I have known for a while that my taste in literature is conservative. In fact, I'm sure in some fields it would be considered very conservative and many readers might wonder how I find any books to read at all. But the point I want to consider is how a writer handles topics when the world around them is filled with these kinds of 'real-word' scenarios.
The first misconception that readers and young writers seem to have is that when writing a book if you want to convey that something bad has happened, you must make the moment filled with profanity. Rather than finding a creative way to express what is going on, there's a standard response, to plug in some profanity, and move on to the next bit.
That does not have to be a standard response. How do people handle stress? What do they do? People will do things other than swear, and you can use those to find keys to their characters and put scenes together. Does a nervous twitch express itself in other ways? Does someone's snappy attitude become something inappropriate for the situation, yet perfect for you as a storyteller? You can find a hundred ways to display what's going on in the characters' heads.
I can give an example of what I think is an inappropriate and excessive use of profanity. I began to read a book by an author which was unfamiliar to me, and the book was filled with characters swearing at each other. Left and right, old and young, all of them were swearing at each other. Now the characters were all living in the same neighborhood. I have to say, I can try to think back months, and I can't remember a single day where I've heard nearly that much profanity in a single day.
The thing that must be understood here is that every author is giving the reader a lens to look at the world through. There might be neighborhoods very different from my own where people swear all the time, but it put me off when I read it. I thought it distracted from the story.
A lot of new authors, and some established authors, say that profanity is a tool to add excitement or tension to a scene. What they don't think is that anything could add tension to a situation. But there are many things that are not appropriate which could work in just the same way. A stampede of llama's could break the door down and eat the hero's cell phone. A man could come up to the hero and offer to buy all of his furniture for $50,000. These would certainly add tension, but they don't contribute to the story that you were writing before these scenes came along.
One example of excessive profanity came from a thriller I read. The scene was set in a desert. An archeologist was doing some work, visited by someone who was there to move the plot along. When asked if he wanted something to drink, the visitor said something like "#@$! yeah." Knowing what the novel was, and that it was a thriller, my primary thought was that the author had wasted his use of this profane word. The man would likely be running for his life later in the book and if the author was going to use any profanity at all, he had just wasted ink. If the character was going to go and swear, saying "It's hot" is not the time, because there are a thousand creative ways for the author to tell the reader about the heat of the sun.
I believe, too, that there is a market out there for books without this kind of language. I've heard that the Christian fiction market started out as simply a group who were looking to write books without content they didn't want to read. Eventually, whether because they themselves were Christian or because they drew so many Christians, this developed into the Christian Fiction genre of today. One of the ways to handle this is to encourage new authors who are clean, and who don't put profanity and other inappropriate things into their books. There is a market for a conservative audience, and most books out there are catered to people who either put up with profanity and other inappropriate things or who find other things to read.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Outlining a Novel
I've faced this task at least once before - outlining a novel. One of those novels I completed, others were side projects which I fiddled with. The first novel I started (and finished) I wrote without any preliminary outline.
In the world of fiction-writing, there's a spectrum of how much or little a writer will plot their story. The terms writers use are 'Plotters' and 'Pantsers'. 'Pantsing' coming from the phrase 'by the seat of one's pants'. The writers in this second group will improvise, to a greater or lesser extent, the writing of their novel. Some Pantsers may have a general idea of where their book is going, others may have a theme in mind. There are pantsers who will sit down at a blank page and start typing away at their keyboard. Stephen King, by his own admission, is one of these.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Plotters. No matter how much like 'schemers' this might sound, that is not the idea I'm trying to draw for you. Plotters like to have some kind of outline written out before they start writing out their novel. This could be a summary of a page or three pages. It could be a list of scenes that the Plotter wants in the book. It could be a listing of chapters with a summary of the story, scene-by-scene like James Patterson prefers.
There are hundreds of ways to outline a novel. The way I used for my latest project is the Snowflake method by Randy Ingermason, an author who worked as a physicist before he became a writer and developed his own method of outlining his books. He was interested in fractals, shapes which became increasingly complex by step. So he took this idea and applied it to writing.
Writing a one-sentence summary of the book, he expanded that to a paragraph, and then each sentence of that paragraph to another paragraph, creating a piece of writing which naturally, spontaneously grows from the whole. There's work in there developing the characters because that prompts the growth of other things as well, including more scenes and other characters.
Every writer has to find their own system that works for them. For my own writing, pantsing has worked well. Sometimes ideas will come from unexpected places. I will often pick up small details from life or from books I've recently read or that I'm reading at the time. This might be drawn from another book. It will be small details, but they will lend life to the characters and story.
As a writer, wherever you fall on the spectrum, I'd urge you to consider outlining not as a description of a type of writer, but as a tool in your belt. Outlining is a way to give yourself a roadmap to where your novel may be going. Some writers, like surveyors, just have to find the road as they go. Others prefer a 3D rendering with all the details. Whatever your preference, don't dismiss outlining without a little experimentation and research.
In the world of fiction-writing, there's a spectrum of how much or little a writer will plot their story. The terms writers use are 'Plotters' and 'Pantsers'. 'Pantsing' coming from the phrase 'by the seat of one's pants'. The writers in this second group will improvise, to a greater or lesser extent, the writing of their novel. Some Pantsers may have a general idea of where their book is going, others may have a theme in mind. There are pantsers who will sit down at a blank page and start typing away at their keyboard. Stephen King, by his own admission, is one of these.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Plotters. No matter how much like 'schemers' this might sound, that is not the idea I'm trying to draw for you. Plotters like to have some kind of outline written out before they start writing out their novel. This could be a summary of a page or three pages. It could be a list of scenes that the Plotter wants in the book. It could be a listing of chapters with a summary of the story, scene-by-scene like James Patterson prefers.
There are hundreds of ways to outline a novel. The way I used for my latest project is the Snowflake method by Randy Ingermason, an author who worked as a physicist before he became a writer and developed his own method of outlining his books. He was interested in fractals, shapes which became increasingly complex by step. So he took this idea and applied it to writing.
Writing a one-sentence summary of the book, he expanded that to a paragraph, and then each sentence of that paragraph to another paragraph, creating a piece of writing which naturally, spontaneously grows from the whole. There's work in there developing the characters because that prompts the growth of other things as well, including more scenes and other characters.
Every writer has to find their own system that works for them. For my own writing, pantsing has worked well. Sometimes ideas will come from unexpected places. I will often pick up small details from life or from books I've recently read or that I'm reading at the time. This might be drawn from another book. It will be small details, but they will lend life to the characters and story.
As a writer, wherever you fall on the spectrum, I'd urge you to consider outlining not as a description of a type of writer, but as a tool in your belt. Outlining is a way to give yourself a roadmap to where your novel may be going. Some writers, like surveyors, just have to find the road as they go. Others prefer a 3D rendering with all the details. Whatever your preference, don't dismiss outlining without a little experimentation and research.
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