Writing manuals and what's in them

[winter]

Lately, I've been thinking about the theory of writing. And doing some research. Most stuff in so-called writing manuals is the same - write what you know, separate a time for writing, read more than you write, kill the adverb, know the rules before you break them - but some people have interesting insights.

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The book that started off this train of thought for me was Feliks W. Kres's Broken Quills Gallery, a collection of his beginner-writers feature in two different magazines. A lot of his advice applies to writing in Polish only, but some is universal and surprising:

- The way people see things, they notice light first. Then movement. Then colour and shape. That's the order in which you should describe things.

- Use sentence lengths to set the rhythm of your scenes. All short and all long will be monotonous, but use 3 short - 1 long for an action scene, 3 long - 1 short for descriptions, or any mix that seems right.

- And most of all: anyone can have an idea and a plot. It's the artisan's work, not the artist's, that takes skill and practice and time. 1% genius, 99% sweat.

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I also got Stephen King's On Writing. Apart from being fascinating as a biography and an insight into his other books (and notice the narrative tricks he uses in the biographical part - maybe even more useful than the actual manual), it's a compendium of useful, basic rules that I recommend for anyone. Also, his muse is a New England cigar-smoking snob who wins bowling tournaments. I feel a bit better about my foul-mouthed psychobeauty now.

- Unless it's really inappropriate, use the first word that comes to mind while writing the first draft. When you reach for the mental thesaurus, therein lies the path to pretentiousness.

- At the core, each sentence is subject-verb. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. Plums deify. If you're stuck, write the next sentence like that. It'll tell you how to flesh it out.

- If you have a paragraph of description, make the first sentence the theme. The rest of the paragraph elaborates on this first sentence. The forest was dark. Branches rustled somewhere above as something - a squirrel? - jumped from one tree to another. The lack of light turned the green moss grey. (Note: my example, not King's, because his is too long.)

- Once you've written something, re-read it. Apart from normal editing (King says he trims 10% off a work in second draft), look closely: is there symbolism? Is there a theme? If so, good. Emphasize it elegantly. It helps the reader focus on the story and the message, makes them see the lower layers.

- And finally: if you find yourself with too many troublesome characters, blow them up. As many times as necessary >:D

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So much for Messrs Kres and King. Anyone have any insightful writing manuals they care to recommend to me?

Comments

The Great Craft.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Writing guidelines! You are a God.

[smtfhw.livejournal.com]

There are some interesting thoughts and ideas there. I do, however, think that if you're not careful what ends up happening is you spend more time thinking about the rules or guidelines or whataver you wnat to call them, and less actually writing, and I'm a firm believer that you get to be a better writer by constantly practicing the craft. I think the rules are useful once you go back over what you've already written, but in the end none of them are a substitute for inspiration. This may well not apply to all other writers, or even any other writers, but I find it to be true of my own writing.

[winter]

I've much the same opinion, but what I'm after are the little ideas - like the paragraph thing, or the sentence rhythm - that can make a piece flow smoother. The equivalent of people-watching in a cafe and picking up neat fashion twists, if you will :)

As for the practicing... *looks with trepidation at her pile of things to write* Uh. Right. I'll get to it, shall I?

[hotbeast.livejournal.com]

Dobrze byłoby jak King wpierw skończyć odpowiednią szkołę i wtedy wziąć się za powżne pisanie, ale na to teraz za późno.

Dawno, dawno temu znalazłam w Empiku książkę Nigela Wattsa " Jak napisać powieść" i myślałam, że nareszcie zdobyłam wszystko czego mi potrzeba :). Potem usłyszałam wiele złego o tej pozycji, ale prawdę mówiąc nie przejęłam się zbytnio, bo jestem totalnie odporna na wszelkiego typu indoktrynacje. Z ksiązki wzięłam do siebie te punkty, które były dla mnie podpowiedzią jak poradzić sobie z problemem, a i tak częściej robię wszystko po swojemu.

Ale każdą nową podpowiedź chętnie przetestuję.