The Writing Workshop

Writing Prompt: Power to the Shippers

There's this thing called fanfiction, wherein an amateur author writes a story using the characters from their favorite books, TV shows, etc. and then publishes them online. It's generally considered a form of flattery, doesn't make much money, and thus, isn't penalized under copyright law, even though it technically should be. Sometimes, that fanfiction develops into something else - the Random House bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey (as of this posting, the book is over on the Amazon's Most Wished For list in the sidebar) started life as a Twilight fanfiction.

There's also this great internet meme called "shipping" (a derivative of relationship), wherein fans of a particular show or book or comic wish for a particular relationship that doesn't quite exist in that world's reality. For example, people might ship Wolverine and Storm, Heathcliff and Nelly Dean, or there's even something called Wincest, the pairing of Supernatural's Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean.

Write a fanfiction story in which you ship a pair of characters that are normally not paired up. Then change the names and setting to create an original work.

Imitation is the finest form of flattery, people.

Writing Craft: Stopping in the Middle (Just for Today)

As I've mentioned previously, I am trying out a new writing plan: I simply write a page a day.

It's a simple equation that never actually works out. It did, however, get me to start writing every damn day, which is something I've struggled with for years - whether it was thanks to a lack of energy, depression, or being too damn busy.

But working on a page a day has brought up a lesson one of my professors taught me along the way (and I do wish I could remember which one, but I can't): stop in the middle of your writing, so that the next time, you know exactly where to start.

We've all had the problem of the blinking cursor and the blank page, but by purposely stopping in the middle of a section - either a chapter or a scene or what have you - then you can begin more easily the next day. This saves you time and also emotional energy, as you don't have to worry about writer's block for that writing session - you already know what you're going to write about.

In my case, I generally take a few days to write a chapter (especially if I just have the time to write one page that day and not more), so I end each writing session with a note, in italics, telling myself where I thought I was going to go next.

The best part, though, is that the next day's writing, since I've already thought of it once, stays with me. And when I start thinking that day about the fact I haven't written yet, I've found that I often revise the idea before I even get to that day's writing - and most times, for the better. It's a way of keeping me engaged with the writing, which for longer projects, like novels, is a writing must.

I've even started doing this when I finish a chapter or section - I'll write something down, probably on one of my zillion post-its, about where I should start tomorrow. And I'll be honest - it's the days that I haven't done that, where I don't know where I'm going, that are the hardest to get the work done.

Writing Craft: The Whys and Hows of Proofreading

If there's one thing that wannabe writers don't seem to get is that while agents and editors are going to help you clean up your book, they're never going to sign you in the first place if your writing is a complete mess.

And that's for the simply reason of it being too much work for them to do.

You've got to remember that agents and editors work more than 40 hours a week - they do their standard work at the office, then come home with piles of papers to read through and sometimes edit. If they ever have a choice between two books of equal market value and interest to them, they're going to pick the one that's the easiest to work with. It's just good business sense to save the company money by saving the editor's time.

In other words, you've got to know how to proofread.

Proofreading, the last step of the writing process, really isn't that difficult. It's truly more a matter of discipline than anything else, even if grammar isn't your forte.

First off, you need to decide whether you want to proofread on your computer or on paper. Each has their advantages - the computer has spellcheck, but paper is easier to read for longer periods of time. I'd say, if you're just starting off, proofreading on the computer is the way to go. Remember that whenever you proofread on paper, you then have to transfer your corrections to the screen, which does take up time.

Proofreading begins by having your internet browser open and ready to google any grammar questions you have. If you don't own The Chicago Manual of Style, go buy one. And then learn it. There's simply no way around not knowing your grammar rules if you're a writer.

If you have trouble focusing, then I'd say print the thing out and read it that way. Use another piece of paper to cover up the lines on the page you're not looking at. Work a page at the time, if you have to, but don't rush. If you can speed read, this isn't the place to do it. Slow down and question everything you see on the page: spellings, commas, dialogue attribution tags, etc., until you're sure that line is perfect. Then you can finally move on.

Proofreading is not an easy process. It's not even fun. But it's vital to your work. If a manuscript filled with horrible comma splices and no quotation marks shows up at an agent's desk, you can better believe that you'll get a rejection letter before the agent even gets past the first page. And no, that's not unfair to you as a writer. It's your fault for not holding up your end of the bargain as the writer.

Writing Craft: To Write Better, Read More

Over at the PFS Book Club today, I talked about critical reading - the act of reading as analysis to foster deeper understanding of a work. I then realized that writers need to be aware of their most important job as writers: to be readers.

When I speak to my students, as a professor of English, I often ask my students if they like to read. Most of them say no, but a few of them fess up to liking Harry Potter or Twilight. (Read this great article about JK Rowling saving reading for a whole generation in the WSJ.) But as I continue to ask them questions, you begin to realize they do enjoy reading - they surf the web, read the news, or read a magazine. It's just that don't like reading books (takes too long, most of them say).

Writers, unfortunately, don't have this option. And wannabe writers who don't realize this are never going to make it very far in publishing if they don't read. One of the main reasons for this is that you need to know how a book works. It's not just words on a page, but rather hundreds of years of collective experimentation that have developed our narrative structures, ones that people know how to follow and enjoy.

Writers who don't read also won't understand the current marketplace. The writers need to see the books that people actually like. I'm currently reviewing a memoir for a freelance assignment, but the book's not really a memoir in the modern sense of the word - it's an autobiography. And because of that, the book had to be self-published. Autobiographies aren't published anymore, because they don't sell.

You've got to do your homework if you want to succeed. And that homework is reading.

Also, avoid reading only a certain type of book. I know it may be your favorite, and it might even be the only one you enjoy, but your writing won't improve that way. You must force yourself to pick up other books, other styles, other authors, because your writing mind can stitch together what you like (or hate) about other books into your own work.

The best writing comes from those who can take influences from all over the map and transform them into something new. If you're only reading one type of book, then there's a good chance your work will feel generic and stale.

What it comes down to is this: being a writer is impossible without reading. This is also due to the fact that you'll need to read your own work before submitting it. Trust me, just because you write the last line in your 1,000 page novel doesn't mean it's done. If you don't read other books, you won't be able to tell if your own book is ready to sit on a shelf next to the real deal.

Writing Craft: How to Pre-Write

In the last Writing Craft, I talked about the writing process, which covers how people actually write: from brainstorming to proofreading. In today's Writing Craft (and probably a few more down the road), I'm going to focus on one particular step in that process. Today, let's talk about pre-writing.

Jason Aaron, a columnist for Comic Book Resources and writer for books like the indie hit Scalped and the upcoming mutant event X-Men: Schism, posted an article last week about how one of the most important things for him to do when writing is planning things out. And I couldn't agree more.

Pre-writing, that stage between brainstorming (where it's all in your head) and the actual writing (where you write in full chapters or at least full scenes), is the writing process stage that's most often ignored, especially by younger writers. They have all these ideas in their heads, and they just want to get them out on the page.

Surprisingly, I don't think that's a bad thing. My writing process was, for a long time, to write first and then deal with planning later. When you do that, you're creating a very long process of editing and rewriting. For myself, I would write whole chapters and then scrap them entirely once I figured out what I wanted to do. It wasn't until I became a more mature writer did I realize that pre-writing would save me a whole lot of wasted time.

Pre-writing can consist of anything that helps you focus your ideas before you start writing. The most obvious form of pre-writing is the outline. In nonfiction, outlines are an essential part of the book proposal, but they're used less often in fiction. It could be, though, a good idea to outline each chapter - what will happen, what characters will be there, why this chapter is upping the tension level, etc.. Knowing these things before you write will save you time in the end from having chapters that just don't work.

Pre-writing can also exist of smaller writing exercises that are designed to get you ready to write the actual book. For example, my current novel has six narrators, all with a different voice. In the pre-writing stage, I practiced the voices, writing just a page or two, to make sure that I had each one down before I tried to write a whole chapter. It was easier than rewriting chapters worth of narrative voices.

There are also brainstorming exercises that can really help you focus your ideas. This is where the whole line between brainstorming and pre-writing becomes a bit unclear. As a writing professor, I describe anything in the mind as brainstorming and anything on paper as pre-writing.

For example, I love to use relationship bubbles, writing a main character's name in the center bubble and drawing lines to other characters and describing that relationship in a single word. I also go for storyboards, where I detail each chapter on a notecard and move them around on my wall, so I can get a visual for the book's layout, instead of your standard outline on paper.

In any case, for all writer out there, I suggest you try to pre-write more than you do. It will save you time in the end, and it truly does help get your creative juices flowing. Pre-writing is especially good for days when you're having a bit of writer's block.

Writing Craft: The Writing Process

When I teach a writing class, my pedagogy comes from two places: Gardner's theory of mulitple intelligences and the writing process. While multiple intelligences has more to do with how you teach someone, the writing process is something that all writers need to be aware of, not just those poor students writing essays.

The writing process describes the idea that writing has multiple stages and that the act of writing is more than simply putting pen to paper. In other words, writing doesn't begin with that flicking cursor, but rather, writing covers everything from the moment a story enters your brain to the time when you send it off to agents, editors, or readers.

In order (which can be altered and reversed and changed, but this is the basics here), the writing process goes something like this:

• Brainstorming
• Outlining
• Writing
• Reading
• Editing/Rewriting
• Proofreading

In other words, writing is actually a 5 to 6 step process (depending on how you break down the writing process - some people believe brainstorming and outlining to be the same step or similarly, editing and proofreading). As a creative writer, this is important to remember.

Too often, young writers simply sit down at their computers and write. They don't take the time to truly develop the work before they start to write, so they get stuck in the middle. All too often, when we get stuck as writers (that awful writer's block), we just stop. Brainstorming and outlining can prevent that from happening.

On the other end of the spectrum, editing/rewriting and proofreading are major steps that writers tend to want to gloss over. If you ask a major author, especially in literary fiction, they'll tell you that the majority of their time is spent in revisions, first doing revisions alone, then revisions with their agent, and then revisions with their editor.

The problem is, though, that nowadays, agents want that first manuscript to be flawless. They don't want to spend any time developing a new author - they want the new author to show up, first day, with a complete and utterly perfect, ready to publish manuscript in hand. (And I'm not exaggerating too much.) To do this, writers need to spend far more time editing, most likely much longer than the time they spent actually writing the piece. That's how you create (publishable) art.