Everything's Eventual

As in everything is caused by other events, or everything eventually happens. You decide. But eventually I will post that piece on dialogue that I promised. Lately, I've been trying to adjust my writing schedule and everything else I'm involved in around my new job. So far, as with the last assignment, Carol is the only one who has turned in her homework. Her main concern with her dialogue exchange was that some of Charlie's replies were silent. Silence is very much a part of dialogue. It can express much more than words in some situations, especially in the situation Carol has presented. So bear with me folks. I started this project when I was jobless and bored, and now I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'm sure you understand.

Writing Assignment #2 - Dialogue

Write a short exchange of dialogue between Charlie and his wife, Amy. They can talk about whatever you like. Charlie's reluctance to scoop up the excessive dog poop in the backyard, for example. I should like this exchange to go back and forth at least five times. As always, you don't have to spend more than thirty minutes on this assignment. Send your completed assignment to lamar65@yahoo.com, and I'll write a short piece about dialogue on Monday, assuming I don't get too busy with my new job and my own writing.

Urgh!

I don't know what happened. I was putting a google search bar on the site and it bumped all the stuff on my sidebar to the bottom of the page. At least that's where it is on my screen. If your screen resolution is set higher, it will still be on the side. If it's always been on the bottom to you, then that means your screen resolution is lower than mine. Anyway, I'll have to try to fix it later.

To Describe or Not To Describe

All that I had written yesterday that suddenly disappeared on me miraculously reappeared after I had already written what follows. I think this new version is a little better, so that’s what I’m posing. I’ll have a look over the old version and see if there is anything that would add to this one and I’ll make a separate post. But for now, this will suffice.

Okay, here we go again. Description, hmmm…well, there are many facets to description. Many more uses than simply allowing the reader to see the things they are reading about. I could say, “Charlie poured water in the glass and took a sip.” That’s perfectly fine for a lot of people. I know what water looks like. I know what a glass looks like. The glass I see in my head may not be the one the writer saw in his head, but does it matter? And unless this is the first sentence in the story, I’ve probably already got a good idea of what Charlie looks like. Either way, I still know what human beings look like. I see Charlie with dark brown hair, average height, wearing a flannel over a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. Is that what the writer intends for him too look like? Probably not, but the image in my head still serves the purpose of seeing a man standing at the sink, pouring himself a glass of water. So what more do I need to know? If this sentence is unimportant to the story, then it’s perfectly fine. If it’s not important, then I probably don’t need the sentence at all. Maybe Charlie’s been working out in the sun all day, and I felt the need to let the reader see him get that drink he’s been hankering for. Though, in that case, he would take more than a sip. Maybe the writer hit a lull in the story and decided to get things moving by having Charlie get himself a drink. As a writer, I know those things happen. You’ve been pounding away at your keyboard or scribbling away with your pen, trying to keep up with the action in your head, when suddenly you sit back and think, “Okay, what happens next?” If you’re following an outline, then you don’t have this problem. You just glance over at your little cheat sheet and keep moving.

As I may have mentioned before, I don’t like outlines. That’s about the most boring way in the world to write fiction. Especially first drafts. I want to be just as surprised as the reader as I move from one scene to the next. You ever watch a movie with someone who’s already seen it a dozen times? Before each exciting part, they’re leaning over and saying, “Watch this,” as if you weren’t watching the movie in the first place. Instead, with outlines you get some past version of yourself leaning over and whispering into your ear, “Write this.” I wrote a mystery story some years back. When I set out to write the story, I never intended for it to turn into a mystery. It just happened. But when I got to the end of it, the plot was a jumbled mess. I spent days sorting through it and made a simple outline of the sequence of events that lead to the conclusion. Does this mean I should have made the outline before I wrote the story at all? No! Because before I sat down to write the story, I had no story. It’s this act of creation in the heat of the moment that I love the most about writing. Without it, I wouldn’t write. It’s like an athlete cutting up and down the field or court, making split second decisions as the game progresses, trying to take control of the game while knowing that he never quite can. Though we do have one advantage over the athlete. When the game is over, when the story is written, we can go back and make changes, correct our mistakes, while the athlete has to accept the outcome and try to do better the next time. Oh, and we don’t have to worry about all that heavy breathing…unless you’re an asthmatic like me and you’ve been putting off taking your inhaler while you try to finish a scene.

Sorry about that. Back to description.

So we have our nice little sentence. It’s a perfectly fine sentence, trust me, but doesn’t it leave you wanting just a little more. Maybe Charlie’s forehead was beaded with sweat. This would give him a reason to want a drink of water. Maybe the water was cold and clear. A fine drink for a thirsty person. Maybe the glass was cloudy. This would tell us something about Charlie’s character. Which is one of the many uses of description—building character. Since everyone on a very basic level looks the same, we need description to differentiate one character from another, other than each character has a different name. So, either Charlie’s dishwasher isn’t getting the job done, or in Charlie’s desperation for something to drink, he grabbed a dirty glass sitting beside the sink, which tells us that Charlie hasn’t gotten around to washing his dishes for some reason. Or maybe Charlie’s wife took off on him and between his two jobs, he just doesn’t have time. I’ve been assuming all this time that Charlie is getting this glass of water from the kitchen sink, but our sentence doesn’t say where he is. He could be in the bathroom or a hotel room. He could be anywhere. Now let’s change our sentence a little bit to clarify some things. “Out of breath, sweat beading his forehead, Charlie staggered into the kitchen of his small apartment, grabbed the cleanest looking glass he could find by the sink, filled it with cool, clear water, and chugged it as if he could never sate his thirst.”

That was better. But depending on the circumstances of the story and how important this drink of water is, I may have gone a little overboard on my description. In my writing, I try not to depict characters doing too many of the mundane everyday things of life. If I decided Charlie needed to get a drink of water but didn’t feel it was important for the reader to see him getting that drink of water, I would probably write it like this, “Charlie walked out of the heat and into the cool apartment and got something to drink.” Don’t get me wrong, I like good description. But good description is just that. Good description. Don’t mistake it for a lot of description as many people do. If you want a good lesson on good and bad description, pick up a copy of Richard Adams’s Watership Down. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. If you like nature and wildlife or just a good story, that book’s for you. I’ve never been to England, much less walked the English countryside, but if I ever do, I’ll be a lot less surprised by the things I see after reading that book. For the most part, the description is great. In the flow of the story, Richard Adams finds the perfect balance. But at the beginning of many of the early chapters, he goes into long bouts of description crammed into long block paragraphs that made me wonder if there was anything good on television. It took me a good little while to wade my way through this book because of that. I’d run into these long paragraphs and just set the book down instead of charging through them. This is not what you want your readers to do. Yeah, maybe you’ve already suckered them into buying your novel or short story, but when your next potential bestseller hits the shelves, that person is liable to hesitate, wondering if it’s worth the effort of going along another magical journey with your description magnifying glass. A piece of advice I remember from college is “omit needless words.” That doesn’t mean you can’t say that the water is cold or the day was hot, but if you’re reader already knows the water is cold or the day is hot from the context of your story, then you don’t need to repeat it. In my revamped version of our sentence, did I need to say that the water was clear? If the water from the tap isn’t clear, then we have a problem and we should mention that fact. Maybe there’s rust in the pipes or somebody dumped barrels of black poison into the municipal water supply. Otherwise, we can safely assume that water will be clear. I said that Charlie’s apartment was small. If we’re further along in the story and you already know that Charlie’s apartment is small, then we don’t need to be told this again. The same with him being out of breath and sweat beading his forehead. If we’ve been following Charlie along, then we were there while he was chopping weeds in his vegetable garden and his breath quickened and the sweat began to pour. But if we’re beginning our story with this sentence, then those things are fine.

About a week ago, I asked my faithful readers to “Pretend your character 'Charlie' is walking through his backyard and he stubs his toe on a rock. Describe this sequence, and especially the rock, with as much detail as you can in thirty minutes.” As it turned out, I only have one faithful reader who was kind enough to turn in an assignment. Though I hope this doesn’t mean that I only have one faithful reader, or one reader period. That last can’t be true because according the report on my ads I’ve been getting a lot of page impressions and a decent number of clicks, though most of the clicks are probably from me. But anyways. Since I have just the one, I shall post it in its entirety (edited for grammar and typos, since I’m sure it was done in a hurry as I requested).

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Charlie's fears were growing stronger. There were knots in his mind continually. He was preoccupied that matters would always go unfavorably for him. He did not know that this was unusual, for it was all he knew. As he stared at the grocery list that his wife had prepared last night, he realized that she only wanted him to get outside. She wanted to excuse him from his daily grind of doing nothing. He grasped the piece of paper and turned to go but the tension in his forehead made him ask if he should take a pill to get him through this. He decided against it and resolutely opened the door. Still trying to convince himself that there was nothing to fear, he counted his breaths. As he rushed out the door he stumbled on a rock. He held his throbbing toe and whined that he knew that something always happens. There is nothing but pain outside. His wife would not be back from work for another eight hours. She would find him on the lawn, a failure at getting out of the house. He should know the pattern by now. As Charlie lay ruminating about his misfortune, he picked up the rock that was the cause. It was not large but was not a pebble either as it fit in his palm. The rock's coolness and smoothness soothed him as he stroked its contours. His breathing was back to normal now. Charlie got up with the red and black speckled rock still in his grasp. He continued to comfort himself by rubbing the stone and he surprised himself by walking to the store. He got the groceries and forgot all about himself because he held that which caused him the pain. This little piece of the earth both hurt him and healed him.
By Carol

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I really liked this piece. I wanted a good description of the rock, but Carol took it a step further and developed Charlie into a strange and fascinating character, much different from the Charlie I’ve been describing before. The bulk of the description revolves around the rock, as I requested, and that’s what we’ll examine. Carol’s rock is the size of Charlie’s palm, cool and smooth, speckled with red and black, and the piece of earth that both hurt and healed Charlie. I especially like the last sentence. Now, can you see this rock? If Carol had said that Charlie stubbed his toe on a rock without any further description, what would the rock look like in your mind? When I made this assignment, I saw a large gray rock the size of a bowling ball buried in the lush green grass of a backyard surrounded by a tall wooden fence. I don’t know why, that’s just what I saw. But as Carol’s scene developed and moved along, I saw a small rock. “It was not large but was not a pebble either as it fit in his palm.” I would cut out the first part of this sentence. “The rock fit in the palm of his hand.” This tells me just as much as “it was not large but was not a pebble.” Then I see a rock with a smooth surface that feels cool to the touch. “The rock's coolness and smoothness soothed him as he stroked its contours.” I like the effect the coolness and smoothness has on Charlie’s fear of the outside world. “Red and black speckled.” Now I’m wondering what type of rock this is. The best I can come up with is a small piece of red granite, which is all over the place where I live. It’s mostly red but has black spots here and there. “Both hurt and healed him.” I think of a surgeon’s knife, which has the same power.

Thank you, Carol, for your contribution. Remember, this piece is entirely yours. Copyright law is a finicky thing, but the moment you write something original, it becomes lawfully yours. Proving it in the court system is another thing altogether. But if you decide to turn this piece into a short story or a novel, I won’t try to sue you for royalties, and I will testify against anyone else who may try to do so.

There’s a lot more that can be said about description, and I’m not sure how much my ramblings have helped you. If you have any further questions, feel free to post a comment. But the main point I was trying to get across was quality over quantity. I urge you not to worry about this during your initial draft. My first drafts are pretty bland. I’ve got to get the story down on paper before I can decide what is important and needs more or less description. I’ll write a piece on first drafts in the near future.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As promised I wrote a nice piece about description and was about to show some examples from the one assignment I had turned into me. I had to go eat supper, so I clicked to save the draft of what I had written, and guess what? Something went wrong and it didn't save it. When I tried to click back, it was gone. It was the sort of thing that makes you want to say unChristianly things. I've run out of energy for today, but I shall take another crack at it tomorrow. I apologize for this. For those few of you anxiously anticipating my views on description shall have to wait a bit longer. And once I get it written, I'll post another assignment. Again, I'm sorry for this inconvenience. From now on I'll write my posts in a word document and paste it over. Word automatically saves my document every so often, so if something goes wrong, I won't lose it all at once.

Tag Me

Looks like the tag board's working again. So tag away. I'm gonna be gone until tuesday evening or perhaps wednesday morning. I'll try to post my little article on description on my brother's computer on Monday. So far someone named Carol is the only one who has sent me a piece for Assignment #1. Perhaps she's the only one actively reading this blog. That's fine. I shall carry on. You might notice that there are some ads along the top of the blog and just under the tag board. It would help me very much if you would be so kind as to click on these ads. Everytime you see a different ad, click on it, perhaps see what they're offering, and then return to my blog. As I am currently seeking steady employment, this will be my only source of income unless I can get some stories sold. I have some promising ones in the works, but we all know if you're unkown, it's hard to get anyone to take you seriously. But once you can make those first couple of sales, you'll find more and more editors taking longer looks at your work. Success breeds success, in other words.

Writing Assignment #1 - Description

Pretend your character 'Charlie' is walking through his backyard and he stubs his toe on a rock. Describe this sequence, and especially the rock, with as much detail as you can in thirty minutes. You can take as much time as you like, but thirty minutes should be long enough. I don't want to take much time away from your own writing. When you finish, copy and paste your assignment into the body of an email and send it to lamar65@yahoo.com. I'll review your assignments, if I get any at all, and post a few of my favorites. I'll write a little piece on description next monday, perhaps using examples from your assignments. This will help you become a more active participant in my blog, and hopefully will help you a little with your own writing.

Tagged Out

Sorry about the tag board. Tag-Board.com is having technical difficulties right now. It's nothing to do with me, so I can't do anything about it but wait until they fix it. You can still add comments to my posts if you need or want to say anything.

Our Purpose

As writers we seek to tell stories that entertain people, that make them think, that in some way bring a smile to their face. As Christians we seek to spread God's word in any fashion that we can. As Christian writers, we seek to do both. Our purpose is to minister to our fellow Christians as well as nonbelievers. I am part of a Christian writers critique group, and the question has been raised several times about the content of the stories we should post. It seemed obvious to me since we were a Christian writers group, we should post Christian stories or stories that we are trying to put a Christian message into. Many of us at some point in our past had tried writing for the secular market. Because, let's face it, that's where the money is. The Christian section in most bookstores is pretty scant. Even the Christian bookstores in my area have a poor selection of Christian fiction. They seem focused on study bibles and gift type things. And there aren't very many Christian magazines that publish fiction, and the ones that do don't publish much of it. Not real attractive to a young writer seeking a career in the Christian market. But eventually we all came to our senses and realized, fame and fortune or not, God put us on this Earth to serve His purpose, and he gave us our writing talent for that purpose. We should serve God in everything we do, not just when we go to church or when we're in the presence of other church members. We should serve God when we go to work. We should serve God when we go to school. We should serve God when we're out shopping. We should serve God when we're brushing our teeth in the morning. We should serve God in every aspect of our lives, so it makes sense that we should serve Him when we write.

If you can't think of a way to include God's message into your story, then you probably shouldn't be writing the story. There are enough people in the world today writing godless stories and getting paid plenty of the devil's money for it. We don't need our fellow Christians doing the same thing. Does that mean that you can't write stories that would appeal to a secular audience? Of course not. We're trying to reach those secular people. But if your story doesn't in some fashion bring God's message to light, then you've wasted your time. Does this mean that you can't send your story to a secular publisher? Again, of course not. The chances of your story making it past a secular editor are slight. But if God wills it and it happens, all the better. Secular magazines have larger circulations and secular book publishers have larger print runs, spreading your message to more people.

How do I include God's message into my story without sounding too preachy? This takes practice, and learning your bible inside and out is the key. Through His word and through the guidance of His Holy Spirit, God will show you how to teach his message in any fashion that you desire. The bible is full of wisdom. Whether you believe in God or Jesus or not, you can't deny that the bible is full of wisdom. In your story, you can very simply present some of this wisdom in the situations you put your characters into. In many of my stories, I take a character who does not believe in God or Jesus and show how he eventually comes to realize the truth. Or I take a Christian character and a non-Christian character, and the non-Christian character eventually comes to know the truth through the example of the Christian one. Or I take a Christian character and show his struggles with carnality and the continuous battles we all have with the world. This is especially true for new Christians. It's hard to let go of that old lifestyle, even though we know it's wrong.

There are many ways to include God's message in your work. I have friends that aren't Christians, but I don't discard them or start throwing the bible at them. I live an example, and sometimes they get curious and ask me questions. That's when I give them a bit of God's wisdom. I don't start dragging them to church with me. I don't start quoting scriptures at them, chiding them for their lifestyle. Later they may get a little more curious and ask me another question. There's another opportunity. Our job is to present God's truth to the world in some form or another, and let them make their own decision. God gave each one of us a free will, and part of that free will is making the decision to follow Him. If you start trying to shove chunks of theology and righteousness into your stories, you're apt to lose those nonbelievers. But if you do it subtly through examples, you'll keep their attention and be able to show God's truth in the end, letting them make their own decision.

Tag Board

My cousin helped me set up a tag-board. It’s on the right side just below my profile information. You can use it to ask questions or give a thought or carry on a mini conversation. I think it only allows like 200 characters at a time, so be brief. Brevity is a virtue, I believe. I have the profanity filter on, and I can delete any unfit post at my discretion. Just put your name, or preferably a nickname in the name section. Don't worry about that url or email box. And type your message in the box below. Then click tag. Your post should instantly appear. What you have written will remain highlighted in the text box. People have a tendency to hit tag again, thinking their post didn't make it because the text didn't disappear. Just glance up. Your post should be there on top of the other messages. Delete what's still in the text box if it makes you more comfortable or if you want to post another message.

Humble Beginning

Okay, so, I created this blog on a whim, and here I go. My intention is for this to be a place where Christian writers can go to get tidbits of advice on writing and on the Christian writing market as well as inspiration. When I get around to it, I'll set up a message board of sorts for a more direct sort of conversation, but for now, feel free to post any comments. This is a non-denominational sort of thing. I don't think God intended for denominations, which is a fancy word for divisions, to be formed in His church. He gave us His word and told us how we should live. But as human nature goes, we couldn't all get along. So that's where we get our denominations, our divisions. I live my life according to God's Word set forth in the Bible. I don't live my life according to what the Baptists say or the Methodists say or the Catholics or so on and so forth. I know there are many points of argument among certain scriptures in the Bible, which is the largest cause for the numerous denominations, but there is one basic belief that should unite all Christians. God sent His Son, Jesus, who lived a sinless and blameless life, to die for the sins of all mankind on the cross, and rose again three days later, conquering death, which is the result of sin, and ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. Any posts or comments arguing this point or that point about this scripture or that scripture will be removed as soon as I see them. This blog is about writing, and I'd like to keep it so. There are plenty of other forums out there for arguing if you must do so. Just not here.

I'm not a professional. I haven't had anything published in anything major. I'm still getting started in this business just as I imagine anyone who reads this is still trying to take that next step forward. Until I can start getting some outside response, I'll just be posting some thoughts on writing style and how my own writing is progressing. I have a lot of promising things in the works right now. At least I think they're promising, and the small cirlce of people who read my writing and offer constructive criticism seem to think they're promising as well. So since I'm the amatuer that I am, I don't mind getting advice in return.

The best bit of advice that I'm going to give you right now is one that I've heard over and over from different sources, and it's always true. The best way to learn to write and to continually get better at your craft is to read a lot and write a lot. Many of us already read a lot. We were doing that long before we ever thought about writing a story of our own. But you can read every word that has ever been written thirty times over and still have trouble finding your own words when you sit down to write. You can't wait for inspiration or a muse to strike you before you begin to write, either, or you'll only write a few pages here and there and never get anything done. Plod on with the story whether you feel like it or not, whether you think it sounds good or not, whether it is good or not. Because you always have the opportunity for a rewrite once you get the story down, however sloppy it may be or stupid it may sound. And if after the rewrite, or countless rewrites, it is still bad, don't fret. You still learned something. You still took the first steps toward training your brain to think in prose. Move on to the next story. Eventually you'll write something good, perhaps great.

It may take a couple of million of words worth of practice to figure out your own style and get your form right. I'm still in this process. I've written several novels worth of material, much of it barely worth the paper it is printed on, but I keep going, knowing someday I'll get it right and other people, besides my friends and family, will believe in what I have written and want to give me money for it...or at least contributor's copies. If this sounds like too much work, then you've already been wasting your time. Writer's are crazy people blinded by the love for their craft who keep pushing on with or without any forseeable gain to their labors. I've been discouraged in the past and spent stretches of time where I didn't write anything at all, but writing always kept calling to me. Story ideas flooded my mind whether I wanted them to or not, first wispering, and then screaming at me to let them out, to put them down on paper, to shape them and mold them into the best stories that they could be. Simply put, if you can keep yourself from writing, then by all means, don't write. But if the desire to write burns within you, and the only way you feel you can quench that desire is by writing, then write. Don't fuss or complain or moan and groan. Just write.

More on that later. It's almost bed time, and a tired mind is not one fit for the demands of writing. I like to write first thing in the morning after spending an hour or so reading my bible. I use that hour to clear my head, then I put the energy of the dawning day into my fingertips as they fly around the keyboard, trying to keep up with my frantic mind.