Zeitgest Essential in Storytelling

She is, of course, aiming her comments at screenplays, but “storytelling guru” Bobette Buster has advice for anyone trying to tell a story in a compelling, meaningful way. In a piece for SSN called “How to Ignite Audience Word-of-Mouth Through Story, No Matter the Genre,” Buster writes:

Zeitgest is an essential component in storytelling. Zeitgeist is often translated as “spirit of the age.” But I read that Einstein once translated it as, really meaning “ the rotten nerve of the age.” (I prefer that definition.) We all feel the “rotten nerve of the age” – but most of us are too afraid to name it, or can’t yet find the word for what’s unsettling us. So, we turn to facts.

And, Buster says, genre has no bearing on these facts:

Stories work from zeitgeist word-of-mouth – the storyteller dares to speak the truth of our times in dangerous new ways. Genre does not matter. Only broadcasting the unspoken truth in an audacious way counts -- to the audience. 

Buster is taking part in the SSN Storyteller lecture series, “Deconstructing the Masters,” starting June 2. Click here for tickets and to learn more. She is the author of How to Tell Your Story So the World Listens (Do Book Company) and we all want to know about that.

Killing Darlings: Authors Who Wished Books Away

Though authors are often encouraged to kill their darlings, there are times when even those responsible for the work want nothing to do with it. io9 pulls out some terrific examples in “10 Great Authors Who Disowned Their Own Books,” which more or less amounts to the same thing.

Many of these will surprise you as will some of the reasoning behind each author’s desire to wish the book gone. For instance, Ian Fleming tried to delegate James Bond to a more minor role in The Spy Who Loved Me. According to io9 “Fleming said he wanted to make Bond’s misogyny apparent after being shocked to discover that his Bond novels were being taught in schools. This ‘experiment,’ Fleming wrote to his publisher after the book received overwhelmingly negative reviews, had ‘obviously gone very much awry,’ and Fleming attempted to keep the book out of print.”

Those who know much about Franz Kafka won’t be surprised to learn that the writer basically hated almost everything he’d done and would have seen it destroyed.

When, a few years before his death, Kafka asked his good friend Max Brod to destroy all his papers, besides the few short works with which Kafka was satisfied, Brod responded, "If you seriously think me capable of such a thing, let me tell you here and now that I shall not carry out your wishes." Nevertheless, when Kafka died he left Brod a letter asking him to destroy his fiction, diaries, and correspondence. Brod remained true to his word: he proceeded to publish everything he could get his hands on.

Other authors whose works are looked at include Octavia Butler, Jeanette Winterson, Anthony Burgess, Martin Amis, Stephen King and others. The piece is here.

Are Creative Writing Courses a Waste of Time and Money?

Are creative writing courses worthwhile? Not according to Hanif Kureishi, an English professor at Kingston University whose debut novel, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread first novel prize.

Speaking at the Independent Bath Literature festival last Sunday, Kureishi said:

“A lot of my students just can't tell a story. They can write sentences but they don't know how to make a story go from there all the way through to the end without people dying of boredom in between. It's a difficult thing to do and it's a great skill to have. Can you teach that? I don't think you can," said Kureishi, according to the Independent, which sponsors the festival.

"A lot of them [students] don't really understand," said Kureishi. "It's the story that really helps you. They worry about the writing and the prose and you think: 'Fuck the prose, no one's going to read your book for the writing, all they want to do is find out what happens in the story next.'" He works with his own students, said Kureishi, "for a long time". "They really start to perk up after about three years. And after about five years they really realise something about writing. It's a very slow thing.  People go on writing courses for a weekend and you think, 'A weekend?'"

Nor is Kureishi the only one who feels that way:

Novelist and former creative writing teacher Lucy Ellmann, while disagreeing with Kureishi that style is unimportant, nevertheless described creative writing as "the biggest con-job in academia", and pointed to the poet August Kleinzahler's comment in the Guardian that "It's terrible to lie to young people. And that's what it's about."

"The whole system is set up to silence writers, and dupe students. It doesn't even provide a safe haven for writers, as Hanif made clear, because most universities go out of their way to ruin writers with admin, overwork, and other nonsense. There's lousy teaching too: I know of creative writing teachers who don't even read the students' work. This is criminal," said Ellmann. "But of course, the purpose of corporations - which is what universities now are - is to scupper originality and dissent.Universities have gone from being culture-preserving institutions to being culture-destroying institutions. And people queue up to pay these culture-destroying institutions £9000 a year to ensure that any idea of literature is destroyed before it can enter their heads."

If you want to write, said Ellmann, "what you should really be doing is reading as much good literature as you can get your hands on, for years and years, rather than wasting half your university life writing stuff you're not ready to write".

You can read the full story here.

Want to Write Like Hemingway? There’s an App for That.

There’s more to Ernest Hemingway’s prose than brevity, clarity and active language. But those are the things that Hemingway App will help you with. In other words, it’s a fun starting point on an edit, but it won’t make you a literary genius.

That said, Hemingway App is awesome and has an interface so simple and easy to use, it might have been designed by the master himself.

Dump a chunk of text into the online editor and get a grade score as well as easy to parse advice on how to make the sample cleaner and more clear. The (editable) sample text you encounter when you go there also explains how it all works:

Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear. 

Hemingway highlights long, complex sentences and common errors; if you see a yellow highlight, shorten the sentence or split it. If you see a red highlight, your sentence is so dense and complicated that your readers will get lost trying to follow its meandering, splitting logic — try editing this sentence to remove the red.

Adverbs are helpfully shown in blue. Get rid of them and pick verbs with force instead.
You can utilize a shorter word in place of a purple one. Mouse over it for hints.
Phrases in green have been marked to show passive voice. 

Paste in something you're working on and edit away. Or, click the Write button to compose something new.

Strictly speaking, HemingwayApp isn’t an app at all. That is, don’t look for something you can use on your phone: it doesn’t seem to work that way. Rather, at the moment, it’s all done online, in your browser window, though a downloadable desktop version is on the way.

Writer’s Studio: Avoid Writing Mistakes That Make Your Fiction Suck

Avoiding serious suckage should be any writers Job One. Sure, there is so much that is important. So many things to do and not do to create work that seems real to the reader. Things to elevate your words and lift your characters off the page. But before you get anywhere near any of that you need to start with the basics: making sure your work doesn’t suck.

Ernest Hemingway was very good at
creating writing that did not suck.

Here Script magazine looks closely at this very issue. Though this piece relates specifically to writing for the screen, there’s a lot here that all writers should be paying attention to in their fiction. Some you may already be watching for, but a few you might not have ever considered.

Though this advice doesn’t have all the smoothness or even the snap we got used to from dear old Elmore and -- certainly -- not all of it applies to work that is meant for the page, not the screen, there’s a surprising amount that does apply to all types of fiction. For instance:

4. The scene begins at the very beginning of the exchange, rather than the middle. Yes, many conversations begin like this in real life. But on the page, it’s crushingly dull. Instead, enter the scene mid-conflict by jumping in as late as possible (without being confusing). Then, make sure to exit the scene before it’s all wrapped up neatly. This leaves some tension to push the reader into your next scene.

And another:

8. We’re introduced to too many characters on the first page. Introduce us to just a few characters at a time. It’s like going to a party: If the host tells you everyone’s name at once, you won’t remember a single name. But if you start by talking with just two or three people, then move on to the next small group, you’re way more likely to get to know and care about each individual.

The full piece is here.

How to Be A Writer 101: Bum in Chair

And speaking of writing tips, bestselling mystery author and former journalist Betty Webb recently offered some no-nonsense general advice for those who are considering becoming writers. The biggest take away here: writing is hard work and, as I’ve often said before, if it isn’t hard, you’re probably not doing it right.

Here are some of Webb’s thoughts:

If you're meant to be a writer, you are already writing a minimum of 10 hours a week. Note -- that’s MINIMUM! Writing is very hard work -- you must DAILY apply the seat of your pants to the chair, and your fingers to the keyboard. If you “don’t have time” to do that every day, you’re probably not meant to be a writer (otherwise you’d structure your time to make sure those hours are available to you, even if it means getting up at 4 a.m.). 

One more thing -- writers don’t ask for “permission” from another writer to write: writers write. Period. Every day. Regardless of what's going on and how crummy they feel.

Now, clearly, Webb knows what she’s talking about here. Her popular Desert series, featuring Scottsdale-based sleuth Lena Jones, has enjoyed a wide and enthusiastic following. In 2008, Webb added a second series about a California zookeeper who solves mysteries. The most recent of these, The Llama of Death, came out in January of this year.

You can learn more about Betty Webb and her books here.

Five Writing Tips from Blake Bailey

One way or another, Blake Bailey has thought a lot about writing. His biographies of famous writers have thus far gotten him a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and nominations for the Pulitzer and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Bailey has written about Cheever, Yates and last fall, Philip Roth told the New York Times that Bailey was at work on his biography. Meanwhile, Bailey’s own newest book is Farther & Wilder: The Lost Weekends and LIterary Dreams of Charles Jackson, out next week from Knopf.

With all this writing and thinking about writers and writing, it only makes sense that Bailey might have put together some strong opinions, and he has. Writing for Publishers Weekly, Bailey sends out Five Writing Tips. His reasons are all in-depth and can be seen here. Until you get there, here are the highlights:

1. Write about things that really interest you.
2. Be quiet and listen.
3. Action is character.
4. Be prepared.
5. If possible, be funny.

See the full piece here.

Fiction Trends for 2013: Editors Share What’s Hot and What’s Not

What will top fiction editors be looking for in 2013? An interesting article on the Andrew Lownie Agency’s blog talks to several of the top editors of fiction in the United Kingdom… and comes up with not much that is new.

Unsurprisingly, editors are mostly looking for good books and strong stories. Transworld’s Sarah Adams says, “Forgive the clichés, but I’m looking for compelling storytelling, quality writing and a killer concept that taps into our everyday fears.”

Marcus Gipps, editor at Gollancz/Orion Books imparts what may be a top secret: “As always, as with any editor, what I’m looking for are books that make me fall in love with them.”

Alison Hennessey at Harvill Secker agrees. “Like all editors,” says Secker, “I’m looking for brilliant writing and clever plotting, and I’m also looking for originality and ambition.

John Murray publisher Kate Parkin, points out books aren’t the only thing changing. “Although the ways in which publishers ensure authors connect with their audience are being transformed at unprecedented speed, readers want what they always did: stories that compel and intrigue and transport.”

Read the full piece here.

Swimming in a Cold Sea with Ann Patchett

“If we could learn everything we needed to know about writing fiction by seeing it masterfully executed, we could just stay in bed and read Chekhov.” So we are told by Orange Prize-winning author Ann Patchett in a new Kindle single called The Getaway Car. The e-book is published by Byliner, the publishing company-social network building around long-form journalism. (An interesting experiment in its own right. You can read about Byliner here.)

Of The Getaway Car, Shirley Hong writes that the e-book, “doesn’t offer prospective writers a step-by-step guide to the craft of fiction. Instead, this primer from the highly-respected novelist mostly shares her own experiences -- her childhood dream, her life as a struggling writer who sets aside her work to make ends meet, and her ultimate success, reached with the help of teacher/mentors like Russell Banks and Grace Paley.”

Patchett is the author of Bel Canto, The Magician’s Assistant and, most recently, State of Wonder (Harper).

“Novel writing, I soon discovered,” she tells us in The Getaway Car, “is like channel swimming: a slow and steady stroke over a long distance in a cold, dark sea.”

Tips for Writers: Want to Get Some Work Done? Try Landing in Jail

In a terrific essay for the New York Times this weekend, Tony Perrottet (The Sinner’s Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe) posits that, even before the time of Twitter and Facebook, writers were easily distracted. In fact Perrottet writes, for the comparative work some writers produced, the place for a writer to get their best work done might just be in jail. Take, for instance, the Marquis de Sade:

From a strictly literary point of view, prison was the best thing that ever happened to the marquis. It was only behind bars that Sade was able to knuckle down and compose the imaginative works upon which his enduring, if peculiar, reputation lies.

Sade’s most impressive stint began after 1784, when he was transferred to the Bastille, which effectively operated as a literary colony on a par with Yaddo today. From a suite decorated with his own furniture and 600-book library (and tended by his valet), the marquis entered a mind-boggling frenzy of writing, cranking out thousands of manuscript pages at breakneck speed. As Francine du Plessix Gray describes in her classic biography “At Home With the Marquis de Sade,” he completed the first draft of his pornographic novel “Justine” in a single two-week-long burst, and knocked out the final 250,000-word draft of “The 120 Days of Sodom” in 37 days, transcribing minuscule letters on five-inch-wide pages glued into a roll nearly 50 feet long. By 1788, after only 11 years behind bars, Sade had churned out 8 novels and story collections, 16 historical novellas, 2 volumes of essays, a diary and some 20 plays. Whatever you make of Sade’s oeuvre, you have to envy his productivity.

Nor was the marquis alone.

The peripatetic Marco Polo got around to recording his classic travels through China only because he was captured in 1298 during a naval battle with Genoa and held in a lavish palazzo. Five hundred years later, the playboy Giacomo Casanova found time for his renowned erotic autobiography only after he had run out of money (and libido) and retreated to Castle Dux in Bohemia, where he accepted a sinecure as a librarian. Napoleon Bonaparte dictated his multivolume memoir — one of the great best sellers of 19th-century France — thanks only to his long exile on St. Helena. Even the harsh public jails could induce results. In 1897, Oscar Wilde wrote the philosophical essay “De Profundis” while locked up in Reading Gaol on charges of “unnatural acts.” And in 1942, Jean Genet wrote his first novel, “Our Lady of the Flowers,” while in Fresnes prison, near Paris, for petty theft, scrawling on scraps of paper.

To work properly, a writer’s prison doesn’t even have to be the official kind, and no crime need be involved.

“A prison is indeed one of the best workshops,” Colette declared. She wasn’t speaking metaphorically. In the early 1900s, by her own account, her caddish first husband had stashed her in a tiny room for four hours a day, refusing to let her out until she had finished a requisite number of pages — a drastic measure, but one that resulted in a novel a year for six years. “What I chiefly learned was how to enjoy, between four walls, almost every secret flight,” she later recalled, sounding almost sentimental.