In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* News Flash
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.” Kurt Vonnegut
News Flash
on the Craft of Writing Mentorships
or “I’ve Had a ‘Well, Duh’ Moment”
In an effort to pay forward what I’ve learned about fiction writing, over the past several days I’ve been busting my hump putting together a few really intense, down-in-the-weeds Craft of Writing mentorships complete with writing assignments.
My goal was to pass along to students literally everything I know about how to present the characters’ story to the reader in such a way that the reader felt he was actually IN the story with the characters.
After all, readers can’t be more engaged in a fiction than that.
By late yesterday, I had four new mentorships nailed down so solidly that I even posted them to the Journal website on the Craft of Writing Mentorships page:
- Writing the Opening
- Writing the Major Transition Scene
- Writing the High-Tension Scene
- Writing the High-Action Scene
In fact, this morning, to round out everything any devoted, serious fiction writer would need in order to write a complete novel, I was on the verge of putting together one more mentorship—Writing the Ending—plus maybe another one as kind of a bonus on Writing in Series.
I’ll still give those last two some thought and put them together—but not as mentorships.
It dawned on me this morning that I couldn’t present any of those one-on-one mentorships and price them as inexpensively as I’d like to.
Plus, I realized that working with even one serious student through even one Craft of Writing mentorship would take up pretty much all of my time. And I would have reached only that one student.
So the Becoming a Fiction Writer mentorship will remain and it’s open to everyone, but I won’t be posting the Craft of Writing mentorships. I’ve deleted that page from the website.
In addition to eight or ten how-to subtopics that are common to any scene—like How to Ground the Reader, What I Mean by Take Your Time, What I Mean by Focus Down, etc.—there were many other how-tos that go into even deeper detail but that most writers never think about.
For example, The Importance of the POV Character’s Opinion and The Importance of Nailing Down the Sequence of Events (what happened and specifically when) to avoid confusing the reader, as well as how to actually write
- protracted silences;
- meaningful looks;
- facial expressions;
- audible breathing patterns;
- body language;
- the intense, high-action freeze frame;
- and many others.
Most writers seem to think they know how to do those things, but from what I’ve seen, most really don’t. And I want so badly to help peel the scales off their eyes so they can see deeper.
Still, as I mentioned above, I realized the prospect of presenting all of those in a one-on-one mentorship was unwieldy, at least if I wanted to continue writing my own fiction too.
Now, if I lived in a major city with a good-sized population of fiction writers, I could take a few weeks off, put together a two- or three-day seminar, and present the intricacies that way at an affordable price, say a hundred bucks a head. If I drew 40 or 50 attendees… well, that would at least come close to compensating me for my time.
But I don’t live in a major city. And besides, from my experience getting even dedicated writers to attend such an event would be a lot like herding cats.
Plus for every one truly dedicated writer, there are at least a few hundred who only want to talk about writing or think about writing or who say they hope to write “someday” and somehow believe that makes them writers.
Sigh.
Still, I want to pass along what I know, so I’m thinking about other ways to do that.
I’m considering adding a new weekly, paid-subscriber only Substack newsletter specifically for the purpose of presenting all of the down-in-the-weeds, how-to stuff I know about writing fiction to those who are seriously interested in learning the craft.
If go ahead with that newsletter, I will “comp” subscriptions to all paid TNDJ subscribers and long-time PayPal donors, so they won’t have to pay for the new newsletter. Others will have to subscribe with a monthly or annual fee through Substack’s preferred vendor, Stripe.
Once a week, I’ll write an in-depth article on each of the subtopics I mentioned above (and many others), with their application to specific types of scenes when appropriate.
At this point, that seems feasible. I still have to give it some thought, but I hope to announce it here by the end of September.
To get a vague idea of what a post in that newsletter would look like, take another look at yesterday’s post on Applying the Six Senses.
Then imagine any ONE of the bulleted items broken out and explained with a focus on the details of how to write it and how it will directly affect the reader.
That’s what each post in the new newsletter will be.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
What Makes Writing Good? (I don’t remember whether I posted this before.)