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Craft and Draft: Parallelogrammar

February 27, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

This post has nothing to do with math. It has to do with shapes. But the shapes of language, which are way cooler than, say, rhombuses. Rhombi. Bent rectangles. You get what I mean.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the term “parallel structure,” always imagining sets of parallel objects, like yellow lines on the road or meticulously laid chopsticks or some gymnastic beams. Parallel is one of those words that invokes strong mental images, probably because we are forced to memorize its definition as children during the same phase we learn shapes and spacial reasoning and how to not walk into walls all the time.

Parallel is important. It means separate but equal. Two paths that can never cross. Two dimensions that should never be mixed in case you accidentally meet your parallel-self and cause the universe to implode.

In writing it still means separate but equal, but your concepts should cross. Sort of.

While I would (and will) definitely argue that individual words can create parallelism, the real concept is based on parallel grammatical constructs. To achieve a balance in your language, establish a rhythm in your prose, you have to make sure all of your grammatical formations are in sync.

Think of a group of synchronized swimmers; if one is out of time with the others, doing some kicky move with her legs in the air while the rest of the swimmers are doing jazz-hands, the majesty and flow of the performance is ruined. Your writing functions the same way. If you throw in an off-note, an incorrect tense, a flat-out wrong verb form, your reader is going to notice. And probably not be happy.

What Parallelism Isn’t

If you’re used to reading pretty polished writing, you may not see a lot of examples of a-parallel structure. It’s something a lot of editors will catch in early drafts. Seeing the dissonance in action might help you understand (and ultimately kill) it. For example, this sentence is clearly not balanced correctly:

“Oliver loves brewing, drinking, and to pour beer on his head when he’s drunk.” (note: this may or may not be a nonfictional sentence)

That last infinitive form verb (to pour) breaks the pattern established by the two present participles (brewing, drinking). It just sounds…odd. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with that sentence, the lack of parallelism hurts the flow, and more importantly, the style.

This mistake can happen when a writer mentally builds a simple sentence (Oliver loves to pour beer on his head when he’s drunk) and then tacks on the present participles to add more context to the sentence. When you write, you want to make sure all of the grammatical parts of the same sentence are cut from the same hunk of verb:

“Oliver loves brewing, drinking, and pouring beer on his head when he’s drunk.” (And yes, I do realize this sentence implies that I enjoy brewing beer on my head)

Re-wording

While being a good manager of your grammatical employees is probably the most important part of parallelism, there are several other ways to use it to enhance your language or drop a little hardcore flair into your prose. Using duplicate words to create solidarity between two phrases is one of my favorites:

“The noises of the 56.6k modem were the heralds of my budding social life; each bleep and blarg and chzzzk-chzzzk got me closer to my friends, closer to that much coveted teenage popularity.” (This is a line from a piece I pitched to 20 Something Magazine)

By repeating closer, I’m connecting the second phrase to the first, but also building on the impact and emphasis of the first. This is a fun technique but writer beware: too much of this can annoy a reader and make your writing seem lazy and uninspired. Use this like Sriracha. A little squirt adds a lot of spice.

Chiasmus chasms

Another form comes to us from rhetoric: chiasmus. This literally translates from the Greek “khiasmos” which means simply, “cross.”

This is a form that is prevalent throughout spiritual texts (like the Bible and the Book of Mormon) as well as political speeches and public announcements. It’s a form you’re probably pretty familiar with, only because it stands out so strongly on the page (and lends itself so well to sound-bites):

“When everyone is famous, no one will be.”

Chiasmus follows traditional symbolic logic. The example above is ABAB, but it can follow almost any pattern that completes a logical loop:

ABBA: “You do not dance with the queen, the queen dances with you.”

ABCABC: “Refreshing like a lager, intoxicating like an ale.”

ABCCBA: “To relax is to be at peace, to be at peace is to be free.”

The most important thing about chiasmus is the correct balancing of the sentence. If one side is too heavy, or has an extra verb or preposition or clause, it ruins the effect. This device works well as a single line paragraph, a quick transition, or a way to really connect that baseball bat of emphasis to the knuckle ball of your theme.

Parallel application

All of this seems very artsy. That’s because it is. Parallel structure is a chance for you to play with your language, infuse it with the Frankenstenian extract that makes writing come to life. It gives your writing that je ne sais quoi, making it sound natural and effortless and, for lack of a more descriptive term, good.

There are many other ways to use parallel structure to improve your writing, like matching prepositional phrases (the boat on the beach near the house on the shore) or matching appositives (Hansel, the fearless brother, and Gretel, the benevolent sister). Using any of these comes down to intentionally building a sort of syncopation, where the pacing and structure and diction all work together to create sentences that almost sound like music.

The language is your sheet music. Your brain is the composer. Go make some literary music using parallel structure.

Railroad tracks are, pretty much be necessity, parallel.

Craft and Draft: Branching Out

February 18, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Have you ever been reading a book when, without warning or reason, your brain wanders off onto some random idea (like tacos!)? Have you ever looked back over the pages you just “read” and realized that you didn’t actually read them at all, they just kind of passed by your eyes like a slow moving cloud?

The culprit, for once, may not be your underdeveloped attention span or lack of sleep.

The problem might be in the syntax of the writing.

Despite our contemporary attempts at universal equality, not all sentences are created equal. Some are stronger than others, or are innately more interesting to read. In standard prose there are three types of sentences:

Right-branching (or “loose” sentences)
Left-branching (or “periodic” sentences)
Middle-branching (also called “periodic” sentences, I don’t know why)

These sentences determine how subordinate information is provided to the main clause of the sentence, and determines the syntactic variety of our writing. If you want your writing to dance on the page, put on that tutu and really nail that Tchaikovsky, you have to understand what each type of sentence does, and why.

Right Branching (aka Boring, Mr. Traditional Pants)

The right-branching sentence is a writer’s comfort sentence. It’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes. It’s that favorite pair of jeans that you refuse to wash because you know when you do, they won’t fit the same. It’s our default syntactic form, and the one you’re most likely to encounter in everyday reading.

It’s also the first kind of sentence that English speakers learn to write. A typical right-branching sentence looks like this: “He ran to get to the sword on the other side of the room, hoping to reach it before the swashbuckling goat-man.”

The basic sentence is just subject + transitive verb + direct object, “He ran to get the sword.” The other “stuff” (call it whatever you want: subordinate information, embroidery, a fancy tie for your sentence-suit) comes after – or to the right of – the subject of the sentence.

This is the journalist’s preferred style, as it gives all of the information in a clear, often chronologically appropriate order, without the reader having to figure much out.

The right-branching sentence is great for delivering information quickly and cleanly.

It’s also pretty boring (sorry journalist-type people).

Imagine reading a long-form piece that was written with all right-branching sentences: “He ran to the store to get milk his sister desperately needed. He had no money, but that wouldn’t stop him. The milk was in the back of the store, so he had to pass the clerk to get to it. The clerk watched him closely, hoping he wouldn’t steal anything. He picked up the milk and ran out the door before the clerk could even yell in protest.”

Not terrible, but it sounds pretty choppy. All of that adjectival and adverbial supplementation dangles off the end of the predicate like a poorly attached fishing lure on some thin, cheap line. One big fish (or good reader) and that tackle is lost forever, claimed by the briny depths (of your recycling bin).

Fortunately, most writers recognize that writing like a third-grader isn’t the best way to get an idea across, and use (even if they’re not aware of it) another type of sentence to vary the patterns and cadence of their writing.

Left-Branching (aka Sir Rambles-A-Lot)

If the right branching sentence is your comfort sentence, the left branching sentence is that tumultuous but exciting relationship you had in your early twenties. Mysterious and fascinating, packed with new experiences, something you couldn’t help but be attracted to, even if only for the novelty of something different. But with excitement comes risk. The left-branching sentence can leave you pretty burned and bitter when it dumps you for a guy named Steve who totally isn’t as smart or successful or as good looking as you.

To prevent predictable, chunky prose, a writer must vary sentence patterns. I just wrote a left-branching sentence to explain why you should write left-branching sentences. Such writing, unexpected, even sometimes confusing, keeps the reader engaged. I just did it again.

A left branching is exactly what it sounds like: the embroidery of your sentence comes before – or to the left of – your main subject and predicate. It is very good at building tension, or front-loading a sentence with information that you as the writer feels the reader needs before he gets to the action of the sentence.

This is a great for for dramatic moments, where you want to drag out some emotional scene, or build-up to a specific, powerful realization.

It’s also great for pissing your reader off.

There’s little worse than a sentence that just won’t get to the point, and that’s the risk you run every time you write a left branching sentence: “In the fading light, under the mossy ruins of a fallen willow, hoping against hope that she would show up dressed in that red sundress that hugged her curves, praying he wouldn’t fumble as he reached for the ring in his pocket, Jason sat.”

Shit man, Oscar Wilde called, and even he’s bored. Get on with it. Building tension is one thing. Rambling for five adverbial phrases is another.

The left-brancher can be a great cog in the steam-powered mechanization of your writing, but writer beware. It should be used sparingly and with purpose. If not, it may alienate writers and muddle up your voice, leaving you sad and alone on your birthday even though she promised to hang out and watch Spaceballs with you.

Wait, forget that last part.

Middle-branching (aka Mr. Fear of Commitment)

The middle-branching sentence is living through a perpetual identity crisis. Sometimes it wants to be left-branching, sometimes right-branching, which leaves it stuck in the middle, waffling and confusing everyone. It can’t figure out where to drop all that heavy subordinate information, so it just gives up, drops it at its feet, and stomps away in a fuss.

The middle-brancher places subordinate information between – or, um, in between – the subject and predicate. This makes for some interesting appositives or adjectival phrases that make your sentences more interesting.

Or more awkward. It depends on the style or effect you’re going for.

A middle-brancher would sound like this, “He drove, filled with shame and self-loathing, to Walmart.”

A lot of editors might immediately want to “correct” these sentences and make them left- or right-branching, but in defense of all things artistic, they can be used to vary the flow of a piece, and present important information in a way the actively engages the reader. If you’ve already introduced your subject, immediately following up with adverbial or adjectival information is a way to place emphasis without having to add a ton of supporting words that scream, “pay attention to this part right here, it’s super duper important, for real!”

The middle-branching sentence relies heavily on restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. If you really need to qualify how or why your subject did something (to say, build character, establish setting, or foreshadow) the middle-branching sentence might be exactly what you need. If the clause you’re placing in the middle is non-restrictive and just adds some other sundry detail for spice, left or right branching might be more appropriate.

Syntactic exploration is the cardamom and curry powder of writing

Next time you’re writing (or editing!), pay attention to the style of sentences you’ve used. Is it heavy on the right-branchers because you were a little too comfortable with your language when you wrote the first draft? Is it packed with tedious left branchers because you drank too much and started remember all the times you and ::named redacted:: went to the movies in 2001? Is it full of weird, lurching, awkward pariahs of language that dawdle about in the middle for too long?

If so, change it up. Any type of sentence can be transformed into another type with some clever grammar Feng Shui. When you review your own work, pay attention to the syntax just as much as the content and word choice. A little variation or emphasis passed on through the proper sentence structures can take your writing from “yea, I’ll read this” to “holy shit I can’t put this down.”

“Superfluous branches we lop away that bearing boughs may live” -Shakespeare

How to Choose

February 11, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Life is a huge, open-ended Choose Your Own Adventure book.

At any moment, no matter the circumstance, you have some level of choice. You can choose which pair of pants to wear (if any), what to believe and what to deny (and what to tell others to believe and deny), or which flavor of Doritos would go best with your Lean Cuisine (Cool Ranch, by the way).

You can choose what to do with just as much ease as you choose what not to do.

You have more options than your brain can possibly process.

You can choose anything or nothing or something or everything.

What do you choose?

You choose to stop reading this blog post. Close your browser window.
You choose to keep reading this blog post. Continue to the next sentence.

You are progressing through your very own tailor-made, hyper-personalized adventure, one choice at a time.

You might associate choice with “big” or “important” concepts: whether to buy a manual or automatic, a Colonial or a Tudor, paperback or the Kindle version. It’s easy to forget you’re even making choices when the robotic perfunctitude of your daily life turns most little choices into exercises in the process of elimination. You may choose to eat cereal for breakfast, but since you only have half a box of stale Cinnamon Toast Crunch left your choice of cereal is predetermined by your available resources.

You may also automatically assume that your choices are limited by the choices you have already made: you can’t choose a new career because you already chose one years ago, or you can’t choose to be healthy and fit because of all the other choices that made you not so healthy and fit. This seems true because you’ve formed habits. Habits are just big collections of choices that have turned into semi-permanent mental constructs like carefully stacked Lego blocks made of pure destiny. Even though they seem like cumulative life-definers, these habits are sickly and squishy, only as strong as the weakest choice in the theoretical chain.

You can, at any moment, make a decision that undoes all of your previous decisions, to your advantage or to your doom.

That is the great secret of free-thinking; you can and should and will make your own choices. Sure, some will be harder than others, and some might be unfairly influenced by external mind-goblins. But each choice is perfectly yours. Even though the outcome may be grim, you always have a choice to go against the forces pushing you in one direction.

You have to be active in the decision making process. Each thing you decide should be intentional and deliberate. Don’t get sucked into the undertow of choices that make themselves. If choices define your life, and you’re not actively making said choices, who is defining your life?

The great news is that our reality, even limited by our relatively small ability to perceive the electromagnetic spectrum, is exploding with choice. Sit and think about everything you can do right this second. You could jump up from your computer, go buy 25 kittens and a huge package of catnip and just roll around in kittens and catnip for hours. And that’s just one thing! No one is stopping you. Only you, questioning my sanity (and possibly your own, if you’re considering it), are stopping you from hopping in your Prius and going to PetSmart.

Very rarely are you in a position where your choices are truly limited. Sometimes, a choice that works best for you just requires some less-orthodox and deeply critical thinking. The concept of coming up with choices in seemingly no-choice situations has been around for a long time. A lot of people call it “problem solving.”

Following our passions comes down to making choices that feed, not starve. Being active instead of passive. Do you sit and watch another hour of TV, or do you use that hour to write a short story? Do you eat four donuts and sit around in your unwashed boxer-briefs, or do you eat a tasty spinach avocado sandwich and go for a jog? Do you diligently work on improving your skills, or just hope that one day someone will notice you and hand you a delicious burrito of success wrapped in a tortilla made of thousand dollars bills?

Do you put what makes you happy first, or do you put what makes other people happy first?

The world is at the doorstep of your brain. You just have to make some choices.

What do you choose?

You choose to keep putting your passions second or ignore them completely. Go to Kristen Lamb’s Blog: “The Land of Good Enough“
You choose to spend your time and energy on your passions. Go create something and be blissfully happy because you’re awesome.

I used to "play" these books all the time as a kind. And by "play" I mean "cheat my way through to see all the possible outcomes."

I used to “play” these books all the time as a kid. And by “play” I mean “cheat my way through to see all the possible outcomes.”

How to Read like a Writer

February 6, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Reading is like eating seven-layer dip.

At first salivating glance, you see piles of gorgeous green guacamole. A mountain range of avocado-salsa blend contained between four walls of Pyrex. It is easy to be emotionally overcome by the beauty of the guacamole, thinking that, from this angle, the dip is nothing but guacamole.

But if you maintained this perspective, and someone asked you to recreate the seven-layer dip, you’d be content to mash up 13 avocados, stick them in a bowl, and shove them proudly at your party goers with a grin that says, “I made dip.”

To successfully make seven-layer dip, you have to understand that is has, y’know, seven layers. Beneath the obvious top-guac hides delicious cheese and olives and sour cream and beans. The dip itself is kind of complicated. The flavor comes from a combination of foods, all working together to create a single unified taste.

This is the problem with reading casually, only paying attention to the events of the plot and the overall story. You’re only noticing the top layer of the dip. Sure, you’re learning about story telling and enjoying yourself in the process, but you’re missing out of the other layers of literature that make a story robust and complete.

To recognize the layers, stare through the side of the Pyrex dish. Cross-section, not bird’s-eye. Think of it in a whole bunch of parts and techniques sandwiched together to make an engaging story. Think of it in layers.

Things you’ll need:

-A brain (I’ve found that the one inside your skull is easiest to access)
-A book (preferably something with some literary merit)
-A beer (optional, I guess, if you hate all things that are good)

Step 1: Recognize what you should be recognizing

A lot of scholars have attempted to sum up what makes something “literary” (which usually results in a list of 10/15/18/22/25 “things”). There is a lot of grey area. There is even more debate. Some aspects of literature are forehead smackingly obvious, others…not so much. I covered my take on these a few months ago.

It’s up to your inner Sherlock to decide what tools an author used in writing her book. Which means you need to be paying close attention while you’re reading. Which means you can’t just flop onto a beach chair, plow through a Robert Patterson novel while mutating your melanin, and expect to come out a better writer once you reach the satisfying, bolded, 16 pt, “THE END.”

Therein lies the jerk chicken rub. A lot of us read to relax. It’s our escape from the hellish realities of our grey, damp, corporate dungeons. The last thing we want to do while we read is analyze. I get it, I really do. I’m right there wanting to read for leisure with you.

But I’ll play messenger and deliver the bad message even if it means the king will behead me: you need to turn yourself into an analyst. There’s nothing glamorous about it. If you want to write like the authors you’re reading, you have to study the writing.

Start recognizing when an author like Jennifer Egan uses structure and odd timelines to enhance her narrative. Make notes when you see someone like Erik Larson using dueling narratives and foreshadowing to build tension even when we know how the story ends. Start recognizing that these are deliberate choices made by the authors, not just magic leprechaun luck that innately comes from being born during a significant astrological event.

Good writing is the culmination of a ton of intentional choices that are transposed into words and onto the page. Start learning what those choices are, and why they were made. When you learn them, you can emulate them, and your writing will transcend.

Step 2: Recognize what’s missing in your own writing

Talent is weird. It’s like we’re forced through the water sprinkler of talent as kids. Where the spray of talent-juice hit our brains, we’re awesome. Where it missed, we’re clueless.

Some of us are great at playing with language, turning phrases, being grammatically devastating Others are amazing at building tension through dialogue and scenes. Others can use structure to arrange a story in such a way that it is fresh and unexpected to the point where the reader yells, “no effin’ way!” at the book in disbelief.

It’s good to know what you’re good at.

It’s even better to know what you suck at.

If your stories seem one-dimensional, notice how great authors use back story, probing dialogue, and action within scenes to enhance without being all up in your grill about it. Study the latent symbolism in a work and learn how that helps connect the reader to the story in a more universal, approachable way.

Read authors who are great where you are terrible (also admit that you are terrible at certain things). Learn how they do it. Eat it, process the calories, make that technique part of your physical being. The only way to learn what talent didn’t give you is through mindful application of a stubborn will.

Step 3: Take your time

Unless you’re involved in some sort of underground reading death challenge (and yes, I’m fully aware of what the first rule is), the stakes are pretty low. No one except maybe your book club peeps or that one annoying friend (who really only wants to talk about the book, so her intentions are good) really cares how quickly you read something.

It’s not the Daytona 500 with little paper cars with words on them. You can read at your own pace.

Actually, no. You should read at your own pace. Take as much time with the words as you need to understand them. Reread if you’re really trying to internalize a specific technique, or figure out why something was so effective.

The book or essay or whatever won’t self-destruct after five seconds. You’ve got plenty of time to read. Take it.

Step 4: Take Notes

If you can’t seem to dive deep into the creamy nutrient filled sub-layers of literature, force reading to be more active by gluing writing to it.

If you’re like me, writing in the margins of a book is painful (reading is the closest thing I have to religion, so marking up a book feels sort of like defiling a sacred relic). But sometimes, to remember certain spots, commit the best parts to memory, it is necessary. With the help of our new computer overlords, we can at least do this without taking ink to page.

Open a Word doc or keep a notepad nearby when you read. Write down the stuff you find interesting. Ask questions. Try a certain technique to see how it’s done.

By writing while you read, you’re engaging more than just your eyeballs. You’re introducing your fingers and possibly ears to the dance. The more senses you use, the harder your memory works and the more points of reference it has to build a permanent structure in your brain. It’s science, bitches.

Step 5: Read good shit

Sorry about the “bitches” thing. I got carried away.

None of this fancy advice matters if you’re not reading stuff that is well done. Not that everything you read has to be a timeless classic, but it should at least be worthy of your time.

The old saying is, “You are what you eat.”

In our world, “You write what you read.”

The books and essays and memoirs and news stories and shampoo bottles and billboards and waffle iron instruction manuals will seep into your unconscious. Each one makes up part of the synaptic web of what we understand to be “writing.” Each has it’s place and it’s purpose and teaches us something (even if that thing is what color dye is used in peach-scented Alberto V05).

If you’re going to read, read well. Read up. Spend your time with things that will make you smarter. Challenge yourself and strengthen your writing web.

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” -Sydney J. Harris

Guest Post: Join the Club

February 5, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

To follow up from yesterday’s post about reading, classmate and fellow blogger Melody (from Melody and Words, a seriously great and well written blog) shares her less-thought-of insights into why reading, especially as a writer, is so, so important. If you would like to write a guest post for Literature and Libation, send your ideas to literatureandlibation@gmail.com.

So you want to be a writer? Join the club.

The book club, that is.

If you are serious about writing, start reading. Whether you want to write fiction or nonfiction, articles or trilogies, you need to be aware of what else is out there.

One of the best things about writing is its simplicity. All you need is a pen and paper (and basic literacy) and you’re good to go. You don’t need the fanciest laptop or a highfalutin degree, although those may help. All you need to do is put pen to paper and start writing.

But if you really want to take your work to the next level, hit the library stacks.

Survey the Field

Would an inventor ignore all the new products being released? Would a doctor be able to diagnose a patient’s illness without keeping up to date on modern medicine? Would a scientist forget about atoms just because he didn’t discover them himself?

Writers need to keep current in their field. How else would you know what else is being done in your field? Maybe your fantastic idea about a time-traveling T-Rex who’s really just searching for true love has already been done. Reading is a writer’s market research. It’s how you discover whether an idea is fresh or whether the market for Vampire Angel Viking Sheikh Navy SEALs is oversaturated. (It is.)

If you do have a great new idea in a certain genre, reading others’ work will help you discover how fellow authors have tackled your issue or genre, what angles to take, and what is currently missing from coverage of your favorite topics.

Marketability

Surveying and learning from what has come before will not only help fine-tune your work. It will help you place your work with publishers. Reading The Atlantic will teach you to pitch big-idea pieces, not deep-sea fishing stories. Reading best-selling memoirs will help you find agents, editors, and publishers who have a proven history of representing books like the one you want to write about your childhood in that cult. Reading Seventeen will show you that no one above the age of ten would be caught dead with a magazine like that. Pitch your stories accordingly.

When you read books, magazines, and newspapers, try to put your finger on what their “signature” story or idea would be. What kind of stories are the publication’s editors on the lookout for? It will help you develop a sense of who publishes what.

Start reading with an eye on book covers and bylines. Following the work of other writers will serve as a frame of reference for yours, so that you can correctly pitch your travel memoir to outer space as “Orson Scott Card meets Elizabeth Gilbert.”

Learn Technique

Reading is also the best way to find good examples of great writing. From Cormac McCarthy’s lack of punctuation to Jack Kerouac’s lack of sleep, from Anne Tyler’s empathetic characters to George RR Martin’s fearlessness regarding philandering dwarves and murdered main characters, other writers can teach you a lot. After all, there’s a reason they’re famous, and you get to ride their coattails.

When you see something you like, imitate it in your own work. And when you see something you hate, well, lesson learned!

Find Inspiration

If you’re experiencing writer’s block, pick up a book. Sometimes, simply giving your mind a rest allows your subconscious to work through issues on its own. You may land upon a creative way to solve a problem that’s been stumping you.

Imitating—but not copying wholesale—the work of others can help you overcome an issue you face in your own story. When your character is stuck between a goblin and Gollum, try inventing some fancy jewelry. When the party runs out of booze, hand your Jesus some water. These solutions may not stick through your revisions (of which there should be many), but they may ease you through a tight spot until you figure out what the hell you want your character to do next. (Unless you’re writing nonfiction; in which case, I suggest sticking to what actually happened next.)

Network

In our graduate writing program, Oliver and I spend much of our time reading. Reading the works of great writers and identifying why they’re so good. Reading the works of less successful writers and discussing what they could have done differently. Reading the work of our classmates and helping them expand the good parts and shore up weaker sections. Reading, reading, reading, oh yeah and more reading.

You may not be in a writing program, but you can form your own writing group or join a local Meetup. Not only will critiquing others’ work make your writing stronger, you’ll also establish connections to other budding writers. These classmates, our instructors tell us, are our future editors and freelancers and the people we will talk about at cocktail parties in the future: “Oh, we knew him when…”

Or, if you’re that guy who makes it big, the possibility exists that you might bump into other writers on the bestseller lists at your own, much better, cocktail parties. You won’t want to be caught with a canapé in one hand and your dick in the other when that hot redhead realizes you haven’t read her mega-bestseller at all.

In addition to sounding erudite, maintaining relationships with other writers is important. You might get a glimpse into their writing life, and one day, you might ask them to blurb your book or help you promote that screenplay. A little networking goes a long way.

Practice Jedi Mind Tricks

Most importantly, reading gets you into the mindset of your target audience: the reader. Figure out what you like and don’t like in books, and then do/never do that. Write the stories you wish you could read, and you can’t go wrong.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons

Craft and Draft: I’ll take words that start with “Ad” for $2000, Alex

February 1, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Warning, this post contains explicit grammar that may not be appropriate for people who don’t like grammar. Words like participle and infinitive and adjectival will be used. Parental discretion is advised.

As a culture, we’re rapidly approaching critical mass of “stuff we need to remember.” Kick-off times, meeting times, departure times, closing times. Passwords, PINs, SSNs, and IPs. Some of us have to remember large, complicated matrices and formulas and numbers, others large, complicated designs and abstracts and ideas. We have to remember how our systems work, both technical and physical, where Microsoft decided to hide the “sort ascending button” in this version, who asked who out for beers, and that in order to cook dinner, the oven needs to be hot, and for it to be hot, it needs to be preheated.

There are so many pieces of information to store, catalog, and recall that it’s amazing our brains have time for anything else.

As a result of this constant data-bombardment we inevitably forget things that aren’t important to our daily survival. Things like the specifics of molecular structure or which side of the plate the salad fork goes on or to finally water that poor house plant in the corner of our bedroom. Our brains work like massive databases where the most relevant, frequently accessed, and important information is kept at the ready, while everything else is crammed and stuffed into parts of the brain that aren’t frequently visited. You haven’t completely forgotten the stuff down in the dusty tomes of your archive, but it takes some effort and a big Swiffer Duster to bring it back up to the light of your main study.

That’s where your grammar lives. Unless you’re a ferocious copy editor or the reincarnation of E.B. White, chances are your understanding of grammatical rules has sunk deeper than the Titanic.

That’s OK. I’m here to raise the wreck and help figure all this “grammar” stuff out.

“Ad” Words

I’ve read a lot of contemporary writing advice and the general consensus seems to be, “don’t use adverbs or adjectives unless you really need to.”

In a literary vacuum this is good advice. Don’t write “He walked aimlessly” when you could write “He sauntered.” A good verb will almost always trump a bad verb with an glued-on adverb trying to pick up the syntactic slack.

But to avoid using adverbs and adjectives at all would lead to peculiar if not nigh unreadable language. You could avoid using single world adverbs and adjectives for a while, but to give no description to any of your nouns or any of your verbs seems masochistic for the reader and sadistic for the writer.

The explanation is simple: don’t rely on single words, use phrases. A phrase is a group of words that can stand for a single part of speech. For example, “He ran up the bank of the river.” The simple sentence is, “He ran.” But that sentence is boring and non-specific and no one wants to read it. Enter the adverbial phrase, “up the bank of the river.” Now we know where he ran. That whole string of words equals a single adverbial phrase (it’s also a prepositional phrase, but we’ll ignore that for now).

Of course, you can overuse phrases just like you can overuse single words and turn your prose into an insipid nightmare of nothing but pointless, unwavering description. But let’s pretend you won’t do that because you know better. Please don’t do that. It hurts our brains.

An important thing to remember about a phrase is that it does not contain a subject and predicate, meaning it isn’t a sentence or a clause. “Under the waves” is a phrase because it clearly doesn’t have a subject or predicate (or verb for that matter), it only functions to describe where, in some other, imaginary sentence.

There are two types of phrases: prepositional phrases (which, to everyone’s alarm, contain prepositions) and verbal phrases (which in turn has three sub-forms: infinitives, past participles, and present participles.) For now, we’ll just focus on how to identify and use the larger concepts of adverbial and adjectival phrases, regardless of their status as prepositions or verbals.

To help you understand how adverbial and adjectival phrases work, I’ve called on my friends: “Adjectival Arwen” and “Adverbial Aragorn.”

They are currently in post production of “Lord of the Ings: Two Gerunds”, slated for a 2027 release.

Adjectival Arwen rides towards Rivendell in a saddle made of soft leather

As a refresher (no one is judging anyone here) an adjective is a word (or series of words) that describes a noun. The word “Adjectival” in Arwen’s name is itself an adjective (I’m so meta). You know these words and use them all the time: drunken, sharp, red, gooey, awkward, etc. They add specificity to the noun, so the reader knows exactly which subject the writer meant. You could say “the man” which could mean any random dude, or you could say, “the man with the giant purple mustache” which pretty much points directly to a specific, crazy guy.

Adjectives give nouns unique identity. Arwen is not just an elf. She is a pretty elf who wields Hadhafang, sword of the Elven queens. Adjectives!

We use adjectival phrases all the time without really thinking about it. Any time you try to describe your subject, you’re using an adjectival phrase. It can be as simple as describing the look of something, “Arwen dyed her flowing hair bright red” (she didn’t just dye her hair, she dyed it a specific color) or as complicated as an appositive, which completely renames the noun, “Arwen, only daughter of Elrond of Rivendell, rode out to meet the battle.”

The key thing to remember her is that adjectival phrases always reference a noun. If something is describing the verb, or explaining how/where/when/why the action happened, it can’t be an adjectival phrase.

Adverbial Aragorn fights the orcs valiantly

Adverbs are the beasts that labor in the fields of our language, doing most of the heavy lifting and manual labor. They are words or phrases that describe verbs. These are often the “-ly” forms of adjectives (drunkenly, hazily) but can come in many other flavors.

An adverbial phrase always describes a verb in the sentence. If “Aragorn swings Narsil with the might of his Dúnedain ancestors,” the adverbial phrase (“with the might of”) describes the way he swings. It emphasizes and explains the action of the verb, giving sentence some spice, and clarifying just how the action took place. That adverbial phrase also contains a secondary adjectival phrase that describes what kind of might he was swinging with. Sweet.

All of this stuff builds on itself. Look at the basic sentence first, “Aragorn swings Narsil” then the adverbial “with the might” then the adjectival “of his Dúnedain ancestors.” It’s like a Russian doll of phrases, all of which eventually gives you a sentence that describes multiple things in specific ways.

So, adjectival phrases modify nouns, adverbial phrases modify verbs. All pretty simple, right? You’ll be able to use these left and right, with purpose, to make your writing all awesome now, right?

Right?

If you’re confused, that’s OK. Sentence variation in English is damn near infinite. You can and will have adjectival phrases inside of adverbial phrases that are part of compound predicates with multiple verbs that may or may not be prepositional. They may be part of a direct object or a subject compliment or just a tulle dress that you put on your subject to make it fancier so it will get more attention during its debutante ball. The great part about understanding these rules is that you can intentionally play with them and have fun with your writing, which, with practice, eventually becomes a part of your style and voice.

I know I’ve dumped a lot of ideas on you and presented a lot of unqualified terms. If anyone has any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I’ll cover more next week. These guy may pay a visit:

For the record, this is The Pirate of Prepositions, The Appositive Adventurer, and The Clause Clown. They mean business.

Craft and Draft: Grammar (with an “a”, not an “e”)

January 25, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I am taking a graduate level grammar class this semester. I apologize and you have been forewarned.

Grammar is an under-appreciated beast. It seems an inborn relationship, that of writing needing grammar, but very few people truly understand why the two are symbiotic. It’s the Adobe Illustrator of the writing world; everyone knows it can do great things, but very few bother to learn how it really works beyond the very basics. Many people assume they know enough about grammar to get by.

It is equal parts adored and reviled. Non-grammar people love to hate it, and grammar enthusiasts love to hate people who misuse it. It is more often than not misunderstood and almost always misrepresented by misguided, albeit well-meaning supporters.

Grammar carries on its back a latent fear, the summation of all of those painful elementary school lessons that you never quite learned and definitely don’t remember now. It causes unwanted mental disruptions in even the best language handlers. It vexes young editors and senior writers alike. It reminds a lot of word-people that their grasp on this whole “English” thing is more slippery and tentative than they care to admit.

There is nothing to fear about grammar. It is (when its guts are dissected and carefully examined) the math of language. The formulas and order of operations that keeps everything in line. It dictates how and when we can use certain patterns, and gives us a standard to mold our writing around.

If the goal of writing is to convey a message, grammar is the vehicle the message drives. It is the jeep that tumbles over the rocky terrain of complex ideas. Without grammar, writing would be an incoherent jumble of words, out of order, misspelled, with no rules governing how to decode and understand the message.

Without canon grammar, we’d all spell and write (and sound) like Chaucer.

Nobody wants that.

So, why do you need to understand grammar? Why should you care if your language is passive or you’ve split tons of infinitives or overused conjunctions in a sentence like I did in this one?

To oversimplify: clarity.

My wife has a motto, “Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can.”

If you can’t clearly present your idea or argument because of muddled grammar, what’s the point of writing it down and sharing it with the world?

1. Grammar is your friend, not your enemy

I really dislike the term “Grammar Nazi.” Not only does it apply all sorts of unnecessary (and frankly tasteless) connotations, it also perpetuates a culture where the only way to fix bad grammar is to ridicule and demonize it. Nazis wanted to create a perfect master race. Grammarians just want people to be accurate. Big, not-so-subtle difference.

If we’re forced by some weird societal zeitgeist to have a catchphrase for grammar-sticklers, I’d prefer “Grammar Ninja.” Instead of loudly declaring your hatred of poor grammar while wearing large boots and screaming at people to correct that use of “their” to “they’re”, sneak in under shadow and assassinate the bad grammar. Move like ink from the tip of a pen, flow through the errors, slice out mistakes. A good editor/writer will seamlessly, stealthily, efficiently correct grammar without making a big show of it, all ninja-like.

Comma splice? More like comma slice! Puns are great.

Comma splice? More like comma slice! Oh man, puns are great.

Godwinning grammarians makes grammar seem mean and harsh and evil. Grammar is anything but. It is there to help you organize your thoughts and be as articulate as possible. It is that really well qualified buddy who wants to help you with that start-up company, if you’d just stop ignoring all of his calls.

You wouldn’t yell at your wrench for not being able to loosen a bolt. You’d yell at the bolt, or your pathetic upper body strength, or the person who tightened the bolt in the first place. So why be mad at grammar for your poor sentences? Figure out what went wrong and why, and fix it.

Any sinking sentence can be repaired with the proper application of grammar. Remember that the next time you get mad at someone for using a possessive apostrophe to pluralize a word. Help and use the grammar, don’t shun and hate the grammar.

2. Grammar is a toolbox, not a single tool

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that almost anything in life can be explained by drawing parallels to Lego, especially writing, editing, and other literary endeavors.

The word “grammar” is not just an abstract, but also a collective noun. It stands for all of a writer’s tools: tense-wrenches and structure-screwdrivers, appositive-augers and subordinate-saws.

Just like the word “Lego” is a catch-all for the blocks and fasteners and mini-figures. You have 2×2 blocks and 3×1 blocks and those weird “L” shaped blocks, and little men with swords and helmets that make up the abstract concept of Lego.

You could just stick the blocks together however so struck your fancy at the time, and I’m sure people would recognize it as something built out of Lego. But to turn those little plastic blocks into something that other people want to look at and in turn appreciate, you have to follow the rules in the instruction pamphlet.

Grammar is the same way. You can loosely throw around constructs and still get some vague message across, but if you want your readers to understand your point and have a meaningful reaction, you have to be as clear as possible. Being clear means acknowledging the rules set forth by contemporary grammarians and reading lots of Strunk and White. Any misplaced subjects or confusing adjectival phrases or malapropisms will distract your reader from your message.

Top vs. Bottom: The difference between, “This a tree.” and “This is a brown and green tree, made of Lego.”

You wouldn’t use a screwdriver to hammer a nail (even though it could work), so you shouldn’t use weak adverbs where a strong verb could do a better job. Good grammar (and good writing) comes down to the best application of the best tool in the right circumstance.

Figure out which tools are already in your grammatical toolbox, and which ones you still need to acquire Learn what each tool does and how it can be best applied to strengthen your writing.

When you’ve mastered your tools, your message can’t help but be clear.

3. To break the rules you have to know the rules

I’ve never been a big fan of rules. Rules by their nature are restrictive, and I don’t like anyone or anything to tell me what I can and can’t do, as a general life philosophy.

I do however appreciate why rules exist. Rules are for the people who don’t quite get it yet, and serve as a universal basis that everyone can understand and work from. It is good to have rules, so that anyone can fall back on them and say, “well yes, I guess that works, but the rules say to do it this way” should there ever be any confusion.

But, as the cliche goes, “rules are made to be broken.” Most creativity would be stifled if it were forced to always follow a set of guidelines, so the very act of creating something new often defies an existing rule set. In order to be fresh and innovative, you’re going to have to smash down some rule-walls and tell the standards police to shove it up their textbooks.

With that comes certain responsibility. A responsibility to understand what rules you are breaking, and why breaking them is a good thing. The only reason to ever break a grammatical rule is for style, effect, or voice. If you’re breaking a rule for another reason, chances are you don’t understand the rule in the first place.

The only way to effectively play with grammar is to first make grammar your bitch.

Ever wonder how really rich dudes and corporations get away with not paying a huge amount in taxes? It’s because they (or the people they employ) know the tax rules better than they know their own children. They know just how far they can bend a rule without breaking it. Just how much of the gross income can be claimed as international revenue. Just how many legal donations will lead to huge tax write-offs.

If you want to bend (or even break) the grammatical rules, you first have to study a lot of grammar. Not just the basic stuff you learned in school, but complex grammar including usage, phrasing, colloquialism, etc.

If you try to break the rules without really knowing the rules, people will notice. You might break the rules too much, or too little, or in a way that doesn’t make sense which will make your writing look sloppy and unprofessional.

And most importantly, if you’re going to break any rules, make sure you’re doing it for a reason that will support your voice, theme, or message.

Breaking them for the sake of breaking them, just because you don’t like them and want to see them in pain, is no way to go through your writing life.

I made "Gangsta Gandalf" because I know and have studied the rules of LOTR for years.

I broke the rules and made “Gangsta Gandalf” because I know and have studied the rules of LOTR for years.

Craft and Draft: Input on your Output

January 8, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

(As part of my 2013 effort to try new things, this week will be the first of a series of “theme weeks” wherein every post will be related to the same overarching topic. This week: Applying what we learned from NaNoWriMo)

We’ve all forgotten about NaNoWriMo 2012 by now, right? We’ve either buried the embarrassment that was our novel attempt in a lock box and sealed its tomb with ancient curses or moved on to other projects that are more practical and packed with pitching potential. Some of you might just be waking up with a pretty killer NaNo hangover, asking yourself, “what the hell did I just write?”

Win or lose, we’ve probably all taken a writing breather through the nog-drunken haze of the holidays, resolute on our promises to do more with a new year.

It seems like NaNoWriMo scurries off into the dark recesses of the imagination just as quickly as it flies in when you realize it’s October 25 and you have no idea what you want to write come November 1. In January, the Google traffic for “NaNoWriMo” tapers off to nearly nothing after a huge seasonal spike.The hours and words so passionately spent on those short November days become nothing but another abandoned Word doc in your “Current Projects” folder.

But now is not the time to forget NaNoWriMo. Ever smash your brain against a textbook/piece of music/mathematical formula for hours in a last-ditch, “holy-shit-the-test-is-tomorrow” attempt to memorize it? Ever notice that when you come back to study it after a break, suddenly it seems like you’ve known it your whole life?

The cognitive approach to the psychology of learning suggests that you will more easily commit things to memory (and thus improve your long-term skill set) after you’ve taken a break from whatever it is you are trying to learn.

If you want to take that stuff you learned about writing and merge it with your mortal soul so that it becomes your very nature to be a writer, now is the time to revisit what you learned in November.

So what did I learn about my own writing? Mainly stuff about how much I can write when I really make writing my focus. There were tons of other little lessons hidden in nutritional nuggets of writing-chicken, but NaNoWriMo 2012, for me, was an exercise in spewing out lots and lots and lots of words.

1. Write or write not, there is no muse

When I was a mewling undergrad, I was convinced that I could only write anything of substance when the moon was in my house, the date was numerologically significant, and Mercury was in retrograde. I’d sit and waste time doing anything other than writing, passively waiting for that moment of spontaneous writing zen to hit me. It rarely came, if ever, when I needed it.

Now that I’ve been writing a lot more (and I think being a little older/maturer helps, too) I realize there is no magical, semi-divine fate watching over the collective flock of writers. It’s just me and my keyboard and you and your keyboard and them and their keyboards. Acknowledging that you are actively responsible for your work will lead to you actually writing, not sitting around waiting to be ready to write.

I’ve used this analogy before, but writing is like working out. Some days you’ll be so amped and well rested that you want to go out and run 30 miles or lift all the weights in the gym so many times that you won’t be able to put a shirt on the next day. Other days you might embody an exceptionally lethargic sloth, and would rather sit around in your pajama pants eating an entire block of Stilton blue cheese rather than move. The same goes for your writing. You’ll have good days and bad. Discipline keeps you writing, even when you’re not feeling it.

When you finally get over the idea of waiting for inspiration, you should see your productivity leap dramatically, like some sort of pole vaulter on crystal meth.

2. Proper prior planning…

…prevents writer’s block or any other crippling afflictions. If I find myself struggling to write something, it’s probably because I haven’t thought it through. The short stories I wrote for NaNoWriMo were all at least roughly outlined, so that I knew where I was going, if only on a basic level. If I started to write a story and the words just wouldn’t come zooming out of my fingers, I moved onto another story that did come naturally.

I took that slamming of the mind-brakes as a clue that whatever idea I had wasn’t fully baked. Gooey, choclately proto-story came out on the toothpick I shoved it into the middle of the idea. It needed more time in the oven. It needed some love and attention from me before it would be something I could write without a period of painful labor.

It is really easy to come up with an idea that is so exciting and packed to the veritable brim with potential that you think it will just write itself. And that does happen, sometimes. But for the vast majority of your work, be it fiction or nonfiction, time to grow and evolve and develop naturally will result in a much more compelling, easier to write product.

The next time you face the wall of a white blank page or an unjumpable hurdle in your story, stop and think if you’ve thought enough. There is a reason you’re struggling, and that reason could be that your mind isn’t ready for that part of the story. Move to a different part of the story, or another project all together. No one said you had to write the story in chronological order, after all (Alice McDermott wrote the National Book Award winning Charming Billy in a pretty random order, if that gives you hope).

When you plan ahead and have fresh from the oven idea-brownies, you’ll find that you can write a lot more, more quickly, and with greater ease.

3. Another time and place

Many successful authors describe their schedules as these perfect things with perfect crystalline structure, that they have perfected to the point of…perfection. Wake up at 6:00, drink 8 ounces of French press brewed espresso blend, write for three hours on the current book project before moving on to social media and smaller projects. Spend the afternoon editing and researching.

My schedule, in comparison, is about as consistent as paranoid schizophrenia. Wake up at 6:28? 7:14? 7:30? 8:03? Try to write, realize I’m barely conscious without caffeine. Go into the office. Drink a lot of bad, free coffee. Power through the jitters. Write something random; probably whatever I left open on my laptop the night before. Make it through the day without dying.

But the point is I try to have a schedule. I make writing a priority in my day, even if my day itself is a mess of incoherent events that are loosely glued into the shape of a life/job. Even on my busiest days in the office, I carve out thirty minutes to write something, if only a part of a blog post or notes on an idea I had that day.

I see a lot of people say they want to do something, but then they never make it a priority. They will talk about doing that thing a lot, but then let it get lost in the maze of TV, work stress, and other sundry distractions. Talking is not doing. If you really want to start seeing an increase in the amount you create, make creating one of the most important things you do in the day.

Other things in your life may suffer, initially. But as you get better at managing your time, you also get better at realizing just how much time you waste on things that don’t bring you any satisfaction. I’m not advocating some sort of Utopian life free of all distractions. I’m advocating making the best of the 745,094 hours you’re given on this planet (on average).

Bump writing up your list of things you need to do today, and you’ll start seeing just how much you can write.

“It is not enough to be busy… The question is: what are we busy about?”
― Henry David Thoreau

Craft and Draft: Idea-Logical

December 19, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

I start everyday with a shower. While I spin around ritualistically in the hot water, ideas start to froth forth from my brain like the bubbles of my Garnier Fructis. I have some of my best ideas as I stand, half awake, doing my daily preening, and should probably invent some sort of waterproof notepad so that I can write while I cleanse.

If I take a cross-section of all my writer friends and boil it down to its atomic basics, there seem to be two quite bipartisan groups when it comes to ideas: those who have more ideas than they know what to do with and those who struggle to come up with any ideas at all.

As a sufferer from clinical Overimaginatitus, I fit into the prior category. I am constantly coming up with ideas, all day, most of which are so bizarre and so specific to my own preconceived mental conditions that they are little more than wisps of inanity that disappear just as quickly as they came. My challenge is sifting through the hoard of ideas my imagination creates, finding the ones that have potential and moving the rest to the recycling bin of my brain.

But I know there are other people who either don’t don’t experience a deluge of so many ideas, or struggle to convince themselves than an idea is good. This is equally challenging and it requires a lot of personal discipline to run with and commit to any one topic.

How does one figure out which ideas are worth the rare delicious spice that is our writing time? How can we possibly know, in the microcosm of the world that is our own creativity, that one specific idea will lead to an engaging finished product?

We don’t. Probably can’t. But there are somethings we can do to come up with good ideas, and more importantly, make sure we execute them in a way that shows other people how good the idea is.

1. Know Thyself

I get ideas in the shower because my mind is quiet. I am able to complete the necessary bathing activities without much critical thinking, leaving my brain completely open and available. I let my conscious mind disappear into the white noise of the falling water, the heat on my skin, the smell of the various soaps that litter our shower stall.

From this mental carte blanche, the ideas begin to coagulate.

Other activities promote this idea generating state: mowing the lawn, running, watching SyFy Originals movies. I know that these banalities can serve dual purposes in my life, and I’ve started to actively notice when more ideas are flowing than usual.

There are two generally accepted ways to kick start this sort of hyper-creative state of mind: overstimulation and sensory deprivation.

My showers are an example of sensory deprivation; a situation and environment when I have almost nothing to think about, and can let my left brain magically guide my muscles while my right brain inhales the intoxicating mists of whatever my brain is smoking. Many classic forms of divination (like scrying and gazing into a crystal ball) work off of the concept of sensory deprivation.

Overstimulation is the exact opposite. Some people can find amazing value in exposing themselves to an extreme influx of sounds and sights and smells. The idea is that your senses get so overwhelmed trying to process everything that your left brain takes over in an attempt to save your brain from imploding. Some people have their best ideas when they are about-to-collapse busy, chasing kids, finishing up a big project at work. This is a classic example of overstimulation.

The next time you’re suddenly awash with great ideas that you can’t seem to silence, think about how you got there. If you can figure out what situation is the most conducive to you creative compelling things, you can watch for similar situations going forward and start to learn when you brain is at its most active.

2. Organize and Record

I used to beat myself up over losing ideas. I’d have something (I thought was) brilliant to use on the blog or for a longer form piece, only to come up with ash and fragments of ideas when trying to recall it later.

In defiance, I started writing everything down. Every little idea, phrase, quote, doodle, word, lyric that inspired me. It quickly became an inky chaos where ideas entered, but never exited. I could never find the original thought, and when looking back over my own scribbles, often thought that I needed serious psychological help.

So I got technical. We all have access to a computer (unless you’re reading this on some sort of magical rock). We all have access to the organizational tools a computer provides.

Make a spreadsheet. Start writing your ideas down, in order, with dates of when you came up with them. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just something with enough function to keep things organized. Once you get used to using it, you can get fancy: color coding, tabs for levels of interest, comments with tangential ideas, even crazy things like who and where you pitched said idea to.

Not organizing your ideas is like asking for them to disappear into the cosmic background radiation. It’s like a carpenter ordering a bunch of wood to build a really nice desk and having the delivery company just dump it in a huge pile outside his workshop. He’s going to be able to focus on what is much more important – the craft and artistry of building that awesome roll-top desk I’ve always wanted – instead of sitting there, trying to organize the wood into piles, just to find the right piece.

3. Open your mouth

You are a person (unless you are some sort of magical rock). You live, eat, dance, fight, and work with other people. Find some people who are similar to you temperamentally and creatively. When you have an idea, share it.

Don’t sit and ramble about some weird-ass dream you had where you went to an underwater school and had to swim between classes because a giant sea monster with a light red on his head tries to eat all the student as they swim.

Do sit and ramble about the story you might want to write about some kids who go to an underwater school and their potential hilarious perils. Ask questions, listen to reactions to your plans, internalize what you can, and discard what you don’t want.

When you talk about an idea, you can get other perspectives on it; other evaluations of its potential word-worth, and most importantly, you can hear it again outside of the filtered, unreliable confines of your own mind. The greatest idea you ever had (like for reals it was so good, NY Times bestseller for sure) might sound totally cliched and moronic when you actually try to explain it to someone.

Talking about ideas can either make them into something worth writing, or remind you why not everything that comes out of your brain is neuron-forged gold.

4. Set the oven to 375, cook until golden-brown

I think most ideas have potential. They are seeds of promise, just waiting for the fertile soil of a blank Word document and the right conditions to grow.

I also think too many writers, armed with Miracle-Gro laced with impatience, try to force their seeds to sprout too quickly.

Good ideas take time to mature. Go check out the amount of research time it takes for someone to get enough background and context to finish a book. The basic unit of measurement here is years. Ideas for short pieces will obviously have less fermentation time, but you should still appreciate that it may take a while for you to even really know what you want to write about, nevermind what the actual story is about.

Don’t rush, guys. Seriously. It’s not cool. Your ideas deserve their childhood. You don’t want to be the reason your ideas need to go to therapy in their twenties to talk about their loss of innocence.

Take your time, let your ideas grow naturally. I promise they’ll be better for it.

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. " -John Maynard Keynes

“Words are but the signs of ideas.” -Samuel Johnson

Craft and Draft: The Editor is dead! Long live the Editor!

December 4, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

If you NaNo’d and are now in a post-NaNo writing coma, you may not be ready to face the harsh realities of the raw novel landscape. The world changed while you slept. You grew a beard. Sandra Bullock visited you and told your parents you were engaged to be married with hilariously unexpected results.

When you finally wake up, you’re going to have to edit. A lot. And not like, fix a couple grammatical mistakes or missed commas, but full-blown, angry, word-drunk edit in which you destroy your own art without impunity, in some weird backwards attempt to build it back up again, better, stronger.

I took a cursory glance at my “manuscript” and before I processed what I was doing, I had deleted massive swaths of content, rewritten several sections almost entirely, and realized that I still didn’t have enough distance from my writing to objectively make any meaningful comments. 4 hours later, I stopped.

Just kidding. I didn’t really stop, I just ran out of “being awake.”

Editing is when you move your armies in to occupy the territory you won during your word conquests. It’s where you can use your left brain to clear the battlefield of all the dead metaphors and corpses of analogies that your right brain abandoned to rot. It’s your chance to hone your paragraphs to razor-perfection like blades on a whetstone. A chance to make those descriptions shine like a suit of full plate mail.

I love editing. It’s fun to find things that you just nailed the first time around, and equal amounts of fun to beat yourself up over the border-line brain damage you had when you wrote that scene about the army of ninja wolves who could fly (because they had jetpacks).

But you need to be careful when you edit; it’s too big a time investment with too much on the line to undertake unprepared. To see you through this harrowing journey, I offer the following boon(s):

1. Train yourself to be offended by mistakes

This ties loosely into proofreading, but involves a lot more than just looking for passive constructs or dangling modifiers. This is about really noticing when something is wrong, and being actively disgusted by it. You need to learn the difference between “less” and “fewer” and have a visceral gut reaction when you see something like, “he needed less calories, due to his access to the liquid chocolate larder.”

Learn what pisses you off about bad writing and internalize it. Swallow it, eat it, live off of it as your only means of sustenance until those mistakes burn inside your body like the sputtering carbon of a dying star. If you’re emotionally connected to the writing (especially to the negative) you’re more likely to catch and correct errors that a less invested editor might overlook.

Get mad at your writing. Demand more of it and more of yourself.

2. Remove context

Your mind naturally fills in blanks and establishes patterns of things it thinks it already knows. If you read your own work, in order, knowing exactly who does/says/kills what next, you’re likely to gloss over weak writing and glaring mistakes. To avoid this, pull the context blanket off of your scene. He’s been too warm and cozy, snuggled up in your plot line like a lazy teenager. Make him get up and go outside, look at him in other context, and see that he’s been under that blanket for so long that he’s thin and pasty and probably smells pretty bad.

Objectivity regarding your own work is really challenging, but viewing your work outside of itself can help you get that much needed distance. It’s easier to break apart a single scene or exchange and edit that, than it is to try and edit the entire work at once.

This has the added bonus of allowing you to analyze your tone and voice to see if it is strong enough to stand alone in a short example. If it is, chances are you’ve got a pretty decent manuscript on your hands. If it’s not, keep on editin’.

3. Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em

This is a personal editing weakness of mine. My editing kryptonite, if you’ll allow the cliche. Sometimes, you’re really, really, really committed to that scene where your protagonist has a steamy threesome with a sexy anthropomorphized grasshopper and a giant jar of honey, but it just doesn’t seem to fit in with your realistic romantic comedy set in modern day Chicago. You can’t find the resolve to delete the scene, because you put a lot of thought and craft into it, and it seems wrong to just delete it.

I used to say, “Suck it up, cowboy. It’s for the sake of the story! Delete that shit!”

Now I say, “Hey, that could work with other context, or if you made the grasshopper into an actual woman. Save that shit!”

When I edit, I leave a second document open. If I find a scene or piece of dialogue that I really like but just doesn’t seem to fit the theme or plot, I cut and paste it into this “holding document.” The writing isn’t lost, but it’s not cluttering up the main story, either. It’s a way to psychologically distance yourself from what you’ve fallen in love with.

After a while, you can go back and read the stuff you cut out. Out of context, you might hate it and realize that it really wasn’t very good in the first place. Or you might find inspiration in some random aside to start a whole new story. You can’t lose!

4. Alpha and Omega

Writers spend a lot of creative energy on beginnings and endings. The middle seems inconsequential; just a means to get from origin to exit. It makes sense to really make sure your beginnings and endings work, as they are the delicious 9-grain bread to your literature sammich.

Pay attention to how you start things. Is the beginning of each section engaging? Does it transition well from the previous section? Is your reader going to want to keep reading, or did you leave them alone in the West-Virginian woods with nothing more than a pointed stick to fend for themselves? As you begin a section, be sure to set the hook in your readers mind, don’t just dangle it out there hoping they’ll nibble at it.

As you near the end (or an end) make sure things seem to be organically coming together. Make your endings have meaning, insight, purpose. Readers tend to like resolution to conflict, when and where possible, even if it isn’t a happy resolution.

Don’t pull a Lost. Don’t leave me wanting to kill you after I’ve invested SIX FREAKING SEASONS of time by writing some cop-out, bull-shit, “they were dead the whole time but don’t worry because they’re in pseudo-heaven now, and please forget about all those other loose ends to really intriguing shit we left out” ending.

That shit is weak.

But whatever you do, make sure you actually get back to your manuscript and edit it. It’s great practice that will ultimately improve your writing, and there’s always the possibility that you can (after many hours of revision) turn it into something that a publisher may want to read without barfing! We can all dream, right?

"Editing is like walking through an old overgrown railway tunnel. You have a lot of weeds and vines to hack through, but when you emerge on the other side you have a whole new view of the world." -Oliver Gray, circa right now

“Editing is like walking through an old overgrown railway tunnel. You may have a lot of weeds and vines to hack through, but when you emerge on the other side you have a whole new view of the world.” -Oliver Gray, circa right now

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