I was trained in school to write essays and lesson plans. I teach academic writing. I have experience writing teacher guides and process documents, and have edited a variety of written materials. Creating nonfiction and technical documents really isn't a problem for me.
I've dabbled in creative writing for most of my life. I've critiqued and edited original stories and fan fiction. But there's always been some sort of block between creative writing and me, and I couldn't put my finger on it until I started cleaning up my notes and bookmarks as I was reconsidering killing a much-loved project. And then the problem hit me.
I have never been trained in creative writing. I've never been formally trained in editing, either, beyond what was taught in my English classes in middle school and high school, but at least I've had that exposure, and it's only been reinforced in my teaching. But there hasn't been anything beyond my plodding on without reflection through my creative writing. I've had no classes. My editing is more technical than story-focused. There's been virtually no catalyst to help me grow and develop better creative writing skills.
I follow blogs on creative writing. I'm starting to read books on game writing, which often cover some degree of creative writing. And that information is just being added to a weak understanding of what makes creative writing what it is. I've honestly just been taking my reading experience and applying it to my nonfiction training.
It really does explain so much, and it gives me a direction to move in my self-directed studies. It even gives me a project to practice what I'm learning! Maybe there's some hope for me.
Aug 202010
One of the things I’ve had rolling around in my head since the second or third revision round of this manuscript is that maybe I’m trying to force it to be a novel. This started out as a NanNoWriMo project, so it makes sense that it should be a novel, right?
But I’ve noticed as I’m working that I’m trying to create a very visual world through my text. I became so invested in creating the backdrop this story plays out against, in creating certain characters and symbols, that I’ve tried too hard to paint these scenes. In trying to get the reader to see what I see, I’ve been overly descriptive. In very beginner-ish ways. It’s almost kind of cute when it isn’t downright annoying, provoking grumbles of, “What was I thinking? Why did I do that?”
It really seems to gather around a specific character. I didn’t realize I’d created her to be a sort of linchpin in the events of the book, but every time she shows up, I start wondering if I should be writing a script instead of a novel. I focus a lot on what she’s doing and where she’s doing it. In fact, it’s become so severe in later revision rounds that I’ve nearly started scripting her scenes in the hopes it would get it out of my system.
But it’s really not her fault, and so that wouldn’t fix much. This story spoofs treasure hunting movies, books, and games…all of which are visual in nature. So, it follows that this novel should also be visual in nature. If I’m struggling to do it in text, then my next best bet is probably to adapt it to a script…and then try to figure out how to draw everything (since we all know I’m still too new an artist to be able to do this successfully).
Maybe I’ll just try to figure out how to make the text work the way I want without being completely sophomoric about it.
Character development is a known issue of mine. With very few exceptions, the majority of my main characters are uninteresting. They lack something. Some lack a backbone, which is odd given that I’m the one writing them. An amazing number of them lack any sort of drive or goal. Others just flat out lack personality.
Alexandra Williams, the main character of my favorite NaNovel that I’ve ever worked on (the one I’m currently trying to beat into something readable), falls into that second category. Originally, these weird guys roughly her age asked her to help them find one of her contemporaries, and she was only too happy to go along for the sake of going along. She had no other reason for being interested in the case.
Actually, she kind of reminds me of a character I once played in a pick-up game, one who could have happily remained at the tavern eating her dinner because there was absolutely nothing interesting to her about the events going on.
Unlike that character, though, Alex played her role well within the plot of the story. It could have been any other archaologist in the world, but Alex really made it her own little quest. Eventually, I revised things to a point where she was suddenly a decent choice for the job because the missing archaeologist was her father’s old friend and colleague, but Alex herself had little to do with the choice. If she’d had a sibling who was also an archaeologist, that sibling would have been just as valid a choice.
Even with the family connection, Alex’s only real reason for working on this particular case is because she was asked. And she comes out of it with a broken ankle and a better understanding of an obscure culture she’d never heard of prior to the story. Alex is a strong, confident young woman who makes it clear early on that she pretty much does whatever she chooses to do, and she just goes along with first a research assistant and then some scary guys roughly her age.
And she’s the protagonist.
I think Alex illustrates a lot about where my main characters fail, and she gives me a lot to think about while I’m trying to make her into a better character and trying to research character development. I sometimes wonder if I stay with this manuscript because I can see so many opportunities to learn more about crafting a good story.
Aug 162010
Seven years ago, I was consumed by this idea of writing a spoof of treasure hunting media. I loved archaeology-themed books, movies, and games, so I had a wealth of tropes to play with. I created an archaeologist main character and her staff, created a group of villains, and started building an outline. I tried to throw in a trope or two as I went.
The outline was finally “ready” shortly before NaNoWriMo started that year, so this project became my NaNovel for that year. That year marked my first year as a Municipal Liaison, so I was writing and organizing events for a region that hadn’t had them before. It was also the year I was working as an assistant editor, and the combined stress from work and NaNoWriMo ended up making me very sick. I didn’t finish that month.
Two years later, after a few more stress- and environment-induced illnesses, a cross-country move, and a career shift, I finally sat down to finish the manuscript. It probably took me the better part of the next year to finally get to the final scene, but I got there.
I had a couple of friends read over it, and while both had kind words, neither had picked up on the fact it was a spoof. Their main complaint was that it looked like I’d ripped off all these archaeology-themed movies and games.
I kept their words in mind when I sat down to do the first round of revisions, only to find that not making the spoof clear wasn’t my biggest problem. The bad guys were barely present in the book, and the artifact everyone was searching for were even less present. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact I’d done that, and then I couldn’t figure out why no one else realized it. I rewrote the entire novel, trying to bring the bad guys in more. But another friend read over it and admitted I hadn’t brought them in well.
Frustrated at my inability to work with my villains, I labeled the project “dead” in February of this year and decided to move on to another project.
I started organizing my notes and bookmarks, trying to sift through outdated ones and tag the rest so I could actually find things. I discovered Springpad (my notetaking app) allowed you to pull notes into Notebooks that you could order and change, and started building another project in one of those Notebooks.
As I was working on one project, though, the archaeology spoof whispered in the back of my mind, “I bet if you pulled all of my notes into there and sorted everything out, you could probably fix most of my problems.” I’m weak, and easily swayed by talking manuscripts. I started building an information guide (or writer’s bible) for the manuscript and started filling it with information I’d written down but long since forgotten.
And I changed the project’s status from “dead” to “zombie”, because every time I say I’m done, it sucks me right back in. It just won’t get out of my head!
The other day, I talked about the debate over whether fan fiction is plagiarized or inspired. Today, I’d like to start off by talking about fan fiction as flattery. Yes, flattery. You see, there’s an old saying about imitation being a form of flattery, so it’s arguable that someone writing fan fiction is trying to pay a compliment of sorts to the original creator.
Sometimes, though, something happens to the fan fiction writer. She was perfectly happy writing stories about her favorite characters from her favorite media. She was sharing her work with her community and reading others’ work. And then it happens. This little voice (that sounds suspiciously nothing like any of the characters from the media she’s imitating) in her head says, “What if you did it this way?” Suddenly, she’s working on a fiction that is set somewhere the characters would never be, somewhere completely inside her imagination. Or maybe she’s experimenting with changing a critical aspect of one of the characters and exploring how that change affects his interactions with other characters.
She starts changing little things bit by bit, bringing out more of her own vision and relying less on someone else’s constructs. Eventually (although she doesn’t realize it at first), she’s changed so much and is relying so much on herself to create not only the plot but the characters and settings as well that she’s actually moved to creating her own original works. She’s learned how to develop and tweak characters and settings, to explore and play with ideas. In my experience, she’s also a stronger writers because she took the time to tinker with someone else’s creations, essentially deconstructing them and learning about character and setting development from the inside out.
This isn’t how it happened for me (I started out writing original fiction, and then dabbled periodically in fan fiction.), but I’ve watched students and fellow fandom participants go through it. It’s always interesting to watch because they often don’t realize what they’re doing and try to make their work continue to fit inside the fandom they’ve outgrown. It’s an apprenticeship into writing of sorts, and if they’re really thinking about it they’ll remember to credit the creator of the work that inspired their fan fiction as a source of inspiration and really flatter the creator.
If you’ve known me or read one of my blogs for any length of time, you know that I’m fascinated by fan fiction. There are many reasons for it, but one of the aspects that really fascinates me is the “Is fan fiction plagiarism?” debate.
At its core, the answer to this question is a very simple, “Yep.” The fan fiction creator has taken someone else’s characters, which they often then change into something radically different from the original character, and someone else’s world, which they either shun for a setting more like where they live or change radically to accommodate their altered versions of the original characters and woven a story around them. Some fan fiction writers will actually take an incident from the original stories and rewrite it to a different outcome and some will use it as a direct launch point for their own story. Others will create their own stories, often with an original character (Mary Sue or otherwise) or two woven in.
Wait a minute. The fan fiction writer will sometimes take the original world and altering it to fit what they know? Isn’t that inspiration, then? Wasn’t the fan fiction writer then just inspired by the original source?
And now you’ve seen where the argument begins, how it begins, and how circular it is. Just watching this argument can be fascinating enough, as people try to support why they’ve taken a side. It’s interesting to see how different people on each side regard the practice and wording of disclaimers, too.
Things only get really interesting, though, when you stop listening to the general debate and start listening to individuals within the fandom. You see, there are people within the fan fiction community who will plagiarize someone else’s fan fiction. It’s a bit meta, but there it is. Inevitably, the first person will find out, and caps-on arguments will ensue as to whether or not the second person really plagiarized or was inspired. (This is particularly entertaining when the second story has nothing more in common with the first story than a specific set of characters and a very vague plot similarity that looks like nothing more than both people responding to the same writing prompt.)
In every single case, the fan fiction writer who created the first piece screams, “Plagiarism!” while the second yells, “Inspiration!” And when someone watching the debate points out that both technically are plagiarizing the original source, both explode. For some reason, feeling plagiarized herself doesn’t give the fan fiction writer any sort of sympathy for the creator she herself plagiarized to begin with.
So, fan fiction is plagiarism. But it can also serve as the inspiration for an aspiring writer to start experimenting as part of their development.
Jul 302010
Not that I’m anywhere near being ready to have to make this decision, but I’ve often debated between querying my writing or just self-publishing it. Part of it is just the nerves that come with putting something very dear to you out where people can judge it. Part of it is listening to agents, editors, publishers, and writers who’ve already faced and made the decision. Part of it is listening to, “The sky is falling,” rhetoric from people both inside and outside the publishing industry.
Self-publishing has made small waves, with authors occasionally winning traditional contracts for successful self-publishing efforts. e-Books are making larger waves, in part because both traditional and self-publishers can create e-Books. It’s sort of fascinating to watch things play out.
But it does have me wondering: Who really should have the say on what’s going to be worth reading? We’ve always assumed it’s the publishing houses, because they’re supposedly trained or experienced enough to serve as the “best choice”. And agents, editors, and writers often share their thoughts on the published books they’ve been reading, so it’s safe to assume they’re probably in the larger group of us who read.
But they’re a section of it, and publishing houses have a history of passing on manuscripts that have later turned out to be The Next Big Deal. It’s a hazard of calculated risk-taking, I guess. It’s more that they’re making the decision of what they’d be willing to take on the production cost for. Self-publishers make the decision that they’re willing to take on the production cost for their own manuscripts. To me, that’s the real difference between the two.
But when it comes down to what’s going to be read, it seems like it’s the readers themselves who ultimately make that choice. Regardless of the publishing source. Regardless of the format. Readers will read what they want to read how they want to read it.
So, who really should be deciding what’s publishable?
Jun 182010
I haven’t completely given up on this project, but a lot of things are standing between me and this. Hopefully, next year will be better, but for now I just want to complete as much of this as I can.
Today’s offering comes from working on the prologue of an old novel manuscript. There aren’t words for how much is wrong with this manuscript, and I’ve given up on it more times than I can count, but something in me really wants to see it finished, or at least polished to a somewhat presentable state, so I keep dragging it out periodically and working on it.
A few months ago, I sent the last two revisions to a friend to see if she could find the problem that I knew was there but couldn’t put my finger on. She realized that the new intro I had put on the manuscript in the later revision was not an entry point and suggested I go back to my old intro. I’ve been wrestling with the two versions of that scene, trying to mesh the best parts of them together.
The worst part came when I was trying to mesh together two parts that gave me fits to write to begin with, but after a three-month break, they finally melded into the following:
“It is.” Aurora brushed her cinnamon hair off her shoulders and ran her fingertips ran lightly along the six alcoved shelves placed evenly about the room. “The pathway to this room is far less well-protected because the architects thought people would be less likely to continue since the stories say treasure is always hidden behind layers of traps.”
“That’s clever.”
“Not as clever as this.” Aurora stopped beside one of the alcoves. “This culture held its values very dear, so they made it so that anyone wanting to claim the artifact for himself must prove they understand those values by passing their ultimate test. Each of these statues represents one value treasured by the culture.” Aurora waved her hand over a statue. “The challenge is to place them on this pedestal in the correct order.”
Jun 182010
Thinking about how information organization is a cultural affair has me thinking about the effect of the cultures I’ve been exposed to on my own life. I was lucky to grow up in an area that was rich with culture and with a family that enjoys celebrating other cultures.
Being exposed to so many different cultures growing up has led to some interesting situations as an adult, though. For example, when I was in college, we had to create a multidisciplinary lesson plan for kinesiology. One of the disciplines had to be P.E. or health, so I elected to weave in social studies and teach an Israeli folk dance I’d learned a few summers before. But the day I went to present my lesson, I wore my Ancient Egypt vest without thinking. I realized it as I was setting up my lesson and turned the first two minutes of the lesson into a brief lecture on why I was removing my vest for the lesson.
Before that, I grew up with Greek mythology. I liked reading different versions of the same myth and figuring out what was different between them. Roman mythology didn’t interest me nearly so much. Rome seemed like a bunch of warriors, and I wasn’t into war. Anyone who confused the two pantheons was quickly straightened out. In fact, I’m so rabid about keeping the Greek and Roman pantheons straight that it’s a wonder I made it through Fred Saberhagen’s Swords Trilogy. To date, his disregard for the pantheons is the worst I’ve ever seen.
Even better was when I was working on a recent revision for one of my novels and discovered that I had really taken things too far. Before I started the very first revision, I did some research on the groups that have inhabited southern England, where the key points of the novel take place. My research didn’t turn up any sign of Roman occupation…so the key location is a hidden Roman temple. And in the temple are trap chambers reminiscent of the kind you see in treasure hunting movies set in Egyptian or South American pyramids. The trap chambers are slightly more acceptable because the manuscript is supposed to be spoofing treasure hunt media, but it still bothers me.
I’m always grateful for opportunities that allow me to experience different cultures. I’d like to believe I can be respectful of these cultures. I just wish my work would reflect that more often.
May 312010
Apparently, something dislodged in my head between killing that manuscript this morning, having a long conversation with a good friend this afternoon, and seeing an interesting Magic: The Gathering card this evening. I found my peaceful game of Mah-Jong Solitaire disrupted by the following:
Curator: You’d think since I’m trained in collections management that I’d be better able to curate my own stuff.
Jocelyn: Oh, I don’t know. This place has that stuffed bookshelves look that says, “I swear I’ll catalog you someday!”
Curator: [laugh] You’re very kind, dear. Now, why are you here again?
Jocelyn: I was wondering if you’d seen my aunt. I haven’t seen her since I left for school yesterday, and she’s not scheduled to leave until next week.
Curator: Perhaps she left early?
Jocelyn: That’s not like her. Will you ask her to call me if you see her?
Curator: Of course, Jocelyn.
When it started, it was just a conversation between the curator and a random person, but then it became clear that it was between the curator and Jocelyn, a character who has spent the better part of the last year trying to introduce herself to me. I was finally able to hear her.
I don’t know what this means, but perhaps now a part of me is free to explore Jocelyn’s world. It’ll be fun!
