Write Hard: Prompts, Prods, and Pep-talks for Writers
Write Hard Smashwords Edition copyright 2011 Aaron Polson
www.aaronpolson.net
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This book is dedicated to every one of my students, especially the reluctant writers.
Nobody said writing was going to be easy. Take chances, make the courageous, daring choice. Write hard. No one wants to read another version of what's come before. No one wants the same thing, warmed over, and served cold. This is a time to be bold and foolish with your writing; you just might like the outcome.
Truths about Write Hard:
This is not your English professor’s book.
This will not be the last book you ever purchase about writing.
If you’re a seasoned writer looking for a kick in the pants, head directly to Pep Talks and Ass Kickings.
What Write Hard is: bold, sassy, slightly irreverent, inspiring, and different.
I hope you can find something useful.
Write Hard!
Chapter 1: Stealing Ideas, or How to Lie Like a Pro
Welcome to summer at my house:
One day, Owen and Max (my sons) made "potions" in our front yard, a variation on mud pies, I suppose. They filled a few old plastic bottles with their nefarious concoctions, and when I asked what was in the bottles, Owen replied, "magic potions."
"Oh," I said. "Potions. Sweet. What do they do?"
"Turn you into a gorilla," he said.
Me: whistle. "I guess I shouldn't drink it, then."
The next day, they constructed binoculars out of mini-planters (the biodegradable kind for starting tomato plants). And what, pray tell, did they do with said binoculars? Spy on the tree-trimming crew across the street.
Ah, the power of imagination.
(I think they were waiting for one of the tree trimming guys to turn into a gorilla.)
Borrowing from the Real World
What’s the point of my story? Ideas for writing are everywhere. Go to a shopping center, pick a bench, and watch people. We do weird things all the time. Weird behavior makes for great story fodder because it’s filled with inconsistencies. Inconsistencies breed conflict. Conflict is the heart of storytelling.
Mine the Collective Unconscious
But no, you say, I want “real” ideas, not the lonely guy hanging out by the Build-A-Bear store at the mall. Try this: pilfer ideas from fairy tales, folklore, even old ghost stories your Great Aunt Bessie used to tell at family gatherings.
Better yet, take a couple of good, solid fairy tales and mash them together into something new.
Maybe the ghost from Aunt Bessie’s tale would make a great spin on Cinderella.
Stories are part of our human legacy. Take advantage of them.
Robbing Yourself
And by “yourself” I mean your own subconscious. Damon Knight included a great section in his book, Creating Short Fiction, on collaborating with the subconscious. My take: it works.
You can’t force ideas to come to you, but you can nurture them. Give them space to grow.
Avoid telling your subconscious no to any idea, even if it sucks. You have to foster the relationship, and pretty soon, your brain will spit out some real gems.
Do you have a journal yet? No? Get one. Start taking notes.
Keep your eyes open.
Borrow from everything, stir it up, and tell it new.
Chapter 2: Essential Element 1: Conflict is Plot, or I Just Want a Damn Drink of Water
Every story is about conflict. Plot is the journey a character takes to resolve the conflict. Think of plot as a story’s map.
Start with a typical morning on the way to work or school. Does it make for an interesting story?
No?
I’m not surprised.
Now throw in a flat tire, a shooting on the subway platform, a stranger on the doorstep before you leave your apartment. Better yet, the tire doesn’t flatten itself—a mad gunman shoots it. Now your dear main character is stuck and at the whim of a madman with a gun.
Yes, now you see: conflict. Without conflict, a story isn’t a story.
Tying the Knot
Everyone knows a story needs to have a character (essential element 2).
Let’s call her Gwen, and Gwen really, really wants a drink of water.
Do we have a story?
Close—we have a character with a want, but not quite a story. Not yet.
Story comes when a character’s wants are blocked. This is conflict, the initiating event, the problem—whatever. I also call it tying the knot. English teachers have this weird penchant for metaphors. Bear with me. Picture a knot in your mind as you read—not one of those easy to untie bows. This is a real knot. A get-the-scissors-and-cut-it-out knot.
Gwen wants a drink of water, she climbs out of bed (did I mention it was night?), and walks to the kitchen. There, she grabs a glass from the cupboard, fills it from the tap, and ahhh, sweet drink of water.
Snooze fest, right?
Right.
Stephen Crane wrote a story about a man in need of a drink of water, “A Mystery of Heroism,” and his story landed in our 11th grade American Literature anthology. Why did his make the cut and Gwen’s tale put me to sleep? Crane tied one hell of a knot, that’s why. Collins, the thirsty character, found himself in the middle of a Civil War battle. The only well was smack in the middle of no-man’s-land between the armies. Now things are interesting, right?
Let’s go back to Gwen.
She wakes up, thirsty, but hears a noise from inside the house. No other living things should be in her apartment—her lease doesn’t allow pets and her boyfriend is out of town on business. Things are starting to get interesting.
Now, dear writer, tug on the knot.
The noise has become footsteps, and the footsteps are tapping on the hallway floor, growing louder. Gwen is still thirsty, but…
The more complicated the knot, the more emotional tension. The more suspense. Keep that knot bunched up until it seems our dear character can never untie it—untying the “problem” knot is the goal of the plot, the goal of your protagonist (the main character). Dénouement, the French word we use when discussing the final resolution of a story, means, literally translated, “untying”. I tell my students it means de-knot-ment.
Please dear writer, don’t cheat us here. Don’t make that nasty, gnarled up ball of string, which moments before we felt would never come undone, fall apart like a trick loop. Those footsteps in Gwen’s hallway don’t belong to her boyfriend, back early from his trip with a glass of water in his hand. Oh no. This knot just might need a knife.
No one said untying the knot had to be neat and clean.
Add a Little Lust
The easiest way to tie the knot: your main character has to want something. Lust for something.
Sure, it can be a man, woman, what-have-you in a sexual sense, but lust can also refer to power, money, objects, etc. In the example above, our poor main character wants to survive, wants it more than anything else. Using the word “lust” is also a nice reminder that the best verbs really grab a reader. (more on this later)
All you literary, avant-garde types please avert your eyes. I know you care less about plot than character development. Go about your business. This probably isn’t your book, anyway.
Every story, especially a novel, must have a problem—a conflict. The easiest way to accomplish this is to thwart a character from getting what he or she wants. And any character, if drawn properly, wants something. (Because characters should be like real people, right? I certainly have wants.)
In The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, the Time Traveler wants to prove his theory about the 4th dimension.
In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor wants to learn the secret of life.
Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey wants to keep hiding.
Even in more "literary" work, the protagonists have desires—love, acceptance, other universal human themes.
The story happens when a character is blocked or thwarted from achieving what he/she wants... Or sometimes faces consequences of seeking the object of his/her desire.
The Time Traveler arrives in the future (yay!), but his time machine is stolen, thwarting his return to the present (boo!).
Victor brings the Monster to life, but ugh… Dude is ugly. And scary. And lonely. (Um, should I mention vengeful?)
McMurphy punches holes in Chief's defenses and helps him realize there's more to life than hiding—but living life comes with a cost.
In each case, story happens when something interferes with a character’s wants.
Upping the Stakes
So you've discovered what your protagonist lusts after, now frustrate her/him with a good old fashioned traffic jam (I'm writing metaphorically here, unless a real traffic jam works).
Nothing creates dramatic tension (e.g., suspense) more than making the protagonist wait, and every good traffic jam carries an element of danger (more suspense!).
Wait? What is suspense?
Simply the level of emotional tension in a story. How tight is that knot? Emotional tension rises from danger.
Danger is vital to good fiction, regardless of the genre. Even literary tales have a solid dose, whether it is the threat of physical harm or more subtle dangers (living outside one's social circle, trying a new career...etc.).
You are Now a Horror Writer
Congratulations!
I don't care what "genre" you read/write: you are engaged in horror fiction. Don't deny it—I know horror writers often receive a bad rap, but the truth is, quite simply, every story is a horror story.
We have already established: for a story to work, there must be conflict. Internal or external, implied or explicit, I don't care. Conflict has to happen. A story simply isn't a story without conflict.
Conflict creates suspense (will the conflict resolve favorably for our dear protagonist?). Suspense is driven by fear. Fear is the central emotion of horror.
Need I say more?
Okay, Aaron, you might say, what about the Formula Romance? Well, the story revolves around the central will they/won't they conflict. The fear might not be Horror (capital H), but it is suspenseful, at least a little, or otherwise no one would read it. Suspense drives the reader to the end of a story. The best stories have loads of it, even where the big threat (death) doesn't exist. But I'd say every good story carries elements of the big threat... At least derivatives of it. If my seven-year-old is asking questions about whether Harry Potter dies after reading book 1, well, the big threat is there. Derivatives? Think lost love, lost family member, lost job, lost respect... All those "losses" are surrogates for death.
Need More Plot?
One of the common themes in classical literature is the "hero's" journey into the underworld. Odysseus had to do it. So did Orpheus (and we all know how well that turned out—can you say decapitation?). Most Harry Potter books (all of them?) involved our intrepid young wizard in the Forbidden Forest at one point or another. The underworld is usually a place of learning or trials, a place for your main character to meet a mentor or gain wisdom, an important stop on the journey to solving his/her/its "big problem". It doesn't even have to be underground (um, Forbidden Forest, anyone?)
Take your protagonist on a trip to the dark side. He/she/it will emerge stronger, wiser, and/or ready to slay the dragon. (unless, like Orpheus, he/she/it doesn't listen to directions and crosses the streams—er, that's from Ghostbusters)
Squeeze Until They Pop
Here’s one sure way to kick up the emotional tension: get physical. Sometimes characters need to physically assault one another, regardless of the genre of your book. Physical altercations amp up the drama, the threat level (hey, a character could bleed here), and provide much needed umph when we've had too many pages of dialogue. Remember, any good fight scene is like a good sex scene: let the reader fill in as many blanks as possible. It's easy to overwrite both. No one needs a two page nanosecond by nanosecond recap of a fist coming into contact with another character's jaw. Maybe your big fight scene doesn't move past one character snapping a pencil in two when he/she sees a rival. That works, too. Physicality makes those characters' emotions real.
Fighting isn't your protagonist's style? No one said your main character had to be in on the action, did they?
Eventually, all this tension is going to burst. Your dear protagonist is going to have to do something about his/her problem. The big resolution, the climax, comes when stakes are just about too high to bear. Suspense has hit “11”.
The main character needs to take action to untie the knot, to resolve his or her conflict. A story just doesn’t work if he/she is passive at this point. No one wants to read the book about the character who watched everything happen.
And even though the knot is untied in the end, it doesn’t mean all of the problems which arose in the story are over. Sometimes untying one knot leads to another knot/problem (or a sequel). The real world isn’t wrapped up neatly. Real life never has happy endings.
Chapter 3: Essential Element 2: Characters are People Too
Start with the basics: gender, age, appearance. Now turn this cardboard pattern into a real person.
Everybody Hates Writing a Resume
But writing one for your character is a good way to start. Most word processing programs have built-in templates for resume construction. Use one for your most important characters. Think about how your character earns money. Where would your character volunteer on the weekends? What are her biggest achievements in life?