To Plot or Abandon.

Graham Clements — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 03:50:00 +0000

Creative Writing:
Learning from the Masters (Part Two)

If
you missed my last post, I have been reading an ibook called Creative Writing:
Learning from the Masters. The masters are John Irving, Carol Joyce Oates, Ernest J Gaines, Amy Tan, Norman Mailer and Carol Shields.

Plotting a novel.

There
are supposedly two types of writers: those who write an outline of the novel
before they start writing it, and those who just start writing and see where
the story takes them. John Irving is an extreme example of the first. He spends
months writing a detailed plan of a novel so when he finally gets around to
writing it he can concentrate on the words and language and not have to worry
about what happens next.

What
really intrigued me about Irving is that he writes these outlines backwards. He
starts with the final line of the book and then works out how the story got to
that final line. This immediately had me rushing to my bookshelves and
retrieving The World According to Garp to read its final line: But in the World According to Garp, we are
all terminal cases. The numerous meanings of terminal cases kind of sums up
the book.

Carol
Shields prefers to just start writing and see where the story goes. I could not
write this way. I abandoned (45,000 words in) the only novel I started writing with
no clear idea how it would end because I had no idea where it was going (it was
about the end of the world too). Shields did admit that she usually had an idea
of how the story would end.

I
have to know how my story will end before writing it. I usually start with a
situation that is, or is about to become, full of uncertainty and then send the
characters in search of certainty. I like Irving’s idea of writing a very
detailed plan so I then can concentrate on the words. I might try that with the
next manuscript I start.

So
which are you, a planner or someone who is prone to abandon stories that are
going nowhere?

Creative Writing: Learning From the Masters.

Graham Clements — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 06:19:00 +0000

I
am about halfway through the ibook, Creative Writing: Learning from the Masters. The masters are Norman Mailer, Amy Tan,
Earnest J Gaines, John Irving, Carol Shields, and Joyce Carol Oates.

I
have read a couple of John Irving’s novels (The World According To Garp
and Hotel
New Hampshire) and seen at least three films adapted from his novels
(the previous two plus The Cider House Rules). I have read
one Norman Mailer novel (Tough Guys Don’t Dance) and seen the
film that he directed of that novel. I have read The Best American Short Stories 1999
edited by Amy Tan (I loved her foreword where she said that a lot of
the stories, which had all been previously published, she considered for the collection
left her wondering what they hell they were about. So I am not the only one who
is not afraid to admit they didn’t get a story.)

They all Started
Young.

All
the masters started writing when they were young. And they all had success when
they were young: publishing award winning novels, winning scholarships to
exclusive schools, winning short story competitions. Their early success is not
good news for me, unless I count a high school teacher reading a story I wrote
to mine and at least one other class due to its cleverness, or my writing of skits
that were performed in university revues.

A
couple of the masters did stop writing for a while to raise a family or fight
in a war.

Revision.

The
ibook then got into the basics of writing. Nothing really new to me, until the
section on revision came up. Revision is split into three very separate activities:
redrafting, revising and then editing.

Redrafting.

Once
a first draft has been completed it is time to redraft it. “Redrafting is the
process of making broad sweeping changes to the major elements of a story.”
When redrafting the novel an author should consider the key elements of their
story: POV, plot structure, the purpose of all the characters and the major
themes of the story. Is there too much or too little mounting tension? “Does
the theme clarify a universal truth the reader can relate to?” Redrafting is a
time to really think about the novel overall and cut and replace large chunks
of it.

The
novel I am currently writing is 175,000 words and will probably creep over
200,000 before I am finished. So redrafting will be all about cutting it back
in size. In the redrafting stage I will be asking myself whether I need the
long build up to the crew reaching their destination. And then how (or if) to restructure and cut
back on their time on the planet, which is crucial to the story as that is
where the central character grows significantly.

Revising.

After
redrafting it is time to revise. “Often when writers think they are redrafting
their stories, they are actually revising them. Revision is the act of tackling
the smaller issues around language, scene, flow and nuance.” I am one of those misguided
writers.

In
the revision stage for my current manuscript, one of the things I plan to do is
remove a lot of dialogue and paraphrasing it.

Editing.

This
involves the refinement of both content and structure. It is basically what I
have come to call copy editing. Removing stray commas, getting rid of adverbs,
changing say into said, removing overused words like “that” and “was”. Editing also
involves making sure factual details are correct. Oh, faster than light travel
ain’t possible, bummer. A second pair of eyes is recommending during the
editing stage.

Creative Writing: Learning from the Masters is an ibook
available from the Apple ibookstore section called itunes U.

Creative Writing: Learning from the Masters. – Graham Clements

To Plot or Abandon.

Creative Writing: Learning From the Masters.