Part 1 of 2 (because this ended being a lengthy analysis; when I post Part 2 on April 4th, I will include a link to this Part 1 post for your catch-up/review).

Writing a novel is complex work. On this point the most successful among us and the most consistently frustrated among us will agree.

No other artful avocation I can think of is complicated by so many processes, theories and debated conventional wisdom as the seemingly simple intention to write a novel.

It’s just a story, how hard can it be? Professionals make it look so easy… isn’t it?

And while it’s true there are many viable ways to go about writing a novel, some more efficient than others that in the end prove to be just as effective, there are also infinite ways to screw it up.

Some of those pitfalls have less to do with how and what you write than with what one believes to be true about writing and the writing conversation in which we are all taking part.

I recently read that about 80 million folks cling to the intention of writing a novel.

Which means, to whatever extent that is even close to being true, there are 80 million prospective authors who intend to turn pro. In a world loaded with ways to occupy our spare hours – golf, bowling, macramé, even reading – nobody seems to be doing this as a hobby.

They intend to get paid. To become famous. To contribute to the collective library of human experience, and thus, live forever.

And yet, very sadly so, a significant percentage of those writers are buying into myths that will hold them back or sabotage their writing dream entirely. Some will fail because they’ve never heard otherwise, they’ve never had their limiting beliefs challenged.

It seems that 80 million of us believe we have the raw chops to write a novel at the highest level of the game, and to command a fee for it. This alone is likely to be a limiting belief. It is a myth in its own right, because it’s just not gonna happen for all 80 million of us.

Not even close.

Not because the truth isn’t available to all.

It actually is available to us all.

But rather, because the truth will be lost on many. Sometimes because of the very writing conversation to which they look for guidance. Contradiction, confusion and outright toxic untruth is out there. Everywhere, in magazines and books and at writing conferences and in keynote addresses, even from the mouths of those who would have you believe they know from whereof they speak.

Confusing the matter is the fact that shreds of truth are marbled within all the noise, just as there are voices of wisdom wandering among the crowd. Like trimming the fat from a delicious rib eye of writing energy – because really, it’s just so fun and energizing to listen to or read about what others more famous than ourselves are saying about writing – we are left to digest as best we can before our arteries clog from the sheer preponderance of partial truths.

We all have access to the truth in all its varied forms, but we are challenged to weed them out from the abundant noise. Not just the truth – because indeed, there are many that apply – but to find our own highest and best truth.

Where process is concerned, what is true for one may not be true for another.  

But where craft is concerned, the truth about what works in a novel, and by omission or weakness what doesn’t, stands unchallenged and largely non-negotiable. If you doubt this, try writing a novel without dramatic tension or stakes, for example. Those are only two of about a dozen incontrovertible essentials.

There are voices calling to you in this regard, and as you read and listen and learn you must seek to separate veracity from hubris, knowledge from ignorance, the overly-simplistic from the perfectly complex.

It is precisely because there are so many pathways to success that you must discount anything that smacks of “this is how I do it” from the mouths of the famous. Because you may not yet know what they know.

Notice how the so-called gurus – Robert McKee, Donald Maass, Randy Ingermanson, James Scott Bell, and others writing here and elsewhere, including myself – rarely if ever say “this is how how I do it, so you should do it this way, too.” Some gurus apply different vocabulary and modeling to their versions of the truth, but when you look closely you’ll see that we’re all basically singing the same tune.

The one you’ll be singing, too, once you get it right.

Rather, we write about what we believe to be true about process without suggesting what your process should be, provided it leads you to certain outcomes, and then, what is unmistakably true about stories that work regardless of that process.

The former is fluid and negotiable.  The latter is as firm and solid as the gravity holding you in your chair.

And thus the beautiful, harrowing, worthwhile dance with our fiction plays on.

If you are reading this and thinking, “well, I hear you, this is hard, but nonetheless I’m going to be one of the few who actually make it,” there is good news and intimidating news.

The good news is that this is precisely the attitude you need, and if you go about it properly – both in terms of process and reaching the qualitative bar required of making it – you must might.

The intimidating news — it’s more good news, actually — is that you might just have to give up, to completely walk away from, some of the things you believe about how it all happens, and what it looks like when it does. Some of which might have been why you came to the writing party in the first place.

A few of these might not ring fully true for you… yet.  But the longer you are at this, the more clarity you’ll find in the following list of myths about writing novels.

Myth #1: “Just write.”

These two words, when strung together in this context, can be among the most misleading and toxic pieces of writing advice you will ever hear. Especially if they aren’t paired with some notion of what and how to just write.

There awaits a place along the writing road where this becomes solid advice. But until you just write in context to a robust awareness of certain principles – requisite storytelling competencies and story forces, all of which will serve you when done well and sink you if omitted or fumbled – you will for the most part be treading water if you simply just write.

For many writers – just for grins, let’s say that this is the case for 79 out of those 80 million aspirants – suggesting that they “just write” is like telling a prospective doctor who has not yet gone to medical school to “just cut.”

The outcome of that can be fatal.

Myth #2: Listen closely and you’ll hear what you need to know.

Maybe. That’s far from a certainty. The better bet is to hear what you suspect may be truth and then seek to prove or disprove it by looking for it within the stories you read.

We have been brought up to listen to those who have gone before us and succeeded mightily. We read about them in magazines, we take notes as they deliver their acquired wisdom in a keynote address. When they tell us that their characters are speaking to them – sometimes as if they want this to be taken literally – we believe.

Because we so want what they are saying to be completely true.

And so often it isn’t.

Here’s the dangerous part, the siren melody of their message: what they say won’t be completely wrong. Because it will be real and right – spot on perfectly accurate – for them. And yet it may actually be the worst thing you can do relative to your own writing process and your understanding of what makes a novel work.

Famous Writer A says she has no clue about her story when she begins, including the ending. She just writes and writes, year after year, draft after draft, until the story coalesces and her characters take on a life of their own. It’s as if she has very little to do with it – which in the moment sounds so humble and heroic – she’s only driving the bus, which is on autopilot to a destination that always surprises her.

Famous Writer B says he won’t start writing a project until the premise haunts his every waking moment, until he knows every last twist and turn, including the ending. Especially the ending. Then he writes a 50-page single-spaced outline and lets it stew for a few weeks while trusted advisers weigh in. Only then will he embark upon an actual first draft, and when he finishes that draft it is pretty close, only a tweak and a polish away from what he submits.

They are both famous bestselling authors. So who is right?

In that moment, the one that scares you the least, and inspires you the most, the one that aligns with what you already think you know and have chosen to believe is true for whatever reasons apply… that’s the writer you believe.

None of those are the best criteria for your choice. Better criteria awaits within the vast oeuvre of craft, solidified by your own reading and witnessing within novels that inspire you. Because reading in context to what you know about craft – using the experience to test and solidify your knowledge – is the most empowering form of learning available.

Learn the craft, witness the craft, practice the craft. That’s the ticket, and it applies to any and all processes, pantser and planner and everyone in between.

Myth #3: There are no rules.

Writers hate rules. Rules are for traffic court and raising children. Rules advocate a crowd mentality, they exist for sheep to keep the sheep alive, while writing is a creative, individual pursuit that seeks to break new ground.

Until, that is, you sign up to sell your fiction as a professional. The moment your raise your hand for that, certain expectations that smell a lot like rules begin to define your path to success. The more you understand the more you’ll realize what you though were rules are actually principles, and they are there to empower you, not hold you back.

There are lines on this playing field, and if you step over them you put your game at risk.

The proposition that “there are no rules” is a misinformed hope, while the fundamental presence of a suite of powerful writing principles is an incontrovertible truth.

Empowerment comes from understanding the difference. And, once you do, to understand that to break form with the principles is advised only for those who know precisely what they are doing.

Versus, say, someone who violates a principle because they don’t recognize or understand it for what it is. Or does so in the name of art, expectations and lines be damned.

Don’t be that writer. It can cost you years of spinning your wheels on the writing road if you are.

Myth #4: Story Trumps Structure

All this means, when taken literally, is that structure is useless without a worthy story to tell. Like using a CAD program to create the blueprint for how to light a candle.  It’s a book title, not a truth or even a principle.

Good stories always have certain things in common. Like a compelling premise. A hero with something to do – the pursuit of a goal, the seeking of a solution to a problem, the avoidance of something that threatens. A plot, in other words. And where this is a plot there is structure. Always. There are stakes involved. Something stands in the way of what the hero wants or needs or seeks, threatening or blocking or otherwise causing trouble.

It isn’t a story until something goes wrong. And it won’t work if the structure is off.

That’s called dramatic tension, stemming from conflict. This is the life-blood of every genre, every time. Structure is like math – it’s not something we make up, it’s something that adds up once we understand the principles involved.

Which leads us to…

Myth #5: It’s all about your characters.

Authors love to talk about their characters. Backstory and inner landscape and how an abusive father messed up their lives. But until the writer tosses in what goes wrong, creating an unfolding path of response by the hero followed by proactive intention, all in the presence of an antagonistic force or villain, motivated by stakes… they aren’t telling you the whole story.

Plot exists to give your characters something to do.

Characters exist to engage with the plot.

It is through their decisions and actions along that path that character is best revealed. saying storytelling is all about the characters is no different than saying it is all about the plot. Rather, the sum of the two exceed the parts standing alone.

*****

Part 2 of this article will post here on April 4th.

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There are some writers who do very well writing one thing, and one thing only. An author named Lee Child has written only thrillers about a character named Reacher. He’s done pretty well with that, and may break into big sales soon.

There are writers who concentrate on one genre, though they may create different series characters or stand alones. Michael Connelly is like that, and so was Robert B. Parker.

Then there are writers known for one type of book who get restless and take a flyer on another kind. John Grisham wrote A Painted House (literary) after a string of hugely successful legal thrillers. Dennis Lehane, known for gritty contemporary crime, came out a few years ago with a sweeping historical, The Given Day.

Some fiction writers cross over into non-fiction. Ray Bradbury was a writer whose fertile imagination and curious mind could not be contained in fictional worlds only. He wrote numerous essays and opinion pieces, many of which have been collected into volumes, like Bradbury Speaks.

Saroyan

And then there is one of my favorite writers, William Saroyan. His name is not as widely known today as some of his contemporaries (Hemingway, Steinbeck), but in the 30s and 40s he was considered a literary lion, winner of the Pulitzer Prize (which he famously turned down), and author of short stories (e.g., My Name is Aram), novels (e.g., The Human Comedy), and plays (e.g., The Time of Your Life).

When his fiction sales tailed off in the early 50s, Saroyan turned to the quirky memoir, writing several volumes of remembrance, observation, and opinion. Examples include The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills and Places Where I’ve Done Time.

For Saroyan, writing was life and life was writing. And, indeed, death was the only thing that stopped him. His final words were: “Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?”

A few years before his death Saroyan came out with a book unlike anything I’d ever read before. Obituaries was a large collection of short pieces, each one a riff on a name from the list of movie industry people who had died in 1976 and listed in a special edition of Variety.

What’s so nuts about the book is that it contains no paragraph breaks and no indentations. Each entry is just one solid block of text that goes on until Saroyan is finished with what he has to say.

And what he says varies with where his mind takes him. He starts with the name of the deceased, whether he knew the person or not, and off he goes. Then he’ll switch mid-stream-of-consciousness and go in a completely different direction.

This crazy book was nominated for the American Book Award and named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times. I own a first edition.

Anyway, early last year I was thinking about ways to increase my writing production, and found myself reading the obituary of Anita Ekberg, the Swedish actress. Something in me clicked, like a switch, and a sluice gate opened in my brain, and all these words starting pouring out on a page. It was different and it was fun. What was coming out was part essay, a little bit of memoir, and “parts unknown.”

So I decided to keep going, and spent a goodly portion of 2015 reflecting on obituaries. Many of them are of famous people, but I also looked at local obits from small town papers, and found myself using those, too. Every life has a story if we’re willing to listen.

When I looked up on January 1, 2016, I had a full-length collection. And here it is. If you want to get a flavor of it, just click on the PREVIEW button below. You can scroll through the preview and you’ll stay right here on TKZ.

It’s a book you don’t have to read in one sitting. In fact it’s set up for when you’re waiting in line for coffee, or at the doctor’s, even in the checkout lane at the grocery store. I do, however, advise against reading it in commuter traffic.

Have you felt the pull to write something completely different? Well, what’s stopping you? Here are three tips:

1. Write wildly

Pick a subject you love, or a topic you’re mad, sad or glad about. Write like a wildfire about that subject. Shut off your inner editor completely. Even if you never publish the entries you are at the very least stretching your writer’s mind beyond self-contained borders. That will help you in all your writing.

2. Edit soberly

If you do decide to publish something new, go at it objectively. Make sure you edit your words so they mean what you want them to mean, and what you want other people to see. Get feedback from beta readers. Not everything that flies off your fingers is ready for prime time. Write hot, but revise cool.

3. Publish enthusiastically

Digital self-publishing is the greatest boon to writers since Gutenberg. It’s even better than old Johannes’s regime, because there you had to own a printing press, and get paper, and ink, and binding, and distribution. Only a few big companies could do that in the modern era, and thus many more books were rejected than published.

Not anymore. While some decry the “tsunami of content” in digital, for writers who write, who love to write, who—dare I say—live to write, there is a free marketplace. If you’ve got something to say, say it. Work it, polish it and then put it out there. Let the readers decide what to do with it.

So what about you? Do you have a secret pet project you’d like to write someday? What’s holding you back?

Robert Gregory Browne

It was bound to happen. I have been sick for the first time in years, and of course, I completely forgot that I have obligations, one of them being this blog. Those two weeks went fast!

So, because I’m still recovering, I’m going to take the easy way out and post an excerpt from my book, CASTING THE BONES. Next time you’ll get something brand-spanking new. I promise. No, really.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF SUBPLOTS

While you can certainly get away with a short story having only one plot, novels will almost always have a number of plots going at once. One of those plots is dominant, of course, but what about those smaller, all important subplots?

In The Godfather, we watch as a violent power play is made against Don Corleone by a rival Mafia family. His young, clean-cut son, Michael Corleone, volunteers to take revenge, and the movie follows Michael’s descent into the dark world of the Mafia and his eventual emergence as the new Godfather.

There are a number of subplots in the movie, but the one that most strikes a chord is Michael’s relationship with two women. The first is Kay, who is not Italian, not part of the “family” and is Michael’s lifeline to the outside world. His connection to “reality.”

But as he’s drawn deeper into the violence, Michael’s ties to her become more and more tenuous, until he finds himself completely cut off from her—and the outside world—as he hides out in Sicily.

In Sicily, Michael meets a young local woman who steals his heart. She’s his soul mate, his true love, whom he marries. Then, in another act of revenge, a car carrying his new bride is blown to bits, plunging Michael into an emotional darkness he’s never known.
He goes back to the U.S. a considerably different man, but rekindles his relationship with Kay and eventually marries her—a marriage that is obviously doomed.

This particular subplot would probably have a tough time standing on its own. Its reliance on the main storyline is obvious enough, but what really makes it great is that it parallels and impacts Michael’s descent. Kay represents Michael’s relationship to the “civilian” world, while his marriage to the Sicilian woman illustrates his rediscovery of his roots.

The tragic twist in this subplot is one of the major causes of Michael’s emotional retreat and his rise to power. He becomes a man so cold and ruthless that he’s able (in Part II) to put a hit out on his own brother…

And that’s what all great movie and novel subplots do. They rise organically from the main storyline, attaching themselves to your hero and impacting his ability to reach his goal. Great subplots are so closely woven into the fabric of the story that we often have a hard time discerning them.

Even so-called “lesser” movies than The Godfather recognize the need for a solid subplot.
A favorite of mine is a dark thriller called Resurrection, which was written by Brad Mirman, the writer of several good thrillers. To some, Resurrection plays like a poor man’s rip-off of Seven, but I much prefer Mirman’s take on the hunt for a serial killer because of its inventiveness.

Resurrection is essentially about a couple of cops hunting for a serial killer who is taking the body parts of his victims and building them into a representation of Christ. Each of the victims is named after an apostle and the killer’s timeline runs him straight toward Easter, the day of resurrection.

The subplot is a minor one, but it certainly deepens the lead character. He’s a cop who, after the tragic death of his son, has discarded his faith in God and is quickly losing his emotional connection to his wife.

During the course of the movie, his wife attempts to repair their marriage and his faith by inviting the local priest over for a pep talk, but our hero soundly rejects the man and any notion of accepting help from him.

Then, while looking for a clue to the killer’s plan that seems deeply rooted in Biblical lore, our hero must finally seek the help of the priest. But as he enters the church, he hesitates, as if the mere act of stepping foot in the place is a betrayal of his son’s memory.

Again, this subplot is powerful because it is so securely attached to the main storyline that it can’t exist on its own. The two plots feed off of each other and both are stronger because of it.

A lot of books today treat subplots as an afterthought. Stories are often built based on a “hot” idea, the characters created to fill out a plot that’s stretched so thin that the slightest jolt could snap it apart.

Subplots are haphazardly tacked on in a weak attempt to keep the whole mess together, and their paint-by-numbers obviousness is one of the greatest contributors to the collective snore rising from the readers.

Many storytellers today have it backwards. Yes, start with a great idea, but rather than try to force characters and subplot into that story, try creating the characters first, then let the story and subplot grow from them.

Characters are story. And any great plot or subplot is driven by the characters’ wants and desires.

Remember this as you sit down to write and, with time and patience, you too can give us writing the caliber of The Godfather and Resurrection.

Not a bad place to be.

By Kathryn Lilley, TKZ

Right now I’m reading AN EXPERT IN MURDER, a bang-up mystery written by Josephine Tey (a pseudonym for Scottish author Elizabeth MacIntosh, 1896-1952). Tey was a writer who delighted in breaking the formulaic mystery writing rules of her era. Those rules, as proclaimed by a group of London-based mystery writers, had been set forth in a manifesto called “The 10 Commandments of the Detection Club”. (Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers were founding members of the club.)

TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE DETECTION CLUB

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

5. No (archaic ethnic term) must figure in the story. (Editor’s note: At the time, popular mysteries frequently included a character of Chinese descent. The writers used an archaic ethnic term that I don’t care to repeat here).

6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.

8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

***

Josephine Tey gleefully broke most of these rules in her mysteries. Twin imposters? Check. A sleuth playing a hunch? Check. In some of her books, Josephine Tey herself featured as a sleuth. (The Detective Club probably never dreamed of creating a rule against doing that).

Because she was a gifted, excellent writer, Tey got away with jettisoning the standard writing tropes of her era.

Nowadays, genre writers still like to talk about the “rules” of writing. (“Never open with a dream or the weather,” for example).  Have you ever intentionally broken a writing rule in your work? Did your “infraction” succeed or fail? Or, have you ever read a story that broke the rules, but was successful nonetheless?