Monthly Archives: April 2018

Suffering for Your Writing

You’ve heard the phrase “suffering for your art,” and you know the stereotype of the writer who’s deeply disturbed and probably insane. Let’s reason this out together.

First, I’d like to define some terms. Suffering means simply to experience something undesirable, some hardship. Given that definition of suffering, it’s something no human escapes. We all have undesirable experiences. Suffering is universal and inevitable.

An insane person is one who does not exhibit normal perception, behavior, or social interaction. Imagine lining up all people in order from the most sane to the most insane. Even psychologists would have a difficult time marking the boundary separating the sane from the insane, though most would agree about those at the extreme ends of the line.

For my purposes here, let’s consider insanity a rare condition. Let’s use the term as a psychologist might, and not like the hyperbole we use when seeing someone do something remarkable: “He’s insane!”

In this post, Wency Leung cites a study showing that creative people are more likely to receive treatment for mental illnesses, and likely also are related to people with mental disorders. The study specifically found authors to have high likelihoods of anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and substance abuse, and to be more prone to suicide than the general population.

Michelle Roberts cites the same study, but her post details a similarity between the brain scans of creative people and those of schizophrenics. Both seem to have fewer mental filters, thus allowing a greater capacity for seeing connections between unlike things. Those two groups make associations and links not made by the general population.

Exploring the study’s implications for writers, Kimberley Turner warns against glamorizing mental illness, saying it can bring on depressions that are far from desirable. Given the higher incidence of mental illness with writers, she asks if writing causes the illness and its associated unhappiness, or if the mentally ill are more likely to take up writing. She concludes that depression is not a necessary condition to be a great writer, but that a writer must have endured some suffering to portray believable characters contending with conflict.

This post from Kevin T. Johns focuses on the suffering writer, without delving into whether that suffering results from, or causes, insanity. He contends writers must suffer for their art. However, they need not seek out suffering; life supplies enough suffering by itself. Writers differ from most people in that they use suffering. They don’t shy away from the hurt and pain—they write down every detail. They force characters to suffer, thus producing engaging literature.

Considering that question of whether suffering sparks people to write, or writing itself causes suffering, Mark McGuinness distinguishes between two kinds of suffering. Suffering from life, he contends, is different from suffering from your art. We all suffer the pain of living, so you must face and overcome it. Writers use it by learning from it and writing it down. However, he spares no sympathy for writers who suffer from their writing. He finds that self-pitying and unhelpful.

As for me, I agree life provides enough suffering for any writer to use. However, I recommend you not allow your writing to cause you undue suffering, let alone to drive you insane. Your readers await your next quality story, and you can’t deliver if you’re sliding into depression and madness.

Life throws bad stuff at all of us, but we get to choose how to respond. I’m in favor of remaining as optimistic as you can. That’s the best advice available from your fellow suffering writer—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 29, 2018Permalink

12 Types of Combination Stories

The reading public raved about your book. Readers loved the characters, the setting, everything, and they’re asking for more. More? Yes, more novels with those characters in that world you created.

What can you do? You could start a series, and I have a dozen suggestions on how to do that.

This ‘problem’ happened to Homer in ancient Greece. The Iliad was popular, and fans demanded more. So he wrote the Odyssey, very likely the first sequel in history.

But straight sequels aren’t the only type of combination novels you could write. There are many more, and I’ll define each one. I’ll use the term ‘base novel’ to mean the one you wrote first, the one fans loved so much. I’ve included an illustration that attempts to depict these types graphically.

  1. Sequel. This picks up where the base novel left off. It has most of the same characters and takes place in the same fictional world as the base novel.
  2. Stand-Alone sequel. This is like a sequel, but is so self-contained that readers need not have read the base novel.
  3. Threequel. This takes place after the sequel. It’s also called a second sequel.
  4. Prequel. This takes place at a time before the base novel, and establishes the base novel’s backstory. For readers who already read the base novel, there won’t be a surprise ending, so it can be challenging to keep prequels interesting.
  5. Interquel. This is set in a time between two already existing works of your series.
  6. Crossover. This is a sequel to two different base novels that weren’t previously part of the same series. Say you have a compelling character in Base Novel 1 and an equally compelling character in Base Novel 2. You could write a Crossover novel in which they meet and interact.
  7. Remake. This is where you write a new version of the base novel. You take the same concept but redo it, abandoning any connections to it, or continuity with it. It’s more common in the movie industry.
  8. Reboot. This is like a Remake, but you’re redoing the base novel of an existing series. Again, it’s more common for movies.
  9. Spinoff. This is when a secondary character stole the show in your base novel, so you write another novel featuring that character. It can take place at a time before, during, or after the base novel.
  10. Parallel. This is a novel that takes place at the same time as the base novel. It is set in the same world, but may involve different characters.
  11. Spiritual Successor. This doesn’t build on the base novel, but contains many of the themes, elements, and the style of the base novel. You write it in the same ‘spirit’ as the base novel. It’s also called a Spiritual Sequel.
  12. Companion Piece. This is associated with and complementary to your base novel. It needn’t take place in the same world, but it expands on ideas and themes of the base novel and you intend for your readers to think of it in the same context as the base novel.

You can write novels in any or all of those forms. There are so many ways to please your hungry fans. One problem can occur if your enthusiasm for the series wanes before the clamoring from your readers dies down. Let’s call that the Misery problem, and we’ll leave that for a future blog post by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 21, 2018Permalink

Your Antifragile Hero

Is the protagonist of your story antifragile? Should she be?

I wrote an earlier post on ‘antifragility,’ but there I applied the term to stories themselves. Today we apply it to heroes/protagonists/main characters.

Here’s a brief introduction to antifragility. In his book Antifragile, Things That Gain From Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb sought an antonym of the word “fragile.” He didn’t mean words like ‘resilient,’ ‘tough,’ or ‘robust,’ which refer to sustaining shocks without damage. He wanted to describe things that improve their resistance to stress by being stressed. There being no such word, he coined the term ‘antifragile.’

What does this have to do with literary heroes? Remember, all stories involve conflict.The writer must subject the protagonist to a significant conflict. Stories are about the hero contending with the problems arising from this conflict.

Conflict needn’t involve bombs or guns, swords or knives. The conflict can be verbal jousting with another character. It can be internal, as the hero wrestles some inner demon.

Note the mention of ‘disorder’ in the subtitle to Taleb’s book. Often, a story begins with an orderly, logical world for the hero, a world soon thrown into chaos, subjecting the hero to confusion and unfamiliar surroundings. The story then becomes the hero’s struggle to contend with this new and disorderly world.

The best stories take some weakness in the protagonist’s psychological character or some aspect of the hero that deviates from the norm, and exploit it. That is, the author designs the conflict to attack that weakness or stress that deviating aspect. In this manner, the author fits the specific conflict to the specific hero.

Moreover, a good writer will show no mercy, and will ramp up the conflict throughout the story to the point where it seems the protagonist can stand it no longer. Authors do this, not because they’re sadistic, but to get the reader to care about the character, to want to read the story to the end.

The story ends soon after the resolution of the conflict. In a few stories, the resolution involves the death of the main character. Most of the time, though, the protagonist prevails in the struggle and wins the day. This occurs when the hero faces her fears, defeats her inner demons, beats the bad guy, etc. In the best stories, the main character learns something in the process, changes for the better, improves herself in some way.

In this manner, the protagonist exhibits antifragility. She encounters several stressful situations and emerges stronger from the ordeal. She changes and learns from the experience. She is antifragile.

Maybe this idea extends beyond the hero herself. In stories where the protagonist prevails in the conflict, we could say the protagonist is teaching us, the readers, about antifragility. To be more specific, as we read such tales, we learn how to become antifragile ourselves.

Maybe you disagree. Go ahead and submit comments disputing my statements. Such slings and arrows only serve to make me stronger. Antifragility is the middle name of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 15, 2018Permalink

How to Write When You’re Not Writing

This post’s title sounds kind of Zen, doesn’t it? What does it mean to write when you’re not writing?

Let’s say you’d like to be a writer, or a more prolific writer. The trouble is time. There’s not enough of it in your day. The rest of life sucks up too much time. Just when you find yourself with a few free minutes to write, the words won’t flow, or you’re too exhausted.

What if you could get some writing done during the rest of the day when you’re not writing? Moreover, what if I told you that if you could write when you’re not writing, you’ll write more and better prose when you do write? Is that even possible?

It is possible. I’ve hinted about it in previous posts, but today I’ll describe what I mean. First, I’ll discuss the available time, and then I’ll go into what you can do with that time.

List the activities you do during a typical week or month that have the following properties: (1) you are either alone or don’t have to interact with others, (2) you are performing drone work that doesn’t require full concentration, or you’re waiting for something to happen.

Examples of these activities might include:

  1. Cleaning your place;
  2. Commuting to and from work;
  3. Waiting in a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room;
  4. Showering or bathing;
  5. Preparing or eating a meal alone, and cleaning up afterward;
  6. Sitting (ahem) atop a porcelain throne in the bathroom;
  7. Yard work or gardening;
  8. Exercising;
  9. Waiting to fall asleep;
  10. Etc.

Your list would be different, but you get the idea. That represents an amount of time when you’re awake and alert, but may not need to focus all your attention on your activity. (Be careful with the commuting one, though; that works best if you ride in a vehicle someone else is driving.)

That’s the time you have available to write when you’re not writing. What kind of writing can you do during that time? Especially if you can’t actually write anything down?

Here are some examples:

  1. Think of your next story idea;
  2. Flesh out a character, including her specifics like strengths, weaknesses, personality, quirks, motivations, life story, etc.;
  3. Imagine the details of a scene’s setting;
  4. Work out a solution to a plot problem;
  5. Do some people-watching, for appearance quirks, gestures, and speech patterns you can use for your characters;
  6. Lay out how the next scene will go, including dialogue and action;
  7. Etc.

This list will vary quite a bit, not just between different writers, but it will vary for you, day to day. These are the things you will think about during the times you’re not writing. Sometimes the process may be almost, or entirely, subconscious. You emerge with the problem solved in your mind even though you’d don’t recall thinking about it.

Oh, yeah. Remember I mentioned that writing when you aren’t writing will help you be more productive when you are writing? Here’s how that works. Since you solved some problems when you weren’t writing, you’ll sit down at the keyboard and you’ll know what to do right away. No need to ponder things. Those ideas you had will spill out.

Some ideas won’t look as good when you write them down as they did in your mind while you were showering. That’s okay; you can always modify and improve them.

By the way, this process of having your non-writing time influence your writing time—it also works the other way around, too. When you’re writing and you come across a problem, relax. You don’t have to solve it right away. Just file it away for future thought. That’s what your non-writing time is for. Simply move on. In this manner, your writing time also serves to prime the pump with problems to work on in your non-writing time.

Practice writing when not writing, my diligent apprentice, and you, too, will attain the skills of Zen Master—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 8, 2018Permalink

Writing by Number, Part II

Are you the type of writer who measures progress through word counts? If so, here’s today’s question: how do you measure your progress in the second draft?

I first explored the metrics of writing in this post, but I was thinking of first drafts as I wrote it.

It’s easy to measure progress on your first draft. The manuscript was x words long at the end of yesterday, and y words long at the end of today; therefore, today’s word count is y – x. Any word processor can count those for you. There are several blog posts where you can compare your words/day count to those of many famous authors.

That’s fine for the first draft. There was a blank screen before, and there are words on it now. Easy to see and measure the difference.

What about the second draft, and all subsequent ones? For me, those are the more difficult and time-consuming drafts, and therefore it’s even more important to find a way to measure progress. But despite the crying need for a good metric in these drafts, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable one.

Let’s illustrate the problem with some numerical examples. Let’s say the first draft of your short story contains 6000 words. At this point, you don’t really know how long the finished story will be. That first draft might have been too verbose, so cutting will be necessary. Or you might have left out some key points, so it needs to be longer.

You start the 2nd draft editing process, using whatever technique you’ve grown accustomed to. At the end of the first day of this, you reviewed 1000 words of that first draft. To that, you added 100 words and cut 200. Those 1000 words are now 900 words (1000+100-200), with 5000 remaining to review.

How do you measure the work of that first day of editing?

  • Do you count added words as positive, and cut words as negative? That would be -100. On days when you cut more than you add, your ‘progress’ will be negative.
  • Do you count the percentage complete for editing the entire story (900 ÷ 6000 = 15%)? In that case, how long do you think the final story will be; what number do you put in the denominator? 6000 was the length of the first draft and most likely won’t be the length of the second.
  • Since both adding and cutting represent work on your part, do you add the adds and subtracts together (100 + 200 = 300)? That may not be easy to get your word processor to do.
  • Do you count all 900 words as the finished portion of your 2nd draft?

To me, the last option seems the best. It’s easy to get your word processor to count, and does represent completed work on your part. On the other hand, some days, you may not have much editing to do and will nevertheless get credit for quite a bit of work. On other days, you may cut most of what you read, and will end up with very little credit for all that work.

I offer the question up to the wisdom of the web. Comment and let me know how you measure your daily progress through 2nd and subsequent drafts. If there’s one writer you can count on who can learn from others, it’s—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 1, 2018Permalink