Occasionally, people ask me for writing advice. Over the years my response has changed. When I started off, oh my goodness, everything was amazing and I wanted to share the possibilities. They seemed endless and they were all so good. But the more you learn, the less you know! Now, my advice boils down to “everyone’s path is their own”.
I’m aware that it sounds like a cop out. It’s not. It means that where you’re starting from on your writing and publishing journey, your motivations, your goals, the ethical choices you’ll make (and the compromises), your definition of success, and for how long writing remains a priority will be unique to you and will change over time.
There are a lot of free and paid resources for writers. When you have a question, you can find an answer. Reflect not just on what you’re creating, but where it (and the process of creation) fits in your life. Choose what you give to writing and value what you receive from it.
All of that said, I’m not a meanie. If you’d like good writing advice and a vetted list of writing and publishing support services, I recommend Jane Friedman’s website as a starting point. I’m also happy to receive other recommendations, so if you have a book or course or whatever that has been helpful to you on your writing journey, feel free to mention it in the comments.
A hero is integral to most novels. We follow their journey. But “hero” has connotations that sometimes obscure the purpose and grace of the concept. Therefore, it can be useful to consider the role of the “protagonist” instead.
“Hero” links us to the word “heroic” and we expect the lead character to strive, perhaps to grow, often we hope to witness them triumph. A “protagonist” doesn’t carry such a heavy burden of expectation. A protagonist is freer to interrogate their world. What can they learn?
In real life I think we should all consider ourselves the hero of our own stories. However, if we push that notion of hero closer to protagonist then I think we have more agency. We can ask what are our goals? What experiences confront us or have shaped us? How will we change? Why should we change? Who will we journey with?
We don’t have the mythical hero’s burden to save the world. Our challenge as the protagonist-hero is to be more ourselves.
Yup. You’re the hero of your story when you’re you.
And when I say “you”, it can be a collective “you”. The hero can be a community, a nation, even a business; whatever entity that is challenging the world so as to be true to itself.
I think the temptation to inhabit the role of victim in your own story comes from this concept of the hero as a larger than life character who must triumph or else loses the right to exist.
A protagonist whose journey is one of internal and external discovery is far healthier.
When you’re writing, one of the most effective things you can do is evoke something familiar, and then, compel people to question it; to confront it anew.
Light and darkness are common themes, dualities, in fiction.
Fiat lux! Let there be light!
But light as a metaphor loses its impact when it’s always accessible, available at the flick of the switch. Even if electricity goes out suddenly, most of us have our phones near us and they provide sufficient light for us to grope around and find a flashlight.
When I look at a candle I remember how, for most of human existence, darkness was implacable. Flickering flames were all we could summon to push back the darkness.
A well-crafted story uses what we take for granted and shakes it up.
Now, it is not darkness, but light, that threatens and intrudes. Satellites watch us from on high, security lights illuminate us, cameras track us. We are always visible, always on the record.
Fiat tenebris! Let there be darkness.
Frightened animals hide in the darkness, they sleep in their burrows. If all our lives are visible, where can we hide from ourselves?
Many people blame Kindle Unlimited and its pay-by-pages-read remuneration system for the increased padding in novels: lots of description, limp banter, and holy socks! have you seen how litrpg novels pad out word count with repeated system statistics?
But in fact padding, or excess verbiage, is a reflection of current attitudes.
We’re used to accumulating stuff and we suck at getting rid of it. Have you seen how many storage unit complexes exist on the outskirts of our cities?
A good editor can help an author eliminate the dross, but that raises a different question: is it dross?
For as many people who hate limp banter, others adore it.
The system stats that I skip in litrpg novels fascinate other readers.
Excess isn’t always excess. It can be valuable to the right audience, and that’s often why it stays. Why eliminate something that someone may enjoy? (An argument remarkably similar to the argument for filling a new storage unit; that is, “we can’t get rid of that only slightly chipped teapot, someone might want it one day, if not to make tea in, maybe as a garden ornament. Wouldn’t it look darling with pansies growing in it?”).
And as an author, I’ll let you into a secret. That excess can make a really effective hiding place for clues you need to sneak in.
“Excep’ talk. I’d forgot that. You ain’t asked to talk more’n you’ve a mind to aboard the We’re Here. Keep your eyes open, an’ help Dan to do ez he’s bid, an’ sechlike, an’ I’ll give you—you ain’t wuth it, but I’ll give—ten an’ a ha’af a month; say thirty-five at the end o’ the trip. A little work will ease up your head, and you kin tell us all abaout your dad an’ your ma an’ your money afterwards.”
A century or so ago dialects and accents featured heavily in fiction. Then the fashion changed. Perhaps people found reading accents hard going, or realized that sometimes the dialogue was flattened by striving for effect or that the attempt was wildly inaccurate.
If you’ve ever heard Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins attempting a Cockney accent you’ll know what I mean.
Nowadays the flavour of an accent is hinted at, and at its best, achieved by the rhythm of the writing. Mary Jane Staples wrote pitch perfect Cockney.
Sammy, practical though he was, could not help being touched by the request. He said, “In consideration of you being a credit to me business, Miss Brown, I am happy to inform you I’ll use me highly regarded influence on your behalf.”
King of Camberwell by Mary Jane Staples (pseudonym for Reginald Thomas Staples)
Dialogue is difficult. When you’re writing it well a reader should be able to tell who’s talking even without tags. However, it’s possible to go too far in that direction and end up with a caricature rather than a character. Also, when a scene is moving swiftly, unobtrustive tags (who-saids and actions) are necessary to avoid confusion. Dialogue can’t do everything.
Basically I think of dialogue as poetry: when you get it right, it sings!
(I can sew, but it drives me wild, so it’s one of the first hard-won skills I abandoned.)
Do you have any fashion resources you refer to?
On a related topic, if you ever get a chance to watch The Supersizers Go… grab it! This British TV show where Sue Perkins (comedian) and Giles Coren (food critic) dressed up and ate the food of an era is brilliant.
People sometimes ask why there is so much dystopian fiction and so very little utopian fiction. Often the answer given is that utopian fiction is harder to write because the conflict is less, or less obvious.
Hmm.
I’ve written a dystopian fantasy series, The Faerene Apocalypse, and I agree that it was never hard to find sources of conflict in that world.
Novels (all stories) need tension to progress and to keep the audience engaged.
But tension can be subtle. The conflict in a utopian novel mightn’t hit you in the face, but it exists. The questions of what next and why and who, how they’ll do what they choose to do, all of these questions boil down to a fundamental tension of existence—free will.
In a utopia the characters may have built a system where free will is a positive force both individually and socially, but it still exists. Harmony isn’t frozen perfection. Entropy must be countered by creation.
So, no, I don’t believe that lack of conflict is the reason utopian fiction is rare. I think the issue is authority.
In dystopian fiction authority collapses. Either the story is set in a lawless land or the authority is corrupt.
Look at the Wizard of Oz (book or movie). The authority for that world is literally named in the title, and yet, he’s merely smoke and mirrors, collapsing on revelation.
In a utopian story the authority mustn’t collapse. The instant it can be questioned, the utopian bubble bursts. Doubt is the death of utopia—of course, handled deftly, the questioning of authority in a utopian novel can become the source of conflict for the story, and be triumphantly asserted in the ending, but…
(and here’s the point this post has been building to)
To write a utopian novel the author has to be confident in the authority that legitimises the utopian community. Belief in that authority underpins the utopia both in the fictional world and for the reader.
And let me tell you that, as an author, it is very, very, very hard to summon the sort of confidence to be all-in with a single authority.
The modern world lives by Lord Acton’s maxim that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The authority that underpins a utopia has to be absolute. Anything less allows for cracks to form, beginning the fracturing of the utopia. Yet, absolute power itself corrupts. So, the authority of the utopia is the reason it will fail—unless the author presents an authority so compelling, so confident, that we can believe it transcends the limits of our lived experience of fallible humanity.
Imagining a utopia is, therefore, a political act. It requires the suspension of disbelief in pursuit of believing in a greater good, a cause. The author must convince the audience to sacrifice their doubt and embrace an authority that can deliver them from themselves.
It sounds a heck of a lot like a cult, doesn’t it?
The ideas that arrive to torment an author are called plot bunnies. They frisk around and try to lead us down strange paths.
How do you handle them?
Well, you never want to squander inspiration, so you must record your ideas. You will NOT remember them. Trust me on this. But, beware.
(Maybe what I’m about to say applies more to pantsters than to plotters, but here goes.)
Think of butterflies pinned down in museum collections. They are still brightly coloured and perfect for studying, but they’re dead. They no longer fly, sip nectar, or create the next generation. They’re beautiful corpses.
This is what happens if you strip a plot bunny, examining every detail of it, and nailing down your thoughts. You’ll be tempted. But don’t.
Instead, write down fragments of ideas, description, dialogue, and theme. Sketch the pictures that swim in your head.
Concentrate on recording what you need to tantalise future you.
The aim is that when you open your notebook you’re greeted by a cloud of butterflies rather than beautifully described, dead ideas.
For me, writing my novels is a conversation with the world. I know that sounds weird. But it means that I “listen” to the world (read the news and commentary, and generally indulge my curiosity), think on what the world has said, and then, respond.
Perhaps it’s different for people who fully plot out their books, but I’m a pantster. No matter how many notes I have to keep me “on track” I go wandering off as I write. The world is talking and it affects how my fictional world develops.
This is why the same book (i.e. one with the same starting point and premise) written again ten years later would be very different.
A few authors have done this.
Robin McKinley wrote Beauty in 1978. In 1997 she wrote Rose Daughter. Both are retellings of Beauty and the Beast. The books are very different. (Beauty is my favorite.)
On a sidenote, I enjoy Beauty and the Beast retellings. I haven’t read the old British romance The Mettlesome Piece by Anne Hepple in years, but I adored it. It’s not quite the traditional Beauty and the Beast in that the Beast rescues himself, and then, rescues Beauty, but it definitely has the theme of being trapped until love finds you.
Last week I mentioned Patricia C Wrede, her fantasy novels, and their brilliant world-building. If you’re an author, let me recommend her advice on writing and world-building.
But I also want to talk about world-building from a different perspective. In creating Caldryn Parliament and its Realm I deliberately set about building a safe space. There is danger in it, as well as heartbreak and grief. Nonetheless, it is a space removed from real life; one where I can guarantee a happy ever after.
The intriguing aspect of a created safe space is that it becomes a place where we can play. Novels are where we safely explore and test ideas. In reading we become different people in different worlds making courageous decisions and surviving (at least in my books) to go on to new adventures.
Underpinning this concept of a safe space is Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, of “other spaces”.
Writing this post I took a deep breath, and then, opted for the sensible decision of providing you with a link to his thoughts on heterotopia rather than trying and failing to summarise them. This isn’t just intellectual inability or laziness on my part. The article I’m linking to gives so many jumping off points for understanding how the setting we choose for a novel frames the otherness of the story and contributes to what we explore.
So, thank you to MIT for sharing the article. It is a pdf and will probably download automatically, so please be aware of this before clicking the link: https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf
