A Writer’s Eyes

You may remember the moment. Plots became more obvious to you. Books, movies, and TV shows had to be among the best to impress you, because mediocre wasn’t cutting it anymore. You had writer’s eyes, and story became fairly obvious to you.

At first I didn’t like being able to figure things out. I wanted to be surprised by the stories I consumed in whatever format I consumed them in. And occasionally I still am, but for the most part it takes a pretty good story to get me impressed. There truly is nothing new under the sun, but I continue searching for those really good stories that make the consumption worthwhile.

Has that happened for you? Are you able to predict the plots of stories because that’s your business? That’s just how your brain works? You’ve spent a lot of time making those plot connections yourself, so most plots of most stories won’t really surprise you.

That’s often how I feel about movies today. Oh, we’re spending a lot of time on this minor character, he must be important later. Hmm, seems like this girl’s only purpose is to get the plot going. Things like that.

Granted, there are a few movies/books/shows that do take me by surprise and tantalize my brain, but that’s generally more the exception than the rule.

And then there are those stories that I know exactly what’s going to happen and yet somehow they still pull me in. (See Korean dramas.) I always try and explore the essence of those stories and figure out what it is that keeps me hooked and how can I harness that draw in my own writing.

Although becoming a writer and understanding story has “ruined” some experiences for me, it’s enlightened me in other ways. I try not to waste my time on mediocrity. Although I have found on occasion the abysmal story can be instructive in its own way.

But I want to hear from you. Do you now have writer’s eyes? Has it ruined certain stories for you, or do you feel it has enhanced your experience? Is it difficult for you to find really impressive stories or do you find value in even the abysmal? Let me know what you think below.

Make It Word Count

If you’re an aspiring author like me, eventually two words are going to cross your path if they haven’t already: word count.

If you’re really new to this biz, you may still be telling people about how many pages your book is. And that probably works better for friends and family. But all that agents, editors, and publishers want to hear about is word count.

Why? Because you might be writing in Courier, Times New Roman, Squiggly Wiggly (please don’t), but the one thing that stays uniform across the board is word count. How many words have you crammed into that Word Document that is your novel? But more importantly, how many should you have crammed in there?

As is with a lot of things in the writing world, the answer is it depends. It depends on your genre, your age range, and whether or not you’re JK Rowling or Plain Tryingtagetpublished Jane. But is there any kind of guide for how many words a novel should be?

According to Writer’s Digest, this is a typical guide for novel lengths:

Adult: Commercial & Literary ~80,000-89,000 (for you newbies, if you have it double-spaced with Times New Roman, this will be around 300 pgs, depending on your formatting)

Sci-Fi/Fantasy ~100,000-115,000 although lean toward the short end of that figure

Middle Grade ~20,000-50,000 depending on age range

YA (they say the most flexible of ranges) 55,000 – 69,999 although the trend is getting closer to the top of the 80Ks for the max. Again this depends on genre, story, etc.

Picture Books ~500-600

BUT WHAT ABOUT (INSERT BOOK TITLE)? IT WAS WAY LONGER/SHORTER!

The thing is you can’t use other authors to argue the length of your book because 99% of the time your arguments are invalid. Especially if the author in questions is 1) super famous, or 2) wrote something a long, long time ago. When you’re a household name, you can write a 160,000 word book because odds are your name is the money-maker the publishing world sees (although for your reader’s sake, please don’t).

One Step Back, Two Steps Forward

Last night I went bowling. But that’s not the whole story. The summer of 2012, the BFF and I had this summer pass we bought that let us play 2 free games every week. So we went and bowled and bowled and bowled. Sometimes our games were good, other times not so much.

In fact I used to tell people I bowled a two-seventy—two games, seventy each. 😉

It was soooo frustrating to practice so much and feel like we weren’t improving. We looked up techniques, asked other bowlers, but our scores didn’t seen to move.

It had been awhile since I’d last played when it came to last night, and it seemed like things were going as they usually did. Then this happened.

I’ve never gotten a turkey before. Ever. This was a personal best for me. Part of it was taking a step back, the other part was not over-thinking my techniques.

WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING

It’s good to study technique and practice and improve yourself. But there can be too much of a good thing. Sometimes a break is necessary to move forward.

But what you take a break from depends entirely upon your individual situations. Maybe you’ve been editing too long. Maybe it’s time to start editing. Maybe you’re reading too much. Maybe you’re not reading enough. It’s just as important to cut the wood as it is to sharpen the saw and vice versa.

A mentor of mine recommended after finishing Shade I write something completely different to freshen my writing. I switched from third POV to first and from fantasy to a bit more contemporary. That’s how Project Clemmings was born. And it seems like this has been much easier to write–not that it should be easier per se. I just feel like I’m finally bowling a 142. I have a wise mentor.

So whatever you’re doing, take a look at your projects and goals and ask yourself how you can take a step back. How can you rejuvenate yourself as a writer? Or how can you keep yourself rejuvenated?

Then bowl a turkey.

Have you ever had to take a break? Was it helpful? What do you do to rejuvenate yourself?

Death Is Not the Worst Thing

At least not in storytelling it isn’t. If you’ve read any of his books or attended any of his workshops, you know this is a big point of Donald Maass. How can you make it worse?

Part of our job as writers is to torture our poor protagonists and often their friends and family as well. Sometimes we hesitate to take our stories to the level it needs to be because we like our protagonists. Why let them suffer so much?

Because it doesn’t make for a good story. Sorry, that’s the rub.

We like stories because we like to see conflict overcome. Triumph attained. Some kind of new understanding gleaned. In my opinion this is because we hope those issues in our own lives will come to some kind of catharsis in our lives or just a resolution that makes sense. So it’s relieving to read about others’ troubles and trials because typically stories have a resolution, whereas our lives may continue on troubled for some time.

That’s why what our protagonist is after should be harder and harder to attain the further we get into our story. Something should keep getting in their way, and each time something does it should make things worse.

Since hearing the advice, how can you make it worse for your character, I’ve come to new ideas I’m not sure I would have come up with otherwise. But the other side of that is remembering, death is not the worst thing. For our main characters, death must be off the table—as a result, not as a fear.

Firstly, if your protagonist dies, end of story—unless of course you’re doing some freaky ghost realm back and forth story. But when I say death, I mean no longer available to act in your story. Also, death can often merciful for a character. They can no longer be tortured, whether physically or mentally, by something.

When we’re crafting story, remember death is not the worst thing.

Do you torture your poor protagonists? Do you try and apply the “how can I make it worse” principle? Or has this philosophy helped spark any new ideas for your story? Have you read any Donald Maass or listened to him? Anything you would add?

Monday’s Writerly Quote

Happy Monday!!!

Yeah, did you believe that? But I bet my Monday is worse than yours. Currently I’m standing in a line. And this isn’t just any line…oh no… This is that line. You know which line I mean. The DMV line.

Shudder and weep for me.

But I’m making good use of time, right? Blogging in line. It works. Anyway, oddly enough I came across this quote this morning from Henry David Thoreau:

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood to live.

At first, we probably wouldn’t think of standing in line at the DMV of all places as standing up to live, but it is. It’s really living, because isn’t what we do for most of our lives is wait for something. And if anything can amplify the frustration of waiting, it’s the DMV.

I mean, they say the A/C is on, but we all still feel like we’re standing in front of a hot oven. And forget the flies buzzing around, like something’s gone rotten in here. (I’ll let you know if I find it.) The walls are mustard yellow and taupe and gray. There are a few beauty shots of Utah, likely an attempt to make the wait in line less depressing.

Just a second. Oh, this is new. Now there’s a line you have to wait in before you get to the real line. How thrilling! Well, I’m in the second line now, doing real living.

Point being, for a writer, any moment in life is good fodder for writing. We can make our stories that much more authentic by simply paying attention to our lives.

Now, please, make sure your interaction with the real world does include more than three occasional visit to the DMV. Okay?

Do you loathe the DMV our your country’s equivalent? What moments in life do you have to deal with regularly that you dislike? And those you like? What do you do to stand up and live?