GENREALITY

Howdy Folks!  And Happy Saturday!

Today, I want to chat briefly about advice.  Over the course of your writing career — from way back in the very earliest days when you’re pushing for that first sale all the way up to your glory years of multiple books in print and more books under contract — you’re going to need advice.

You’ll need it early on when it comes to getting to the place of writing compelling stories and novels that are publishable.  You’ll need it when it comes to how to best find an agent or a publisher.  You’ll need it when you bump up against something in your career that you’ve never bumped into before.

I’ve asked for a LOT of advice over the course of my writing life…and I’ve always gotten it.  Hell, I just sent off notes this morning and made some calls yesterday to get a bit.  The need for help as we go along our merry way never really completely goes away.

A few things come to mind when I think about asking for advice.

1.  Am I Asking the Right Person the Right Question at the Right Time in the Right Manner?

I think about all of that.  Is this the person who really can help me…and if I’m not sure, am I asking them who they might know if they are the wrong person?  How much research have I done to see if there is advice elsewhere already waiting for me to find it thanks to Google?  Have I really thought about the question and am I asking it clearly?  I’m asking for a piece of their time and experience — am I offering them the best venue for them to answer in?  Email?  Phone?  A lunch meeting?  And am I mindful of the other things going on in their lives?

2.  Am I Open to Their Advice Even If I Don’t Like It?

This is a big one.  Sometimes we ask but we have an answer we already want or believe to be so.  I know people who, upon not liking the advice, just go asking more people and more people until they hear what they want.  I try — and do not always succeed — to listen and ask questions and gain an understanding of why the advice is what it is.  This applies to story feedback especially.

3.  Am I Placing Too Much Importance on Any One Person’s Advice?

Advice is…advice.  If I’m asking for someone to give it to me, I should know why I’m asking but I should also know that it’s one person’s opinion, usually based on their experience.  They may or may not be giving me the best advice for my situation.  Often, if I’m asking a handful of people, I’ll gauge it based on what the consensus of the group seems to be.  And I try to go outside of the box (which somewhat ties in to asking the right person.)

And a few things come to mind when I think about giving advice:

1.  Was I Asked?

I usually don’t appreciate unsolicited advice as much as the advice I ask for.  Though sometimes it’s just what the doctor ordered.  But when giving advice, I try really, really hard to only offer it up when asked.  And if I’m going to offer unsolicited advice, it’s  usually good to ask, “Hey, can I give you a bit of unsolicited advice?”  Though you have to be careful with that because few people are going to say “Well, no, Ken, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t.”  And you have to be careful about just assuming that a person thinks you’re the right one to give them advice.

2.  Do I Have Any Meaningful Advice to Give (or Know Someone Else or Some Other Resource That  Could Better Help) in this Instance?

Sometimes people offer advice where they have no experience — they have a hard time saying “You know, I really don’t know.”  And they make it up.  I try hard not to do that.  For example, I frequently get asked about how to query for an agent or publisher and I truly do not have much experience there.  It serves the asker better for me to point them toward others or toward the vast array of information available on the web when it comes to that.

3.   Am I Delivering the Very Best Advice for THAT PERSON (not for me) in as Helpful and Clear a Manner As Possible?

Sometimes, we project onto others what we ourselves wished we’d known.  And sometimes that’s good advice…and sometimes it’s not.  Not everyone is the same.  For example, telling everyone that they should only submit to pro-level paying markets isn’t really good advice if the person is cranking out fifty stories a year.  They can afford to hit a broader range of markets.  And how we say something is important — I try to make sure that when giving advice, I’m up front that their mileage may vary.  And I try to make sure I’m delivering it in a way that helps and doesn’t hurt.  The truth is, once we get to a certain place, some people really really listen to every word we say.  Our expectations for ourselves based on who WE are can be easily misinterpreted into perceived expectations for everyone or for that person who is asking us for advice.

And in it all, whether asking or being asked, take it with a grain of salt.  Stay courteous and friendly.  Don’t take it personally if it’s not what you want to hear or if they can’t help you.  Be grateful — thank them for giving the advice and thank them for asking you for it.

And now that I’ve given you all a bit of unsolicited advice on asking for advice…I’m out!

Have a great weekend!

Yesterday Stacia Kane tweeted a link to a website that had this on it. I just had to copy it, it’s too perfect.

Especially number 3, 10 and 11.

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You have to start somewhere.

Have you ever listened to a writer who just recently started a new project? They are practically jumping out of their pants with excitement. Their eyes light up and oddly enough, they break out of that introverted shell and start babbling away about their latest novel.

This is at the core of the Kernel Idea. The spark of inspiration. That one thing that made you believe you could sit alone in a room and write 100,000 words. However, when the writer hits the 50k mark they often forget what excited them in the first place.  As you go through Nanowrimo, are you starting to sputter out?  The flame flickering low?

The kernel idea is the Alpha and the Omega of your book.  By that I mean it starts your creative process and it completes it.  It’s what you begin with and at the end of the manuscript, everything in the book points toward it.

The kernel idea is the foundation of your novel. When I say idea, I don’t necessarily mean the theme, although it can be.  Or the most important incident, although it can be.  But it can also be a setting.  It can be a scene.  It can be a character.

It is simply the first idea you had that was the seed of your novel. All else can change, but the idea can’t.  It might be a place; a person; an event; a moral; whatever.  But you did have it before you began writing and you must remember it as you write.  If you don’t, your story and style will suffer terribly.  You should be able to tell your idea in one sentence.  And repeat it to yourself every morning when you wake up and prior to writing.  Knowing it will keep you on track.

Every new book I begin, I write out this one sentence on a word document as the very first writing I do.  I print it out and put it where I can constantly see it.

A Test

Can you clearly state what your book is about in 25 words or less? This is a key, essential ingredient of writing a good book. This idea keeps you focused and on track. It is important to:

1. Write The Kernel Idea down.
2. Ask yourself what emotional reaction does it bring about.

Good writing and strong characters are the key to great writing and knowing what excited you to write the book in the first place will bleed onto the page. However, if you don’t write it down, you might forget and get lost along the way.

What Is Your Kernel Idea?

• Good news is you had one.
• Bad news is you probably forgot it.
• It is usually the first thought you had (the spark of inspiration)
• It is the foundation of your book, the seed.

KERNAL IDEA EXERCISE

Write down the idea behind your current project.

If you can’t do it, then you need to backtrack through your thought process to find it, because you had it at one point. Everything starts from something. While idea is not story (something I will talk about later) idea is the only thing in your manuscript that won’t change. Your story can, but your idea won’t.

In one of my early novels, the original idea was an action: What if Special Forces soldiers had to destroy an enemy pipeline? That’s it for Dragon Sim-13.  Not very elaborate, you say.  True.  Not exactly a great moral theme.  Right.  But with that original idea there was a lot I could do and eventually had to do.  I had to change the target country after the first draft.  But that was all right because I still had the idea.  I had to change characters, but that was fine too, because it didn’t change my idea.  I had to change the reason why they were attacking a pipeline, but again, the original idea was the same.

You will have plenty of latitude for story after you come up with your kernel idea; in fact, I sometimes find the finished manuscript turns out to be different from what I had originally envisioned, but one thing is always true: that kernel idea is still there at the end as the Omega.

For my first kernel idea, I made it as simple as possible to enable me to focus on the writing because when I was in the Special Forces my A-Team had run a similar mission on a pipeline.   Since I had a good idea what would happen in the story, I could concentrate on the actual writing of the novel.

I’ve sat in graduate literature classes and heard students say: “The author had to have a moral point in mind when they wrote that book.”  I agree, but sometimes it is not at the forefront of the story.  Many authors write simply to tell a story started by that kernel idea, which indeed might be a moral point, but sometimes is a story that they wanted to tell and the theme developed subsequently.

A moral or theme (screenwriters call it intent) always does appear in a book by the time it’s done. No matter what conscious expectations or thoughts an author has when they start writing, a lot more appears in the manuscript than they consciously anticipated.

After you have that kernel idea, you should spend a lot of time wrestling with it and consciously uncover your feelings and thoughts about it. I try to look at my main characters and determine what will happen to them emotionally, physically and spiritually as they go through the story.  Who are they at the beginning of the story and who are they at the end?

This is an example of being aware of what you are doing. Not all authors have a conscious theme when they write a novel, but experience has taught me that it is better to have your theme in your conscious mind before you start writing.  It might not be your original idea, but it will definitely affect your characters and story.

The reason it is important to have a theme in mind is because people want to care about what they read and the characters. If there is some moral or emotional relevance to the story they read, they will become more involved in the story and enjoy it more.  Even if the reader doesn’t consciously see it either.

Writers balk at the Kernel or one-sentence idea. How can you be expected to write the entire essence of your epic novel in one sentence? You are told that every word, every sentence, every paragraph and every scene must have purpose, so how can any writer sum up their work in twenty-five words or less?

It’s simple. Your story started with an idea. The idea wasn’t much. If you write it down when you think of it, then summarizing your story in one-sentence is just that much easier.

One way to work on understanding the Kernel Idea is to take your favorite movie or book and try to figure out the Kernel Idea. This will help you narrow the focus and see how it is the foundation of everything in the story.

Do you know what your kernel idea is?

Earlier this week, Jay Lake had a blog post referencing a Richard Parks blog post about short stories and novels.  And I don’t really feel the need to weigh in with my own opinion — it’s largely the same, though I think of short stories more as a shed than a cabinet.  Could be the trailer boy in me.  I built a lot of sheds as a kid.

I digress.

I’m one of those people who used to swear up and down that he was a short story writer, not a novelist.  I was not going to write novels.  I decided this, I think, after middle-muddling out on two 20k novel starts back in 1995 and 1997.  After that, I stayed in the end of the pool I felt comfortable with until the Great Tater-Taunting and Dare of Aught-Six that turned into my first novel.

So I wrote short stories.  And started selling them.  I think I had close to thirty short stories floating around the markets by the time Lamentation came out…but it was my novels that really seem to have gotten me noticed.

Still, the truth is, I’m more comfortable with short stories than I am with novels.  Probably because I’ve written more of them and have been writing them since I was fourteen.  Twenty years of experience in that medium — compared to five.  Though I’m finding with each novel that I feel a bit more at home.  Because I know that I know how to write a short story…but I do not know that I know how to write a novel (though I’m getting closer.)

I’m still learning my process with novels and one clear bit for me is that my short story and novel processes definitely differ.

In looking at my productivity over the last little while, I finally got back to work on Requiem and laid down around 50k words over the course of two months.  I was building steam for the finish when a couple of back-to-back losses hit our family.  And one thing I’ve learned about my process:  There are some events that I just can’t write through and trying to force it only makes the binding engine worse.

But…being able to build a shed in the midst of that break actually seems to have been a bit of new learning for me in my process.  I’m seeing a pattern now that when I stall from these life events, short stories become the lure that bring me back to work on my novels.

Not long ago, Tor.com invited me to write their holiday story and I leaped at the opportunity.  It needed to be a quick turn around but I knew I could do it.  And right off that bat, I knew I wanted to revisit the world of the Bureaucracy and their Santaman mythos from “The Doom of Love in Small Spaces.”  So I thought and thought; then Jen and I spent a weekend in Seaside, Oregon, (thanks to my family’s willingness to give us a twin-free weekend) and while she shopped and knitted and read, I pounded out a short story.   Ten thousand words in two days…and it felt great.

It’s kept feeling great.

Building that shed has me hankering to play with the tools again and just in the last week, two major pieces of Requiem’s third act have snapped clearly into place in my mind’s eye.  The house is taking shape and the carpenter is starting to understand how he goes about his work just a little bit better than he did before.

Happy Saturday folks!  Trailer Boy out.

Howdy folks and happy Saturday.

This is one of those rare occurrences where I’m actually writing my blog post the morning of.  Usually, I write it anywhere from a day to a week before it posts.  At the moment, the moon is being eclipsed by the earth and it’s pretty spectacular.  Later this morning, we’ll be bundling up the twins to take them out in search of pancakes the perfect tree.  Fun times.

Several weeks back, I started this series on character.  I don’t think I have anything really original to say here but I’d been asked to tackle it and I think it’s always good to formulate my thoughts on how I do things and why.

Today, we’re wrapping up that series.

We’ve talked about treating characters like they are real and about using their POV (and being strict about it) in order to make them more believable.

Today, I want to wrap up with primarily three thoughts.

First, you must be willing to do stuff to your characters.  Bad stuff.  I call it putting them in trees and throwing rocks at them and sometimes, I do it well enough to get emails from readers complaining about how tough I am on my imaginary friends.  Stories need conflict and a key ingredient to that conflict is a character who is facing a problem that is dangerous to them in some way.  That danger doesn’t always have to be physical — it can be emotional certainly — but, to modify someone else’s phrase just a bit:  You have to be willing to maim your darlings.

Second, when you throw these rocks at them, your characters have to do stuff in response to it.  I call this learning how to catch the rocks and throw them back…or learning how bad it hurts getting knocked out of the tree.  If a character is acted upon and does nothing about it, that passivity isn’t going to sit well with readers who want to see your character solve — or try to solve — their problem.

And third, when dealing out problems to my characters I always try to have two — an external problem that threatens many (sometimes the entire world) that forces them to overcome an internal problem that threatens the character’s well-being in some way.  Sometimes, the character isn’t even aware of the internal problem until the external one shows up and forces their attention to it.

So that’s a bit about how I do it.  Again, I don’t think I’ve really said anything new here but I hope it’s been helpful.

Now, the moon is fully eclipsed.  Last I saw it, it was red and slipping behind the trees.  The Wonder Twins are up now and at their cereal and cartoons with expected Saturday morning vigor.

Trailer Boy out!