The Coffee Writer

Tag: writing

  • Word of the Day: Cadence

    Vocabulary is a writer’s best friend.  Mine is sadly lacking.  (My grammar is worse, but my vocab list is pretty short.)

    So! Here’s a word to think about today, maybe use it somewhere if it’s useful.

    cadence“The cadence of her footsteps on the marble flooring heralded trouble on the way.”

    Cadence: noun
    1)
    a :  a rhythmic sequence or flow of sounds in language.
    b :  the beat, time, or measure of rhythmical motion or activity

    2)
    a :  a falling inflection of the voice
    b :  a concluding and usually falling strain; specifically :  a musical chord sequence moving to a harmonic close or point of rest and giving the sense of harmonic completion.

    3)  the modulated and rhythmic recurrence of a sound especially in nature.
    ~per Merriam-Webster

  • Writerly things… like Characters

    Ah, characters. The good guys. The bad guys. The goofy sidekicks. The random passerby in the background. These are the bread and butter of the storyworld, the main staple that feeds the craft. They don’t always have to be human in some medium to still get the stories across and there can be stories without characters.  It’s not recommended, though, because the audience wants to know who to cheer for. For that you need characters to choose from.

    Besides, creating characters is the fun part! What makes them unique?  What makes them a product of your imagination?  Even characters who are based on “real life” individuals have to be run through the imagination of the writer before they can be put on the page.  There’s always details that just won’t fit with the story the author wants to tell, from dialogue between characters to hair color to the preferred brand of booze they have while lamenting their broken homes. That’s all stuff the writer gets to make up and build stories around.

    Part of that is looking at the way real people actually work.  It does no good to tell a story where everything is perfect and no one screws up because everyone is flawless.  The audience starts to feel a bit like they’ve just stepped in amongst the Stepford Wives Club and they immediately want to leave; there’s no one they know there, there’s no one they recognize or identify with.  The story can be lost because the audience looses interest.

    The other problem point to the perfect-character is that a good story needs tension and perfection is the opposite of tension.  The Perfect World is the world where no one wants anything.  Tension is the result of a character wanting or needing something that they can’t easily obtain, there’s a conflict because something is in their way.  This is also something we as writers can borrow from “real life” in the creation of our characters.  We can build this conflict into the character’s past and we can use that to steer the plot.

    Character and plot are actually related more than we immediately notice as an audience; what makes a character unique is that they can’t be plug-and-play inserted into any story, we have to give them their story for this reason.  What do they want? How would they respond to a given situation?  Their past experiences and their present needs steer the answer to those questions and the answers to those questions should ultimately show how the plot unfolds. A writer has to dabble in a little psychology to play in creating characters and explore the idea of “universal needs” and how those impact people in their day to day lives when they go unfulfilled.

    Blogger and counselor Gina Senarighi compiled a useful list of examples of Unmet Universal Needs that impact how people communicate with each other in the real world. (It’s an interesting article, too, so check it out!) The list applies just as well to the fictional world.

    Universal_Needs_-_Creating_Characters
    Image copyright Gina Senarighi.

    Just as an exercise, go through this list of “Unmet Universal Needs” and see what kind of character traits jump out at you.  What can you build from them? A whole novel? A short story? Or just an interesting background/support character?  Every character you put on the page deserves the same amount of attention in their creation, because you never know if they’ll come in handy later while you’re writing!

  • Some Thoughts on Storytelling

    I found this great article, “What Makes a Really Good Story?” by Ted Albrighton, that looks at storytelling through the lens of commercial use.  You don’t often think about commercials as “stories” because, in theory, you know they’re trying to sell you something, not to entertain you.  Stories come with this connotation that they are how we “waste time” and check out of reality.  We don’t often think of them as valid forms of communication and a tool set to be relied on; if we did, getting an English degree wouldn’t have resulted in my hair-dresser telling me I wasted my money and should have gone for a business degree like she did.  Storytelling is a business, it has a function, people can profit from it if that is their goal in life.  Storytelling has been around as long as mankind; it wouldn’t have survived that long if it didn’t have a purpose. The marketing world is tapping into that.  So, buyer beware, they’re looking to lure you in with stories. And it will work, hook, line and sinker.

    The one thing I dislike about this article is the very narrow focus they have on what constitutes a story. A story is anything that gives you something to follow to a conclusion. One of the best examples of this that I’ve ever heard is “I threw the ball. It bounced. You caught it.”  That has a beginning, middle and end.  It evokes engaging images. It has characters. It is the movement of information from one source to another. Nine words made a story. Six words can tell just as effective a story; I’m sure you’ve heard of “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” largely attributed to Hemingway. Did I just sell sports equipment or baby shoes? No. But they were stories. So my caution here is to not get caught up on formulas of what works or what defines a story, because there are an endless variety of ways to craft a story. The only one that’s “the right way to do it” is the one that eventually gives you a product you’re satisfied with.

    The article has this really useful infographic that breaks down traditional storytelling in an easy to follow fashion, but with the focus being instead on what will sell.

    Image copyright ABC Copywriting. See the link!
    Image copyright ABC Copywriting. See the link!

    If you’re in advertising, this is useful.  If you’re looking to be published, this is also really useful! Publishing is sales, because people have to buy the work you publish. So in that sense, the graphic gives you some “insider” perspective on what’s most important and why.  In terms of just a writer, sitting down to put words on the page and get their story drawn out of their brain in the most logical, understandable way, this is still useful because it is relying on the recognized elements of a story. The article goes into more depth on them, but is focused on the marketing perspective to the point of distraction.

    Look through it, add your own, come up with your own “writing rules” to live by.  There is no such thing as a “proper” story.  It’s yours, so tell it how you wish!

     

     

  • Cover Letters and Job Hunting

    I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember and still find writing letters that begin “To whom it may concern” very tedious.  It’s not very engaging wordplay.  It’s boring.  It’s a business-world casualty hit to the writing voice.  But there it is, because formula is sometimes important.

    However, this is the emerging world of new media.  Rules are changing.  So If I get a vote, I vote that one’s the first to go.

  • Writerly things, with a Blogging Bent

    I am brand new at blogging.  Sure, I’ve been on the internet since the dawn of time.  (Okay, not actually that long, but I once ran up a $100 AOL dial-up bill, and I can imitate the sound of a modem.)  I have done my turn on Twitter, and Livejournal, and Facebook, and tumblr, and ohmygawd I remember myspace.  But blogging with the intent to communicate is a new thing I’m still trying to get the hang of.

    So when a friend pointed me to Single Dad Laughing’s “100 things I Never Expected to Learn Blogging” I pounced on it, because I have yet to meet a SDL post that I didn’t like.  And then, as I read it, I realized some of the concepts behind the points on the list are applicable to all writing.  All forms of publishing or broadcasting or idea-sharing.  Not just blogging.  And, as always, SDL has a helpful reminder to be nice to yourself as a content creator, such a novel idea!  So it’s a nice handy list to have in mind.

    It still gets down to an axiom preached by many people, lately most notably by Dean Winchester and Wil Wheaton: Don’t be a Dick.  Especially not on the internet.

  • It’s a Learning Experience

    So this writing thing.  It turns out it’s hard to do.  It takes a toll.  I’m not complaining, mind you, just making the observation.  I have been working on multiple projects, one after the other more than all at once, since September.  I’ve discovered I’m not good at multitasking on projects. None of the writing projects were for a paycheck, they were just for practice.  Bah, you say, writing doesn’t take practice.  Oh, no, I assure you. Writing takes practice.  This is what I have learned and am a little surprised by, so I’ll share.

    The obvious reason for practice is the whole “putting words in their proper order” thing, finding that writer’s voice. Sometimes the words just spew out in the perfect formation, the perfect timing and pacing and perfectly concise.  Other times, they don’t.  But improvement always happens whether you intend it to or not.  It’s called practice; even writers have to pay attention to the old “How do you get to Carnegie Hall” joke.  You get better steps at a time until you’re good.  (I’m still at the getting better stage.)

    The next important practice lesson is related to the first: editing.  When those words don’t just flow out in the perfect prose, editing is required to get them there.  And a large part of editing is the practice at recognizing when your work is weak.  What places aren’t clear or don’t make sense?  Where could you be more concise? Does that sentence have any relevance at all to the rest of the paragraph?  As the writer, I know what I meant to convey because, well, duh, I wrote it, so it obviously made sense in my head.  But that doesn’t mean it is what comes across to the reader.  Recognizing the difference takes work.  Being willing to repair the fault takes more work.  Not murdering the poor unlucky bastard who dares point out your mistakes takes goddamn Herculean restraint sometimes.  But, son of a god or not, even Herc had to train.  In the case of writing, it becomes stronger for the author’s ability to recognize when to edit, how far to edit, and when to say enough is enough before you make mincemeat of good words.

    And the last practice point I’ve learned is the one you always hear about but never fully understand until you realize you’re doing it.  You have to practice devoting the time to writing.  It becomes a second job.  One you don’t necessarily reap any financial benefits from.  The benefits come in other ways.  The more you make a routine out of putting your butt in that writer’s chair, the more your brain learns to think about writer stuff.  Less writer’s block! Less format/punctuation/grammar quandaries! Less wondering what comes next!  Did I mention less writer’s block?  Not to say it doesn’t happen, because it does, but you teach yourself how to work through it. Working through it is key and the only one who can teach you how to work through it is… yourself.

    The more time you spend doing-the-writing-thing, the more you learn to catch the errors as you make them.  You learn to think like your characters, how they would respond, what choices they would make and how the story would be steered by those choices.  You learn to think as you go and loosen up about the whole “plan” you started with (sometimes where you expect to end up and where the story actually goes are two different places.  Sometimes they’re more than two.  And that’s actually all okay.) so that you end up with a story and characters that are true to the story and the characters rather than a rigid idea of where they were supposed to go.  A parent doesn’t know who their toddler will be at the age of twenty, so why does a writer have to know exactly how a character will grow from whatever toll they are put through by the story?  Guidelines are useful, but don’t let them strangle you.

    The trade-off is a personal toll on the writer if they’re not careful.  You find out who your friends are.  Who is willing to put up with your flights into a fantasy world that only exists in your head.  Who is willing to give you the space and the time to write. Who is willing to be your sounding board and cheerleader and reality check when you need any or all of the above.  Those people are rare and precious.  Other people demand your time, never recognizing the fact that writing, whether it makes money or not, is a second job, or maybe a third one.  Some people see it as a pipe-dream that will never happen, because someday never gets here.  Which is all well and good, pragmatic if not embittered, but if you want to be a writer, you can’t buy into that schtick.  It’s a line that will derail every thought process it encounters. We can be our own worst critics, highly susceptible to that kind of logic, and it can be poisonous.  Stick with the people who believe in you for purely selfish reasons: if they believe in you, it must mean there’s something to it, so you can believe too.  (I know that sounds sappy and ridiculous, But I’m Not Kidding!)  Even if it’s stupid, keep doing it, and listen to the people who tell you it’s not stupid.  If they tell you it’s stupid, find out why, and make it un-stupid.

    That’s all the crazy, stand-out, “Woah, they weren’t kidding in the disclaimer!” stuff I’ve learned in the past six months of trying to be a writer.  It’s the stuff I’m going to keep reminding myself as I go along because some of it is too easy to forget, and it can get to feeling like ramming your head into a wall.  Well, it’s part of the process, as it turns out!

    So how do I cope? I keep some coffee handy.  If you’re going to bash your head into walls, at least have some liquid energy to really give it your all. 😉

  • Reviews

    It has been decided – by me, of course, because I own this particular digital neighborhood – that I shall wander into the over-heated world of reviews. Book and movie reviews. Why would I do this? What gives me the right to opinionate on someone else’s hard work? I’m not published, after all, I have never accomplished what they have, so why should I begrudge their work?

    The answer is simple. I’m a reader. A viewer. The audience.  If it works for me, if I like their work, then I can write a review to share that. If there are parts that don’t work for me, I can politely and thoughtfully explain what those were. Should the writers ever stumble on these web-documented thoughts, hopefully my point of view will be helpful rather than offensive.  Feedback is a writer’s friend and if they have gotten this far in their career that I would be reading their work off the shelves of the local bookstores, they have developed pretty thick skin. In the meantime, it goes toward my own stockpile of “things not to do” when I find those things that don’t benefit my experience of the story.

    However. If I’ve bothered to read the book/watch the movie (or both) and think about it enough to write a review, there are very good odds that I don’t have anything scandalous to say about it. It is far more likely that I would be impressed and secretly wishing I could buy the author a cup of coffee and pick their brain for their success secrets. Maybe use the cuppa as a distraction to steal their writing pens.

  • Creativity

    Creativity is an odd beast to corner. It doesn’t behave predictably. It isn’t rational. The cliché is that you court the muse, you don’t chase it. But really, courting implies you – as the courter to the courtee – have some modicum of intentional control, the ability to manipulate and to train the muse.

    I’m really not sure that’s accurate.

    We can chase and cajole and promise the moon with sweet words, but the muse, the creative spark that shapes whatever art we hope to create, still has to have its way at some point. The first draft, the words on the page, the maddening urge to spew letters onto a blank canvas, has to be allowed to go its course before we, as writers or artists or directors or – insert creative outlet here – can pretend to control or tame it by the editing process.

    For instance, right now I have a half dozen projects demanding my attention because I sincerely love them and would rather spend my time writing them than at the old 9 to 5. And yet I am in the percolating stage. I am reading, watching movies and tv, enjoying my friends and family’s company, and listening to music in my car as loud as I can stand it. I am absorbing instead of creating anything.

    And the muses insist that this is how it should be done. They reward me with fragments and glimpses to put on the page and then send me back out into the world. That’s Stage One. It is a vital part of the creative process. But damned if it isn’t annoying!