundry room located at the center of the complex.

I don’t like going in there. For one thing, it’s either too cold or too hot, depending on the season. Not only that, but the owners recently installed new machines, which means I have to pay more per load. (And the new machines keep breaking down. ‘Nuff said.) Furthermore, I’m paranoid. I can’t bring myself to stick the clothes in the washer/dryer and leave them alone while I go off and do my thing. I’m convinced that the moment I turn my back, one of the elderly folks who live in my apartment complex is going to pop in, stop my washer, and abscond with my Arizona jeans and my Daisy Fuentes long-sleeved T-shirt. Not to mention the black camisole that comprises my first ever boutique purchase. Oh, and my precious toe-socks. Must protect toe-socks.

So yeah, when I’m washing clothes in the laundry room, I feel compelled to watchdog them. Which means I’m sitting there for at least two hours I could better spend elsewhere doing elsewhere sorts of things. Which brings me to the point of this post:

I have discovered that the laundry room makes an awesome writing hideout.

Courtney’s Ten-Step Laundry Program For Creative Writing

Here, then, is my solution to the paranoid laundry doldrums:

  1. Take laundry to laundry room.
  2. Stick laundry in washers. (Don’t forget detergent and the “start” button.)
  3. Set up laptop/pull out writing notebook and pen, and settle in.
  4. Begin writing with no distractions, namely:
    • Internet
    • books
    • chores
    • Internet
    • paperwork
    • phone calls (Yes! You, too, can make your laundry room a no-phone zone!)
    • other people
    • have I mentioned Internet?
  5. Keep writing.
  6. Take laundry out of washers.
  7. Put laundry in dryers. (Fabric softener is recommended but optional.)
  8. Write some more.
  9. Keep writing.
  10. Have a very productive writing day.

You see, when you eliminate distractions and enticements, you free your mind and creativity to do the writing work they need to do.

Now, I realize that some of you might be blessed with the creativity-inhibiting inconvenience of washer/dryer ownership. Not to fret, my dears: All you have to do is shut yourself away in your laundry room at home, silence your phone, ban the children, and bask in the rhythmic whir of rotating machinery, letting your story flow as sweet-smelling as your favorite fabric softener.

And that’s WILAWriTWe!

(Last but not least: If you click on a link within this post, and if you buy a product, This Starving Artist will get a few bucks. Thus spake the FCC. And please, kids, don’t forget to clean your lint filter.)

Photo credit Courtney Cantrell.

Filed in For Fun | Tagged | Comments (4)

Strong Sentences and 3D Storytelling

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, February 9, 2010

I’ve mentioned this before, but my dad is (among many other things) a speech professor and an accomplished storyteller. I was talking with him last week about some difficulties he’s had in his creative writing, though, trying to achieve the sort of impact and effect he can get effortlessly with the spoken word.

The problem, he said, is that public speaking draws on so much more than just the words. He described it as three-dimensional expression, using verbal cues like stress and tone as well as nonverbals like stance and gestures to add depth to his message.

Good writing is exactly the same way, but the depth elements are different. Instead of mastering enunciation and dramatic pauses, you learn sentence length and structure. Robbed of forceful emphasis, you focus on emphatic verbs. Effective writing conveys information, but good writing goes deeper.

Expressive Sentences

When Dad said that, I had to laugh, not at the idea but at the realization that came with it. Dad was complaining that writing didn’t have the tools he needed, but I’d been telling him about those tools for years. It took that comment from him, though, before I knew how to make it clear.

That’s what the passive voice rule is about, though. You’ve had English teachers and editors complaining about passive voice forever, and sometimes you get irritated and shout, “Passive voice has its place!” It does. Of course it does. But the point isn’t that passive voice is grammatically wrong, the problem is that passive voice sentences are inherently less expressive. They’re one-dimensional. Sure, they convey information, but they do it in a monotone, maybe even at a mumble.

I go straight to passive voice, because most writers know there are people who hate it, and most writers just don’t understand why. If your only goal is to set facts down on paper, passive voice is perfectly fine. If you’re trying to connect with a reader, though, to convey attitude and meaning, then you need to focus on making expressive sentences.

Unstressed Expression

You need to focus on making all your sentences expressive, and you can do that by doing everything you know how to do, on every sentence, to make it as strong as possible. In other words, practice.

I mentioned before that Dad’s frustration came from the difficulty of doing things in writing that he can do without effort in speaking. That’s really not a difference in the medium. It’s a difference in experience.

After all, when I step up in front of a crowd I can barely stammer my way through a coherent sentence, let alone an expressive one, but the three-dimensional writing is easily for me. That’s where my experience is. And Dad, of course, has spent years longer practicing good public speaking.

Not only that, he’s studied it. He has studied the rules of non-verbal expression, the best methods of eye contact, posture, mimicking and blocking and pacing. He didn’t just do what felt natural, what seemed good enough. He learned the best methods — and why those methods were best — and then he trained himself to do it that way every time.

Best Methods

So what are the rules for writing expressive sentences? It’s more than just good grammar. Here are some of the rules that spring right to mind.

Eschew passive voice. Cling to active voice.

I’ve said enough about the reasons for this, but in case you’re a little unclear on exactly what passive and active voice look like, come back tomorrow for a refresher.

Hunt for the perfect word.

Wherever possible, use strong nouns and verbs instead of letting adjectives and adverbs do the heavy lifting. “Sprinted” and “bolted” and “darted” all say so much more, with their subtle differences, than “went quickly.” “Eschew” is a much more expressive verb than “avoid,” too.

Get to the Point

Say what you have to say clearly, but choose shorter phrases and simpler words when possible. Strong verbs and nouns add richness and depth to your writing, but often it’s tempting to use big complicated words just to make your writing seem more important. It doesn’t.

Cramming in unnecessary syllables only dilutes your message, and gets in the way of clarity. (Same for exotic or rare words, too — perhaps “eschew,” for instance. Ahem.)

Keep it Simple

In the same way, keep a close rein on your verbs. Try to use simple verb tenses as much as possible — “he went” instead of “he had been going,” and “she will go” instead of “she will have gone.”

Like passive voice, complicated verb tenses exist for a reason and they can be perfectly grammatically accurate while still weakly conveying your message. It’s often worth reworking a whole paragraph to make the verb tenses work out, instead of defending the verb tenses you’ve already got.

As a good rule of thumb, you should make sure to use at least one strong, simple verb in every sentence, and make it the sentence’s main verb phrase.

There’s no way that’s every single rule of expressive sentences. Let me know which ones work best for you, which ones you have trouble with, and which ones you’d like to hear more about. That’s what the comments section is for.

Filed in For Work | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

Editorial Post (Technical Writing Exercise)

By Aaron Pogue on Monday, February 8, 2010
Business Writing Exercise

Business Writing Exercise

Today, you’re going to express your opinion.

I’ve talked before about the different organization methods you might use for different document types. I’ve talked about which conclusions work best for essays, for arguments, or for short stories. Today you’re going to work on a document type that combines them all.

Your assignment this week is to write an editorial. Write an opinion piece concerning something of interest to you. Maybe it’s the outcome of the Super Bowl, or the impact of the refs. Maybe it’s your significant other’s childish obsession with football, or your reaction to the newest snowstorm blowing in.

Pick something that interests you, something going on in the world about which you have an opinion, and then share it with the rest of us. Tell us the story of this event in your life. Persuade us to feel the same way you do. Craft an argument even the staunchest denier couldn’t deny, and leave us awed by your opinion.

Or, at the very least, say something loudly and obnoxiously, to get a response. That’s as good as half the editorials out there anyway.

Post it on your blog, and let us know about it here so we can swing by and check it out. I’m prepared to be convinced.

Filed in For Work | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Blog Story (Creative Writing Exercise)

By Aaron Pogue on Friday, February 5, 2010

You should definitely have a blog by now. We’ve been talking about it all week, and yesterday’s article really stressed the benefits for creative writers in particular.

So let’s put that into practice. If you did Monday’s exercise, you’ve already got a good first post for your blog, telling the world that you’re a writer. Now it’s time to tell the world how fascinating your life is.

Tell a story.

Work that weird alchemy I waxed poetic about yesterday, and turn the events of your life into a true tale. Think about something that happened yesterday, or this week, and make a story out of it. Don’t just tell us what happened, craft it.

Find a protagonist (probably you), and figure out the drama in the events — was it frightening or frustrating or funny? Find the moment something changed — a reckless driver cut you off (startling you out of the daze of your daily commute), or someone called and gave you big news (good or bad). That’s your beginning, when something that happened interrupted your normal course of events. And the end is the moment when you found a way to make your life normal again. Everything in between should be part of the story, everything should relate (in some way) to the change and the conflict and the ultimate resolution.

I’m thinking that needs its own blog post, “Structure of a Story,” and I’ll have that for you next week. For now, find the drama in your boring ol’ life, and share it with the world. Oh, but not on our discussion board this time. Put it on your blog. That’s the whole point, right? Let us know, though. Share a link to your blog story, right here in the comments, and we’ll give your blog a couple new visitors.

Filed in For Fun | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Why You Should Keep a Blog (Part 2)

By Aaron Pogue on Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Sleeping Kings blog, may it rest in peace.

The Sleeping Kings blog, may it rest in peace.

I talked on Tuesday about the blog I started to post essays and status updates in 2005, but then in May of 2006 I started another one. SleepingKings on Xanga was a creative writing experiment on a grand scale. I had a story idea I wanted to investigate, some characters I wanted to meet, and a loosely-threaded plot I wanted to pick at. Instead of opening a new Word doc, I opened a weblog.

I invited all my friends and family to come read my new story, and I made a commitment to add 1,000 words a day to it. That became 1,000 words a week or, at times, 1,000 words a year. Still, the blog was up, and with it a constant commitment to write new material.

More than that, every page was available for public comment, in the roughest of rough draft forms. Sure, I’d do everything I could to get it right, but by the time I learned Josh’s car needed to be a pickup, it had already been a tan sedan for two months real-time.

The project was exhilarating, though. For long stretches the feedback would keep me going, and the knowledge that my readers wanted to know more. I was following in some pretty impressive footsteps, too, knowing that Ivanhoe and The Three Musketeers (some of my favorite novels) had been written as serials, published a chapter at a time in the newspapers.

Looking back now…it’s all garbage. I’ve spent most of the last two years trying to salvage some publishable novels out of the mess I put up on the web back then. Even so, it’s one of the most impressive and most exciting things I’ve done as a writer, so far. I learned so much from that experience, and if it sounds at all fun to you, I recommend you take a stab at it, too.

That said…something like that will only ever be an experiment. If you approach it with a lot of forethought and research, you can call it an exercise instead, but mostly it’s a project whose design and demand daily distract you from some of the principles of good writing you should be developing. The big ugly serial can be a monumental accomplishment, but the best thing you can do to become a better writer is focus on the fundamentals, and do it every day. For that, you don’t need an experiment. You just need a blog.

Writing Daily

You’ve heard it before, in any writing class you’ve ever taken. You’ve heard it from Nathan Bransford and Writer’s Digest and from me. You know it, you’ve always known it, but you’ve never really been able to follow through. Still, the fact remains: if you want to get better at writing, you need to practice writing every day.

I’ve been hearing that advice for decades (and I’ve barely got decades to my name), but I’ve never known a writer who could make real contributions to a work-in-progress on a daily basis. There’s too much emotional and intellectual entanglement when it comes to the shape and structure of an active work. NaNoWriMo gets close, but even that usually has it gaps, its doldrums and frantic sprints. On a real-life, day-to-day basis, you can’t keep writing the same novel or short story or epic poem day in and day out, in meaningful chunks.

The time-honored answer to that problem is the diary. Write on your novel when you can, but commit yourself to producing a thousand words of autobiography every day. It keeps your hand moving, keeps your mind engaged, and keeps your focus on writing, even when you let your WIP go for a day (or a week, or a year).

Courtney talked about precisely that in her WILAWriTWe yesterday, and she’s spot on. Every word counts. Every page you fill up makes you a better writer, whether it’s in-genre or not, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, whether it’s creative or not. The process of practicing written communication makes you better at written communication.

Writing for Readers

Part of what sets a blog apart from the private leather-bound diaries of old is its public nature. As I said on Tuesday, you can set your blog to private. You can share it with no one. But the software is there and it’s designed to make public.

That’s both a blessing and a curse. If you have any readers at all, you’ll feel compelled to write to a schedule, to keep them satisfied. That can help shore up your discipline, when you don’t feel like writing, but it can also be stressful. At times (and, of course, I’m speaking from experience), it can become a burden that makes you want to quit blogging altogether.

When you are writing, though, you need more than just word count. Since you have readers, you need something interesting to say. One of the guys in my writer’s group just started a new blog and he’s focusing on song lyrics — the music that gives him inspiration also gives him material. He can post every other day and talk about the poetry that’s moving his soul at the moment.

If you can find a niche, if you can find a topic of interest to you, you can find a thousand things to talk about. That’s what I’m trying to do here. That’s what Carlos is doing as he tries to make his life better, writing about ways to make your life better. That’s what Trish is doing over at Your Homeroom, writing about the activities and projects she works on everyday.

But you don’t have to talk about a particular hobby or niche interest to find something to say. You’ve got a topic ready to hand, every time you sit down to write: you. As I said before, I started my first blog on Xanga to rant about my philosophies, but I gave up on that soon enough and turned it into a journal. Instead of talking about politics or religion, I started talking about me — about my boring ol’ life. As soon as I did that, my readership shot way up, and so did the feedback I got.

Making it Interesting

I know you’re worried that your life is too boring. I know you’re thinking, “Nobody’s going to care what I had for dinner.” That can be true, if you let it be true. You’re a writer, though. Your whole job is to take a story and make it interesting. I’ve got a lot to say about Narrative and Exposition, and it’s all going to come into play with your blog.

You can tell us about your day, with some brutally terse exposition.

“Yesterday I went to work, and then I came home from work. I ate Spaghetti-O’s. I watched something on TV. I went to bed. The end.”

And, y’know, that’ll make a point. If you try really hard, you can prove to your readers that your life is boring. But it’s not your life that matters there, it’s your storytelling. If you’re not careful, you can do the same thing with your fiction, too.

I just finished reading a scene in a novel where the writer skipped over what should have been the climax — an incredibly dramatic and story-changing confrontation between the protagonist and the boy who’s in love with her — with exactly that sort of presentation. “She met him at his house, and explained to him that they couldn’t be together. He didn’t agree, but she convinced him of it. Then she went home and cried.” We didn’t get to see any of it happen, and as a result the most interesting scene in the protagonist’s life was made boring.

There’s a good chance you do the same thing, from time to time. As writers, we all do. It’s easy to stop telling stories and start relating events, and as soon as we do that, it gets boring. It doesn’t matter if you’re putting in time at work, or trekking across the blighted lands of Mordor. Your story will be exactly as interesting as you make it in the telling.

That’s the true treasure of blogging for a storyteller. It’s constant practice. It’s a daily challenge: chronicle your boring life, and make it interesting. Before you go to bed every night, or right after you pour your morning coffee, go sit down at the computer, think about the series of tedious things that happened in your life yesterday, and then begin the brilliant alchemical process of turning them into a story.

That’s the true craft of the author, taking regular ol’ life and turning it into something that shines. It’s not going to work the first time you try. Maybe your first ten efforts will still feel as dull as your Thursdays. Maybe your next dozen will stutter along, half-stories of a dull bronze at best. The only way you’re ever going to get to gold is to try, again and again, with exactly the resources you have available.

It takes a little time, and a lot of effort, but every step along the way makes you better. Start working on it right now. Open up your blog, and make a story out of yesterday.

Filed in For Fun | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)

What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Writing Itself

By Courtney Cantrell on Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Courtney Cantrell's "What I Learned about Writing this Week"

Courtney Cantrell's weekly writing advice.

When I was in college, I spent one particular semester feeling as though I were afflicted with a rare and temporary form of Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder). Two of my classes that semester were Media Writing and Creative Writing II. In Media Writing, I learned to write one-sentence paragraphs; to put all of my important information at the beginning of each sentence so as to keep the reader’s attention; and to use passive voice. In Creative Writing, I learned to vary the length of my paragraphs; to hint at important information so as to pique the reader’s interest; and to banish passive voice to the depths of the hell whence it originated. You laugh (and yea verily, I can hear the Schadenfreude in your sniggering), but I honestly did feel like two different people vying for control over the same mind. Depending on which of the two classes I happened to be sitting in, one personality dominated, while the other languished in impotent frustration. The homework assignments for both classes had me picking up my marbles off the floor of my living room several days a week.

Eleven years later, here I sit, having finally learned that divergent creative personalities need not remain unintegrated forever.

Over the past two-and-a-half weeks, I have written five posts (counting this one) for Unstressed Syllables. My writing for this site is not wholly media writing, nor is it wholly technical writing. (At least, I don’t think it’s entirely tech writing; but please don’t quote me on this–you’d have to ask Aaron to be sure.) It seems my quirkier side can’t resist putting in a word here and there, peppering my articles with creative flair. Still, what I’ve been writing for this blog is not fiction.

But.

Since I joined Unstressed Syllables, I have added 6,000 words to my work-in-progress, a paranormal novel entitled SHADOWS AFTER MIDNIGHT. That’s compared to the preceding six weeks of teeth-pull-writing that garnered me a measly 7,000 words. Now, I find myself putting together story scenes in my head when I’m away from my computer. I’m making random notes again. The kind you scribble on napkins at restaurants because you can’t remember to keep a Writing Notebook in your purse. The kind you hieroglyph onto a scrap of paper on your nightstand without turning on the light in the middle of the night. The proverbial creative juices are flowing again–not in torrents to overwhelm me, but in a steady trickle that teases me to come back for more as surely as I’m trying to tease you, my inklings, into reading what I am writing now.

I credit my Unstressed Syllables writing with the end of my creative drought. It would seem that even just the act of writing–stringing thoughts together, finding the best adjectives, editing-in more powerful verbs–just The Doing Of It triggers my need to write fiction, even if my trigger isn’t fiction at all. Finally, I get it: I carry around with me a Tech/Media Writer…who is an excellent resource for my Creative Writer. No longer must I banish one in favor of the other. They are one, they are integrated, they are whole. They help each other, instead of hindering one another and giving me creative blackouts. I don’t have to be a writer version of Sybil anymore.

Metaphors and frilliness aside, the age-old adage (say that ten times fast) is true: If you want to be a writer, YOU MUST WRITE. Write and write and write and write, my friends. Write a journal. Write a poem. Write a song. Write a blog. Write ten grocery lists and pick the one you like most and makes sentences from the words upon it. Write something. You carry within you something that wants you to write it. It needs you to write it. And if you “go through the motions,” eventually the Something Which Must Be Written (please excuse the passive) will come out for a romp that will leave you breathless and begging for more.

And that’s WILAWriTWe!

(Furthermore, the FCC wants me to tell you that if you click on the link within this post, and if you buy a product, This Starving Artist will get a few bucks. Consider it your small contribution to The Arts! ;o)

Photo credit Courtney Cantrell.

Filed in For Fun | Tagged | Comments (3)

Why You Should Keep a Blog (Part 1)

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Start a free blog at WordPress.com

Start a free blog at WordPress.com

You should keep a blog. And, yes, I mean you personally.

If you’ve already got one, pat yourself on the back and then read below for advice on getting the most out of it. If you’re absolutely certain you don’t want to keep a blog (whether it’s a time thing or a lack-of-content thing or even a privacy thing), give me three pages to try to convince you.

On Thursday, I’m going to dedicate Part 2 to convincing my storytellers and creative writers about the benefits of blogging to their craft, but today’s post is for everybody. Today’s post is about the benefits of blogging to casual writers just trying to get simple ideas across. Today’s post could just as easily be named, “How Not to Look Like an Idiot.”

Looking Like an Idiot

I wrote an email a couple years back for work. One of my colleagues had asked for an update on a project I was working, and a week later he had to catch me in the hall to ask again. I went straight back to my desk and sat down to compose his email. I started it, “Hey, sorry, I’m an idiot. Here’s the information you requested.”

After that I put on my Technical Writer hat and dove into my project report. I gave an efficient but effective analysis of the state of the project, including what our roadblocks were and a practical projection of the project’s ultimate implementation. I got through to the end, wrote a really great conclusion and then (as is my habit), went back to the top to reread the whole thing before hitting Send.

By then, having spent half an hour in Technical Writer mode, that introduction struck me as extremely out-of-place. “Hey, sorry, I’m an idiot,” while a noble sentiment, did nothing to establish the topic or conversation for the rest of the email. More than that, it sounded extremely unprofessional in the context of the formal report that followed. So I cut it out, wrote a proper introduction, and sent it off.

Six months later I got an email from my boss detailing project schedules and work assignments and as I worked my way down through all the Forwards and Copieds and REs, I blinked in surprise to see my own quick status report as one of the emails in the chain. And three names above mine in the Forward chain was the Secretary of the Department of Transportation. How do you like that? I was seconds away from telling the big boss that I’m an idiot.

Publishing Your Drafts

You may be surprised to hear it, but I don’t necessarily think like a Tech Writer every time I go to write an email. The fact is, I’ve been writing correspondence for a lot longer than I’ve considered myself a serious writer, and I’m just as lulled by the convenience and simplicity of email (and chat, and all the other online communications) as the rest of you.

So it’s easy for me to jot off something unconsidered, unstructured, and essentially uncommunicative, but most of the time there comes a point somewhere in the process where I stop and remind myself to think like a writer. More often than not, that’s the moment before I click Send when I force myself to stop and reread it first.

And that habit comes more from blogging than from email. I started my first blog back in 2005, and it was supposed to be a place for me to post essays on all my weird philosophies. I jumped right in, ranting about religion and politics, and you’d better believe that got some comments.

I certainly didn’t mind the discussion, but it was infuriating to see how often the argument was about something I’d said wrong, rather than about something wrong that I’d said. I’d put hours into building an essay, a complex and detailed argument for my personal viewpoint, publish it to the world, and then watch as all of the conversation centered on one minor aside I’d made where I’d failed to clarify the exact focus of a pronoun.

I could edit my posts, I could fix the mistakes, but by the time I did that my first readers’ interest in the topic was usually exhausted, and anyone coming to the conversation later found comments that didn’t relate to the actual post, so it was hard to join in. In a very short time, I learned a deep respect for the Publish button.

That’s a powerful lesson you don’t get with email, because email lets you send your work away. Blogs keep it close at hand. Emails are seen as containers of information, whereas blogs are seen more as methods of expression. In other words, you’ll get held accountable more for how you say things in a blog than you ever are for emails.

And that’s a good thing! My coworker wouldn’t have cared if I’d said I was an idiot in the opening line of my email, because he would have taken the comment in the manner in which it was given. As that document wound its way up the corporate chart, though, further and further from my original target, how I said things became more and more important.

Thinking Like a Writer

Honestly, I could use that anecdote to promote this whole website, but when it comes right down to it, my articles aren’t going to save you that embarrassment. Oh, sure, thinking about good writing practices will help, it’ll make you a little bit better all the time, but you’re not going to be able to write good, effortless material until you’ve got some sort of Writer hat you can put on.

For me, my saving grace was the Technical Writer hat. I know that I’m a writer, so I hold myself accountable for the things I write. The problem many of my coworkers run into (and, I’m guessing, many of you), is that they don’t think they’re writers, so they don’t hold themselves accountable. Any one of them could have ended up in the same situation I did, though. Any of you could. The casual writing we do every day is becoming more and more permanent, and more and more public.

Because of that, it’s vital that you learn to think of yourself as a writer. You don’t have to go back to school, you don’t have to enroll in community college Creative Writing courses (although, of course, it wouldn’t hurt), but you do need to find ways to improve. You need to make yourself accept it, and start holding yourself to the same standard the big boss will.

The easiest way is regular practice. That’s why I’m posting weekly writing exercises. You need to spend time stretching yourself as a writer in a way that’s essentially harmless. Trying to write a better email when your boss asks for a self-evaluation could land you in trouble. Trying to write a better business letter when it’s a fake letter to Santa, though, gives you a stress-free sandbox. You can stretch your limits, you can see what works and what doesn’t, and nobody’s going to judge you for it.

That’s exactly how you should view your blog. It’s a practice area. It’s a workbook. It’s a chance for you to spend time realizing you’re a writer (and holding yourself accountable) without risking the real, information-bearing writing you have to do in your regular life.

Starting a New Blog

One thing you should keep in mind, as you consider this advice: Starting a new blog is a chance to experiment, and get better. It’s a chance to learn your weaknesses, which is an incredibly valuable thing, but it’s probably also the number one thing holding you back.

Your blog doesn’t need to be awesome. Your blog doesn’t need to be fascinating, or attract a thousand followers. I’m working on those things, with this site, but as I said, I spent five years working on the boring, “Here’s what I had for dinner last night” sort of blog before I ever got here.

Every word counts. Every page you write makes you a better writer. If you’re concerned about looking like an idiot, make your blog private. It’s easy to do with every type of blog software I’ve ever used, and it restricts your posts so they’re only visible to people you directly invite.

I started with Xanga and then moved to Blogger when all my friends did. I’d love to push Blogger, because I have a massive crush on everything Google, but if you’re going to start a new blog I’d recommend going with WordPress. It’s probably the easiest to use free, full-featured blog software out there, and if you ever decide to make your own web page, chances are good you’ll end up using WordPress to build it. Might as well start learning now.

It’s easy enough. Click this link to make a new account on WordPress. Choose a username (which will also become your web address, so choose wisely), ask for a blog, and start posting.

If you’re having trouble coming up with stuff to write about, check back here. At the very least, you’ll have a ready-made post or two every week as you hone your skills with the writing exercises. That’s what they’re there for.

Filed in For Work | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

I Am a Writer (Technical Writing Exercise)

By Aaron Pogue on Monday, February 1, 2010

This week, I’m going to call on you to start a blog. If you’re here at all, you realize that you’re a writer. Maybe not a prolific novelist, maybe not even a willing emailer, but it’s your lot in life to do some writing from time to time.

Unstressed Syllables is all about helping you get better at that, but all our writing advice can’t do much unless you put it into practice. That’s why I provide a weekly writing exercise, to get you writing something low-impact that will help you think like a writer.

That’s the benefit you get from blogging, too, but I’ll save that sales pitch for tomorrow’s post. For now, I want you to focus on the writing you do.

Think about your writing education.

  • How did you respond to your English classes in school?
  • What’s the most recent class you’ve taken that was focused directly on writing?
  • What are your weaknesses?

Think about your process.

  • When you’ve got a document you need to work on, how do you approach it?
  • Do you start with prewriting?
  • Do you put it off to the last minute?
  • Do you research relevant topics?

Think about all the ways you have to write in your daily life.

  • Do you write emails to friends and family?
  • Do you write emails for work?
  • Do you write business letters for official purposes?
  • Do you post to any sort of social media (whether that’s Twitter, Facebook status updates, or a private blog)?
  • Do you do any other creative or hobby writing?
  • What do you enjoy about writing? What do you do well?
  • What projects are you working on at the moment?

Write up a short autobiography of you as a writer (300-900 words). Make it three sections, with appropriate headings, and generally answer the questions above. Tell us where you’re coming from, so we can better help you get where you need to be. If you want to be smart about it, you can also write this up to use as your first blog post! At the very least, share it with us on the discussion board.

Filed in For Work | Tagged , , | Comments Off on I Am a Writer (Technical Writing Exercise)