Living the Fictional Dream

Writing group mate Stephanie has posted an April writing challenge for herself over at her blog, and it’s a doozy! Basically, she’s going to post writing prompts every day and try to write at least a 500 word flash every day in April. I’m in awe! When my writing group did that without the prompts for two weeks last year, I was crunched to keep up. But, you never got anywhere without ambition, right?

So, go, Steph, go! Write like the wind in April, and come up with tons of marketable stories out of the deal! And if anyone’s interested in joining her, go over to her site and tell her so.

I must admit, I’m tempted, but… I’m also lazy, LOL!

Pop on over to Every Day Fiction’s Flash Fiction Blog today to read my post on how writing flash fiction can help aspiring novel writers (or at least, how it helped me). And, while you’re there, check out some of the previous great posts.

Sometimes, it’s really hard for me to turn off the editing portion of my brain and just read. I’ll be reading along, be it a novel or the latest offering from one of my favorite online fiction venues, and I’ll come across some bit of language and think how much better it would have been if they’d edited just a little more closely — eliminate that passive voice or not say the same word twice so close together, things like that.

Now, of course, if it’s a style thing, that’s totally different, but a lot of the time, it reads to me like it’s just a be verb or whatever that the author didn’t notice, as opposed to a conscious choice to stick with the passive.

I was reading a story recently that said something like, “Her dress covered her like….” (The quotes have been changed, because I don’t want to point fingers.) I thought the similie that the author used to describe the outfit was lovely, but the sentence would have been so much more impactful to me if the author had written, “The dress covered her…” instead. Having the same word twice so close together bumps me out of the story and has me thinking about repetition and redundant word choice instead of marvelling over the similie and description.

Then, not much farther down in the same story, there was an intrusive be verb — something simple like, “He was walking down the street.” Again, I was thrown out of the story to wonder why the author didn’t just say, “He walked down the street.” Why put in that passive voice, when the active voice flows so much better and creates a more vivid picture?

It’s like, now that I search for these things in my own work with such a critical eye, I can’t shut my brain off when I see these things elsewhere. And then I wonder why the author didn’t see them. If only he or she had taken a few extra minutes to edit — perhaps do a search for be verbs. Such a small thing can make a story so much crisper and cleaner!

Is it the mark of a writer who has not spent as much time honing his or her craft? I know that I used to fling passive voice, repeated words, and complicated verb constructions around with abandon. I go back to some of my earlier work and wonder how I ever didn’t see that! It’s thanks to the efforts of my writing group that I’ve learned to go through my first drafts with a fine-toothed comb, searching for better, more active, more descriptive ways to say things.

(A quick shout out here to writing group mate Jens for his nazi like devotion to marking complex verb constructions in crits, and to writing group mate Virginia for doggedly pointing out each and every repeated word! And, heck, to all of Writer’s Ink in general — I’ve learned so much from you guys!)

An author blog I read once recommended reading a book about screen writing and the three-act structure as a way to help develop novel plots. The caveat I remember this author mentioning was that after she read the book and understood the formula used in movie scripts, it made it harder for her to simply lose herself in a film. Instead, she was always looking for the catalyst, the denouement, and the other traditional parts of the screenplay.

Sometimes I feel that way about reading. The more I hone my craft and the better I get at this writing thing, the harder it is for me to be forgiving of other work out there. Especially published work, and especially work that is published in novel format. I’m much more apt to set a novel down and not pick it up again if the writing is sloppy than I ever used to be — even if I like the plot and the characters.

The mark of a really good book to me is one that sucks me in as a reader and totally short circuits the editing brain. If I look up an hour later, and I haven’t thought about word choice, grammar, or passive voice once, it’s a good story.

Take the Twilight series as an example. People give it a hard time because it’s not quality literature (I’m not sure it’s supposed to be, but people judge best sellers harshly, I suppose). And it’s true — there are many books that are better written than Twilight (though, I do think that Meyer’s craft improved over the course of the series). But when I jump into the world of Bella, Jacob, and Edward, I am totally sucked in. Hours can go by, and I don’t even notice until I start getting a crick in my neck or the phone rings.

That is the point that character, setting, and good, old-fashioned story-telling trump the mechanics of writing. Twilight transports me into the fictional dream and doesn’t let me go without a fight. To me, that’s the mark of a good novel that’s worth reading, no matter what the nay-sayers think. (Though, I can see how someone who’s not into young adult romance or vampires might not be sucked in the same way — subject matter is subjective.)

So, from the reader’s perspective, I guess I would have to say that the editor’s brain is a detriment. It is harder to enjoy reading certain things than it used to be — I’m much more selective than I used to be.

But, from the writer’s perspective, the editor’s brain is an asset that you simply cannot do without. The better your craft, the better chances you have of selling it — case closed. Sure, sometimes less well written stories get published, but I prefer to think that’s because the person who bought it was swept away by the story and the characters so much that they didn’t mind a few mechanical flaws.

I don’t think I would give up my editing brain, not even for all the reading enjoyment in the world. There are enough books out there that still suck me in and there are books with issues that I still enjoy (remember the clavicle thing from the Luxe series?), despite being knocked out of the fictional dream every once in a while. There is a wide world of books to choose from out there — I’ll keep my editing brain and let it have a field day with all of my first drafts.

And then all you guys can laugh at me when you read something of mine where I missed a glaring instance of word repetition or passive voice!

Every month, my writing group has a prompts contest. People who are interested buy in for the year, and every month the person who writes the most prompts gets a $10 gift card. We started doing it a few years ago to inspire ourselves to write.

Typically, I’m pretty particular about prompts. I don’t get inspired by them easily. But, when I stretch myself to write them anyway, sometimes I get some really good stuff out of them.

I’m waiting right now to hear back on one that I wrote in our February prompts contest (which I won!), but I’m fairly certain it will get rejected. It’s sort of weird and gross — it’s about vomit! And superheroes, if you can imagine that! I liked it, though — I was experimenting with an unreliable narrator (a mentally unstable, OCD-ish woman), which was a challenge to write.

I will be my writing group’s prompt contest facilitator for April, and I’m looking forward to it. Back in the day, I used to think that I had to find writing prompts other places — websites, writing books, etc. But, over the years, I’ve realized that I can write just as good writing prompts as those other guys — and I tend to like the ones that I create (and the ones that my writing group mates create) even better than the overly formal ones you can find in writing books.

I got on a role creating writing prompts this morning. I had to cut myself off at lucky 13. Hopefully, the group will find at least a few of those inspiring next month!

Once I’ve sent them out to the group, perhaps I will post them here, in case they are of benefit to anyone else out there.

Prompts are an interesting passtime. On the one hand, one might wonder what the point is when there are so many ideas floating around in the writer’s brain already. But, on the other hand, it can really do a writer good to stretch their craft in a new or unexpected direction.

The folks over at Every Day Fiction and Every Day Poets have started a writing blog specifically devoted to flash fiction. If the quality of the blog is anything like the quality of fiction and poetry these publications offer us on a daily basis, the blog should be a must read.

Today’s entry was written by my writing group mate Alex, and discusses the effect of exposition and world building on flash fiction stories.

Here’s the link so you can go check it out:

… my writing group mate, Judy, has published her first poem, “The Dumb Doctor.” It is the poem of the day today at Every Day Poets. I helped her crit this one, and I think it is a really powerful piece. The emotion in it is really impactful — especially to me as a woman, but I think it would be to anyone.

If you have time, pop over and give it a read.

I’m always fascinated by stories that approach time in something other than a linear fashion. The movie Memento is a stellar example of this. The main character has a condition where he can’t make long-term memories, so once they leave his short-term memory, they are gone forever. To illustrate this, the movie progresses in reverse.

Another example of stories that play with time well is the TV show How I Met Your Mother. I truly believe that this is the best-written sitcom that I have ever watched. Their grasp of continuity is amazing. Something is mentioned in a throw-away line in season 1, and it comes up as a huge plot point in season 3. And the stuff that they put in for viewers with a sharp enough mind to catch it makes the show really fun to watch.

But I especially like it when HIMYM plays with time. They’ve done several episodes where they tell stories out of sequence. Sometimes they’ll split the plot between the characters — do one or two characters’ stories from start to finish, then rewind and go to the next one. Other times, they will throw in flashbacks in creative and amusing ways (my favorite was once when they put in a flashback to 30 seconds ago — and it worked).

The best thing about stories that experiment with time is how the normally linear element is twisted and used to give the reader/viewer a unique A-Ha moment — that moment when everything you knew about the story is flipped on its head and you see it all from a whole new light.

I’ve always wanted to expirament with non-linear time in my stories, but I have yet to really do so. I’m not sure why… Part of it may be that I’ve just never had an idea that seemed like it would work well in such a structure. And part of it might be that I seem to have a bias in that a more visual medium seems more appropriate for these types of stories.

I know that second limitation is all in my head, though. I’ve read print stories that did a fine job of twisting time. There was one in particular that I remember enjoying at Every Day Fiction — sadly, I have long since forgotten its name. I just remember it was a story about a guy in prison that was told backwards Memento style, and it was pretty good.

I will have to put my mind to this time twisting conundrum and see if my muse has anything to say about it. It would definitely be a challenging project.

What about you guys? Any recommendations for good time twisting stories/shows you want to share? Have you ever tried your hand at such a story? If so, how difficult was it?

I was rejected again today from a fiction podcast. I wonder what it takes to get into one of those markets. I’ve been trying for months now, and have not cracked it yet. I had a story in the “maybe” pile for a while once at one of the more minor venues, but even that one was eventually rejected.

Perhaps it is just that, since they take reprints, they have so many good stories that they can’t accept very many? Or maybe there is something about my writing in particular that does not lend itself to the audio format.

Hrm…

Have any of y’all ever been accepted or published by a fiction podcast? Any tips to share for making one’s writing more accessable to an audio format?

I would think that a story would need to have a tight plot to fare well in audio, and that favoring action over lots of character development and description would help. Audio seems to me a medium where keeping the story moving is a plus. But I’ve heard stories at some of the various podcasts out there that go the complete opposite, emphasizing the less active elements of a story. I would also think giving characters distinctive voices would be helpful for podcasts.

This is obviously a question that I will have to ponder as I cull through my reprints to decide if any of them are worthy of podcast submission.

Check it out! I’ve got a new story out today in Afterburn SF. It’s called “Not Your Kind of Heathen,” and it’s a vampire story with a Christian twist.

This is the first story I wrote about Rachel the vampire hunter. It took me a while to get the back story right, but in the end, I really like this version. I’ve written another story or two about Rachel and her cursed family, but nothing that’s publishable yet.

The inspiration for this story came from a conversation my mother and I had about the TV show Supernatural. She really liked the show, but bothered her that they never addressed the God side of the equation. For example, if one of the Winchesters was a Christian, then he couldn’t be possessed because if Jesus lives in your heart then no demon can take up residence. (Obviously, we had this conversation before the current season of the show started airing, which actually does start to address God and angels.)

Well, the conversation got my mind ticking, and I was inspired to write a story that was gritty and supernatural, but that also upheld my Christian believes. And the first version of “Not Your Kind of Heathen” was born (then with the lame title of “The Call”).

This story also has the mark of being the one that marked my serious pursuit of marketing short stories. After I finished it and had it critted by my writing group, I submitted it to two different anthologies. I was really hopeful for one of the two, which the story seemed perfect. It was an anthology that wanted Christian genre fiction, but it’s focus was on gritty, hard-boiled fiction that didn’t pull punches just because it was Christian. Sadly, that version of the story got rejected. Though, the editor did say that with a rewrite he would be willing to consider it if they ever did another anthology.

I reworked the story, clarifying Rachel’s background and why she was so pissed at God, as well as fine-tuning the action sequences and trimming down the plot, and started submitting it on a wider scale, and it found a home at Afterburn SF. They actually bought this story nearly a year ago. I think this now surpasses “Zero to Clean in Ten Minutes or Less” as the story I have waited the longest for between acceptance and publication.

If you enjoy the story, leave me a comment and let me know. I’ve considered trying to write more Rachel the vampire hunter stories, if the right idea struck me. There is also a link here where you can discuss the story on ASF’s Facebook site, though there is not an official thread for my story yet.

Have a great (and vampire free) weekend!

Well, I finally got off my duff in the past few weeks and started submitting stories again. Of course, now that means I’m in total waiting mode, wondering when those editors will ever get back to me about my “masterpieces”! And, sadly, the one I’m most anxious to hear about is at a market with a response time of four months! Yikes!

Waiting is never easy — it’s probably one of the most difficult parts of this whole writing-submitting-publishing process (aside from the inevitable rejections, of course). I will say, though, now that I’ve been doing this a while (when I started to attack this in a serious fashion, I sent my first story out in February 2007), the waiting is a smidge easier than it used to be. Maybe it’s cushioned by the fact that I know I can get some acceptances, whereas, before I’d ever been published, it was always uber-anxiousness.