3. Your Story Has a Life of its Own.
I think we all run into this when a story “comes to life” and runs away with us, when the words just pour out, or when characters develop minds of their own and do unexpected things (that often don’t fit with our preconceived notions of plot!) We joke about secondary characters threatening to take over the entire story, or demanding books of their own. Janni Lee Simner often blogs about delightful conversations with her characters. This view of story is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s exhilarating to surf on the wave of unfolding story, one of the best highs there is. All kinds of wonderful things result. Sometimes, we like those pushy, opinionated secondary characters better than the tepid heroes. Then there’s nothing to do but tear the story apart and put it together with the right focus.
On the other hand, if we look at the story as a sort of Platonic Ideal Form, existing as an integral whole outside of us, it can be much harder to make substantial changes. It’s easy to glamorize the struggles of an artist, and actually, it’s a form of boasting to agonize publicly about the vividness of our creations and the recalcitrance (realness) of our characters. I know I’m going to get people upset with me, but I think when we say, “I can’t make my character do what I want her to,” it’s admitting to lazy writing. A poorly-executed, inconsistent, un-thought-out character is going to feel as if she’s talking back or “has a mind of his own.” Then, instead of doing the hard work of developing a deep, complex character in relationship with other multi-dimensional, idiosyncratic characters, we just throw up our hands. After all, if the characters truly do exist independently of us, we stand as much chance of changing them as we might trying to get an alcoholic to stop drinking. That way lies madness.
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Stages in a Writer’s Development
Beginning writers (and experienced ones, too) are often possessed—haunted, really—by the notion that we already know how to write. While few insist that this is something instinctive that we were born with, there’s a persistent and pernicious belief that “talent” will automatically produce great literature . . . or at least commercially successful work. I lay much of the blame for this on our education. We learned how to write in elementary school, didn’t we? We turned in all those school papers, essays, book reports, didn’t we? We write every day—shopping lists, emails, text messages, don’t we? So how hard can it be to write a book? It’s just a longer version of LOL, BRB, isn’t it?
Even if we come to understand that professional writing, whether fiction or non-, whether mainstream or genre or poetry, requires skill, and skill comes about through understanding and practice, all too often we don’t give ourselves full credit for being able to grow. How often have I wailed, “I’ll never get any better!” when in fact I am on the brink of a quantum leap forward in the scope and richness of my story-telling?
In his excellent book, Creating Short Fiction, Damon Knight describes stages in a writer’s development. The very notion is extraordinary. Assuming we are willing to work at acquiring and perfecting the skills necessary for good writing, we need to understand that growth is not uniform. A larva is not a caterpillar is not a chrysalis is not a butterfly. Some issues may always plague us—our “writing nemesis” sort of stuff—but our focus will change along with our development.
Here’s Damon’s breakdown:
Stage 1: Writing to please yourself, mostly day-dream, self-indulgent stories. A lot of fanfic falls here. You really don’t care whether anyone else reads it because you’re your own audience.
Stage 2. You care about an audience, but your stories are what Damon calls, “trivial,” that is, lacking in storyness, in emotional and structural shape. At this stage, it occurs to you that you might want to learn something about what makes stories work.
Stage 3. Now you’re writing complete stories or, as Damon puts it, “reasonable imitations,” but still face serious challenges in terms of technique and execution. Often these weaknesses pertain to characterization or overall story structure/balance.
Stage 4. You’re working at a professional level, with reasonable control over all the basics. This is an open-ended stage because hopefully we never stop learning, never stop “pushing the envelope” for our work.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being at any of these stages or remaining there if that’s what you want to do with your writing. Most, but not all, successful writers have passed this way. You’re in good company.
Understanding where you are, looking around at the territory behind and ahead of you, can be immensely reassuring. It can help you analyze and focus on the learning challenges of where you are. I still dream up Stage 1 stories, but I know that’s what they are . . . pure self-indulgence. Many times, ideas will leap out at me and say, “I belong in a real story.” I know what to do with them because I’ve slogged through Stages 2 and up. If I didn’t, if I were still a beginner, I’d look at that moment as a sign of readiness, an invitation to push forward, an impulse to take a step up that next rung of the ladder.
So where does Mary Sue (or Gary Sue) fit in? The term is often used dismissively to describe a character, usually in fanfic, who is a thinly-disguised representation of the author, in many ways, “the author’s pet.” She or he can be wonderful beyond belief, or equally unbelievably ordinary, but every other character of the appropriately attractive gender falls madly in love with her/him.
The implication is that because such characters and stories are wish-fulfillment, they are without value. Or that writers who indulge themselves in this way are immature and unprofessional.
In dismissing “Mary/Gary Sue stories,” we risk cutting ourselves off from the creative wellspring that fuels them. As children, we all daydreamed Mary Sue (and Gary Sue) stories—we all wanted to be heroes and have wonderful adventures. As we grew up, our notions about what constitutes a wonderful adventure may have changed. We may still want to go flying on a dragon, but now we also want that devilishly handsome (or intoxicatingly beautiful) dragon-rider to fall in love with us.
Mary/Gary Sue daydreams allow us to explore that landscape of yearning, to figure out what lights us up with wonder and delight (or lust). If we react to our “guilty pleasure” daydreams with scorn, we can never learn what they have to teach us. These characters, situations, and worlds bring passion and meaning to our work.
As we progress in our development as writers, we learn to take the raw stuff and refine it, plaster our heroes with warts, apply our professional critical skills, and take the story in unexpected and interesting directions.
Without Mary Sue, without those “idle” longings, guilty pleasures, and crazed desires for escape to the world of our dreams, however, all we’ve got is the warts.
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Blackberry Writing
Blackberries are tricksy things. They can look ripe from where I stand, but turn out to be all red at the base. Sometimes I can tell the moment I touch the berry—it’s too firm and too tightly attached to the stem. I have to be ready to give up on what looked like a great prospect and move on. When I’m in the flow of picking, it seems I don’t even have to think about this. Isn’t this like a story that seems promising but doesn’t yet have the necessary depth? Occasionally—well, more than occasionally—my mind gets dead set on “this berry gets picked” and I force the issue. I’ll glare at the red parts and either pop the berry into my mouth (“for private reading only”). Berries that are almost-ready go well in oatmeal. I freeze quarts and quarts of them for winter breakfasts. They’re too sour on their own, but they blend well, adding pleasantly tart notes. That’s not unlike taking several different story ideas, none of which can stand on their own, and setting them at cross-purposes to make a much more interesting tale.
This whole business of “readiness” in a story is a curious one. It’s a bit like cooking without a recipe, because while there may be guidelines, there are no hard and fast rules of how to tell when a story
concept is “ripe.”
Editor Laura Anne Gilman describes how unprofessional it is to argue with a rejection:
All too often at the Big NYC Publisher’s Office, after rejecting a work—especially if it was a) slush and b) got our standard slush reject letter, which was polite but clear that it wasn’t something we were interested in — we’d get a response from the submitter.
Now, professionals know that, unless you are specifically invited into an exchange, you don’t respond to a rejection. You take it, you consider what’s worth considering, and you move on. That exchange is over.
Sometimes, the response would be to ask for more details. Time-crunches didn’t allow us to do that, but it was an acceptable if frustrating response.
More often, though, we got a response along the lines of “My work is utter genius, and you’re too blinded by (fill in the blank) to see it! But you’ll be sorry!”
This kind of reaction isn’t limited to beginning writers, but it is an insidious trap. It’s far easier to think that your story got rejected because of the blindness/stupidity/conspiracy of the gatekeepers, rather than that it simply isn’t good enough. It could be a great idea and you weren’t ready to do it any kind of justice. It could be a trivial idea that no writer alive could have turned into a decent story. It could have been a nifty idea but it wasn’t properly developed—it wasn’t “ripe.”
One of the hardest things for a new writer to master is accepting that there is a threshold of quality—for ideas, for execution—for publication. It’s hard to hear that the story you are so proud of isn’t good enough. Those thorns hurt as much when I’m pulling out as when I’m pushing in.
Here’s the catch: sometimes the story is great. Sometimes the market just isn’t ready for the story at this time, but it will be in the future. Somewhere there’s an editor and a readership who will adore it. How can you tell?
Experienced writers usually get a sense of whether a story is a passing tone in music, more valuable for where it gets you than for itself, best set aside as an interesting but unsuccessful experiment, or whether it is worthy of continued confidence. I can’t say no beginning writers have this maturity of perspective, but I think it extraordinarily unlikely. It comes with trial and error and constant critical attention to the work. It comes with patience, and it offers more patience as the payoff.
So what is a beginning writer, or a middling writer, or any writer, to do? Here are some immediate thoughts, but everyone’s solution is going to be different and to change with time.
Get lots of support, people who share a vision of a career as being long-term, hopefully life-long. While striving to make each new project the best you can, keep perspective. Yes, there are “break-out” books, but what makes or a breaks a career is steady improvement. Most of us, on occasion, need shoulders to cry on, hands to hold, friends to celebrate with, and colleagues with contagious enthusiasm for writing itself.
Beware the lure of self-publishing. It definitely has its place, but it ought not to substitute for inadequate quality by providing a way around the traditional gatekeepers. While it is remotely possible that an early work might be not right for today’s larger market but perfect for a specific, smaller readership (and hence a good candidate for self-publishing), it is far more likely it simply hasn’t passed that threshold of quality. Assume it hasn’t. Work harder, write better, and keep pushing your critical skills and your standards.
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When a Story Isn’t Ready, Part 2
Most writers who have been at this business for any length of time have the experience of a story not being truly finished. It may come to an end, but it has not yet come into itself. My version of this usually involves my initial concept being wrong. I will start with an idea in what I call the “front part” of my brain—a notion, a conceit, an image from some visual medium (painting, film) and spin it into a plot. I labor under the delusion that this is what the story “is about.” More often than not, I’m wrong.
I’m wrong because I’m going for the glitz, the superficial attraction. The truth is, I’m a better writer than that when I listen to what’s underneath the glitz. That’s where the emotional juice is, the deeper resonances, the Deborah-vision.
The symptoms of this mis-step are many: characters that refuse to follow the pre-arranged script, story elements that just won’t come together, plot idiocies that are not just holes but dead-end canyons. I’ve learned to rip all that stuff out (leaving chunks of bleeding, burning manuscript strewn about) and dig deep into the core. That’s part of my revision (re-vision, right?) process. Although with time (read: decades of practice), I’ve gotten better at writing first drafts that are less superficial and more true, I still value this process. Throw away the chaff; be ruthless; seek the nuggets of treasure and bring them into the light.
Stories can be not ready in other ways, too. You throw them in the infamous trunk when you’re so tired of looking at the same words, you can’t see the problems you know are there. I’ve been known to put manuscripts in the freezer to cool them off, although I doubt the physical temperature has any effect except as a metaphor. Working on something else gives “the back” of our brains time to work, for ideas to ferment and percolate and for new patterns and solutions to emerge. Alas, this process can take years, which is why it’s a good idea to immediately dive into the next project and the next.
Sometimes it’s me, the writer, who’s not ready to tell that story. Usually this is because my writing craft isn’t adequate to the challenge. This is particularly true if the story is a “high wire act,” requiring great skill and subtlety. Or a story that plays into my weaknesses as a writer and refuses to be told in any other way. Or something I myself am not ready to tackle, like emotionally difficult subjects.
If I try to write these stories before I’m ready, they will fail just as surely as those I first described. Perhaps every failed story involves elements of story-unfinished-ness and my own imperfect skill. However, I’ve found that the attempt is always valuable. If I am willing to listen to the heart of the story and to see myself as being a work-in-progress, then I will surely receive priceless gifts. I grow as a person as well as a writer, and end up with stories I am proud of.
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Series as Career Killer
Sometimes when we create a world, whether it is for a novel or a shorter piece, we realize how much of it exists “off the page” and we come to love it so much we want to go explore. Or to stay in the same location or time period and delve more deeply into it. Or simply to run away to our favorite imaginary place with our favorite characters. These multi-novel variations allow us to do that, to create related stories, to use and build upon our vision of a world. Incidentally, I have been known to bribe secondary characters who are threatening to run away with the plot with the promise of their very own stories. Knowing that I can “spin off” such tales helps me to focus on this story, to keep plot and subplot from burgeoning into a shapeless and planet-consuming proteus. Sometimes I find that secondary characters or places mentioned only in passing turn out to be more interesting, more complex and ambivalent, dark and transcendent, than my original conceptions.
The pitfall of writing a series when a writer is still new and learning craft is that working in an established world means we don’t create new ones, and world-building is a skill that improves with practice. If your first story is the only one you ever want to write, that’s less of a problem than if you are like me and your head is filled with a gazillion story ideas, each screaming to be told. I think you do yourself a disservice in committing years of your formative literary life to one vision, instead of pushing to make each new world more complex and fascinating. One of the benefits of writing short fiction is the relatively small time investment in each story, as compared to working at novel length. Mistakes cost a far smaller fraction of your overall career, and each story is an opportunity to start fresh, aim higher, and twist real
ity in a different way.
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How Gossip Can Trash Your Writing Career
Volumes have been written about ways to offend a prospective agent or editor: unprofessional queries, manuscripts printed in purple ink on yellow paper in Gothic font, annoying phone calls, even stalking. The story of the manuscript pushed under the door of the toilet stall is legendary. These tactics backfire, and not just because they are obnoxious and immediately communicate that the writer has not a clue about publishing protocol and appropriate behavior. They constitute an abuse of the agent’s or editor’s time (and eyesight).
Editors and agents are, it goes without saying, human beings with hopes and dreams, families and outside problems. They have good days, bad days, and times they use less than perfect judgment. Most of them love their work and want to love ours. Now more than ever, the publishing industry is under tremendous pressure—implosion might be a more apt description. In addition to their regular duties, most editors find themselves staggering under the burden of more and more non-editorial work, not to mention worrying about how they’re going to buy groceries if the firm goes belly-up. Anything that a writer does that adds to the crap level in an editor’s life must raise the question, “Is this worth the hassle, when there are a dozen equally promising projects that don’t come with strings?”
So you study the business, you present your manuscript in the prescribed format, manner, and place. You communicate in a timely, appropriate, and courteous manner. You even buy your editor a drink at WorldCon. Things are going great! Maybe you’ve got an offer or a multi-volume contract, or a book or five under your belt. Your agent returns your calls; you’re on a first-name basis with your editor. What can go wrong? Besides the vagaries of the market, the whims of distributors, and such like?
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