In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* An Email on Focusing Down
* On Learning
* Focusing on Learning
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“The second you think you know all you need to know about writing fiction, you’re done as a writer.” Dean Wesley Smith
An Email on Focusing Down
This from a long-time, dear writing friend:
Remember when I asked why you thought [A Most Unusual Day] might be [your] best, and you did not, of course, give me an answer.
I went back and read it and the next chapter with an editor’s eye AND I settled on the word “concentrated” because there were no incidental words or phrases. Each one was weighted and necessary, nothing extra tossed in, nothing extraneous.
Remember making orange juice from frozen cans? The result was infinitely variable by the amount of water used to dissolve the orange mush.
This particular writing was concentrated to the best effect. Then today I learned it is called focusing down. Cool.
My dear friend is almost right. Or peripherally right.
Focusing down is only one way of presenting description.
The other ‘types’ or ‘levels’ of POV are Distant and Close, and you can convey a story perfectly well using only those.
But focusing down on an intimate detail that not everyone would notice—whether a sight, sound, smell, taste, or feeling (physical or emotional)—engages the reader more closely.
Focusing down feels as if you’re passing along confidential information, and it pulls the reader more deeply into the story.
Conveying that detail in the right place, time, and way forces the reader to lean more closely into the story without feeling the pressure of the bend on his waist as he leans.
It causes him to care a little more, to be a little more deeply invested in the story, and all without realizing it.
Obviously, I recommend learning and using it, but you do you.
On Learning
Backing up a little, my friend was also right in saying I didn’t answer her question re why I thought A Most Unusual Day was my best writing so far.
If I remember, in my response I only wrote something like “Because it’s the latest thing I wrote, and I learn something new about writing with each story or novel.”
That’s true. Every major character in every story or novel teaches me something I didn’t know or hadn’t realized before about human nature or human psychology and storytelling.
Like “real” people, the characters are endlessly complex: what writing instructors and critics back in the day called “well-rounded.”
At its most basic, ‘well-rounded’ means the successful “good-guy” character will also have flaws, and the successful “bad guy” character will also have redeeming traits.
Especially with “bad guy” POV characters (like in my Blackwell Ops series), the writer has to illuminate the character’s redeeming traits so the reader will have a reason to root for him.
Of course, the best way to do that is write into the dark, which basically means just write the story and let the characters be who they are. Then present all of that in a way that the reader gets to know and like the character just as you know and like him.
If the reader doesn’t like your main character, the story’s dead in the water.
Across the board, all successful characters have universal human traits:
- They live and breathe;
- They feel strong emotion and either “let it out” (ranging from a smile or a whimper to loudly wearing it on their sleeve) or push it down, repressing it behind a steely-eyed, pan-faced non-expression;
- They love to varying degrees, hate absolutely, and stumble and fumble and fall; and then of course,
- The successful ones keep getting up.
You, the fiction writer, are the most fortunate person on Earth. Because it falls to you to observe all of those physical and emotional traits and expressions in an endless number of variations.
As you write the story, you absorb all of that, are influenced by it, and react to it. Then—this is the fun part—you get to present all of that on the page.
If you’re very fortunate and if you’ve learned enough, you’ll present it in such a way that the eventual readers will absorb the same physical and emotional traits and expressions you absorbed, and he’ll be influenced by them and react to them in the same way you did.
If the reader’s experience with your characters and your story is that similar to your own, you will have earned a new fan.
Making the reader’s experience as similar as possible to your own is the whole (unstated) purpose of learning everything you can about the craft of fiction writing.
Focusing on Learning
These days, what I do in my own fiction writing—including learning things I didn’t know or hadn’t realized before about presenting human nature or human psychology and storytelling in the best way for the reader to ‘get it’—is just second nature. Or as the old cliché goes, it’s as easy as falling off a bicycle.
But all of that started decades back when I realized two things:
- I don’t (and will never) know everything there is to know about presenting my characters’ stories to the world, and
- I’m eager—even hungry—to learn more. So I keep writing.
That hunger to learn plus my desire to share and pass along what I’ve learned is why I keep writing this silly Journal.
But I realize in writing TNDJ I’m also filling the role of an ‘old guy’ in whose stereotypical ramblings almost nobody is interested.
So here I am, rattling on over the back fence with neighbors only to look up and realize maybe there’s nobody home.
Or if they are, they’re hunkered down on their own side of the fence, maybe listening but not wanting to engage in conversation. Hey, to each his own.
Of Interest
Nada that I could find.