EVOLVING INTO HUMDRUM
I think back to when I first joined the Air Force. I was a terrible Airman as far as military bearing. However, I loved being a mechanic, especially when it came to electrical stuff. In fact, I was good enough that my bosses tended to overlook my personal foibles with my wrinkled uniform and ratty hair because I got things fixed. The other side of the coin was that because I got things fixed, and because I had a natural ability with multiple choice tests, I worked myself right out of what I loved doing. In one respect, I shot myself in the foot. On the other hand, I did my body a world of good and though I’m paying for it now with plenty of health issues, it could’ve been worse. The point is that I evolved. That made me think of characters in series that evolve. The intent is well-meaning, but the end result can ruin a good thing.
BANDS
I think about some of my favorite rock bands. I often loved their first few albums, but then the musicians got bored, or decided to evolve their sound to become more commercial. They changed into something I didn’t like much anymore. I look at the huge album shelf next to me, as I type this, and see bands with one or two out of five or more albums that are great, while the rest are just meh. The thing is, those meh albums are usually their biggest sellers. Go figure. Then again, after those big sellers, they all faded as musical tastes changed and the bands broke up for various reasons.
TV SHOWS
TV shows usually have a much shorter shelf life. The first few shows start with a bang, the thing that attracts audiences to them in the first place. However, the writers and the audience get bored real fast and the pressure is on to “evolve” the characters to keep the numbers up. Before long, the show may either flop or become way more popular. More often than not, it will not be the same animal it was in those first few shows. Once that evolution takes place, it may very well fizzle out and that’s it. Shows that stick to a formula seem to last longer. They take a lot of flack for sticking to a formula, but they gain dedicated viewers who stay with them.
BOOKS
I’ve fallen in love with a book series, only to have the characters evolve into something I don’t like anymore. The characters and plotting will grow right out of what attracted me in the first place and become something a far cry from what I read in book one.
PROS AND CONS
Many readers love and expect characters to evolve. There are others that don’t. I think there’s room for both.
Some people think it’s mandatory to evolve, like there’s some cosmic rule that you have to evolve the characters, or what’s the point, and bla bla bla. I say bull. You don’t have to do anything. It’s your world you’re drawing. Why not be like AC/DC and don’t fix something that isn’t broken?
I have no issue with the character evolving a little. Maybe put in small changes or details along the way, but nothing that requires or forces the character to change character. A natural progression is fine as long as you don’t fix something that isn’t broken.
There’s no reason a character has to start as A and end up being Z.
In this short attention span world, it’s almost expected characters have to change or the audience gets bored. If we all bend to that, we’re playing right into that mentality.
BRIEF EXAMPLE
I’ve always loved the Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt series. Over several decades, he’s written several dozen novels. My beef with Pitt is that though the series has been going now for several decades, Mr. Cussler chose to age Pitt along with the decades. Instead of keeping him young and not letting time get in the way of a good story, he threw realism in and aged him and gave him baggage. Pitt started as the young, dashing hero. Now he has a dead wife, is semi-retired from adventuring and has been promoted to director of his organization. His son and daughter do most of the heroics. That’s not exactly what attracted me to the series. I’ve aged right along with him, but though I still enjoy the series, it’s not quite the same. Yet, he still has his detractors who say it’s the same old thing, which is just a case of you can’t win.
On the other hand, the good old pulp stories of Doc Savage never had that issue. Though it’s been several decades since I last read them, but I don’t remember Doc evolving all that much. Ken Robeson, AKA Lester Dent didn’t fix something that wasn’t broke. He wrote 30+ great quick and dirty novels that gave me a great time.
SUMMARY
It’s perfectly fine to evolve your characters if you want to. I do, to some extent. On the other hand, you don’t have to. You don’t have to fix something that isn’t broken. You don’t have to ruin something good. You don’t have to bend to the will of the short attention span crowd. On the other hand, that does buck the catering to a wider audience. Then again, there are authors out there cranking out what some call the same old stuff and they’re doing just fine, like Stuart Woods and ahem… Clive Cussler, according to his critics (yeah, go figure).
Happy writing!
DESCRIBING CHARACTERS REVISITED
Back in 2011, when my fledgling web site first launched, one of my flagship articles was Describing Characters. I want to revisit that article because it recently came up during the development of not only a video I’m having made, but from an accumulation of discussions over the past few months with people at my writer’s group. Below is the original article, updated with my latest tweaks.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
In the good old days, it used to be almost mandatory to describe your characters, down to the most minute detail. Not too many decades ago, it was common to see the old cliché of the character looking in the mirror (or seeing their reflection in something like a department store window) describing themselves through internal dialogue or through narrative. One way or the other, you had to describe each and every major character and most of the minor ones. This went right along with the literary bent of describing everything in excruciating detail. Some of that spilled over into genre writing.
TIMES HAVE CHANGED
No longer was it mandatory to describe characters in detail. The author could leave it up to the reader to draw their own picture.
IS THERE A RIGHT WAY?
Is there one correct way? Not really. There are, as usual, both extremes. Describe in detail or don’t describe at all. Either method works. Which one is right for you? From the trends that I’ve seen, unless you’re an established author, or write chick-lit or romance, the most common method to describe characters, especially for male-oriented stories or general appeal novels seems to be to drop an occasional hint and let the reader draw their own picture.
A FEW NOT-TO-DO’S
I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. One of my big no-no’s was the character looking in the mirror (or seeing his or her reflection) cliché. That was the place to describe the character in detail, which became a list (another bad idea). I left nothing to the imagination. A consequence is that if you happen to describe a character with physical traits the reader doesn’t like, they may be biased against that character throughout the story, no matter how the character acts. Maybe the character reminds them of someone they don’t like.
A second big nono was comparing a character to a celebrity. I’ve read plenty of stories where authors have done that. It usually doesn’t work very well. In fact, it can backfire. Never EVER describe a character as looking like “Danny Glover” or “Megan Fox” or “Katy Sagal” or “Brad Pitt.” By doing so, not only are you being lazy, but you’re biasing your reader. What if your reader hates that actor? What if that actor or celebrity does something extremely controversial in real life, like a certain pitch man did recently? Or, that actor plays a character so far from what your character is doing? It will draw your reader out of the story.
Detach, the hero in my Gold series fudges the rules a bit. I describe him as looking either like the late Russian leader Vladimir Lenin, with hair, or a crazed biker. Is that comparing him to a celebrity? In a way I used to think so. The reason I decided to keep his description was as much an inside joke with the other characters in the story as it was the fact that most people today have no idea who Lenin was. A few years ago, I saw a documentary on Lenin and saw him in disguise with a wig on. Detach didn’t look a thing like how I pictured him with hair! That was when I threw in the crazed biker description. His real description came from a biker I once knew who somehow reminded me of Lenin. Crazy rationale, but it worked.
CERTAIN GENRES, DESCRIPTION WORKS
In certain genres, such as women’s fiction and romance, the readers like the character described in detail. In that case, you still have to be very careful how you draw the character! Even if you’re describing Brad Pitt, or Fabio or George Clooney, make sure you don’t actually describe Brad Pitt, Fabio or George Clooney by name. You may describe them exactly in your mind, but your reader is likely to paint a different picture.
DROP HINTS/BE VAGUE
For most genres, drop a hint here and there. Joe stretched his tall frame as he got out of the car. Mary rubbed her blue eyes in the smoggy air. Andy tugged on his goatee while he pondered his next move. Throw these little things out but spread them throughout scenes, not all at once. Gradually draw a picture.
When I originally wrote this article in 2011, I kept track of character descriptions for about two dozen books. Not a one of them directly described a main character in detail. I thought about it and for most characters, I had no idea what they looked like except for a general idea. You know what? I didn’t care. What they looked like wasn’t important. The story was what mattered. Of course, I wasn’t reading romances so I’m sure that was a factor. Since I normally read thrillers, icky bug and mysteries, the only characters that are ever described in detail are occasional bad guys and special characters, usually to magnify evil or bad traits (sometimes in stereotypical fashion). However, the main characters usually don’t get that kind of detail. As of 2015, that still applies.
BOTTOM LINE
I’ve learned and still apply to this day to keep my descriptions vague. I don’t want to bias my readers and pigeon-hole my characters into a description (with notable exceptions like Detach) except in the vaguest terms so that the readers can draw their own pictures. If the reader want’s to fancy a character after themselves, their cousin, sister, mom, dad whoever, I want to give them the freedom to do that.
I’m not telling you not to describe your characters in detail, but you don’t have to. It’s something you can leave to the reader’s imagination if you want to.
This subject came up again at our meeting last night (as I publish this). There was a section in the presentation on describing characters in detail. Though I understood why the presenter did it, I also cringed because it’s so far from how I approach it. What’s that tired old cliché, apples and oranges?
Happy writing!
EVOLUTION OF A SHORT STORY
As much as I talk about writing, I’ve never sat down and analyzed, or gave a step-by-step process of how I go about writing a short story. This is especially true of when it’s actually happening, or in this case, just happened. While it’s fresh and raw off the press, I thought I’d outline how I just did one. It might give you all insight.
THE NUGGET OF INSPIRATION, THE MUSE, THE PUSH TO CREATE
It’s been a while since I’ve written a true one-of-a-kind short story. It’s not like I don’t write something every day, but usually that’s part of something else, maintenance as I like to call it (especially coming from that world). It’s not like I’m not busy either. I have a lot on my plate, getting ready for my book launch, keeping up my web site (this article being an example), and I’m also editing a manuscript. However, when the muse strikes, I have to go with it.
I got the nugget for this inspiration about a week ago at the writer’s group meeting. Though I have several short stories still in the archives, when our secretary Audrey Balzart brought up that we only have two weeks left to submit to the newest Writer’s Bloc annual anthology, her announcement prompted me to come up with something fresh. I’d been brewing on it for a bit but with so much going on, I’d left this short story thing on the back burner. That evening, something popped into my head out of the blue. I won’t say what it is, that’s the surprise of the story, but that nugget of inspiration brewed in my brain a bit and I thought about it off and on for a few days.
Once in a while it would pop up in my mind as things around me inspired me. I’d think about it, then brew on it a bit more. That, my friends was the seed for the story.
FORMING THE BASIS FOR THE STORY
As with any story I write, I want to know where to start and where to end. That’s pretty much my entire outline. I don’t need to write any of that down. All I need to do is settle that in my head, and I’m good to go.
I thought about that nugget of inspiration and after brewing on it for those few days, I thought about where to begin and where to end, the key elements, so to speak. Truth be told, the ending came to me right away. It didn’t take more than one take, to use movie jargon, to come up with the ending. In fact, that part came to me when I got home from work as I was getting out of my car.
The beginning took a little more time, but when I finally figured that out, it was just a matter of time to sit down between everything else and start the story.
GETTING DOWN TO BONES
I started it on a Thursday evening after NBC Nightly News. I think I fell asleep during the second half and my wife woke me up. I came into my workroom, had to start the framework for continuing with the editing job, did some other stuff and kept putting off starting the story. Okay, I procrastinated almost until the 11th hour.
Finally, I saved as the file with the title, which came to me on-the-spot, and typed.
I made it to the second paragraph before Bones came on. Game over.
About five minutes of work and I nailed the title and beginning. That was it for night one.
Friday, we sat down to watch Bill Maher and discovered it was a surprise repeat. Since I was expecting to watch an hour of TV, I opted to read instead, but forty-five minutes into that hour, I couldn’t stand it anymore and came back into the computer room. You see, I take both my TV nights and my computer time seriously!
I fudged around with the editing job, then messed around with trivial things, with no muse in sight. Before I knew it, with Hawaii 5-0 looming on the horizon, my muse finally called strong enough to get down and dirty.
I pulled up the short story file and got to work. First I read through the two paragraphs from Thursday night, got my rhythm going and bang! Twenty minutes later, I had 1,443 words down. I closed it and watched Hawaii 5-0.
FIRST EDIT
Saturday morning I did the first edit.
Did I say what I wanted to say? Did I use the voice I wanted to? Did I make a lot of grammatical mistakes?
As for grammatical mistake, I made a few tweaks, but overall, it wasn’t too bad. No misspellings, but I had a few misplaced modifiers and I re-worded a few sentences to fix context. Little stuff. I’m sure my writer’s group will find more.
As for voice? When I caught my muse for this one, I wanted to make it a first-person account because the story is about me, and from my viewpoint. Though I despise first-person in fiction, this is not, thereby making first-person acceptable. There’s no or very little dialogue because I’m not conversing with anyone. The story is my thoughts and opinions. I’m not here to liven it up by making up conversations. So, the voice is me. There’s humor in it as well as sarcasm. That’s definitely me!
Did I say what I wanted to say? Uh, yeah! There was one place where I more or less implied it. When I read it back, I saw where I didn’t say it directly, but to rewrite the paragraph and bludgeon the reader over the head with it was unnecessary.
In the end, I realized it wasn’t a short story, but an essay, an op-ed? I’d written a humorous opinion piece. It was exactly what I wanted to say.
This process took a half hour.
WRITER’S GROUP
If I get on the list in time, I may have a chance to read it at the writer’s group meeting. I’m sure I’ll get a plethora of opinions, good and bad. I’ll of course, listen to them all. Will I go with all of them? It depends on what they say. As usual, I don’t have to do everything they say. However, I do listen to each opinion, no matter how off-the-wall.
Turns out, I did make the list and read it Monday night. I heard the predicted wide range of opinions from changing the order to make the story flow to adding dialogue, to changing this and that. It was great feedback from a wide range of viewpoints. I especially liked it because I just started reading and didn’t let anyone know what I was reading. They had no pre-conceived notions. Their opinions were raw and as unbiased as I could get.
CONCLUSION
With maybe an hour’s work total, maybe a bit more after the writer’s group as I ponder which advice to take, I whipped out an essay of about 1,400+ words. Not everyone can do that, while some can do a lot more. What I do with it in the end is hard to say. Will I submit it to Writer’s Bloc? Not sure. I may use it for something else.
The point is that I felt the muse and followed it.
How about you? I know it’s not as simple for many of you, but if you can, don’t worry about the mechanics. If you get the muse, just go with it and see what comes out in the wash. You may surprise yourself. All it costs is a bit of time. You never know until you try.
Happy writing!
I LOVE TO WRITE
I can’t say it much better than that. As one comedian once said, “It’s my job, it’s what I do.”
Writing is my job, my passion, one of my reasons for getting up every day. I live it and breathe it.
I USED TO DREAD IT
Like speaking in front of a crowd, how many of you got those cold chills, or a sense of total frustration when you had to write something? Be it an essay, a critique, a whatever. It’s not the same as writing a letter home to momma and papa, which in itself, can be a real chore if you are that bad!
When I finally got back to taking college courses, I didn’t have any choice. I had to write…a lot.
When I became a supervisor and manager, I had to write…a lot.
From that time when I tried if for fun on that awful Star Trek parody, which lasted ¾ of a page on my old Royal manual typewriter, it never occurred to me that I’d be where I am today.
ONE DAY IT JUST CLICKED
I don’t know if it’s fate, karma, or destiny, but when something like this happens, it just does. I guess I should give credit to those APRs (airman performance reports) and college papers I had to do. When I put my nose to the paper, it wasn’t that bad. However, I was just doing what I had to do, and getting it overwith.
The real deal came when I learned the Nazi method of good writing. Though some of you may have heard this before, for the benefit of the rest of you that don’t want to slog through my past blogs:
My boss, Master Sergeant Hornsby, at Torrejon Air Base, was the Branch Chief of the AGE shop (Aerospace Ground Equipment). I was a Testicle (Technical) Sergeant at the time. I had to do quite a few APRs. He wasn’t happy with the quality of the writing I turned in. So, one day, actually over several days, he had me stay after work and write, re-write and re-write again until I got those APRs right.
This was especially stressful for my wife Kim, who lived in Eurovillas, about 18 miles from the base. We had no phone and she had no idea if I was just late, wrecked the car or what. She freaked out every time. Add that to my stress of having to stay and write over and over again until I got the noun-verb agreement, the correct adverbs and punctuation, while worrying if Kim was going to walk down to the local store and call the La Guardia Civil, the Spanish heat, da fuzz, the po-leece.
So, my friends, after what I call the Nazi method of learning to write, despite the somewhat negative connotations, something clicked. Writing became a lot easier for me. I took the rest of my college courses to get my associates in basket weaving (my Air Force career field). The essays were so easy I could do them in my sleep. Letters home, which I’d never had a problem with to begin with, were much more pleasant! It wasn’t long after that when the first Commodore computers came out and we became electronic. Those first word processors were pretty bad, but I made good use of them for a newsletter Kim and I did.
THINGS FINALLY COME TOGETHER
Then we get back to the good old You Ess And A, I decided to take a crack at writing a novel again. Our music “career” was gone, and I needed a creative outlet.
Old news, said it many times.
Anyway, the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write.
To this day, I write almost every single day. Sometimes it’s just maintenance stuff, but usually it’s something creative.
TO BE A GOOD WRITER, YOU NEED TO HAVE THIS IN YOUR BLOOD
A real writer loves it and loves to do this stuff. I may be slamming some tortured soul, but I bet I’d never like their stuff anyway. Well, I take that back. I DO know a few writers that don’t really like to write. They have a burning desire to tell a great story, but they hate the process. I feel for them and I’ve read work like that and some of it is quite good. I’ve helped them best I could, but often I say if it’s that much torture, take up another hobby.
Loving what you do shows, plain and simple. I expect it will in what I do.
I hope it does in your work too.
Happy writing!
A GOOD EDITOR CAN MAKE OR BREAK A BOOK
As often happens, a book I just read provided a perfect inspiration for my weekly article.
A killer story can be less than great if the author’s writing quibbles get in the way of things. This is where a good editor can make that author shine. Even if an author can whip other manuscripts into top shape, as I’ve said many times before, they (we) can’t always see the forest through the trees. On the other hand, some authors are not technically proficient writers. They need all the help they can get.
This is where a good editor comes into play.
A GOOD STORY IS A GOOD STORY
Yeah, yeah, bla bla bla. We’ve heard that tired old excuse over and over again. We’ve also seen it over and over again with million sellers that, as far as writing quality is concerned, are total crap. There, I’ve said it. As for writing, they’re total crap, yet the average reader not only doesn’t care, they probably don’t even notice except maybe they detect that something isn’t quite right. Do they care? Hardly.
The problem is that there are others that do care. I’m talking about those of us that know better, those of us that want to leave a legacy. Also readers that are more sensitive to good writing, good grammar and good syntax will have their bull detectors go off. They’re going to remember that writer/author and a rep will build. It probably won’t hurt those author’s pocketbooks in the short term, but it will ultimately mar their legacy.
Do you care? Maybe, maybe not.
If not, you probably don’t need to read any further. I happen to care. I want a quality product to come out and don’t want my legacy tarnished by crap writing. I don’t want to be known as one of those writers.
I want to be able to tell a good story with good writing!
GOOD STORY, GOOD STRUCTURE, BAD WRITING
This latest thriller I read was a good story with good structure. However, the editing had a lot to be desired. The author liked to repeat words, and repeat words… and repeat words. Geez! Even though he wrote it in solid third-person, and it was NOT omniscient, he blatantly head-hopped enough to give me pause. The author is also known for the overuse of exclamation marks. I’ve mentioned them before and how they scream melodrama. Well, ‘nuff said about that! He also did a little bit of foretelling, which bugs the crap out of me.
Every one of these annoying things could’ve been fixed with a good editor. Unlike another thriller author which I’ve railed about before, at least this guy’s editor did a little more than run it through spell check. However, the editor let slip so many other issues that I still have to wonder if it wasn’t self-edited, or just helped, rather than actually hard-edited by his publishing house.
DIFFERENT EDITORS, DIFFERENT STYLES
Of course, each editor has their own style. However, I don’t see where they should be so off the rails. Then again, these books sell, and lots of readers don’t notice.
I don’t want my stories to end up that way.
How about you?
Happy writing.
DON’T ALWAYS EMULATE YOUR FAVORITES
Sorry, folks. This is a day late due to computer issues!
Week before last, I talked about influences. Now I want to talk on a related subject.
Okay, you have those writers you admire. You’ve probably heard others say that you should look closely at the writers you like and see how they do it. Look at the best sellers and see how they write. That’ll show you a roadmap of how to do it. Right?
Ahem… not exactly.
LOTS OF BLOCKBUSTERS ARE HORRIBLY WRITTEN
There are plenty of well-written books out there. However, just because a book is a best-seller, a blockbuster doesn’t mean it is written well. It can be a fantastic story but the grammar, syntax or style can be terrible. The book still might be a million seller because it has the “it” factor. Something about it strikes a chord with people. I could name several off the top of my head but I don’t want to badmouth other writers. All I know is that I’ve sampled plenty that were so bad, I couldn’t get through the first page.
BEST-SELLING AUTHORS CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER
The more popular or more established an author is, the more they can get away with. Therefore, if one of them is a huge influence on you, if you try to copy their style, or let their writing influence you, you may be picking up all their bad habits.
Their editors may either have different standards, the author may come from a different or older school than what’s contemporary, or he or she simply ignores convention and writes the way they want because they generate sales and simply don’t care. Bad habits.
DIFFERENT PUBLISHERS/EDITORS HAVE DIFFERENT STANDARDS
Though some things are supposed to be universal, don’t count on it. Each publisher and editing staff sets their own standards. One of your influences may be doing their best and the editing staff may be molding them into a style that’s not quite to convention. This could be good or bad.
YOUR INTEGRITY IS EVERYTHING
Your writing is a reflection of you. It should be the best it can be and not some half-assed attempt to get by. Don’t cut corners or cheat just because others are doing it!
I have a book I’m currently reading to my writer’s group. I wrote it when Dubya was still in office (yeah, it was that long ago). So far, I’ve deliberately left it the same except for minor tweaks, knowing it isn’t up to snuff. When I read the first chapter to the group, I provoked the group by bringing up a rhetorical question about “Every other thriller I’ve read lately does it this way.” The responses I got were what I expected and generated discussion. It boiled down to the fact that the story started too slow with too much description and not enough action. The past few thrillers I’ve read have had almost the same thing, though not quite as bad as mine.
I did it to make a point and I did. If everyone else is doing it, why can’t I?
Because it isn’t right, that’s why. It’s not up to my standards or the standards, we as writer’s are striving for.
YOUR STORIES ARE YOUR LEGACY
When you get published, those books will be out in the world in some form, long after you croak. Do you want future generations to look back and think of you for lousy writing?
I certainly don’t!
Happy writing!
WHAT’S WITH ALIENATING READERS LATELY?
A pet peeve of mine is alienating readers. When an author preaches either politics, religion or sex to the reader through the guise of a fictional story, that pisses me off.
I don’t care whether I agree with them or not, when a book is advertised as fiction of any genre, unless it plainly says it involves such discussion in the blurb on the back, I expect to get what I’m paying for. If I want discussion, I’ll go to the non-fiction section!
RIGHT-WING LEFT-WING
I read a lot of thrillers. When I find an author that writes decent, to my specs, third-person, past tense, fast-paced, short (or relatively) paragraphs, scenes and chapters, I’m there. They also have to have positive endings.
Once I find those authors, I keep a lookout for them. I think a lot of readers are the same way, right? When you find someone that writes what you like, you stick with them.
What happens when they suddenly (the “ly” word is deliberate here) make a left or right turn? I’m not talking about changing writing styles, though there IS that. I’m talking about going all cause on you?
In my case, I have two thriller writers. One I’ve been a huge fan of for two decades. The other, I’ve liked okay for maybe the past year. I’ve been growing on this number two guy.
I just read the latest novels by both guys. The first one uses his “thriller” as a platform to deny global warming. I’m not talking just about a plot device, but he comes close to author intrusion in spots to hammer his point home to the point where I almost threw the book down. It wasn’t even in the character’s heads as much as coming from blatant… well, you get the picture. It’s not whether he made any legitimate points or not, either. It’s that I didn’t buy one of his thrillers to put up with that. I wanted to be entertained, not get mired in a philosophical discussion on which scientists are right or wrong. Thriller? What thriller?
On to book number two. In this supposed thriller, it was merely a vehicle for Obama bashing. Might as well spell it out for what it really was. Like the previous example, the bashing was so blatant it should’ve been on the political discussion instead of the fiction shelf.
LOST A FAN
Those two authors lost a fan. This has nothing to do with whether I agree with them or not. It’s that I bought a book from them under false pretenses.
Before you think I’m just a dirty liberal weenie, I’ve had the same thing happen from the liberal side also. I’ve read thrillers that did nothing but bash either Dubya or #1. They pissed me off also, but at the time, I wasn’t as keen a reviewer as I am now and probably didn’t give as harsh a review. If I did, it was probably not just for that but for the writing or plot. It’s actually been quite a while since I’ve seen a thriller that bashed the conservative side as blatantly as these bashed the liberal side. I’m sure they’re out there.
WRITERS CAN’T HELP SOME BIAS
As humans, we can’t help innate bias to some degree. However, we can and should not preach if we expect to appeal to a wide audience. Unconscious bias is one thing, blatant preaching is another. You should know the difference.
Do you want to be known as that Left Wing Writer? Or, the Fox News Darling?
Guess what? You now have half the audience you could’ve had.
If you shut the hell up and just write a good story, EVERYONE can enjoy it!
Duh!
Happy neutral writing!
WHO OR WHAT INFLUENCED YOUR WRITING STYLE(S)
I’ve talked about writing styles before, but I’ve never approached it quite this way. The idea is to give a breakdown of the amalgam that is what I am as a writer so that you can see yourself and how you fit into your own style.
You’re not me, but I’ll bet you’re not a clone of one writer. Maybe by stepping back and looking at all your influences, you can see who you are and get a clearer picture of where you’re going. Who knows?
EVERY STORY IS AN ADVENTURE
I’ve said this many times not only here, but when talking about any manuscript or short story I’ve ever written. Everything I write, no matter the genre, is still an adventure. Period. It may be science fiction, icky bug, adventure/thriller or fantasy. At least those are the genres I’ve tackled so far. No matter, every one of them has been an adventure with the trappings of the specific genre.
Why?
How about Mark Twain? Clive Cussler? That’s two of the biggies. They, among others took me on thrilling adventures, one from the classical era and one still cranking them out today. Those lifelong influences embedded that sense of adventure into everything I write. It’s part of my storytelling DNA.
B-MOVIE NIRVANA
I still joke that good icky bug is that half the characters get eaten, they drop the f-bomb liberally and there’s lots of sex that has nothing to do with the plot.
Okay, there really are some B-monster movies like that, but there are plenty of outstanding B-movie classics that I just die for when they show on TV. They’re the ones that you’d find in the dingy corner of the horror rack at the now defunct video stores, usually hidden amongst all the slasher gore movies that are so popular with young adults. Yuck!
I’ve been a huge B-move fan since I was a little kid. My two icky bug novels are inspired and in the spirit of the good B-movie monster movies of the past and (a few) from the present. The only difference is that there isn’t any sex that has nothing to do with the plot!
YEAH, I ROLLED DICE WITH THE BEST OF THEM
When it comes to fantasy, there have only been a few I ever liked, both past and present. Why? Ahem, how about when half the heroes (not just side characters) die as in a certain popular series right now that is on HBO? Not for me. How about extremely wordy tomes where nothing happens for a hundred pages, literally (I’m not kidding). How about an extremely popular movie series based on a book that was fantastic but the actual books, which I forced myself to read back in 1969, were awful to get through? I couldn’t figure out why until now. They were omniscient! Then there were the character driven stories or intrigue stories that didn’t have enough action.
There were a few exceptions like Andre Norton and a few other authors I can’t remember, their names faded with decades. I can’t say I struck fantasy off my reading lists, but I was turned off enough by the genre that even though I loved the covers, I was quite often disappointed with the contents.
Then a weird game called D&D came along and things changed.
I rolled the dice and loved it! From there, a few authors came along with good plot-driven novels like R.A. Salvatore. However, I go back to the beginning of this section where I delved into the same old crap, the reason I still don’t like most fantasy.
There was one other exception that I like to call a mashup, though it was actually termed urban fantasy. It was a series I read in the 90’s about a guy who uses computers and computer logic to cross back and forth into a fantasy world. It wasn’t half bad.
As a result, after a few decades of rolling dice, switching to single player computer games, then adding in my “always an adventure” style, plus prodding from my wife to write fantasy, I started the Meleena’s Adventures series. I emphasize adventures, of course.
SHORT CHAPTERS
I started like a lot of writers, and wrote long chapters with multiple scenes. Sometimes way too many scenes. About ten years ago, I learned some “rule” at one of the Las Vegas Writer’s Conferences that you should only have three to five scene changes per chapter. Why? It made the story too disjointed. However, over time, that reasoning has faded like a lot of other things. The same for head-hopping, which was given the go-ahead a few years ago at one of the Romance Writer’s of America conferences. Once word got out about that, authors went nuts and every time I picked a book up, I saw head-hopping. It still drives me nuts. I hate it! Aaagh!
On to my point. I’m a stickler for rhythm and flow. I don’t like long paragraphs, long sentences or long chapters. I don’t like to be tortured when I’m reading and I also like to read during commercials.
Along came James Patterson. Unfortunately, despite being one publishing son-of-a-gun, he tends to write a lot in first-person, which I hate. However, the one thing he does right is he doesn’t write scenes. Instead, he makes every scene a chapter. As a result, his books might have eighty to over a hundred chapters. That makes the story move faster.
I’ve done that with Meleena’s Adventures.
As for my other novels, I have longer chapters, but with relatively short scenes because I like to write the same way I like to read. Those scenes may change to short chapters in future novels. We’ll see.
Thank you James Patterson.
INFLUENCES
We all have influences. Who are yours? Do you even know, or will you have to step back and think hard? Maybe you don’t even realize that one person is responsible for how you lay it all down.
You might be surprised.
Happy writing!
The Worlds Of Fred Rayworth 