Session 8: Wrap-up

We had so much fun with our exercise this week: to read and attempt to critique the Very Bad Prose that Lindsey posted for us, courtesy Dangerously Curvy Novels.

We are now fairly sure that, yes, it is terrible prose, and we all came away from it with extra determination to be aware of our reader's expectations, not only with how a text should look on the page (typos, breaking up paragraphs, punctuation etc.) but also that somewhere there needs to be a point. And if bad use of language and distracted narrative obscures the point ...? We'll likely chuck the book.

World-building

Thanks to Jerome for an informative and practical view into the art of world-building. 

Two key starting points, especially for writers of fantasy, that you can't go wrong with:

• geography
• magic  

Geography

A great place to start is by drawing a map of your world because this will inform the action, the history of the land and its inhabitants, the character of the people/creatures ... it can also kick-start great plot ideas (e.g. How exactly are they going to cross that mountain range in winter? What if the delta is flooded?).

Magic

A writer should always be aware of what exactly is possible to do with their magic (or new technology).

Say, for example, you have a box that can record people's thoughts. There are many questions you can ask about that box:

• From what distance does it work?
• What happens when there are multiple people in the same place?
• Does it need to be calibrated to a person, or does it work on anyone? 
• How big is the box? 
• And so on. 

You need to know the answer to all of these questions, and fix them!

If a technology (or magic) is very powerful, look at all your scenes and consider if the problems your character faces could be solved with it, because even if your characters don't remember, your readers still will!

Secondly, remember that all magic must come at a cost.

An exercise

Pick anything that could be the cost of your magic ...
e.g. What if the cost of casting a spell is a loss of air around the person casting the spell? What if you lose some hair when you use magic?

Now think about all aspects of that, and how this tension/friction will inevitably impact on the society's infrastructure, its culture, its religions, the world around the characters, the way those at either extreme would be treated, and so-on.

Session 7: Exercise

Here is a 'diagnostic' exercise to complete in time for Session 8:

This is a continuation on from our discussion about being able to discern 'opinion' (or 'personality') from 'description', in order to be able to observe how the narrative voice may be biased.

Select a paragraph of your own text (can be fiction or non fiction), and go through it, highlighting only the bits that aren't opinion or embellishment, but are the bare bones of description about what is happening.

Now go through and look for words that are embellishments, and you'll see that these are either unconscious (the writer doesn't realise they're offering their POV) or intentional (the writer is using the bias in order to give the narrator a personality or an unreliability, perhaps).

You should be able to start building a picture of how the writer is positioning the narrative voice.

Example from Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 1.

Bold is bare bones.
Green is opinion or example of how the words chosen exhibit personality.
Orange is assumption.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all — I'm not saying that — but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.

You'll see the narrative voice is being built up as an 'unreliable' narrator. We can see he is probably young (colourful, colloquial language), has opinions, makes assumptions, and has perhaps even had (or likes to say he's had!) a breakdown.

Which all adds up to a unique Point of View!

Session 7: Wrap-up

Our 'topic' this session was Point of View (POV), and we were able to incorporate some thoughts about POV and its importance into the workshopping session.

We also had a discussion about writing in a language that's not your mother tongue.

POV

We kicked off with our workshop piece, and referred to the first chapters of the submitted work-in-progress to look at two POV aspects in particular:

1. How we break up our narrative on the page, asking questions like: How can the visual design be a 'clue' for the reader about a change in POV?

For example, italics can signify that the narrative voice is switching from external to internal. Thriller novels use this technique, sometimes as a way to get inside the head of the protagonist or the antagonist. (e.g. Silence of the Lambs.)

Similarly, a paragraph break can be a clue that a new action is happening, or we are changing focus (or dialogue) to a different character, or perhaps a different train of thought is being tacked.

2. How we choose to position our narration. How much does the narrator know? Are they all-knowing? How much of what they say is reliable?

We discussed the advantages of having a narrator who doesn't know everything (who is not omniscient), because it can be easier to keep the reader 'in the dark' or 'guessing', so to speak.

And, on the other hand, with Memoir, for example, omniscience can be useful for painting pictures with broad strokes, especially when writing about, e.g., a global political climate, or events going on in a country at the time the story is set.

(We also talked briefly about The Martian, because about 2/3 of the way through (ish), the 3rd person narrative voice breaks into an omniscient voice ... for just one solitary chapter. It's weird, but somehow it works, perhaps because of the pace or timing, as up till that point it's a fairly intense, same-ish read, and the break-out chapter provides a change of sorts for the reader to take a breath. We're talking about the final frontier, after all!)

We talked about the excellent exercise of breaking down our narrative into dot points, in order to remove everything that isn't a straight-up description of action. (One of Libby's favourite activities. :)) This is good practice for learning to identify opinion and fact (or action), and how we use the interplay of these elements (plus description and our innate writerly magic of course!) in order to build narrative reliability (or not).

An 'unreliable narrator' can provide the reader with a 'game', where they must work out what's real and what's not, what's fact and what's narrative fiction. Fun!

Writing in a language that's not your mother tongue

In this session, Thanh-Nu kindly shared her experiences of writing in English (a third language), having first learned Vietnamese and then French.

An insight for all of us was that being able to write in our first language can be an advantage, but we can also be too 'close' to that language, and sometimes writing in a different language can give you critical distance ... as well as some turns of phrase that are very 'non-cliché' and even unusually beautiful.

Session 7: Outline

At our meet-up on May 19th, we will:

• Hear from Thanh-Nu about submitting writing in a language that's not your mother tongue (and, if we get time, a few hot tips on submitting for journals and small presses!).

• Talk about POV (Point of View) and how choosing the point of view from which you tell your story matters (and in what ways).

• Tie POV to the units of story (global, scene, dialogue etc.).

Session 6: Exercise

This is an exercise in preparation for Session 7, when we will be discussing Point of View (POV).

Write the same short scene (half a page is fine) from 3 different points of view.

Session 6: Wrap-up

This time, we:

• Share insights and questions regarding the Session 5 exercise
• Workshop a short story
• Hear from Jim, who is leading the discussion on beta readers

Examples of Antagonists

We discussed how antagonists don't have to be the Darth Vaders of the story; antagonists can be environmental catastrophes (Twister), war zones (War of the Worlds), cultural attitudes and expectations, illness, corporations ...

Within our group, we are writing about:

• A genetic disorder that shows itself in different ways and the people have different narratives around it and how it affects their mortality and lives;
• Opium addiction;
• The institution that’s doing mostly bad things;
• The man/revenge that is the personal level;
• The incidental side-kick who ends up being a ‘bad person’;
• Societal attitudes about career and motherhood;
• Internal conflict.

Important to remember that a story's man character—sometimes referred to as the hero and usually the most sympathetic character—isn't always all good, just as its villain or antagonist isn't always entirely evil. The best stories have complicated characters with shades of gray. A main character may be doing a good deed (saving the world/the girl or winning the war) for entirely selfish reasons. The antagonist may be an antagonist by pure dint of being the thing or person that stands in the way of our hero achieving his or her mission. A villain can absolutely have good intentions, but those actions/intentions still serve as a block or threat to our protagonist's journey.

Often the "villains" in a story are manifold, which keeps the dramatic tension nuanced and prevents the conflict from constantly being one showdown after another between the same two characters. For example, one story may have a human villain, an "evil" institution (which your human antagonist may be a representative or embodiment of), and then an internal conflict.

The internal conflict is often a battle between what a character wants and what is best for his or her own interests. This inner struggle can be applied to any manner of subjects: addiction, loving the "wrong" person, knowing you have to destroy the One True Ring but also feeling too exhausted and mortal not to succumb to its power ...


Beta Reading

Alpha Feedback is the ‘what do you think of this?’ broad strokes feedback.

Beta Feedback is great for honing the editing skills. Main goal being getting contextual feedback: characters, plot, flow, anything that might feel ‘off’ for readers.

Many beta readers will try to edit. Tell them no.

Personally: get in the right headspace first because it’s not a time for pats on the back, it’s putting yourself out there to get constructive feedback, sometimes rough but fair.

Pick the right readers: 4 minimum suggestion. You want eyes on the pages. Use the numbers to dictate how much of a problem something is. You can’t argue with numbers, so let the math do the work.

Give a deadline: about 4 weeks is good. 2 months is too long.

Who to choose: Allocate an aspect of the feedback to specific readers (you don’t have to make that the main purpose, but if you value someone’s specialised area, then choose them to get that POV). Choose an ‘end user’: the basic reader who reads for the heck of it, just to get a reading on the general appeal of the book.

Format matters: try to give it in a format that people can read.

Give context: what state is the manuscript in at the point the reader is receiving it?


Quote of the week

Accolades go to Jim, and I am paraphrasing here ...

There can be a million ways to fix a problem in your story but the real goal is to solve that problem.

The idea being that a fix is a patch or a shortcut—kind of a ta-daa! moment that comes out of nowhere and isn't necessarily in keeping with the plot or character development. A solve would be in keeping with both.

Session 6: Outline

At our meet-up on April 21, we will:

• Share insights and questions regarding the Session 5 exercise
• Workshop TBD's piece (we are looking for a volunteer!)
• Hear from Jim, who is leading the discussion on beta readers