On Writing The Breakout Novel

[elfs]

I'm posting this here because I know if I posted it to rasfc (rec.arts.sf.composition) a flamewar would break out, the composition and arc of which could be predicted as certainly as a Paris Hilton press spree. Anyway, one of the regulars there has posted about the book Writing the Breakout Novel, in which it is suggested you go to your own shelves and pick out three books you liked highly, and you will find the books all have the same characteristics (and by extention, any story you write should have these characteristics as well):

• The book takes you to an unfamiliar and somehow dangerous world,
• The memorable characters in the book are larger than life,
• What happens to the characters is unusual, dramatic and meaningful,
• The book is about something. It has an overarching theme.

The author then goes on to say that when he's looking for a valuable premise to a story, it has to have the following characteristics:

• plausibility
• inherent conflict (needs to be strong and difficult to resolve)
• originality
• gut emotional appeal

My first reaction upon reading these bullet points was straightforwards: Is there really anyone out there writing who doesn't understand this? That the story has to be interesting, and that includes both the characters and the setting? That the book has to be about something?

The other day I was sitting on the bus and watching the young man across from me. He was reading a book called Writing the Fire: Unleashing the Writer Within You or some such nonsense. I just smiled and wrote another thousand words.

Comments

[rapier.livejournal.com]

Heh, that guy might as well have been me. I'll do a thousand writing-related things before I sit down to write.

"Research," for instance. Yes, I just laughed when I wrote that. Let's say a story might peripherally involve a cavalry trooper in a world with 1870-ish technology (for instance). I feel insecure because maybe I don't know a lot about how a cavalry unit might operate, so I start to read and read about American cavalry equipment, tactics, operations, history, et cetera, in the late 19th century. I tell myself, "Maybe the story won't include all this stuff, but I want to at least know what I'm talking about and not write something totally unpractical or implausible and get laughed at by some theoretical reader who knows more than I do."

So I abuse what little writing time I allot myself for "research." Or tormenting myself over a single sentence, a single phrase, the right word. Or run some old paragraph from page 3 through the mill again, tightening it up again. But god forbid I actually "write another thousand words."

I'm a little envious. Can you tell?

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I have my own problems with writing.

I'm glad, you, Elf, can write apparently effortlessly and quickly, but I'm not so lucky or talented.

I go through periods where I can't really keep all the details in my head, and so I find myself writing out personality traits and history so later I have something to work with.

Or I write out between two and seventy pages of material and suddenly the story I had in mind all goes completely dry as dust, and I can't find the spark I had which drove the story forward.

I am still figuring out how I write and what works. I've finished perhaps two pieces in my entire life, and they were both crap, unsalvageable. The fact that people like you can write so easily fills me with profound hope, but I'm not there yet. In the front of my head, yes, I know all those things about writing, but at the back of my head where these things matter, it's obvious the message hasn't gotten through completely.

I'm sorry if I was ranting. I'll shut up now.

[davidlevine]

Well, I suspect that most writers do understand at some level that a story has to have all of those things. But when you're up to your elbows in sentences and there are adjectives and adverbs all over the floor, sometimes it's useful to have a nice bulleted list of larger goals that you should be careful not to forget. (I do like the checklists at the end of each chapter of that book... they're useful for evaluating a work in progress.)

I've also found that I've often needed to be told certain basics again and again and again before they really sink in. For example: "life needs to be hard for the character." I can read that in a book, and go "yes, of course." And then I'll hear it from another writer, and say "obviously." And then I'll see it in a comment on someone's LJ, and I'll say "naturally." And then one day I'll read it in a magazine article, when I'm also trying to figure out why the current work in progress is just lying there like a dead slug, and suddenly the light goes on and the chorus of angels sings out and I say "aha! life needs to be hard for the character!" And from that moment on I can move forward confidently on that point, while continuing to screw up someplace else.

Advice doesn't really click, it doesn't really work, until you hear it at the moment you are truly ready to hear it. Which means that there's value in being told the same basic things over and over and over again, because you never can tell when the stars will align. And sometimes you can even get that "aha!" moment twice for the same piece of advice.

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

Well *this* was very nicely written. "...while continuing to screw up someplace else" had me snorking. Heh.

[leethomps.livejournal.com]

Sadly I've read more than one book where it seems the author didn't understand it had to be interesting... fortunately this seems to be an exception... :)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]