Writing Rules To Be Learned & Only Then Broken At Will, part 5

Mark Twain:


1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it.

3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.

6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.

7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end of it.

8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the author or the people in the tale.

9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausably set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.

10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.

11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

An author should—

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple, straightforward style.




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Writing Rules To Be Learned & Only Then Broken At Will, part 4

Ernest Hemingway:


1. Use short sentences.
2. Use short first paragraphs.
3. Use vigorous English.
4. Be positive, not negative.
5. Put the shit in the wastebasket.
6. Don’t drink until after you have finished the day’s writing.




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Writing Rules To Be Learned & Only Then Broken At Will, part 3

George Orwell:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.




~•~

Writing Rules To Be Learned & Only Then Broken At Will, part 2

Kurt Vonnegut:

1.     Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2.     Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3.     Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4.     Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5.     Start as close to the end as possible.
6.     Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7.     Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8.     Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.




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Writing Rules To Be Learned & Only Then Broken At Will, part 1

Elmore Leonard:


1. Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle.*
2. Never open a book with weather.
3. Avoid prologues.
4. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
5. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .
6. Keep your exclamation points under control.
7. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
8. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
9. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
10. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
11. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
12. If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.




* = "Hooptedoodle" — From John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday:  "Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”



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Talkin Shop: Lies & Fiction

I never lie about fiction.



~*~

Talkin Shop: First Lines (brief)

I used to attribute the following statement to a notable lyrical poet, but after consider searching for the attribution to that particular wordsmith—or an attribution of anything even resembling the quote—I guess I'll step up on my soapbox platform and take the blame for it.  If anyone wants to debate that... let's sit down for a cup of coffee and spend some time talkin shop.

If one isn't otherwise presenting itself to you, here's a guideline for your consideration:

The first line of a story should be a simple statement of fact.


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Talkin Shop: Unexpected Turns

So in the midst of this novel/novella, I-as-writer (as opposed to the I-as-narrator function) ask myself, where as this is going? Sometimes I know, but other times I'm writing my way towards something and don't know what. This is one of those sort of stories. And, as I-as-narrator answered that, I initially thought, how ludicrous. But then I realized that was exactly the way this Brett Easton Ellis-meets-Shirley Jackson tale goes. And the path there is quite wonderful. I hope sometime to find out if you think so as well.

Such unexpected turns are one of the tasty reasons I love what I do—the thrill of being in the midst of pure story as it manifests from the what-it-is-not. If it can surprise, challenge, convince, and thrill me, I suspect/think/hope/pray it may do similar things for others.


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Talkin Shop: The Pure Stream Flows

But turn from my tongue, o gods,
the madness of these men,
and from hallowed lips let a pure stream flow.

Empedocles

In my time of writing, I've completed more than 40 short stories and two novels (with a third novel that expanded to 260-280,000 words before I had to walk away from for mental and spiritual health), and several novellas in between that mix.

This past week I've knocked out the better part of another (almost 40k words since late Fri/Early Sat). Although it is very first draft sort of material, parts of it are among the best things I've ever written.

Which brings me to the reason of this post (the intent is less clear to me right now). I suspect this may be true with other writers but is certainly so with me: every time I write something that is shiver-worthy, I think, Where did this come from? and Thankfully, I'm the faucet for this, and How will I ever write something this phenomenal again?

Then, at some point, I write something else that is shiver-worthy and end up with the same trio of questions again, and for a few moments, am absolutely sure nothing I write will ever drip with such epiphanic dew again.

Until the next time it does.

It just amazes me that this has been a recurrence since 1991 when I wrote my first novel (the last couple of lines of which are still among the best things I've ever written) and my first really solid stand-on-its-own short story. I learned a lot from them and in the gulf of time between then and now.

In this novella/novel I've been recording these past six days, I've written some great material. And a few of them triggered those old, familiar questions.

Ah, the wondrous, fucked-up, glorious life of creativity.

There's a celestial reservoir of story-water in the universe. And sometimes, I'm fortunate enough to be a faucet through which that pure stream flows.

Thank you, O muse who sings^* to me. Thank you.

I look forward to as many more years of this as possible.



^* Ok. My muse doesn't so much sing to me as whispers sacred mysteries in the velvet hush of unknown tongues.

· • ·

Talkin Shop: Lingering Depth

I first read the following paragraph in the Atlanta Library. This is the opening of the book and it gripped me then and it grips my attention now. Something my friend Sean and I call the delicious morsels of writing: those tasty bits that explode with delight on the tongue and on the lips and in the heart-spirit center in the brain and linger wonderfully in memory's taste buds long after the meal/snack/dessert was first tasted.

Following the paragraph as it appears in the book, I included it again with some words underlined. These would (will) be what I would look up in a close reading/textual analysis, but also serve as the keyholes through which we'd peep (for if I were leading this critical mission, there would certainly be other voyeurs there beside me—I mean besides me...) to reveal what lurks beyond the edge of the page that is conjured there by referential association.

I also did this back in Fall 08 at Columbia, but I wasn't ready yet. Now, I think I am.


~•~


"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies—everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages—the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Elusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.

"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."

—Jay Stevens,
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream

•

"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies--everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages--the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Eleusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.

"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."

•

That's 101 unique words in two paragraphs totaling 147. 45 of those words are reference keys (18 are "the"). I love this kinda thing. Confectionery words. Tasty. Yum.


· • ·

Talkin Shop: Writing Superstitions

It's funny what sort of story ideas capture my imagination and what sort drive me to the page immediately.

In the midst of something like the latter. No story idea, just those characters/place/event. Playing reporter and following them around. Gets deep and twisted and complicated and so-very-human so quickly, doesn't it?

Going back to an old adage/superstition. Don't talk about the contents of the story until the first draft is done. A couple got away from me by talking about them.

But those are occupational hazards. • y a w n •

Now if you wanna talk shop . . . you know how to reach me.


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