Ugh! The poorest story-telling of all...

What is the poorest story-telling of all? The worst form, the failure beyond all others?

When the audience misses what you said so much that you have to go back and EXPLAIN IT ALL TO THEM IN A VOICEOVER.

Seriously. There is nothing worse than this. And I don't mean your work has to strive to be inaccessible, or that you shouldn't worry whether or not your readers are getting it. But the solution is not to bottle-feed them.

Case in point; For Better Or For Worse.

This comic strip never used to explain itself. It didn't have to. It spoke a universal language gracefully.

However, recently the readers began complaining in large numbers that she was abandoning them, that her work was really, um, betraying the characters, and that she was forcing the worst kind of deus ex machina into the story.

So in the last week Elizabeth went to see her old friend Candace and DIRECTLY ADDRESSED what the readers were saying.

Is there anything wrong with addressing what the readers say? No, not at all. In fact, some of what she said did ease the accusations a little bit. She helped us see the pressure that Anthony's ex-wife was under from her family. She helped us see why Anthony would fall for him.

But the direct nature of the voiceover, the very unsubtle way she went about it... well, it was a lot like being slapped in the face. She stepped outside the story to do this. She didn't SHOW us; she TOLD us.

Show; don't tell. That's the essence of good story-telling.

Storytelling made easy...

So you want to be an author, eh? The next King, the next Rowling, the next person to tell that too-compelling too-mysterious story?

Let's take a test.

Forget grammar, forget metaphor. Forget characters. Forget everything else. This isn't a test of how well you know the tools of the trade; there's plenty of time for that later. Right now you need to remember the last time you told somebody a story.

Any story. A joke. A touching anecdote. How your day went at work.

Don't punish yourself according to whether they were moved, whether they got it, or even what kind of story it was. Right now we're trying to figure out something else entirely, something very important.

Did you enjoy telling the story?

I assume you did. What did you enjoy? Was it being the center of attention? Was it the way you led them through it? Was it the payoff? What is so compelling about telling somebody else your story that makes you want to do it?

For me, it's all about the immersion. When somebody else gets so close to your story that they care about the characters... for me, that's magical.

What about you?

Switching horses in the middle of the road....

There's nothing like the feeling of juggling projects. (see last post) And nothing kills productivity like the switch from one project to another. Humans aren't really great multitaskers. If you're at work and you check your e-mail, it takes you fifteen minutes to get back in groove of whatever you were doing before that. Fifteen minutes.

Yes. There is research.

How much more so with a project? I'm a big fan of grabbing it and sticking with it till it's done. When that doesn't work... well, you'll have a week of refamiliarizing yourself with characters and places, the plot, etc. A week to get back into the atmosphere so you can write properly. A week.

Rush that and you'll regret it.

Trust me. :)

Define horrible realization.

So, I was talking to a friend. She confessed to having three or four current unfinished novel projects on her plate. I laughed, and said I had four too.

Then I opened my computer, and counted.

ELEVEN!! Twelve if you count the one I sorta finished but haven't found a publisher for yet.

Gosh!

One percent!

Walk into an average bookstore and look around. Guess how many of the authors of the books you see make their living by writing books? Just take a guess?

One percent.

Not one percent of all writers. One percent of the successes, one percent of all the people who got published by a major publisher, who made it to the big time, who are doing good! One percent of the big time writers!

That means the vast majority of writers, even if they are a success, have a day job. They toil. They work. (source: an unnamed industry source, as quoted by Randy Ingermanson in his latest blog)

If that prospect right there is enough to shake your faith in writing, you need to get out. Seriously. This is no business for the faint-hearted. If you really want to write you need to be prepared for endless drudgery that will never pay off. Seeing your words in type, knowing at least one person loved them... that needs to be enough for you.

If it's not, you need to go into some other profession. Somewhere they actually do reward your faithful efforts.

For Better or For Worse

Would it shock you if I told you that I used to really like For Better or For Worse? It's true. What other strip blended sentimentality and schlock so well with humor and a brisk, biting taste of real life, and hid right on the funny pages? What other funny page comic could interest you like that, could take a month to wrap up a good scene and keep your attention? Well, Calvin, obviously.

But Lynn Johnston was a master of the craft. I loved the slow growth of her characters, and I loved the realistic plotting and pacing. It felt like a comic that was really, truly great.

Not so much these days.

The sudden about-face to put Liz and Anthony together has been schlocky without the bite of real life. The return home for Liz was contrived. The plotting feels like...plotting. After the great and more subtle stuff that's come before--such as Gordo's romance, which was hilarious, felt spontaneous, and was completely character-driven--this is just a disappointment.

Lessons to be learned from this?

Just because you've grown to love the characters that much is no excuse. Your readers still expect top-notch writing and the same steely-eyed treatment you gave the readers when the characters were young. Now is not the time to gloss over their faults, or to rewrite them.

PS: One ray of sunshine throughout has been April. April is a brat. She has always been a brat. An ungrateful, nasty little thing. And Lynn has gone out of her way to show April the right way in obvious and overly preachy ways--but April still remains the same character, essentially. She babysteps her way better. She proclaimed in a recent strip that although she knew she had nothing to complain about, she'd find something.

In a way, April has remained the best and most real part of the strip. A teenager to the core. Her reactions to the unsubtle life lessons have been the best part of the strip for a while. Her 'band' has been an excuse to preach, one she keeps telling us she doesn't appreciate either.

In short, LJ has been true to the character. Keep being true to that one character, and there's still hope for the strip.

Still not done Harry Potter, but a few notes on metaphor..

This morning I realized that my entire story so far, the one I'm working on, is an externalization of the the protagonist's internal conflict. I.e., the whole story is shockingly personal. It might as well all be in his head. (and the main foil, and the hero... the other two big characters)

This works. For starters, it pushes this entire story BEYOND formula. I couldn't just keep writing stories about these people, endless sequels; they grow. They change. As I wrote, eventually they would change so much that they would be unrecognizable. Besides that, there's a clear beginning and end to their lives.

Because the conflict is an externalized form of their internal conflicts, the entire book obviously centers around the demons that haunt them, and their worst enemy remains themselves. I have no big, over-arching villain in my books; my heroes are the villains. They are a world unto themselves.

It's all rather awesome, actually.

I realized a while back that the first novel I ever finished was trash. The reason? The action was fake and artificial, just things happening to the main characters. It had nothing to do with their internal conflicts, if they ever even had internal conflicts. I had one character morbidly obsessed with one thing suddenly turn and go a different way. I had a villainous character turn heroic.

Only one part of that book was any good, and it was a subplot I glossed over rather quickly.

If I go back and rewrite it, I'll change the action to mirror the internal conflict. I'll give the characters real growth, instead of focusing on how I need to set them up for the big finale and the sequel. That should make it a book worth reading.