Posted in Books, Writing, tagged author websites, blogging, creative writing, novel writing, reader-writer interaction, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 07 Aug 2013| 2 Comments »
This week I came across two articles for writers that I thought I’d pass along.
The first article comes from my friends over at The Noble Dead website. Barb and J.C. Hendee are bestselling authors with nearly a score of books to their collective credit. J.C. is also their webmaster, and trust me, he knows his stuff. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged building backstory, building believable characters, building characters, Characters, creative writing, novel writing, Seattle, The Wolf Tree, Writing, writing research, writing techniques, writing tips on 29 Jul 2013| 1 Comment »
First, a welcome to our new subscribers. At some point we popped up over the 200 member mark, which I find pretty cool. So, thanks, all, for your interest.
My free time this weekend was spent backtracking. I’d started my research of Seattle’s history at 1860, heading up the years toward 1874, but it became clear that for my purposes, 1874 Seattle was just too big a town. I want a setting that is rougher, more primitive, and a town that is smaller.
Picking 1874, the backstory for my main “Old Seattle” character included experience in the Civil War, possibly with injuries, certainly with trauma. I wanted a reason for him to immigrate to the West, but also a reason for him to recoil from society and live outside the town. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged Chapter One, Chekhov, Chekhov's gun, creative writing, how to start a novel, novel writing, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 26 Jul 2013| 14 Comments »
No, not my Chapter One. Sorry if I got your hopes up, there. (Did I? I hope I did, actually.)
No, I mean Chapter Ones (or is it Chapters One, like attorneys general?), in general. What are the needs, what are the requirements of a novel’s Chapter One.
A lot of writers paraphrase Chekhov. In essence, If you hang a loaded gun on the wall in Act I, it must go off by the end of Act III.
A lot of writers (mostly newer writers) want the literary equivalent of a movie’s “establishing shot.” They want everything set up in Chapter One–characters, setting, conflict, subplots–everything.
For me, the best advice I’ve ever heard on how to build my Chapter One is this:
Shoot the sheriff on the first page.
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged creative writing, novel writing, quote, Stephen King, thesaurus, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 24 Jul 2013| 9 Comments »
If there’s one thing that irks me, it’s applying rules to creative endeavors.
I’m also not much for taking things out of context. Like this.
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. — Stephen King
A lot of writers treat King’s advice on writing like a bible and, like a lot of Bible carriers, they often take things over-literally and take quotes completely out of context.
This is an example of both.
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, Fallen Cloud Saga, longmire, novel writing, Seattle, The Wolf Tree, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 23 Jul 2013| Leave a Comment »
…and why it matters.I’m still researching Seattle history for my next book, The Wolf Tree, trudging through Thomas Prosch’s bone-dry but fact-filled Chronological History of Seattle from 1850 to 1897. I’m up to 1871, which is within spitting distance to my target of 1874.
Some people might say this is a bit over-the-top for what is essentially a secondary story line in a mainstream/non-genre novel, and I’ll admit, I do have a tendency to over-research.
But you know what? That’s just tough. Deal with it, peeps. I won’t apologize or change.
Here’s why. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, historical fiction, novel writing, Seattle, Seattle history, The Wolf Tree, Writing, writing research, writing techniques, writing tips on 12 Jul 2013| 1 Comment »
For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing research for The Wolf Tree. It’s been an education, in several ways.
Seattle isn’t like New York or San Francisco or London. I don’t have dozens of books to choose from, rows of scholarly tomes filled with history, details, and anecdotes. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged Characters, creative writing, elevator pitch, novel writing, outlining, plotline, plotting, The Wolf Tree, wolf tree, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 07 Jun 2013| 4 Comments »
I had my first Book Meeting on The Wolf Tree.
This is the meeting where First Reader and I sit down, I give her the pitch, and she tells me, No, the plot doesn’t sound stupid.
Seriously. That’s what this meeting is for. Well, mostly. She also picks apart the plot, the characters, the backstories, she asks how it’ll be told, etc., but mostly, she needs to tell me the plot doesn’t sound stupid.
Why do I think my plot sounds stupid? I don’t know. Looking back on my completed novels, those plots don’t sound stupid. But always, at the outset of every project, I’m convinced that my plotline is hopelessly flawed and will make the worst book ever. To be fair, when you boil any plot down to that one-minute “elevator pitch,” it loses a lot. All elevator pitches sound more or less stupid, insipid, unbelievable (in a bad way), or cliché. So, to get me over this first hurdle, we have our first Book Meeting.
But before I can walk into this meeting, the book must have gelled. I’m not talking about working out the basic plot–in fact, plot is the least important aspect. Plots take care of themselves, to a certain degree, as do sub-plots. Sure, I need to know where the bit set pieces are going to be, what the main action is, and so forth, but if I have them sketched out, that’s good enough. I need to know where I’m going, but I don’t necessarily want to know exactly how I’m going to get there. I used to obsess about every detail in outlines before, and found that it always changed in the production phase, so now I don’t worry about the details of the action. Broad brushstrokes work fine for plot.
More important than plot is the structure. Not what will happen in the story, but how it will be told. Will it be linear? Recursive? Flashbacks? Multi-threaded? How many characters? How many POVs? Structure affects the reading of the story because it controls how information is presented. An action-heavy plotline will benefit from some cliffhanger chapter breaks, whereas a more character-driven plot will have a forced, unnatural feel if I shoehorn cliffhangers into it.
I also need to have an idea of what style I’m going to use. First person or third person? Omniscient or limited? Lyrical or straightforward? Dialogue-heavy or dialogue-sparse? These aren’t cast in concrete (well, none of this stuff is, really) but they’re decisions that should be made before pen touches paper. Stylistic decisions need to support the plot, structure, and the thematic elements.
And those are the crucial items: the thematic elements. What are the big questions facing my characters? What is the book about? I don’t believe a novel needs a “message,” per se–“If I’d wanted a message, I’d have called Western Union!”–but I always want my books to have a single encompassing idea, a topic they will discuss. Usually, it’s a single word that (for me) infuses the story. Betrayal. Family. Love. Forgiveness. I’ve used these in the past.
Before I walk into my first Book Meeting I need to have all this ready because I’m going to pitch the book to First Reader, and she’s going to pick it apart with all her might.
Turns out, the plot for The Wolf Tree is not stupid.
Oh, and we fixed the ending (parts of which were unbelievable, cliché, and stupid).
So…onward.
k
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 