In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A Presentation-Process Post
* Don’t Get Wrapped Around the Wheel
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“When you write from truth, criticism lands differently. Sure, it might sting…but it doesn’t shatter you, because you know what you made is real. You were there. You put something honest into the world.” Jaime Buckley
I excerpted the above quote from a must-read post Jaime wrote recently for Writers in the Storm. For the link, see Of Interest.
A Presentation-Process Post
Interesting how my writing process—or rather, my presentation process—has changed since I started serializing the current novel over on StanbroughWrites.
In fact, I’m considering maybe serializing my next novel over there too. Serializing slows me down just a little, makes me more attentive. The trade-off is well worth it.
For example, the serialized novel is free over there, so readers might reasonably expect a few misspellings and wrong words, and maybe even that the serialized version will be significantly different in places from the final version.
But that isn’t true. Here’s why:
My writing process remains exactly the same. I’m still writing into the dark and most-often writing without a clue what will happen next.
After all, I’m only following the characters around as the story unfolds in real time. I write down what happens in the story, and then I write down how the characters react in word and deed. Nothing more, nothing less.
But my presentation process is different now. Deeper, in a way.
The presentation process results in what the reader actually sees, hears, smells, and so on as he reads your story. So that process is dependent on cycling, which goes directly to presentation.
I still read over each chapter after I write it, making any necessary usually little changes as I go. Those are usually little details about the near or distant setting. Things I left out during the initial writing because I didn’t notice them when the character noticed them.
When I’m finished cycling, I highlight that chapter and run a spell check, then post the updated chapter to Stanbrough Writes and schedule it for release on the next date in the sequence.
So I still cycle through each chapter, as I pretty much always have while writing a novel.
But now, before I begin the current day’s writing, I cycle back through everything I wrote the day before twice, once in the manuscript (the writing) and once in the pre-posted Substack installment (the presentation), again one chapter at a time. Doing that makes a huge difference.
I’m always surprised that I still find a few changes to make that I didn’t notice when I cycled over the chapter the first time.
As I cycle through that second time, in the back of my mind is Hemingway’s admonition to “write one true sentence,” plus of course my own determination to remain true to the story and to the characters themselves.
Or as Jaimie Buckley wrote in the Quote of the Day above, I make sure I “put something honest into the world.”
An Example
Yesterday as I was cycling over Chapter 29 for the second time, I realized I hadn’t provided a physical description of a character. That was silly of me. I usually nail those the first time through.
As I was writing the chapter originally, I was obviously in too big a hurry, trying to keep up with the story and the characters. That’s the whole reason for cycling in the first place.
In the end it took only one compound sentence (25 words) to enable the reader to ‘see’ that character, and having seen her to discern about her other traits that I didn’t bother to put on the page because
- putting them on the page was not necessary to the story, and
- omitting them forced the reader to participate and thereby pulled him deeper into the story through that participation.
“Iceberg Theory,” anyone?
Now, about listening to the characters and remaining true to them and the story:
As I started to write the sentence that would dress that character, she rebelled in that quiet, creative-subconscious voice in my mind: “Um, that isn’t what I’m wearing, Harv. Look again.”
So I looked, and as characters always are (it’s their story, after all), she was right.
So I wrote that one sentence to describe her and knew it was true. Then I cycled over the rest of the chapter, then copy/pasted it (again, over the original) into place on Stanbrough Writes.
So that’s become my presentation process: write, cycle, then cycle at least two more times back and forth to finalize both the StanbroughWrites serial installment and the chapter in the manuscript.
Of course, any writing process and any presentation process is valid for the writer who’s practicing it. For me, the one strong, universal part of all of that boils back down to that “one true sentence” thing.
If in your heart of hearts every sentence in your current work is “one true sentence,” you can’t go wrong no matter what anyone else thinks.
Don’t Get Wrapped Around the Wheel
All of that said, please don’t get wrapped around the wheel of the so-called Iceberg Theory (a term devised by critics) or of any other structural theories about writing fiction, including the 3- or 5- or 7-point plot outline, etc.
Most of that silly stuff is put forth by critics, not writers, and what works for one writer doesn’t work for all. And what works for you vs. someone else doesn’t matter anyway.
Again, if you’re a writer, what’s important is that you write.
It’s fine to study whatever appeals to you from any of the above structural gems or others—but always also read some of the work of anyone who’s pushing a particular structure—and then forget it.
Your creative subconscious will take from whatever theory or structure what it needs and it will leave the rest.
Of Interest
What I Lost When I Stopped Telling the Truth A must read.