Category Archives: how-to-write books

Your Story, Success, and the Wall That Separates Them

Posted on by

Last week Joe Moore posted an especially fun and compelling piece entitled, “But First… ,” in which he provides a wonderful litany of stellar opening lines from iconic novels.  I liked it so much that not only am I mentioning it here, I’m going to write about it again in two weeks in my next Kill Zone post.

In the comments section I contributed a first line that struck me, from Colin Harrison’s 1996 novel Manhattan Nocturne (republished in 2008), which read: “I sell mayhem, murder, and doom.”

I feel the same way.

I’m a story coach, among other writerly things, and my job is to engage with works-in-progress with mostly new writers and weigh in on what’s working, what’s not, and what might be done about it.  Let me say, with as much tact as possible, that sometimes I struggle to find the right words that deliver the appropriate coaching without smashing the writer’s dream into a wad of discarded typing paper.

Just this week I worked on a project that, while promising, demonstrated a very common set of weaknesses, especially from new writers.  I actually stopped in the middle of the process – such was the gap between what existed and what was needed – and sent my client feedback that was incomplete, because in my view the story was emerging from a concept and premise that was already DOA.  Even a great writer cannot breath life into the dead, and life for a story in any genre other than “literary fiction” begins, it lives and dies, at the premise level.

This writer is really bright and very passionate about his story.  So – and this, too, is common with newer writers – his response was basically this: well, I must not have communicated it very well, because my story really is very special and original.

Sensing where this might be headed (not to be confused with beheaded, which popped into my mind), I send him an email this morning explaining the nature of the proposition he was entering into simply by intending to write and publish a novel.

I’d like to share it with you.

Dear XXXX —

Good to hear that you’re up for another round.  Something like this is a sort of crossroads, you’ll look back and see that you could have quit, but didn’t.  This also is a case study in how hard this is… writing a great novel looks so easy from the reader’s point of view, but man, to actually plan and execute a novel that works, really works, that’s brain surgery.  Literally, a brain surgeon who reads my blog wrote to tell me that writing a novel, the right way, is every bit as complex and requires a similar apprenticeship to what he does during business hours.

With that in mind, and as a new writer, don’t be hard on yourself, and don’t rush it.  I did this for 23 years before I published my first novel.  You may find that discouraging – I do – but it’s not uncommon.

Success is the intersection of two things: mastering the craft, and coming up with a killer idea.  Your story idea has potential.  But you need to dig within it to find something truly conceptual and fresh.  Your genre is crowded with dystopian, steam punkish tropes, dark and corruption-riddled story landscapes, so pitching those elements in your own story doesn’t remotely render it startlingly original. 

Your hero, in my opinion, is the main problem with where you are now.  I see a lot of stories in which young kids are sent into new and dangerous situations and are asked to save the day.  Had one recently where a 14 year old had to hack in to a CIA database – and did so — and then single-handedly had to take out four ex-Navy Seals in hand-to-hand combat.  I ask you, how ridiculously impossible is that?  Did I mention, risking a bit of misogyny here, that this 14-year old was a 94 pound ballerina, as well? 

That author was outraged when I suggested that nobody would buy this.  With no shortage of vitriol she said it was her story and nobody could tell her what works and what doesn’t, how dare I say her idea wasn’t viable, she’d never heard anyone say that in a writing conference before.  I had to back off, because it’s sad and my only response was a direct contradiction to all of it. 

This explains in part why 990 out of every 1000 submitted books are rejected.

Part of this writing journey is accepting the truth, the constraints, the odds, the requisite 10,000 hour apprenticeship, and the high bar of coming up with a truly compelling story premise.

There are many roads toward achieving just that.  There are many more that will send you off a cliff.  Rarely is the higher road our first instinctual pass at it. 

So stick with it, wrestle it to the ground.  Set a higher story bar. 

As a reader, perhaps a young reader who is now a writer, your database of stories in this genre might be measured in the dozens.  But know that in the marketplace, where agents, editors and readers (in that order) are the judge and jury of your story, the collective comparative database measures in the tens of thousands, in any genre.  So you may not be aware of how many stories are out there that at first blush sound exactly like yours.

The key is to truly reach for that higher bar.  Not lip service, not getting there tomorrow, but knowing what the benchmarks and standards for such a story are, and not settling for anything less. 

The criteria for that bar is this: the potential for compelling dramatic tension… the compelling conceptual nature of the story proposition via the buttons it pushes or the places it will take the reader… the empathy we intuitively feel for your protagonist… and the vicarious nature of the journey the reader will take alongside your hero.

It is truly amazing how complex this becomes with only those five variables to juggle.  In the end it comes down to not only how those things integrate, but the undefinable energy and fresh tonality of your voice, as well as the story sensibilities that will render it with optimal pacing, subtext and a killer ending that knocks the reader into next week.

That’s what you’ve signed up for.  So don’t rush it.  Competitors will fall out of the race by natural attrition, don’t be the guy who gives up, who settles, or who rages that this is all so unfair, damnit, because my story is special.

Others get to make that particular call. 

Simply by virtue of engaging with this initial brick wall that says your first pass wasn’t strong enough, you are face to face with both the magnitude of the challenge and the breadth of the tools, criteria and variables that are available to get you up and over it. It’s worth the work.  

Because the view from the other side… amazing.

*****

Larry’s website is: Storyfix.com

 

In Defense of How-To-Write Books

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

It’s shameless self-promotion day here at TKZ.

This week my third how-to book for Writers Digest releases. It’s called The Art of War for Writers and I think, in my own unbiased fashion, that it’s going to help a ton of writers, not only those fighting the battle get published, but also those who want to stay published.

But more on that in a bit. In order to keep this from being completely self-referential, I feel a need to say something in defense of how-to-write books.

Every now and again I hear some author putting down how-tos. “You can only learn to write by writing,” they’ll say. “Don’t waste your time studying writing books. Just put a page in front of you and write!”

Which strikes me as making as much sense as saying, “You can only learn to do brain surgery by doing brain surgery. Don’t waste your time studying brain surgery. Just cut open heads and go!”

Uh-huh. Excuse me if I show a preference for a sawbones who has studied under the tutelage of experienced surgeons.

Another trope is, “No one ever learned to write by reading about writing.” Really? Isn’t that a bit cheeky, unless you’ve interviewed every published writer out there?

The writer I know best – me – absolutely learned to write by reading how-tos. I had been fed the bunk that “writers are born, not made” while in college, and I bought it, in part because I took a course from Raymond Carver and couldn’t do what he did. (I didn’t know at the time that there was more than one way to “do” fiction. I thought everybody had to pass through the same tunnel.)

When I finally decided I had to try to learn to write, even if I never got published, I went after it with a club. I started gathering books on writing, read Writers Digest religiously (especially Lawrence Block’s fiction column), took some classes, and wrote every day. Living in L.A. it was required that I try screenwriting first, so I wrote four complete screenplays in one year, giving them to a film school friend, who patiently read them and told me they weren’t working. But he didn’t know why.

Then one day I read a chapter in a book by the great writing teacher Jack Bickham. And I had an epiphany. Literally. Light bulbs and fireworks went off inside my head, and I finally got it. Or at least a big part of it.

So I wrote another screenplay, and that was the one that my friend liked. The next one I wrote got optioned, and the one after that got me into one of the top agencies in town.

All because I finally got it from a how-to book.

That’s not to say I might not have gotten it some other way (like trial and error over ten years), but at the very least this saved me time. And that’s the reason I write my how-to books – to save writers time, and give them the nuts and bolts they need to make it in this racket. I want to write the sort of books I was looking for when I was wandering in the darkness.

“But you cannot learn to write fiction. . .”

So how did the writers of the past learn? Many of them had a great editor, like Max Perkins. Some had an older writer who read their stuff and suggested ways to make it better. Some, like the great writer-director Preston Sturges, learned from the how-to books available in his day. (In Sturges’s case, it was the books of Brander Matthews.)

So a good how-to book is like an editor or teacher. Is there not some value in that?

Now it is quite true you can’t just read how-tos and get better without practice. You have to write every day, and apply what you’re learning. But if you write blindly, without correction and education, you’re most likely going to be turning wheels like that rodent in the cage. A lot of effort but getting nowhere.

I am a firm believer in how-to books, and write them because I want to give back something to the craft I love. I know they’ve helped writers get published. Here’s one testimonial from NPR.

Now the publisher’s blurb about The Art of War for Writers:

Successfully starting and finishing a publishable novel is often like fighting a series of battles – against the page, against one’s own self-doubt, against rebellious characters, etc. Featuring timeless, innovative, and concise writing strategies and focused exercises, this book is the ultimate battle plan and more – it’s Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” for novelists. Tactics and exercises are provided on idea generation and development, character building, plotting, drafting, querying and submitting, dealing with rejection, coping with envy and unrealistic expectations, and much more.

So what about you? Have you ever been helped by a how-to book on writing? Or do you consider them a waste of time?