writing advice – @habits

James Bond author Ian Fleming’s writing advice: “You have to get the reader to turn over the page.”

Source: https://crimereads.com/ian-fleming-explains-how-to-write-a-thriller-circa-1963/

Direct quotes:

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There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page. […] If you look back on the best sellers you have read, you will find that they all have this quality. You simply /have/to turn over the page.

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My contribution to the art of thriller-writing has been to attempt the total stimulation of the reader all the way through, even to his taste buds. For instance, I have never understood why people in books have to eat such sketchy and indifferent meals. English heroes seem to live on cups of tea and glasses of beer, and when they do get a square meal we never hear what it consists of. Personally, I am not a gourmet and I abhor food-and-winemanship. My favorite food is scrambled eggs.

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What I aim at is a certain disciplined exoticism. I have not re-read any of my books to see if this stands up to close examination, but I think you will find that the sun is always shining in my books—a state of affairs which minutely lifts the spirit of the English reader—that most of the settings of my books are in themselves interesting and pleasurable, taking the reader to exciting places around the world, and that, in general, a strong hedonistic streak is always there to offset the grimmer side of Bond’s adventures. This, so to speak, “pleasures” the reader

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I can recommend hotel bedrooms as far removed from your usual “life” as possible. Your anonymity in these drab surroundings and your lack of friends and distractions in the strange locale will create a vacuum which should force you into a writing mood and, if your pocket is shallow, into a mood which will also make you write fast and with application.

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I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to. If you once look back, you are lost. How could you have written this drivel? How could you have used “terrible” six times on one page? And so forth. If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain.

Anton Chekhov’s 6 principles of writing: “To what end? He hardly knew himself. He only knew that he must see Anna Sergeyevna, must speak to her, arrange a meeting, if possible.”

In a letter to his older brother Alexander, dated 10 May 1886, Anton Chekhov set out his six principles of writing: ‘truthful descriptions of persons and objects; total objectivity; extreme brevity; compassion; no political-social-economic effusions; audacity and originality: eschew cliché.

From Marginalian:

…no depiction of reality is realistic unless it include an empathic account of all perspectives, which might be the defining characteristic not only of Chekhov as a writer but of any great storyteller.

Here are his 6 rules, with a few examples pulled from his classic short story, The Lady with the Dog (1899):

1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature

Repeated and bitter experience had taught him that every fresh intimacy, while at first introducing such pleasant variety into everyday life, and offering itself as a charming, light adventure, inevitably developed, among decent people (especially in Moscow, where they are so irresolute and slow to move), into a problem of excessive complication leading to an intolerably irksome situation.

2. Total objectivity

3. Truthful descriptions of persons and objects

He could remember carefree, good-natured women who were exhilarated by love-making and grateful to him for the happiness he gave them, however shortlived; and there had been others — his wife among them — whose caresses were insincere, affected, hysterical, mixed up with a great deal of quite unnecessary talk, and whose expression seemed to say that all this was not just love-making or passion, but something much more significant

4. Extreme brevity

When the Christmas holidays came, he packed his things, telling his wife he had to go to Petersburg in the interests of a certain young man, and set off for the town of S. To what end? He hardly knew himself. He only knew that he must see Anna Sergeyevna, must speak to her, arrange a meeting, if possible.

5. Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype

Anna Sergeyevna was accompanied by a tall, round-shouldered young man with small whiskers, who nodded at every step before taking the seat beside her and seemed to be continually bowing to someone. This must be her husband, whom, in a fit of bitterness, at Yalta, she had called a “flunkey.” And there really was something of the lackey’s servility in his lanky figure, his side-whiskers, and the little bald spot on the top of his head. And he smiled sweetly, and the badge of some scientific society gleaming in his buttonhole was like the number on a footman’s livery.

6. Compassion

And it seemed to them that they were within an inch of arriving at a decision, and that then a new, beautiful life would begin. And they both realized that the end was still far, far away, and that the hardest, the most complicated part was only just beginning.

Notes and quotes from Joyce Carol Oates’ Masterclass on “Art of the Short Story”

Hello world!

I recently finished Joyce Carol Oates’ Masterclass on short story writing. It is a short course and there’s a cool workshop segment at the end where she critiques the short stories of two students.

Here’s a collection of my notes from the lessons, much of it paraphrased

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NOTES

It’s about translating instinct into craft
So that instinct… if you feel like you’re a writer, you probably are

Everyone has a fantastic story to tell – and it’s often a mystery story

Writer as photographer, you have a magic camera, and with lens you can see the subject, and the camera is your writing

Characters generate the plot

Why is this character there? If you can’t explain them, then you should get rid of them

If it’s just a few characters, then it’s a short story. But if it’s a theme / larger world / political or sociological, then a novel is better

Short story is meant to be read in one sitting

“Burn through the first draft”

Orwell believed prose should be like a window, very clean
Faulkner, Hemingway were more interested in the language of a story, the “how” of the telling

“Your worst enemy will have the most beloved face” – whether a child, a dog or cat – someone you can’t say no to (the constant distractions)

She started writing around 14, and working with others at 19

Doesn’t recommend writing a novel if you’re a beginner – it’s important to learn how to finish your work
If you write a novel and take 20 years, your whole life will have a cloud over it
Need the psychological uplift from finishing something

If you get rejected, it means that if it was published it may not have been that good – sometimes you’re very lucky if your first novel is rejected (like James Joyce)

recommends writers keep journals because it’s intimate and private, keep in contact with innermost self
she’s kept journal since 18, she adds dialogue, impressions of places and things that happened

try different ways of writing:
-start writing when you only have 40 minutes
-write when you feel very tired
-next morning look at it, might be really worthwhile

she takes tons of notes, for a novel it can be 200 pages (!)
transcribes notes to laptop, adds them into scenes
has checklists of things, if things aren’t used, she can use them for future stories

critics told her she should leave the “social unrest” / “big novels” to Norman Mailer
she was never interested in what’s expected of women writers, the “domestic novel”
she wrote a lot about domestic abuse, wife battering

her father was almost killed because he wanted to try to help a neighbor suffering domestic violence

Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray is a novel about taboo, couldn’t express his homosexuality, uses the novel

most powerful writing comes from repressed, each taboo subject has a natural audience who have no outlet
memoirs on such subjects are astonished at the number of readers, eg, about alcoholism, obesity, bulimia
William Styron on depression – had no idea it would be that successful, he just felt a total failure
“secret audiences”

**only rule: “Don’t be boring”

bestsellers move fast, short and declarative sentences

writers want to write their family story, their ancestors, their generation

she memorized alice in wonderland as a kid, deeply imprinted
she thinks about it every day of her life
it’s playful, funny, subversive – inspires her writing

interview your own mother, she was astounded when she did this
found out she was given away at 9 months old to an aunt and uncle

wishes she’d also interviewed her grandmother before she passed

try not to exploit other people, never hurt other people (doesn’t think what philip roth did, writing about women he knew, was the right way)

“an unsolved mystery is a thorn in the heart”

take the earliest memory you have, try to evoke it and write it powerfully

Robert Frost: poetry is melting ice on a hot stove

beginning writers should write mini narratives, a paragraph, the shorter the better

really good acting is also an arc of emotion

theater is monologue, eg, Hamlet

good to be young and write an old person’s perspective, or vice versa, or men writing from woman’s PoV, it gives you more objectivity, and is a growing experience

Where are you going, where have you been? is one of her most popular stories, gets questions daily about it
a cautionary tale
based on true story, man who pretended to be a teenager, one by one he was murdering girls he met at the mall
some teens knew, but they didn’t tell anyone, they protected HIM. why?

take your old writing, take 3rd person and make it 1st person, or make past tense into present tense / historic present – this can completely revitalize prose

read from stratosphere to draw upon your mentors / influences

what you read and what intensity will determine how you write

for example, take a summer to read James Joyce – as the weeks go by, your vocab will improve, your language will elevate, etc

Hemingway’s novels are good, but short stories are where he was a master

readers only care about the characters — even though the writer spends so much time on the formal qualities

Hemingway says literature is an iceberg, all his short stories – what’s under the water is implied
Characters don’t have back story, move very quickly – feeling of modernism

for new writers often the story might be too subtle
workshops are helpful in this way, participants are like editors

writers are cooks – keep unused material in fridge, put it later in the casserole

better to have deadline, and readers, talk and revise
more “aerated” instead of isolated

really likes having a window to look out, a garden, natural world outside the window
“i don’t know what i’m gonna see out the window, and that’s part of writing”

hates only having a wall to stare at

think excitedly about what you’ll be working on – something surprising, novel, shocking will happen before noon – and no one will know about it but you

if you write one brilliant short story a year, that’s great!
if you write one novel at all, that’s great too

A brief snippet of Paul Graham’s brief writing advice

His original essay is here.

A few favorites (all quoted):

Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can
Expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong
…just say the most important sentence first
Read your essays out loud to see…which bits are boring (the paragraphs you dread reading)
Write for a reader who won’t read the essay as carefully as you do

William Zinsser on writing well

“A writer is always working. Stay alert to the currents around you. Much of what you see and hear will come back, having percolated for days or months or even years through your subconscious mind” – William Zinsser

On Writing Well is a book for working writers who want to improve. If you need inspiration to pick up your pen and put words to paper, I’d recommend Stephen King’s On Writing. If you want to laugh and sympathize with a writer’s life, I’d recommend Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.

william-zinsser-on-writing-well

Zinsser’s book is an oyster farm of wisdom. Here are some of my favorite pearls (I couldn’t resist the metaphor :)

Nobody told all the new computer writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they’re writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well.
Consider all the prepositions that are draped onto verbs that don’t need any help. We don’t face problems anymore. We face up to them when we can free up a few minutes.
Beware, then, of the long word that’s no better than the short word: “assistance” (help), “numerous” (many), “facilitate” (ease), “individual” (man or woman), “remainder” (rest), “initial” (first), “implement” (do), “sufficient” (enough), “attempt” (try), “referred to as” (called)
It’s amazing how often an editor can throw away the first three or four paragraphs of an article, or even the first few pages, and start with the paragraph where the writer begins to sound like himself
Nouns now turn overnight into verbs. We target goals and we access facts.
Trust your material if it’s taking you into terrain you didn’t intend to enter but where the vibrations are good.
The perfect ending should take your readers slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right.
Surprise is the most refreshing element in nonfiction writing.
This is adjective-by-habit—a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled.
Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with “but.” If that’s what you learned, unlearn it—there’s no stronger word at the start.
…it is still widely believed—a residue from school and college—that “which” is more correct, more acceptable, more literary. It’s not. In most situations, “that” is what you would naturally say and therefore what you should write.
Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it.
Most of the nudgers urged me to adopt the plural: to use “readers” and “writers,” followed thereafter by “they.” I don’t like plurals; they weaken writing because they are less specific than the singular, less easy to visualize.
When you use a quotation, start the sentence with it. Don’t lead up to it with a vapid phrase saying what the man said.
Enjoyment, finally, is what all humorists must convey—the idea that they are having a terrific time, and this notion of cranked-up audacity
After verbs, plain nouns are your strongest tools; they resonate with emotion.
Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself.
With each rewrite I try to force my personality onto the material.
Writers who write interestingly tend to be men and women who keep themselves interested. That’s almost the whole point of becoming a writer.
Two final words occur to me. One is quest, the other is intention.
The only thing [readers] should notice is that you have made a sensible plan for your journey. Every step should seem inevitable.
Never be afraid to break a long sentence into two short ones
When you get such a message from your material—when your story tells you it’s over, regardless of what subsequently happened—look for the door.
You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into an entertainment. Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of devices will do the job: humor, anecdote, paradox, an unexpected quotation, a powerful fact, an outlandish detail, a circuitous approach, an elegant arrangement of words.
One of the bleakest moments for writers is the one when they realize that their editor has missed the point of what they are trying to do.

Thanks for reading! Here’s an earlier post on the same topic, how to improve your writing.