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julieandrewsI got the January 2008 issue of The Writer out of the library on a whim. I think I initially had in mind to search for upcoming contests. Anyway, ran across an article entitled "Letter to a (naive) MFA student" by Joshua Henkin.
There's some common-sense advice in there. 'Common-sense' meaning I already knew it. ;) There's also some other stuff that I wanted to jot down. And I might as well do so publicly. A record is a record.
He says passive protagonists come about because humans are naturally risk-averse and conflict-averse and perhaps writers even a bit moreso than average. One sign of a passive character is one who watches a lot. This all made sense to me. I am risk-averse and conflict-averse and I'd already identified that putting my characters in tough situations was a problem issue for me. (At least, I perceive it to be.) I'm thinking maybe I need to try writing some Gryffindor characters as good practice to get out of this mode. Gryffindors live for risk.
Another tip he includes. "Odd numbers are good." As in the phrase: two's company, three's a crowd. Love triangles, menage a troi's, seven people on Gilligan's Island. So if your two characters are being boring, add a third. A lot of teams, especially in children's fiction and TV shows tend to be sets of five. Voltron, G-Force, Captain Planet.. I'd noticed that before. Apparently the reason is.. it's an odd number!
Flashbacks. Apparently writing students put a lot of action in flashbacks. This puts you one more step removed from the action and yadda yadda, you probably know all that. The thought I had while reading about that was though that maybe I could get more in the mode of telling a story if I set out thinking about it as a flashback. 'This happened, now let me tell you how it happened.' You'd think the past tense would be enough of a clue for me, but I'm thinking no. It might be that I'm too used to writing in the present tense for the immediacy of an online roleplaying game. The action is happening now. So when I write a story, I'm just swapping tenses, as easily as I swap gender pronouns. Maybe I need to think about it a bit more and it'll make the writing easier. It might make the conflict seem like it's at a remove and therefore safer and easier to deal with. (Well, that's my theory anyway, and I'm sticking to it until I've proven it wrong. Like any good science fictionist.)
So.. we'll see if any of this helps.
There's some common-sense advice in there. 'Common-sense' meaning I already knew it. ;) There's also some other stuff that I wanted to jot down. And I might as well do so publicly. A record is a record.
He says passive protagonists come about because humans are naturally risk-averse and conflict-averse and perhaps writers even a bit moreso than average. One sign of a passive character is one who watches a lot. This all made sense to me. I am risk-averse and conflict-averse and I'd already identified that putting my characters in tough situations was a problem issue for me. (At least, I perceive it to be.) I'm thinking maybe I need to try writing some Gryffindor characters as good practice to get out of this mode. Gryffindors live for risk.
Another tip he includes. "Odd numbers are good." As in the phrase: two's company, three's a crowd. Love triangles, menage a troi's, seven people on Gilligan's Island. So if your two characters are being boring, add a third. A lot of teams, especially in children's fiction and TV shows tend to be sets of five. Voltron, G-Force, Captain Planet.. I'd noticed that before. Apparently the reason is.. it's an odd number!
Flashbacks. Apparently writing students put a lot of action in flashbacks. This puts you one more step removed from the action and yadda yadda, you probably know all that. The thought I had while reading about that was though that maybe I could get more in the mode of telling a story if I set out thinking about it as a flashback. 'This happened, now let me tell you how it happened.' You'd think the past tense would be enough of a clue for me, but I'm thinking no. It might be that I'm too used to writing in the present tense for the immediacy of an online roleplaying game. The action is happening now. So when I write a story, I'm just swapping tenses, as easily as I swap gender pronouns. Maybe I need to think about it a bit more and it'll make the writing easier. It might make the conflict seem like it's at a remove and therefore safer and easier to deal with. (Well, that's my theory anyway, and I'm sticking to it until I've proven it wrong. Like any good science fictionist.)
So.. we'll see if any of this helps.
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Date: 2008-03-16 09:19 pm (UTC)Oz
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Date: 2008-03-16 09:41 pm (UTC)* Entertain the reader.
* Tell a story, not a character sketch or slice of life.
* Don't write a victim story.
* Be concrete rather than abstract. (Don't just decide to write about 'loneliness'.)
* Short stories are practically impossible to sell. (This is less relevant in genre fiction.)
* It's easier to get a new, hungry agent than one who's well-established.
It seemed like the article was saying that most literary MFA students think that once their work is 'good' it'll magically get picked up by a publisher and sell a bazillion copies with no further work on their part. Mostly because the schools don't teach much about the business aspect of writing.