What Are Writers Afraid of? Using Emotion To Create Compelling Characters

What’s anyone afraid of? Everyone is afraid of something whether they want to talk about it or not. It might be the dark, spiders and snakes, heights, guns, crowds…something! There is something that sets your nerves to jangling and teeth on edge, not to mention raises a cold sweat.  

Just thinking about whatever that is can make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, your heart pound and the breath hitch in your lungs if you get into the zone closely enough.

Reason. We all try to use it at such moments, but reason can be at war with that fight or flight we’ve all got so deeply embedded within us. The urge to run or do battle is something hard to deny. So what’s all this about?

The writer’s muse.

A writer’s best work can stem from connecting with that moment, getting inside yourself to pull out those deep-seated fears and expose them to daylight in the service of harnessing the power those emotions and channeling them onto the blank page.

Writers want to reach inside the reader’s head and feel things. The gamut of human emotions and dark thoughts. It’s so easy to ‘make it up when we go along’ when writing, but the fact is the best writing stems from the gut. The best writers reach deep to plumb their own experiences and inject that into characters. Remember and regurgitate those emotions in order to really bring a character to life.

 

Terrified of walking alone in the dark on a city street? Think of all the nuances as my mother did when she was a young woman and had the night shift at a switchboard. She walked home on the dark sidewalks of a Chicago night with every other street lamp blown out. She hugged the building side when a car came past and hugged the curb side when passing alleys. She walked fast…very fast. Sounds, common and unfamiliar were all around. Strangers on the street with her; were they as she, walking home from work…or a threat? Adrenaline. Inject the fear. Inject the urgency. Clip the sentences and paint a vivid picture. Hurry. Pause. Confront the dark fear of an unlit alley as a garbage can lid bangs within the blackness.

That was one reality. There are many others, and they aren’t always in the physical realm. A character doesn’t always have to worry about being stalked by a murderer. 

It can be much closer to the heart, much more emotional. Is there fear a marriage is failing? Is a student an outcast at school afraid of one more indignity? Will a friendship end with betrayal? Will a job be lost to a character charged with supporting siblings after their parents die? Nightmares. All of it. Emotional wrench and perhaps destruction.

Either way. Emotional or physical – what do you fear? What can you hand a character that will give him the cold sweats?

Think about it. Feel it. Write it.  

The Rules For Writing A Novel

 THE RULES FOR WRITING A NOVEL

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”― W. Somerset Maugham

It’s funny and it’s true. Of course I could get nit-picky and start talking about language and all the rules needed to write properly. I could go on about the mythology behind stories, story arcs, beats and how to construct one the ‘right way.”

But I won’t.

There must be some rules somewhere, but where? And you know what, why should we care?

After all, storytelling is as old as the human race. Look, of course we need some language rules in order to put our stories down on paper – or on the computer – and be understood. No argument, but really, the other rules are just what some people came up with to try to outline what it takes to write a story.

I’ve been asked many times for help by newer writers. How do you write your books? Where do you get your ideas? How do you write all those words? How do you cut what you’ve written when it’s so dear to you? What’s the structure of the novel as you understand it? 

Wellllll, I’m pretty much a set-of-the-pants writer though I admit to having  done some teaching. In person and online. In fact I have a romance writing course at UDEMY right now called Romancing Your Novel and in that class I provide hints and tips and direction along with encouragement, but no rules. Same for when I teach in person.

The truth of the matter is, there may be rules, but Somerset Maugham got it right, nobody knows what they are. Not really. Some act as great experts, but believe me, whatever rules there are are regularly broken as a new style, a new voice is heard from.

If you’re a reader you know it well. You try a new writer, find a new voice and you’re in love all over again.

If you’re a writer you know it just as well – and for the same reasons – in addition to many more. A new style emerges. A new crossing of genres appears. You like reading it. You love writing it. Your writing evolves as time passes and times change. Life is change. That’s what it’s all about.

So, those rules, wherever they are, can stay there. My reading and writing tastes will change. That’s okay. And I’ll come across some of those rules along the way, probably take a bit of time to understand them, then promptly break them.

That’s just the way it is.

Writers and Readers Websites Wednesday - Writers & Artists

 

Writers and Artists has a web address out of the UK and offers expert advice articles, inspirational author interviews, competitions, a lively online community and editorial services for every stage of the writing journey. 

 Sound good? Then head on over and give it a thorough checking out.

Writer’s To Do List

Have a lot to do?  I know I do.

But in the spirit of procrastination I do find time to wander the web a bit between projects and I came across a rather long post (the equivalent of three pages with – oh horrors – no illustrations) on how to write a writer's ‘to do’ list and manage it.

Really?

Now I don’t to be too sarcastic here and really I don’t intend a slight – in fact it’s good to come across these things so they inspire me to keep it tight, keep it short. Folks just don’t have that much time. Save the long writing for a novel that just insists it wants to keep going.

So I’m going to keep my comments on the lengthy writer’s ‘to do’ list minimal. 

Here it is.

I realize there are many folks different from me and I applaud them – I like difference.

However, the question nags. How does one come up with more than three pages on a subject such as a ‘Writer’s To Do List’? I might be able to do it myself, but it would be a stretch and I’d probably find myself getting repetitive.

So I’ve decided to give my own advice on a Writer’s To Do List. And I do keep a running list on my desk in a spiral notebook, my supply of which usually comes from a well-known office supply store around back to school time when I can get them from $.01 to $.05 each.  When a page fills I rip it out and recycle (trying to be green conscious).

Pretty straight-forward advice:

1. Create the To Do list  - i.e. write stuff you have to do in a list on the page.

2. Follow Your list – i.e. read it once in a while to see what you need to do next. First thing in the morning might be good.

**Check off what you manage to accomplish.

To the point? Clear? Got it?

-- Of course I am rambling on here as well.  Maybe the fun is in the rambling on…I, too, on occasion love to ramble on.

And don't forget a couple other cool blogs: 

Seumas Gallacher's blog:  http://bit.ly/1bPVb1b

David Lender's Blog:  http://bit.ly/13OZAfA

Kevin Hanrahan's Blog:  http://bit.ly/1dpx2jM

The First Draft of Anything is Shit - What????

"The first draft of anything is shit."
~Ernest Hemingway


What?

Really?

Okay, Ernest and I are going to have words.

What?

Okay, I can sort of see where the guy was coming from and after all, writer Ernest was pretty intense and if rumor has it a bit of a drunk (well, maybe a lot of a drunk). Perhaps his intensity and drinking  (and sadly his eventual suicidal inclinations) colored his opinion. Perhaps it truly was that way for him.

Whatever.

Here’s the thing. That statement can well be true many times. And, first written drafts usually DO need a lot of work, but then again there are times when perhaps the spelling, punctuation and technical stuff might be off and need some polish, but the underlying writing is pure gold or just darn good fun.

Yep, I said it. Sacrilege. We all keep hearing the first draft has to be awful, or bluntly put, shit. That it has to be worked and reworked and polished and polished some more.

But I’m here to tell you there are a couple of books along my illustrious trail that were written, checked over for that technical stuff and submitted to the publisher just that way. (I won’t tell you which ones, I’ll just let you guess – and you’ll probably be wrong.)

And, yes, they were bought by a major house.

And yes, they were published.

Did I have to do some additional tweaking of my writing once it reached the publisher’s editor and the galleys came back to me?

Yes, but it was pretty minimal.

Does that make me a genius? No. They were fun, fast fiction. Fast to write and fast to read.

Perhaps all ‘great literature’ has to be shit first, I can’t comment on that as so far I've written the fun stuff, not the 'great literature' stuff, but the point is, not every first draft written of a book or a script or a short story or whatever, is shit.

Nope.

Not even close. Unless of course you’re among those who believe most of what’s being published is shit – then we have a whole new problem such as why if it began as shit it remained so throughout the editing process… but I won’t go there just now.

What I will say to writers is this. You can’t always be running around trying to figure out what you should do. You have to know some of that stuff inside you. (And, my apologies, but not everyone has a 'book inside'.) Oh, you can get some great advice, but not all ‘truisms’ about writing and writers are ‘true’. Not all rules are to be followed. Not all pearls of wisdom are truly wise.

And not all first writing drafts are shit. Might be total word shit. Might not be.

So you have to get in there, use your spell check, re-read for errors and punctuation glitches; get it right so a book editor will actually look at it or a reader won’t be turned off by the script’s many errors  and put yourself out there. Truth is, it all comes back to you, the writer.

And stop thinking of your first written draft as shit. It’s a beginning.

Following Your Own Writing Trail

As a writer you hear all sorts of advice about outlines and formulas, how to do it, how not to do it. Oh, and above all, don’t follow those rabbit trails, stick to your story. Cling to your outline, don’t deviate!

What? 

All right, come on. Isn’t following rabbit trails, getting off the path, the very essence of creativity? That which will help create an exciting, twisting tale. That which makes the storytelling, the exploration fun and exciting. 

Forcing yourself to ‘stay on track’ is a form of idiocy as far as I’m concerned. My first books were written entirely without any outline at all. Now, I write a simple one, but it’s meant to be for basic markers, a place to start from the center so I have a few ideas of where I’m going. They change, believe me.

But the divergent trails of discovery continually beckon and I continually change course so my story grows organically out of the foibles of the characters, the unexpected twists of events, the impact of outside forces. 

You might be writing along and spot one of those fun little trails that you follow in your tale thinking it just won’t lead anywhere in particular but then, suddenly the clouds open and the sunshine pours through and that side trail lights up into the superhighway of your story. Suddenly everything you had in mind earlier changes and your story takes off in a totally new and breathtaking direction. 

I’m mixing metaphors here, but seriously, could that even happen if you were faithfully sticking to the outline you started with? If you were ignoring or discarding new ideas simply because they don’t fit that original framework you began with? Rigidly holding yourself to our originally idea only because it WAS your original idea? Don’t you think if you stick inflexibly to an outline that your story might well be perceived as being artificial? Formulaic? Well, boring and predictable?

Writing a story is a journey of discovery. Serendipitous discoveries can abound if you just give yourself the chance. After all, even rabbits go somewhere. Their trails are just that – trails to somewhere. 

So don’t listen to what you ‘must’ do. Find your own way. Lay out a few ground rules and markers for your story, then give yourself freedom and explore all the hidden nooks and crannies of that story. Wander about aimlessly at times until you find that golden path. 

Oh, and have fun!