Writing from a readers perspective

A few weeks ago I took the Gopen writing course. It was an intensive course in expository writing from a readers’ perspective. The course ran two consecutive Saturdays from 7:30am to 5pm. For me it was mandatory.

I have to admit, when I received the email from my boss insisting that I register for the course, I was a bit miffed. Wasn’t he the one who told me I was a good writer? Am I not a published author? Of course he didn’t know that, but I still complained to a few of my co-workers that I didn’t need the course. And I felt justified in not wanting to attend. That was two Saturdays that I had to spend away from my kids. And I had to drive on the highway to get there (I am terrified of highways).

Well I did take the course, reluctantly deciding I was going to ditch it the following week. Was I in for a surprise! Not only was it interesting and entertaining but it was indeed helpful and necessary for my development as a writer.

The instructor, Dr George Gopen from Duke University gave us one rule to writing from a readers’ perspective: there is no rule. That immediately got my attention. He went on to discuss about the importance of context and sentence structure that would make it clear to the reader. One thing he said that really made an impact on me was, “No matter how good a writer you are, if your reader cannot understand you, you have not done the job.”

So true! How many times have I read scientific papers three and four times and still could not understand what they were saying? I just thought I was dumb. But Dr. Gopen is right. When we write, the reader should not have to use up all his/her energy in understanding what we are communicating. We did some exercises that really drove home the point. They involved rearranging sentence structure to make it much clearer for the reader.

When I went home I re-examined some of my scientific writing and I was appalled. I had fallen into the trap of so many scientists writing long sentences with a million and one sub-clauses before getting to the point. It made it unclear for the reader.

I couldn’t wait to attend the next class. And it did not disappoint. At the end of the course I asked Dr. Gopen if offered courses like this for fiction writers. He said no, because fiction is for the interpretation of the reader, while expository writing, be it legal, journalistic, political, or scientific is to provide information for the reader. Therefore a writer of expository writing should write from the reader’s perspective.


I am happy I took that class. I spoke about it so much that my boss joined me for the second session. Now he’s still talking about it.

I don’t agree with Dr. Gopen about the utility of his course in fiction writing. I’ve read some fiction that are so hard to follow that I gave up reading midway. Yes fiction can have multiple interpretations. But unless the reader comprehends, or if that reader has to expend too much energy reading the material, it becomes unrewarding.

So I’ve begun to apply some of the clarity in my fiction writing. I think I am a better writer for it, both in the non-fiction writing required for my day job and in my fiction writing.

Writers I Owe

KeVin's post Writers of Influence got me thinking. It's difficult to pinpoint writers who have directly influenced my writing; over a lifetime of voracious reading I'm sure they are legion. What I suspect is that the writers I've enjoyed the most must have somehow insinuated their way into my approach to the craft, and maybe even influenced my choice of stories to tell. I won't attempt to analyze exactly how they achieved this, but I'll call them out and mention why they've had such an impact on me. (I'm drawing on a post I wrote on my Wordtryst blog three years ago.)

Richard Bach
Someone described his work as "philosophy lite". Call it what you will, his books captivated me decades ago, and his adventures in living his beliefs have helped to form - or at least validate - some of my own beliefs.

Arundhati Roy
I was fascinated by the legend of this Indian writer who submitted the manuscript for The God of Small Things to a London agent who, not long after, found himself on a plane to India, contract and six-figure advance in hand. When I read the book I understood. It's the writing - lyrical, heart-wrenching... That's the way I aspire to write!

Gerald Durrell
I read My Family and Other Animals when I was a child and was hooked for life. Durrell's accounts of his childhood in Greece, along with his adventures as an animal collector, zookeeper and conservationist, not only provided me with innumerable hours of high entertainment but also contributed to my development as a naturalist and writer.

Dave Barry
During my sojourns in Florida the highpoint of my weekend was buying the Miami Herald and reading Barry's column. Every Monday for the past five years or so, one of his classic columns drops into my inbox courtesy the Herald, and it's a great way to offset the start-of-the-week blues. The quintessential humorist and satirist, Barry is unsurpassed, imho, at exposing the hysterical insanities in everyday life.

William Shakespeare
During my last teaching stint a few years ago I met a fifteen year old boy who shared my passion for The Bard. I wanted to hug him. When I left, he hugged me. After all, how often do you meet a teenager who also gets goosebumps every time we read certain lines of Macbeth? Shakespeare's trenchant observations on every aspect of life have so influenced me that his words constantly find their way into my writing - and even into my everyday speech, much to the disgust of a few people who just don't get it.

Harper Lee
I've lost count of the number of times I've read To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee captures the essence of childhood while at the same time exploring very adult themes and telling a damned good story - a triple triumph I'd love to emulate.

Bill Bryson
After reading A Walk in the Woods I knew I had to get my hands on his other books. (Yes, KeVin, he does seem to have a jaundiced view of certain aspects of the American South but I'm not from there so I don't take it personally and the humour is undiluted by any perception of insult.) Bryson combines several of my reading fetishes, some of which I'm discovering are also my writing fetishes: humour, the natural world, travel, and social satire.

Edward Abbey
Here is another writer who speaks to the things I hold dear: conservation of the natural world, solitude, rejection of worldly values, the beauty and mystery of existence in all its manifestations. My tattered copy of Desert Solitaire is one of my prized possessions.

Others who have deeply influenced my thoughts and my writing, consciously and otherwise, I'm sure, are:

• Maya Angelou, for her genius at making me cry, rage, and laugh out loud - sometimes all at the same time!
• Erma Bombeck, for demonstrating that the most ordinary, humdrum aspects of living (what's funny about a housewife living in the suburbs, battling with spouse, spawn, cooking, laundry, crab grass, weight gain and her own expectations of domestic bliss?) can provide great fodder for humour.
• Erica Jong, for empowering wonderful, libidinous, flawed, lovable feminist heroines!
  

—Liane Spicer

The Power of Three

Recently a reader asked me for my opinion on why there are so many trilogies being published lately -- I have two answers, one short, one longer. You know me...

The first is financial. If an author’s books sell well, there’s nothing a publisher likes better than to have another book waiting in the wings to move onto shelves as soon as the initial sales of their first subside. The strategy seems to be to have new books come out within six months of each other, as my second did, which means that the old paradigm of taking a year to finish a novel is slowly being thrown out the window. That’s right, kids, your competition is now time -- the novelist who can produce good work faster -- i.e., readable and saleable, which doesn’t always mean the best writing -- is more appealing to a major publisher than a brilliant first novel with no guarantee of more.

If a publisher buys a trilogy and promotes it as such, it theoretically means that anyone who enjoyed the first book is a built in audience for the second and third. Since most book contracts are structured in step payments, publishers have no problem writing off any money paid on signature and stopping the ball before it rolls too far down the hill if the first book tanks. For them it’s a win-win situation -- not so much for the author who told everybody about a three-book deal that then goes the way of all things.

The second reason is aesthetic.

There has always been an attraction to the power of three. Off the top of my head I can cite the Holy Trinity that I was raised with as a Catholic -- Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The three witches in Macbeth, the three sisters in Aaron Spelling’s “Charmed”, three-eyed and three legged aliens in “War of the Worlds”, “The Tripods” series -- I could Google and find far more and better examples, but you get the point.

Almost any writing course will tell you that a good story has three elements - a beginning, middle and end. We talk of the three-act structure of plays, even of screenplays. Life is divided into past, present and future, with no side trips into parallel time or alternate dimensions. Bottom line, there is a magic and mystery to the number three that recurs frequently in literature and myth.

There's also something almost irresistible to taking on the challenge of writing a story so big it requires three parts to tell. It is a lure that can be as lethal as Ulysses' desire to hear the Siren's song, with equal risk of crashing to you doom on the rocks. When I started my first novel, “BITE MARKS: A Vampire Testament”, I didn’t plan for it to become a trilogy. That happened in the course of rewriting the first book, as I realized it had generated a valid continuation of the story. Book one took place in 1986/87 and involved a vampire baby that is “cured” by the end of the first book. Once I had that ending, I saw a second story that brought the baby, now human and approaching 21, back to New York to find out what happened to him all those years ago.

I was lucky in that the editor who bought the book saw the same potential, and bought the second book based on a half page description of what it would be. In the course of writing book two of what had become the first two novels of “The Vampire Testaments” at my editor’s suggestion, I had a choice -- cram everything that was coming up into one book that felt rushed, or break the story I saw remaining into two books, turning my first publication into the opening volley of -- yeah, yet another trilogy.

In all good conscience, I couldn’t cheat the characters or the readers with the former, so I wrote up enough details to see where the third book would go, and plunged ahead, counting on my editor to tell me I was crazy if the second book didn’t satisfy. She didn’t, and I am now hard at work on book three, with no contract, driven only by my need to know what happens next.

I did something unusual (I think -- I haven’t read everything, after all) in that each book of the trilogy is separated by a generation -- the first takes place in 1986/87, the second twenty years later in 2007, and the third will be set twenty years from now in 2028. My hope is that no one will assume the third is science fiction and shy away from it, or that first readers of the third will be disappointed in the first two for not having futuristic aspects. For the purposes of the story I am trying to tell I had to move forward in time for certain events to build to a boil. The third is more speculative fiction if anything, in that I am more concerned with social and moral changes than in how technology or science may have changed to affect us.

It does make for an interesting marketing issue, which I will address in future blogs. Publishing today is still struggling to deal with the question of how to effectively sell a book in the 21^st century, when more books than ever are available, in more forms, and in more markets. My hope is that I’ll attract readers who like my characters, the way I tell stories, and my themes, and that, if done well, where or when they are set will be accepted without question.

When I realized that I’d thrown myself into a trilogy, as opposed to a series, (also popular with publishers today, though the Testaments will continue with individual novels), I took on the responsibility to end the third novel well, in a way that wrapped up the lives of the characters while leaving them open to future stories. I didn’t want to pad out a successful first story into two more, as the Matrix trilogy did so poorly, for seemingly no other reason than to milk the market.

In my opinion they destroyed the integrity of the first movie by the middle of the second, when Neo arbitrarily discards saving the real world to save his lover (named Trinity, ironic in the context of this essay) and then lies about it. Then they gave us a third movie that essentially reprised and expanded the action sequences of the first two and cranked them up until there was no room left for anything but more digital copies of the villains in motion. Consistency of plot, character or story were thrown out the window in a virtual orgy of hi-tech destruction driven more by Joel Silver’s action movie mentality than the intelligence of the Wachowskis that instigated the original idea.

For me, a trilogy is justified when it’s driven by an epic story that can’t be contained in anything smaller. The “Lord of the Rings” was a faux trilogy in that it was written as a massive single book the publisher cut into three parts for publication. Nonetheless, except for the abrupt close of the first two portions (I feel each part of a good trilogy should have a satisfying ending, even as it sets you up for the next), it tells an epic tale that couldn’t be told in fewer words.

The future of the trilogy will be determined by two things -- their effectiveness, how well they are written -- but first and foremost, their sales. If people keep buying trilogies, writers will keep writing them, and publishers will keep putting them out there. I will think twice before I launch into another. My only regret is that I didn’t pitch the first as a trilogy so that the publisher could have promoted it as such, but I am making clear that the story continues -- and ends -- with another. After that I have at least two more tales to tell in my vampire lore, and a host of unrelated books to write, supernatural and otherwise.

Why You Should Consider Applying to the Clarion Workshop This Year

As of 1 December, the Clarion Science Fiction and Writers' Workshop opened to applications for the class of 2011.

Here's the official announcement:

Clarion is widely recognized as a premier training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction short stories. The 2011 writers in residence are Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, David Anthony Durham, John Kessel, and Kij Johnson. Each year 18 students, ranging in age from late teens to those in mid-career, are selected from applicants who have the potential for highly successful writing careers. Students are expected to write several new short stories during the six-week workshop, and to give and receive constructive criticism. Instructors and students reside together in University of California at San Diego campus apartments throughout the intensive six-week program.

Application period: December 1 – March 1. Applicants must submit two short stories with their application.

Workshop: June 26 – August 6, 2011. http://clarion.ucsd.edu

So why should you consider applying?

• You'll learn how to critique other people's writing and thus your own.
• Your writing will improve amazingly.
• You'll make several friends for life.
• You get to spend six weeks on a tree-filled campus immersed in writing—no cooking, no chores, no noisy children or demanding pets, nothing at all to prevent you from living and breathing writing.
• You'll have the most fun one can possibly have while being severely sleep deprived.
• You'll find out whether you truly want to be a writer.
• Being a Clarion grad opens doors for you and gives you a professional connection to dozens of professional sf/f writers (and writers in some other genres as well).
• Your life will change forever.

Yes, Clarion is pricey—nearly $5000 this year. (That includes tuition, private room in a three-person apartment with kitchen, Internet service, and three meals per day at the dining hall, as well as a parking pass if you take your car.) Some scholarships are available.

However, if you truly want to be a professional or semiprofessional writer, Clarion is worth the money. In essence, it leapfrogs you and your career several years ahead of where you'd be otherwise. And if you discover that the writing life is not for you, then you can stop wasting time writing and get on with what you should be doing with your life.

If you have any questions about Clarion, feel free to post them in the comments or email me at ShaunaRoberts [at] ShaunaRoberts [dot] com.

—Shauna Roberts

My How "Time" Flies

They say the older we get, the years tend to fly in the blink of an eye. Well, I'm sure I must be 302 years old because this year zipped by so dang fast, it's actually scary. Life is very, very short and as we know, we need to cherish each and every day and make the most of every single moment. And if we manage to discover our purpose, our mission, our passion along the way, what a major blessing that is.


If you've discovered a passion for writing and been bitten by the bug, then you know the feeling of bringing a story to life knowing you've created it from a thought in your mind's eye. And then after all of the sweat it took to pen it, you give your story wings, and then jump right back in, only to need to meet another deadline.

Having an entire year to write a book seems like a long time. But before you know it, you have very little time left and wonder why you took so long to get yourself in gear, why you deviated from what you thought was one heck of a well thought out plan. "If I just do ten pages a day for thirty days I'll have a rough draft. And then I'll take sixty days to sharpen it up, and another two months to tweak it. I'll spend three months reading it and relayering and redrafting and two more months with a focus group." Yeah right. Life happens, and your plan didn't, because My How Time Flies.

Managing to make the most of our time as "reclusive by necessity" authors takes serious discipline and determination and dedication. We work hard to practice those three D's because the rewards of self-fulfillment are so satisfying.

When it comes to what we do as authors, meeting a deadline (called "dead" and "line" for a reason) is challenging. A book is done when it's done, not simply because it's due today. But remember, simply because of the fact that life is so short and time flies so quickly, make the most of your time if you can. Handle your business. But let's handle your greatest passion first and foremost - those who we love, and who love us! Let's give them the greatest gift we can - our time!

Writers of Influence.

Once again a post by my Live Journal friend Altariel has inspired another column. Not long ago she challenged us to name "Fifteen writers who've influenced you and will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes."

I came up with one shy of a dozen. (I'm sure I'll think of more once people start chiming in with their own favorites.)

Robert A. Heinlein. A master storyteller. While he is best known for Stranger in a Strange Land, his juvenile novels like Have Space Suit; Will Travel or Podkayne of Mars are worth seeking out. Heinlein is also the archetype of the writer as no-nonsense craftsman. My approach to the process of writing is based on his: don't write drafts, write a story. His rules for being a writer should be posted above every monitor:
1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

Toni Morrison. You just sort of dive into her prose and luxuriate. Her novel Beloved garnered her the greatest praise, but her Song of Solomon is far and away my favorite. (Do not read The Bluest Eye unless you are well fortified against depression; it's that effective.) My favorite quote of hers: "I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it."

Ray Bradbury, whom I first met through Dandelion Wine rather than his more famous Fahrenheit 451.. The Martian Chronicles, October Country, I Sing the Body Electric – I'd pay full cover price for any of his anthologies in a heartbeat. His gift for evocation and for presenting the alien as us – and vice versa – is unparalleled.

John D. MacDonald. The absolute master of the first-person mystery novel; his narrative voice is flawless. He never insulted – and never bored – his reader and always played fair. He gives us everything in advance and still manages to surprise and satisfy. Read any of the Travis McGee series.

Kurt Vonnegut. Hard to explain how this man's writing, his "unstuck in time" plotting affected my own approach to how a story can flow. I know Slaughterhouse Five is the Vonnegut novel everyone recommends, but go read it. Like Heinlein, Vonnegut had rules for writers:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Vonnegut added that great writers break all of these rules except the first.
Ursula LeGuin for world building.

T.S. Elliot for what he can make words do.

Tony Hillerman for his ability to make his adopted culture so real to the reader that you find yourself regarding your own way of seeing things as strange.

Nonfiction:

Bill Bryson. Though he hates my native south, his Lost Continent taught me how to make a location real. Notes From a Small Island and In Sunburned Country give Britain and Australia the same treatment.

Barbara Tuchman. History more vibrant than historical novels. I recommend A Distant Mirror.

And I have to add two writers who had a great impact on me as people before I'd read their works and who, as writers, have influenced my own work:
Kristine Kathryn Rusch and her husband Dean Wesley Smith. I am a writer – rather than a wannabe best-selling author with delusions of grandeur and a trunk full of half-begun manuscripts – because these two took the time to beat some sense into me.

So what about you? Whose work influenced your writing?

Writing Through the Holidays

My most recent posts here at Novel Spaces have highlighted my first ever participation in National Novel Writing Month. On November 1^st, I blogged about my excitement over writing a 50,000 word novel in one month’s time. Back on the 17^th, at just about the halfway point, I was well on my way to reaching my goal.

Little did I know my NaNoWriMo writing journey would hit a huge snag that segues quite nicely into the topic of today’s post. Instead of celebrating the near-completion of my month-long writing project and enjoying a nice turkey meal at the dinner table, I spent my Thanksgiving sitting on the sofa cradling my laptop (I paused for the Saints/Cowboys game, of course). A killer deadline popped up out of nowhere (umm…not really nowhere I just happened to get a few dates confused), and I was forced to spend my holiday writing. Unfortunately, that NaNoWriMo book still sits at 44,700 words.

Writers, especially those under deadlines, don’t always have the luxury of taking the holidays off. For those who find themselves having to write during the holidays, here are a few tips:

1. Think about giving yourself some time off. Writing through the holidays is not easy. If you can afford to give yourself a break, this is the perfect time to do it.

2. Write during non-traditional times. If you're used to writing from 9pm - 11pm every night, you may have to consider changing things up. If your family is going caroling or there's a swinging holiday party going on, you may have to sacrifice watching the 7pm showing of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer in order to get your pages in.

3. Practice writing sprints. I know of a few writers who do all of their writing in short sprints, but for those who don’t, give it a try. Carve out two to three 15-minute chunks of time throughout the day and write as much as you can. At the end of each sprint, leave a hint of what the next scene will be about so you can quickly refresh your memory when you start the next sprint. You’ll be amazed at how much you can get done in such little time.

4. Take a lesson from Scrouge. It may be considered rude or not in the spirit to turn down invitations to holiday parties, but if you cannot afford the time away from your writing you need to learn to say no. Bah humbug!

I’d love for the writers out there to share some of their tips for writing through the holidays.