GENREALITY

This discussion dovetails a bit with my post from last week about plot and action.  My proposition is this:  that plot and character might actually be the same thing.  I started thinking this when I realized that I can’t talk about plot without talking about character.

If your ideas normally start with a character, then the plot grows (or it should grow) out of what your characters are like, what they would do, what problems they’d naturally get themselves into, and the unique ways that they (and no one else) would get out of those problems.  The character’s goals mark the turning points in the plot:  what does the character want?  What stops her from getting it?  What conflicts and obstacles affect her the most?  The climax and resolution of the plot should also reflect the character arc, where she grows and changes and either realizes her goals or changes them.

If you normally start with a plot (or an idea, or an event, or an action scene), then the story grows when you find the right character to fit that idea or event.  The character has to be the kind of person who would get into that situation, who would make those specific events happen, or be most affected by them.

Essentially, what I think one of the things that makes a story engaging is how this particular series of events couldn’t possibly happen to any other character but the one the story is happening to, and how no other character could possibly deal with this situation.  This story is happening to this character because of who she is, and the story happens the way it does because it’s this particular character driving the events, making the decisions.  Raiders of the Lost Ark works the way it does because the story is happening to Indiana Jones, and you get the feeling that things would have gone very differently if anyone else had been there.

Boring stories happen when you start to feel like the scenes and actions are happening in spite of the characters rather than because of them.  When you could put any character, from Hamlet to James Bond, into that slot and the story would happen just the same.  In my mind, that’s bad writing.

Also, the plot needs to stay true to the character you’ve established.  The character needs to be the kind of person who would make the decisions and take the actions that make this particular plot work.  The plot needs to rise out of the characters’ decisions and actions.  If a character wouldn’t actually make the kind of decisions that you need her to make in order for the plot to move forward, maybe you need to change the character to make her that person.  Or give a really, really good reason for her to behave out of character.  See?  Plot and characterization need to work together.

How many times have you watched a favorite TV show go down the tubes because a beloved character started acting just wrong, in order to make a plot twist work?  (Mine was Callie on Battlestar Galactica.  I couldn’t believe for a second that a woman who, in previous episodes 1) beat up her would-be rapist, 2) survived the ambush on Kobol, 3) pulled the Jack Ruby on Boomer, and 4) helped organize the resistance on New Caprica, would then take her baby into an airlock with the intention of killing them both.  I don’t care how depressed she was, I simply don’t believe it.)  If you have to contradict a character to make a plot point work, it may be time for a rewrite — change the character or change the plot.  What would that character really do?

Plot is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to learn about writing.  It’s the thing I’ve had to work the most on, and the thing I’ve thought the most about because it’s never come naturally to me.  Characterization, however, has been my strong suit.  I’ve never done those surveys where you write down your character’s favorite foods, I’ve never written out character sketches or biographies before I started.  I don’t even need to know their names at first.  (I’ve been known to search and replace the names of main characters after writing the book.)  I just have a picture in my head.  I just know my characters.  So maybe it’s natural that I would think about plot in terms of character, and what my characters would or wouldn’t do.

Action and plot are not the same thing (as last weekend’s big movie, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” so amply demonstrated).

When I attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop, I had a couple of epiphanies.  One was about revising.  Another was about plot.  As in, my stories didn’t have any.  I went around saying stupid things like, “Well, stories don’t need plot.  Ray Bradbury’s stories don’t have any plot.”  Everyone knows that Ray Bradbury stories don’t have plot because nothing actually happens in them, right?  My instructor, Jeanne Cavelos, told me, “Why don’t you analyze a couple of Bradbury stories for plot and get back to me.”  So I did.

Holy cow.  Ray Bradbury stories have plot.  The stories I analyzed were two in which (I thought) nothing much happens:  “Homecoming” is about the reunion of an Addams Family-type family, with vampires and mummies and ghosts and all, from the point of view of the family’s youngest son who is completely normal.  He watches the goings on, the magic, the dancing, the flying, the jokes about blood banks, the astral projection, all the time wishing he could be a part of it.  His uncle (who has bat wings) finally sits him down and explains that no matter what, he’s still special and everyone loves him.  The boy understands.  But he’s still distraught, the odd one out.  That’s it.  The second one I read was “The Million-Year Picnic” from The Martian Chronicles, about a family who has just arrived on Mars as colonists.  They go out for a picnic along the canals.  The boys really want to meet Martians.  Father keeps promising that they will.  Finally, he leads them to the edge of a canal and shows them their reflections in the water.  “There they are, boys.  Martians.”  And the boys finally realize that this is their new home, the old Martians are gone, and it’s just them now.

These outlines seem so simplistic, but of course the stories are poetic and powerful because it’s Ray Bradbury writing them.  It’s easy to think they have no plot because nothing much happens.  But here’s the thing:  They do have plot, the characters make discoveries, they grow and change.  But it’s all happening internally.  It’s not the world changing, it’s their attitudes, the way they look at the world, and it totally works.  Both of these stories are only a few pages long, but the conflicts and narrative drives are set up in the first paragraphs:  Timothy in “Homecoming” wants to belong; the boys in “The Million-Year Picnic” want to meet Martians.  You can point to the moment, the exact sentence, in the stories when the conflicts resolve, for better or worse:  Timothy will never belong, and he realizes it; the boys have to adjust their worldview to fit their new home.

These stories are thick with plot, even though they don’t have much action.

On the other hand, I’ve read lots of stories by newish writers (and seen lots of big budget Hollywood movies) that have lots of action, but absolutely no plot.  Things happen.  The characters are cardboard cutouts moving through a predetermined set of actions.  Often, the characters will explain to me (the reader) why things happened after the fact, or what their motivations were, because it wasn’t set up ahead of time.  Characters seem to go through the motions, and the reader doesn’t know why they’re doing anything, what they want, what drives them.  Without that sense of conflict and resolution, of character motivation, all the things that make up plot, the story won’t have any narrative drive.  The reader won’t have a reason to keep turning the page.  Movies especially seem to pad out so-called stories with explosions and fistfights when the characters aren’t interesting enough to follow for their own sakes.  The most action-packed story in the world can still be boring as all get out if I don’t care why any of this stuff is happening.

I’ve seen many writers talk about a two-sentence way to describe the difference between plot and action (I’m not even sure who to reference, or who to attribute it to, I’ve heard it from so many different people.  I heard it first from James Morrow at Odyssey):

The King died and then the Queen died.
The King died because the Queen died.

The first sentence is a sequence of events.  Pure action.  The second sentence intrigues me.  It presents questions.  It makes me want to know more.  It has plot.

I’ve also heard, attributed to Raymond Chandler, that if you don’t know what happens next in a story, bring a man through the door with a gun.  But remember, while this may be a good way to jump start a story by forcing you to reassess where the story is going and why the characters are there, don’t forget that you need to go back and make sure the guy with the gun has a really good reason for being there and impacts the story in a meaningful way.  Because action is never a substitute for plot.

I have a question for folks.  Some explaining first.

When I was first starting out, one of the good pieces of advice I got was to write every day.  I heard it from lots of people, and it made a lot of sense.  Getting in the habit of sitting down every day and writing is one of the best ways to learn to write, to learn to write lots, and to learn to finish what you write.  Over the course of my years as a struggling writer, I’d write every day some years, and not write every day in others.  The years when I wrote every day were always better.  I didn’t necessarily produce more, but what I produced was better, and got better feedback.  I kind of got superstitious about writing every day, because good things happened when I did — I sold more stories, wrote better stories, and so on.  This last stretch, I’ve been writing every day since February 2004.  I’m afraid if I stop all the success I’ve had the last couple of years will go away.  (I also, coincidentally (?) landed my agent in February 2004, sold my first novel in August 2004, and so on.)

Now, I have a very loose definition of writing every day, which makes it much easier.  I don’t have a set word count.  Writing in my journal counts.  (I’m sure someone looking through my journal would find at least a couple of entries that say, “Can’t write, too sick, blaurrgghh!”)  When I travel I keep a trip journal rather than try to work on fiction.  Brainstorming and outlining count as writing for the day.  So does serious revision.  But I do something that involves putting words on the page every day.

So.  Writing every day.  Good advice for writers just starting out.  But I’ve noticed something: a lot of the pros I know don’t write every day.  They take breaks between books, or breaks for other reasons, or take weekends off.  At this point, I’m not sure I’d know how to take a break from writing.  As I said, I’ve become rather deeply superstitious about it.  Writing is a self-fulfilling ritual.  If I want to keep writing, I have to keep writing.  Irrational, I know, but there it is.

Now the question, especially for the working pros and nearly-pros:  Do you write every day?  Do you take breaks?  How do you decide when to take a break?  How hard is it to get back into the groove?

I love my job, but there are plenty of days I don’t feel like writing, and I have to drag every word out of my brain kicking and screaming, painfully. (I just had a couple of those days, which is what brought this up.)  But if I didn’t write when I didn’t feel like writing, I’d never get anything done.

I did a lot of theater in high school, singing and dancing my way through South Pacific and Anything Goes, auditioning for everything I could, craving the stage.  (I even considered, briefly, pursuing acting professionally.  However, acting is even more difficult and brutal than writing.  I wised up quickly.)  This turned out to be excellent preparation for some aspects of a professional writing career.  I recommend every writer get a little theater experience.

Public speaking shouldn’t be a requirement for being a writer, but it really, really is.  From participating in panel discussions, speaking to classes, and one of my favorite things, public readings.  I’ve managed to snag new readers through all these venues, and every time I do I thank my few years of amateur stage experience.  I may get a little bit nervous, but not usually.  It’s all just like being on stage, which I know I can do because I’ve done it before.  I can chill out and do my job.

What I really want to talk about is public readings from our works, because I’m interested in the theory and practice of this.  I’ve done a lot of readings — most science fiction and fantasy conventions I’ve been to offer numerous readings on the schedule.  Theoretically, you could sit in a room and listen to different authors reading from their works all day long.  Also, many book signing events include a reading.  Some authors post podcasts of themselves reading excerpts as a promotional tool.  If you’re a published author, chances are you’ll be asked to read aloud from your work at some point.

So what’s your take on readings, both as a member of the audience and as a reader?  A couple of my favorite authors to hear read are Neil Gaiman and Connie Willis.  At the World Horror Convention in 2000, I got to hear Gaiman read all of Coraline, which was amazing.  Both of them have wonderful, understated reading styles.  Hearing them is like hearing an engaging story told by a friend.  Not overly dramatic, not at all flat.  You don’t have to do the funny voices, but it’s best not to sound bored by your own words.

A question I debate a lot is what to read.  Should I read from an old favorite, the most recently published work, or something that hasn’t been published yet?  Audiences seem to like previews of upcoming works — I like hearing what my favorite authors have up their sleeves that I can look forward to.  I also have the question of reading from a short story or novel.  If I read from a novel, I almost always read from the first chapter or an early scene so I don’t have to explain what all’s been happening, but lots of authors read from later chapters — usually the most exciting cliffhanger in the book.  When I have a new short story that’s the right size, I like to read it so that my audience gets an ending to go with the beginning.  Connie Willis is rather notorious for ending her readings on cliffhangers, which can be agony when the book isn’t out yet.

I definitely practice my reading ahead of time so that I know what to expect.  I time it so I know exactly how long it’ll take.  I make sure I have all the pages of my reading on hand.  I can show respect to my audience by being as prepared as I can.

Do you have certain things you love to see/hear at readings?  Any pet peeves?  Any recommendations?  And dare I ask it — any horror stories. . .I mean, cautionary tales?

Happy Tax Day!  How is everyone doing with that? Without really intending to fit with the theme, my topic today has to do with financial matters, an issue that makes tax day especially interesting — being self employed.

One of the most sobering moments in the business came for me in December 2005.  My first book had been out a month, it landed at something like 127 on the USA Today bestseller list, it was doing really well and everyone was really happy.  Then both my editor and agent said, in the same week, “Don’t quit your day job.”  But when? I wanted to beg.  When can I quit my day job?  When!  I’d only ever wanted to be a writer.  I’d been working “day jobs” — book store clerk and manager, administrative assistant, temp — since I graduated from college.  I wanted to be able to pay my bills with writing.  I didn’t want to believe the people who said that wasn’t possible.

Well, I quit my last temp gig in April 2007, exactly two years ago.  (I quit my regular job in April 2006, not because I felt like I was able to quit but because the job had become untenable.  I temped for the next year, because I couldn’t bring myself to look for a “real” job when my dream of writing full time was so close.)  One of the things that pushed me around the corner was getting my first royalty check for the first two books.

One of the pieces of advice I’d picked up, something that’s true in any self-employment endeavor from writing to art to consulting, is you quit your day job when it starts to negatively impact the progress of your self-employed job.  i.e. Your time would better spent and would earn you more money at your self-employed job than it would at the day job.  In April 2007, I was staring down a couple of deadlines, a copy-edited manuscript, and my third book had just come out.  Then I got that check.  And I thought, Why am I wasting time at an $11 an hour temp job when I could stay home and do REAL work?

Sometimes, you just know.

“Don’t quit your day job” is one of the biggest pieces of writing advice you’ll hear.  If you have a good day job with benefits, that’s probably true.  If you enjoy your non-writing career, that’s definitely true.  But if you have a sucky job with no benefits to begin with?  Quitting to write full time was a step up for me.

Another thing that made the decision easier:  I didn’t have a family to support.  It was my dog and me, and a fairly low cost of living.  When you have a family, the decision to write full time isn’t just about you.

But if there’s one thing the current economic implosion has shown me, it’s that writing isn’t any more or less reliable than any other job or career out there.  I have friends who thought they would never get laid off getting laid off.  Suddenly, I have the most stable, reliable job of anyone I know.  Who’d have thunk?