In Today’s Journal
* Oops! Correction!
* The Bradbury Challenge Report
* Q&A Re Chopped Livah
* Of Interest
Oops! Correction!
In yesterday’s post, due to a stupid oversight on my part, the link for “the lengthy example I provided in TNDJ” under both The Major Transition Scene and The Rest Scene was broken. My apologies.
- Here’s the correct link for the example on the Journal website, and
- here’s the correct link for the example on the Substack version.
The Bradbury Challenge Report
Participating in any challenge is a great way to have fun and grow as a writer.
The requirement is to write at least one short story per week, then let me know the title, word count, and genre per the format below. During the past week, the following writers wrote these new stories:
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Corbet Cove” 3677 Murder Mystery
- Christopher Ridge “The Pool Party” 3002 Horror
- William Ridge “The Lost Asteroid” 1103 Sci-fi
- Dave Taylor “The Birthday Present” 2,127 Magical Realism
- Glynn Young “The Unexpected Christmas” 2691 General
Congratulations to all of these writers.
Q&A Re Chopped Livah
I’ve already gotten a few questions about Chopped Livah:
Will TNDJ continue?
Yes, TNDJ will continue for the foreseeable future. I have no plans to shut it down. It will still contain an occasional Quote of the Day, a topic germane to or adjacent to writing fiction, and the Of Interest section when I find anything I think is worth passing along.
Will you cross-post from CL to TNDJ at least occasionally?
Nope, although I cross-posted the introductory issue of Chopped Livah over to TNDJ yesterday, that was strictly to entice serious writers to subscribe to CL. I won’t cross-post any future issues. That wouldn’t be fair to those who’ve subscribed.
Even as deep as I went in that post with my explanations of the types of scenes, it was a broad topic and I still only barely delved beneath the surface. Numbering that issue “0” was no accident.
That issue was something over 3000 words—three times the length of most TNDJ posts—but if I wrote a book titled Scene Types in Fiction based on that post, it would be at least ten times longer, and probably twenty or even thirty times longer. That’s how general and shallow that post was.
Do you really see Chopped Livah as a mentorship?
Yes. I see Chopped Livah as a student-centric, in-depth, writing-craft mentorship. And because CL is a mentorship, future issues won’t address such broad topics as I described above.
Each issue will be focused down on one topic or maybe two closely related topics (for example, maybe, “writing protracted silences” and “writing meaningful looks”). And any given issue will run anywhere from around three thousand words up to around six thousand words (so the length of a typical short story).
I predict that length won’t be too much for those who are serious about studying and learning the craft. I also trust subscribers will read the issue more than one time during the week between issues and then ask me any questions that occur to them.
And as one writer pointed out, although the instruction will be intense, it won’t be densely packed together like it is in a book. You also can’t ask questions of the information in a book.
Studying, absorbing, and asking questions is what a mentorship’s all about. And again, Chopped Livah is student-centric. The more subscribers read and study and the more questions they ask the more topics I’ll delve into and the more they can learn.
Also, as I’m writing each article I’ll be able to gauge the approximate length. If it looks like the article will run much longer than five or six thousand words, I’ll find a good place to chop it off and continue it in the next issue.
If subscribers feel crunched for time with the weekly posts (and if they let me know that), I’ll drop back to posting every two weeks or even less often instead of every week.
The posting schedule doesn’t really matter either way. What’s important, as with any mentorship, is that I get the instruction out and subscribers have time to read, practice, and absorb the information.
I should add that the information in CL will help memoir writers, creative nonfiction writers, and poets as much as it will help serious writers of fiction. It will also help with literary fiction and all of the “commercial” genres.
Admittedly CL is largely limited to American English, but the vocabulary and impact on the reader of the techniques I’ll teach there are the same across those genres.
Why two writing newsletters?
A few reasons—
Despite any “writing gems” you might have taken from TNDJ in the past, TNDJ posts have always been more of a surface skim of a topic or topics, at least partly because
- TNDJ started as a vehicle through which I could refute the myths of writing. As such, it was (and is) more for aspirants, beginning writers, and hobby writers than for those who seriously want to go deep in learning about writing fiction.
- Over the years, I also succumbed to self-imposed length restrictions. I’ve always tried to limit TNDJ posts to around 1000 words or less. From comments I received from subscribers, that seemed an appropriate length.
- But as a result of that length restriction, I inadvertently censored myself. On the few occasions when I did attempt to “go deep” into a topic in TNDJ, I did so in a series of successive posts on the topic.
- But even then I was so used to staying on the surface that I didn’t go very deep into any topic or subtopic—even when composing a new nonfiction book in posts on TNDJ.
- Writing Better Fiction is a perfect example. If I’d drilled down into everything that I know and practice every day in my own fiction about the topics in that book, it would be tens of thousands of words longer.
I’m a natural instructor. I love teaching, and I love passing along what I know, but not everyone wants (or needs) to hear it.
If writing fiction and learning the deep craft isn’t all that important to you or if you write only occasionally, that’s fine. TNDJ exists for you, and it will continue to exist as the main (or maybe only) myth-free voice of common sense writing advice in a world gone crazy for the myths of writing.
Chopped Livah—in its role as a mentorship and with its unbounded length and audience of writers hungry to learn the deeper aspects of craft—gives me both the permission and the impetus to pass along the deeper nuances of the language and storytelling to those who want and need that level of information.
If you want to see what CL is all about, subscribe free and you’ll at least get to read a preview or excerpt of each post as it comes out.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Deceit & Deception
How to Write: Day One Anne Lamott on “Deciding to stop not writing.” Good article.
Isabel Allende on Finding the Freedom to Write
Stephen King isn’t sure writing can be taught… Fortunately, I am sure it can. IF learning it and writing fiction is your passion.