ILB Writing Club

Fact: two years ago I spent an entire morning writing about my protagonist passing a Certain Fencepost in whose quality of lichen and state of decrepitude I invested ~2000 words. Cut it to a clause in the subsequent revision.

The showing becomes more resonant as telling builds up (can be just here and there)and becomes the context settling in, rising and falling, the sense of significance "He walked into a bar." "So? Oh shit.") As a jazz musician might begin to leave out notes from the basic melody etc, once he's taught it to the listener as he continues past and/or deeper into it. At least that's what I try to do in my xpost memory pieces (still in progress, or something).

(Correct use of punctuation still in something too.)

What I teach, in actual practice, is that showing and telling (IME) aren’t separable nor do they exist in opposition any more than, say, major and minor scales do from each other.

you obv have a lot more experience of it, it could be a case of "to the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail" but i feel like in my class more of us have problems telling too much. i guess i do think that telling is more of a problem than showing tho, like a story that only showed could be fine, i think that's a lot harder for a story that was all telling. i'm focussing mainly on short stories, i guess in novels there is even more need for telling as a matter of course, i feel like some great short stories only show. i also feel that, for beginners at least, and from my own stuff, when i've only been telling i'm more likely to have little or no dialogue, a passive character who never interacts with other characters, and no scenes. a lot of the anti-telling thing is to try to stop unearned emotion i guess.

there's something v impressive about a story where suddenly you are told about massive events and the passage of time, it feels audacious and bravura. you've been witnessing minutia and then suddenly you are told "in spring, they married. james' work, while repetitive, continued to furnish him with the confidence that he was a man of good standing, and it was this quality of his that maryanne couldn't imagine him without." you feel like, wow, ok i'm in good hands here. this writer knows where we're going.

oh for sure all of that is needed. it's just when a story is only that and there's never any slow examination.

i feel like this piece covers most of what we're discussing better than i can explain it, been a hugely useful article for me in the last few months:

https://stingingfly.org/2017/10/24/edit-lousy-writing/

little or no dialogue, a passive character who never interacts with other characters

This is definitely the area that I'm working on currently! Though for me it's definitely not a result of over-telling, it's more a result of being a dusty-dusty-her-sad-in-her-room existential angst person. I feel like I'm pretty good at scenes and imagery and not so good at creating a human who doesn't feel alienated from everyone else. I'm getting a whole lot better at secondary character/relationship writing but I still shy away from dialogue, tbh.

My main struggle with the thing I'm working on is that it has a central character (who isn't quite me, thank you!) who's going to be in more or less every scene, and the thing will be how I make the other characters into people with full lives and complex motivations rather than cipheresque satellites, while not sacrificing economy. I guess just constantly ask myself 'is this character here for any good reason other than to interact with Our Hero?'. I'm also slightly unsure if the 'plot' is rich enough at this stage. I guess that after writing 500 tiny-type pages of outlandish plot and psychedelic indulgence the right amount of plot might seem thin, so I'll just go with it.

‘She stared at the old house. Her head filled with memories…’ Later, going back to edit this, they reread their own words: ‘She stared at the old house.’ Ah, yes! The words trigger the impulse that led to the words. They can see the specific house they have in mind; they see the dark green ivy covering a high window entirely, so the house looks one-eyed and piratical, they see the saplings and small bushes sprouting in the long-blocked, leaf-filled gutters, they see the ancient elm in the garden, leaning against the side of the house as though drunk.

This is a good article, but I feel very very strongly that sometimes "...the dark green ivy covered a high window entirely, so the house looked one-eyed and piratical..." needs to be edited down to "she stared at the old house".

otm

really there are no hard and fast rules besides 'does this work' - does it draw you on without ringing false - is this a train you want to ride etc

LJ, my advice wrt secondary characters: sometimes a traditional workshop exercise will get them to feel more fleshed out, other times just write the damn story with them as ciphers and find out where it goes, and only after the first couple of drafts do you edit the hell out of them, because you now know them better.

i feel like i wrote about solo characters for about two years. also loads of stories of illness and stuff, i suppose cos of having chronic illness.

like i'm not for a second saying you can't write something great from whatever approach you take, my experience is hardly universal, but i do know personally i am having a lot more fun with my stories in the last few months since i started daring myself into more dialogue and relationships between characters. i hated dialogue but i actually enjoy it now. for some reason it is v cringe-inducing in a first draft but i think that's illusory. a thing i wrote recently i had to bully myself to write the dialogue, 15 minutes at a time and getting angry and frustrated and stopping. when i showed it to my class people thought the dialogue was fine, a lot of the anxiety is illusory i guess.

i've had a few epiphanies lately where a story with characters that began with some sort of point of view or question in my mind about something in the world has gone on to change my mind, or make me realise there's more depth to the initial pov i began exploring. i find that really exciting - like "it turns out what i think is actually this, based on what i found out via those characters"

xpost to emily. all rules in anything are made to be broken, but in finding out "does this work" or "why doesn't it work" i don't think the rules are a bad place to start...

(trad workshop exercises can feel incredibly stupid but I find that I'm more ok with using them if I hit a sticking point, then I can treat it as a kind of fun break and not beat myself up for not moving forward... and possibly something will come out of it)

(xp to self)

btw not trying to claim to know much here or that anything i say has any weight for anyone else.

also xpost...

xpost to emily. all rules in anything are made to be broken, but in finding out "does this work" or "why doesn't it work" i don't think the rules are a bad place to start...

this was to lj btw, i meant the previous bit was xpost to emily.

nothing wrong with trad workshop exercises, writing to template etc. constriction is the force from which coiled creativity can leap. ty for suggesting it! if a chapter is stuck then writing something very exercise-y will probably be for the best

and obviously yeah a working knowledge of 'the rules', or at least 'how it's been done before', is u&k

Imago - I think it depends on how self-involved your central character is. If they are (and a lot of central characters tend to be) then the characters only matter in how they interact with that one character. You can use dialogue and little character details to hint at richer interior lives, things that the reader will pick up on but your character may not notice or care about.

Just started the Kevin Barry stuff, very good

which one did you get? his two collections are p interesting, the second one won loads of awards etc, the first was well-received but imo is not as good, though still some great stuff there.

Showing is pretty much just talking around (rather than about) a thing, yeah? It's the notes you don't play.

"Dan went to the store."

vs

"Dan's phone rang. 'Yeah?' he said. 'To the Piggly Wiggly. You need anything?'"

There will be little kingdoms

Hi emil.y, I would miss the ivy (doesn't have to have "green" in front) covering the high window entirely, ditto the ancient elm in the garden, leaning against the side of the house as if drunk. If I had to choose onel I'd choose the elm, but they convey different things. Of course you might not need any of this, depending on what happens after she stares, but having read this far, I would miss those phrases.

i can't really say what i'd lose given it's just an example and i don't know what else is in it, but as someone who edits and shortens all day for a living i have to say i take a totally different approach with writing. rhythm and imagery are more important than almost anything else to me. if the rhythm/imagery/character dictates a long description of the house then that's what's needed. when i've edited my stuff for length or anything like that it just murders it.

sometimes what happens next is what sounds or looks nice, i guess.

Of course you might not need any of this, depending on what happens after she stares

This is the entirety of my point. Depending on how you write, depending on what you're writing about, sometimes you want the ivy and the elm and sometimes that's just self-indulgence b/c you think you're writing something so evocative, but honestly you don't need it and it shouldn't be there. But look at all of my posts, I'm not saying you never need it, I'm saying SOMETIMES. DEPENDING. Find your voice, find your subject, work out if you need it or not.

i don't think he's saying you should always write in that way, it's not advice in isolation but the second part of an example which begins with someone trying to evoke memories in a character, and he suggests offhand a way to do that that isn't "her head was full of memories", but by showing the house with some subtext, which obv is pretty average considering he just banged it together for an article.

Sometimes purple prose is texture and sometimes it's blather.

for sure.

but in that excerpt the two propositions on offer are not "she looked at the house" v "she looked at the house and the ivy etc" in that quoted text.

the two proposed bits are "she looked at the house, her head was filled with memories" v an example of describing the house in an "evocative" way which yes is crap, but serves it's purpose to illustrate the point. show the house, rather than telling the reader there are vague thoughts happening inside of someone's head

and avoid green grocer's apostrophes

Yes, I know. I'm not disagreeing with you, though I am on the side of soda in that the rules have been more annoyingly wielded in my experience than they seem to have been in yours. Btw, a few of your posts feel like they're saying that there's something there that I'm not understanding, when you're not actually telling me anything I haven't already understood. It feels quite patronising but I'm not sure that's the intent? Sorry if I'm just being massively oversensitive.

xxxp to LG

i guess i just disagreed a bit that the point of that excerpt is about writing more, or writing floridly, if that was your point. sorry if it appeared patronising.

euwww not "her head was filled with memories", just show a *bit* of evocative imagery (maybe, but def no head)sez this reader

i think of description the same way as a close-up in a movie. hitchcock will show you an "insert" i.e. a close-up of a hand turning a key if that's an important part of the story for a particular character. but if it's just a character coming home like they do every day and there's nothing important about the key or the lock you'd never switch to close-up.

this is all good stuff, really helpful. especially the warning to avoid "little or no dialogue, a passive character who never interacts with other characters, and no scenes." I'll keep that in mind

what about routines? do people find themselves trying to write everyday, at least a little? just when inspiration strikes? do you have a set time in the diary? etc etc I know most of the answers to these things is just 'whatever works', but I'm interested in others' experiences.

Currently I write when inspiration strikes, but I also have a monthly meet-up with friends who write and we do prompt exercises, sometimes just 20 minute ones, other times things to write over the month. It is best to try to do something every day, though. Habit is a good way of forming/replacing self-discipline.

Also, LG, I think I was being overly sensitive before, I'm in the middle of moving and super-stressed. Sorry again.

No worries! Sometimes in my enthusiasm I can prob go on a bit :)

what about routines? do people find themselves trying to write everyday, at least a little? just when inspiration strikes? do you have a set time in the diary? etc etc I know most of the answers to these things is just 'whatever works', but I'm interested in others' experiences.

I write most days but I don't beat myself up if life gets in the way. A thing I've noticed recently but never seen properly explained is that (and obv ymmv) it's nearly impossible to experience a real flow with a first draft. Whereas I can edit/rewrite a first draft and hours pass by. I don't feel like I learn much about writing in first drafts, and the things I feel when I'm doing them are untrustworthy.

The other huge thing for me lately is buying a printer and printing second or third drafts then reading over them with a pen. I don't think editing at a computer, the place you use for writing/rewriting, a tool on which it's incredibly easy to delete things, is good at all, ime.

I did this for ages and I couldn't edit properly, I'd get bogged down editing the first three pars instead of reading the whole thing. Whereas printing a thing out adds to the feeling that it's like I'm reading someone else's work. I find now I'm making huge additions down the margin of paragraphs and scenes that I can tell are improving the piece when I add them. It also compartmentalises the tasks nicely - it's good for laziness. Like the part where I just add in the edits I made on the paper to the computer feels a really easy and generous task to let myself do while still feeling good that I wrote that day.

I think a few people spoke upthread about keeping notes on your phone or trying to write down ideas or scenes when they come to you.

I write like clockwork almost every day (every weekday, at least), whether I have a starting point in mind or not. The process of just throwing words down usually prods an idea or two into existence. I personally need the rigidity, as it's often the only way I'm able to perform a task with any consistency (thanks, ADD!).

More specifically, I write on the long commute home, and if I'm on a good tear I'll detour to a nearby cafe to continue before heading home to my myriad of distractions.

yeah i get scared that if i stop i will never have another idea again! so even after progress on a thing that feels good, if i put it in a drawer i tend to have to start something else.

Definitely think that using both computer and longhand/hard copy is the best route to go - the mix that works best for me is writing out sketched ideas on paper, typing up & outlining structure & fleshing out on computer, doing some editing (e.g. individual words, adding bits, rearranging order) on computer, editing as LG describes on paper and then going back to the computer (repeat as necessary). It might sound a bit arduous but honestly I feel like it keeps things fresh.

Mind you, if you're worried about deleting stuff you should try Scrivener and you can either use 'track changes' or the 'snapshot' function. I prefer the latter, it's basically keeping a separate save file of your work but it'll be in the same project folder and easy to find. Track changes is probably preferred by most, though. Honestly, I recommend Scrivener for any writers, it's got so many useful functions.

Via the routine I detailed, I've filled maybe one and a half 200-pg. notebooks in the past year. If I at some point develop a skill for editing my mountains of unwieldy prose, I'll be unstoppable. But you'll be surprised at the volume you can accrue if you stick with it.

I want to hire someone on Craigslist or something to transcribe all of my longhand stuff so I can more easily edit. But christ knows I do not want to type out all of that shit myself.

this probably sounds eccentric but i also print stuff out in different fonts (cochin, geneva and courier are the three i use most) for rereads and mark-ups -- i want to read and reread at different speeds if possible, because you see and hear different things

Okay, wait, this is actually the first time I've done any explicit accounting of my output in a while and it's only now sinking in that I've written something like 600 pages in twelve months. BRB, gotta go call some book agents or whatever it is that people who write for a living do.

that's an interesting idea, must try that, xpost.

i bought scrivener about a month ago but still haven't used it or watched a tutorial :/

i can't really do much by hand, it makes me feel hamstrung by how slowly i write.

I did transcription work a long time ago for a guy who advertised in my local post office. His writing was THE WORST. It was hilariously bad, and as such, wound up being a pretty good job. (Not saying anything about OL's work, obviously!)

i know it's mean to criticise but i did a class at faber about two years ago and this one person who was particularly rude/unpleasant about everyone else's work was so bad that i almost thought it was like a practical or performative joke.

we had to do a piece where we scribbled down some stuff we saw on our journey home, the first night, and hers began "a gay-looking man gets on at oxford circus", at which point you think "hmm, not such a pc way of putting it" - then a few lines later it was "a woman is wearing a leopard print scarf - does she think we are in africa?" - alarm bells close to ringing now.

finally it ended with a huge islamophobic rant about someone wearing a headscarf needing to obey the laws of this country. i was surprised the teacher didn't intervene in a way, but i suppose it would have been awkward.

Man, it would be so weirdly comforting to find out that I'm actually a terrible writer. No need to waste any more energy on that pursuit!

When writing both saves you and hurts you.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/commentisfree/2023/jan/30/my-mentor-john-hughes-taught-me-how-to-write-then-he-plagiarised-my-work?