A few people (let's be honest) have asked me "how I write." One letter got me going enough that I think it's worth quoting the answer I wrote just in case anybody else wants to know. And I've added a few paragraphs below that on what a new writer needs to know.
October 1, 1998
A nice fellow sent me a story to read, and I had to write back and tell him I didn't like it. I really hate doing that, but I hate being dishonest just a little worse. I told him I couldn't identify with any of the characters so I couldn't really get into the story. Instead of just hating me, he returned a nice letter and asked this question:
>Actually, that's
an interesting point. Is it necessary,
>in writing, that
a reader be able to identify with at
>least one of the
characters?
This is what I answered, slightly edited:
I am about as far as you can get from being a literary critic, but I think it is necessary if interest is to be sustained. I have put down a fair number of novels simply because I didn't care what happened to the people, even if the people seemed lifelike. I don't know whether this is a fashionable attitude.
Now the sex story is a genre all its own. Maybe the "rules" are different. As for me, if I can't identify with a character I create, I can't write about that character. My latest, "Island," is about a woman whose fantasies are very different from mine. I wrote the story as a gift for her, putting her fantasies into a story and making her the main character. Along with her there are two surfer-type musclemen. They are there simply to service her; in one way, these characters don't matter at all as long as they do the job (which they do quite well, my friend says (grin!)). Of course I identified with her, even to sharing her pleasure in things I don't think I'd actually find pleasurable at all (I'm hopelessly square). But I also identified with each of the guys in some way.
One man I respect wrote me at some length a while back suggesting that I write a story in which at least one of the main characters is, if not evil, at least a bad person. My correspondent thought it would give me greater scope for my writing. So far I haven't done it, but if do, I'm sure I'll be able to identify with that character in some way. I think Dickens knew what Fagin felt; I think the person who wrote "Silence of the Lambs" identified with Hannibal Lechter. I suspect that if somebody writes a Jeffrey Daumer-like story, that person will identify with the cannibal. It's all there in me--I can imagine blowing up airliners for religious reasons, killing little children, etc. I don't condone such things, but I think I can understand the people who do them. I couldn't write about somebody I didn't feel at least some sympathy with.
Now all this is just me, and I don't even know whether it has anything
to do with you at all.
I've never read a book on fiction writing. People have told me my
stories are all wrong--they don't fit the model of what stories ought to be.
Once I tried to rewrite a story to fit the proper "rules" as they were explained
to me, and I hated the result and went back to the first draft.
A few readers were deeply moved by that story even though it didn't fit the
rules. (Note added later: I know now that I owe the man who forced
me to rewrite a great deal--he forced me to learn to select: to accept
advice I know is right, and to stick my guns, no matter what, if I think what
I'm doing is the best way.) I wrote another that very few people liked,
but the ones who did thought it was a masterpiece. Some people like
my stories, some don't. There is one fairly obscure reviewer on ASSD
who regularly says my stories suck. Once he gave one a 2 on a scale
of 10. I was hurt, but I felt better when I got about 35 e-mails telling
me it was great, which was far more than I'd gotten on any other story up
until that time. I think maybe he and I just like different kinds of
stories.
One writer who writes very well indeed, possibly the best on ASSM in my opinion, has written stories I love and stories that bore me to tears. He recently wrote one that irked me because I thought the main character was a whiner--I couldn't identify with her. Go figure.
When people give me advice on writing, I can make use of it only if it has to do with a piece I'm working on right then, and then I know almost immediately whether that advice is sound, in that instance, for me. I don't think any advice is sound enough to be an unbreakable rule. Incidentally, I wasn't so sure of my instincts when I started, but now I follow them regardless of what the advice is or whence it comes.
To me the art of writing is a big mystery. I know a few tricks I've learned in the course of writing and getting feedback about a dozen stories, but basically I still don't claim to know anything except what pleases me as a story, and what turns me on sexually. I don't know how a story ought to start out, or how one should end. If I get an idea, I just start writing and see what happens. When I come to the end I sort of know it and quit writing, but the story is never really over--I could just go on and on until all the characters die. I've started a couple where the characters bored me; I couldn't finish them. I've started, and nearly finished, a couple where I liked the characters, but nothing that happened to them seemed interesting--into the trash.
The stories I like best, I think, are the ones where I love the characters--and I think it shows in my writing. I just posted one a couple of weeks ago--"Erotica 101"--that is a pure piece of fluff. But I just loved the characters, and that made it great fun for me, and some people have liked it a lot. In "Janey's June," I thought Abe was wonderful. I was deeply involved emotionally with the characters in my last long one, "Assignation"--one of them was me, more me than any other one has been except one. So writing that one was, for me, kind of dramatic, and it shows in the story, I think. And, of course, I just love that girl Janey until my teeth hurt.
All I know is that if I sit here at the keyboard smiling as I write the first draft, I've got one some people will like. I don't usually smile so much doing the tinkering, the rewriting I find necessary every time, because that's work. But if I smile, or cry, whenever I read it all the way through, I know I'm in business.
The only thing I really know about writing is that the grammar had better be good, and I try hard on that.
You must be a persistent cuss. I've never put any of this into words before. In fact, I'm saving it and will probably put it on my web page, because people occasionally ask how I write and I say, "Duh! On a computer."
So I have to thank you for making me think. I try to avoid that--it usually gets me in trouble (grin!).
If this is any use to you, I'm glad. In any case, it's some use to me, so I thank you.
And I still think you'll write something I like a lot sooner or later.
Best regards,
Jane U.
* * *
March, 1999
I'm always carrying on about proper usage and punctuation, but there
are limits. I
want you to realize that once in a while you simply have to break the rules
to get
across the exact feeling you want to convey.
One of my good friends, who is also one of my severest critics, read
my little story
Y2K before I posted it. He pointed out a number a minor errors,
just the kind that
get by me and that I really hate when I find them after I've posted a story;
I fixed
them. Along the way, he found a run-on sentence--the kind that ought
to be two
sentences, ought to have some kind of conjunction in it, or ought at least
to have a semi-colon stuck in to show that I know how to punctuate.
Let me remind you--the heroine and narrator of this story is not a "Janey,"
she's a
femme par excellence, shy and breathless, the kind who would be
afraid on New
Year's Eve. She tells you this about her husband's behavior when
he hugs and
kisses her right in the middle of the crowd at her New Year's Eve party:
"He didn't pull away, he kept on fondling me with his tongue."
So my friend pointed out the punctuation error:
"He didn't pull away,***** semicolon here ***** he kept on fondling
me with his
tongue."
I left that one as is. Why? Because it conveys something of what
she's feeling.
She wasn't worrying about proper English, she was savoring the kind of
kiss that
thrilled her to the core. Stick that semi-colon in there and you
break the mood.
Bad idea.
So I explained to him:
"I realize that you are as bad a stickler for proper punctuation as
I am, but stories
are like poetry, they have to be felt as well as read, if you get what
I mean.
Dangerous business, but important to keep it in mind. Remember,
too, this is first
person--she's telling the story, and she doesn't necessarily speak the
English we
normally do. First person is very tricky. Punctuation is a
tool."
Moral: Do what you have to do. Know the rules cold, and
follow them. But when the
time comes, remember that the story comes first. Telling the story
is what really counts,
not showing everybody how good you are at punctuation. Punctuation
is a tool, not an end in itself.
* * *
December, 1998
I'm going to assume that some of the people who read this page are writers who haven't yet posted anything and are still trying to get up the nerve. If you are in this category, there are some things you need to know. You probably need to know a lot of other things, too, but these are important:
1. Everybody needs a proofreader. This is somebody who knows grammar backwards and forwards and can punctuate anything right. Maybe you yourself fit that definition, so you don't need a proof reader. Wrong! Nobody can proof her own stuff. Nobody. Not even Shakespeare. You can read your finished product ten times and be certain it's perfect, and your proofer will find six comma faults, five double periods, four glaring typos, three misspelled words, two missing verbs and a partridge in your pear tree. (I'm writing this at Christmastime.) If you don't know somebody who can do this for you, put a notice on ASSD, the writers' discussion group, and ask for help.
2. Everybody needs an editor. That's somebody you trust who will read your story and tell you honestly what's good about it and what's bad. An editor will find sentences that don't quite get over what you want them to, point out paragraphs that don't really advance the story and ought to be cut, and see dozens of other things that will help you make your story better. If you're lucky, your editor and proofreader can be the same person, but they don't have to be. (I'm lucky--I have the absolute best of both, combined in one man.)
3. Get a couple of people to read your story before you post and tell you what they think about it. They don't have to be other writers, or literary critics--they just need to be able to read stories and tell you what they think. Sometimes they'll hate the story or find something they think is terrible. Well, it's your call, but at least you'll know how some people might react to the story as written. I sent "Assignation" to four friends to read after my editor had approved it. Two of them really hated it a lot (one really carried on!), two liked it. I was taken aback by the vehemence of the two who disliked it, but I learned from what they said, and did some rewriting that didn't make it work for them, but made it better, so their dislike was a plus for me. Incidentally, that story got me more nice e-mail than anything else I have written so far. I finished one recently that I wasn't quite happy with, but didn't know how to improve. Two friends damned it with faint praise. It's on ice--maybe I can make it better, but it doesn't get posted until I do. I'd rather avoid posting mediocre stories.
4. Make sure you know exactly what the rules are for the group you're posting it to. Somewhere they're written down, but it pays to ask a veteran. You don't want your story to come out looking weird on the page, or get kicked back because you didn't follow some ditzy rule.
OK, that's it. As I said, you probably need to know some other things,
too, but if you do these things you can't go far wrong. Getting help
may not be very macho, but it sure makes a difference as to whether your
stuff gets accolades or brickbats--or, worse, no response at all.