I don't usually blog about writing (who the hell needs that), but in the course of a discussion in our critique group, Richard mentioned the quandaries of writing long versus short fiction, it got me going. Another member of the group also distracted me by mentioning hand puppets, and I laid in bed this morning trying to get the picture of Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop out of my head. I think my brain is trying to destress, but it's going about it in a very weird way.
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| a blue-haired dilemming |
I have huge qualms about middles at the moment. Is it showing? Or is it just these jeans? I guess I'm mostly afraid about my own 'middle' of the upcoming book - will my readers think it 'meh' - or any book I'm writing, really. While the beginning has to grab, titillate and propel the reader into the novel, make them care about the characters and what's going to happen to them, and the end has to satisfy by justifying every premise set up in the beginning, the middle has to weave us into, through, and around the story, keep us turning the pages, and make us think about the darn thing enough that we pick up the same book the next day (or not be able to put it down and turn off the light). While I wouldn't say beginnings and endings are easy, middles are the pancreatic cancer of most stories - it's very hard to detect what's wrong, you don't feel it while you're writing, and when you do figure it out, it's often fatal.
Writing short requires making a story complete and beautiful and perfect in less than 10,000 words. I admire people who can do that. Since I've been reading submissions for Albedo One, there's usually only one story (two at the most, on average) in a batch that I read all the way through. Middles are a huge dilemming for short stories as well, and that's where I usually get stuck. Endings are a different problem and just as huge, but we'll save that for another day.
I wouldn't say it takes more skill to write short than long. It's a different skill. Most writers seem better at one than another. Some can do both. I'd like to be one of the latter, but I'm not there yet. Not even close.
Okay, back to reading a 1700's Scottish Highland romance (no, not that one, another one). I'm just getting to the middle and still have hopes for this one despite the gushiness of the protagonist.
What are your biggest writing dilemmings these days?
*a cross between a small mammal who throws itself off cliffs and an intractable problem.
photo credit: the foosel via photopin cc
My biggest dilemming is trying to get my voice right, to be honest. Turning the right trick with the words without confusing people or sounding pretentious or just being irritating is the skill I trying to acquire, and I'm fairly sure its one of the things keeping my work from being publishable.
ReplyDeleteAs for "middles" I tend to think of the middle as the part where the initial problem presented in the beginning gets much worse. The middle is often my favorite part, for that reason.
Like, in the Three Musketeers, which can drag at points, remarkable enough, has a great complication in the form of Milady, the conniving lady of high court. She is introduced in the middle, and quickly complicates the lives of the Musketeers, especially D'Artagnan. That one soldier than ran off with the youngest Bennett was introduced in the middle of Pride and Prejudice, too.
Movies seem to make better examples though. Like Dante's Peak for example, we have the beginning problem of the volcano blowing up in the first place. But things get much worse when Pierce's character and Linda's character have to go save the stubborn grandma and try to make it out alive. Things just keep ratcheting up and up and up until the end, at least in my more favorite movies.
Of course, I think it is often better, for me, to think of the story in terms of a bunch of little stories that have their own beginnings, middles and ends, that way its not one great work to slog through, but many strongly interlocked little stories that happen to feature the same character. The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Johnathan Stroud, The Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima and the Dragonlance Chronicles by Weis and Hickman do this well, weaving dozens of little dramas together into one tapestry of doom, courage, and humor.
Hi Mark, Comments on older posts are automatically sent to me for moderation (I get tons of spam on them) so that's why it took so long to show up.
ReplyDeleteThanks for chiming in, and I love the examples you gave. I just got through reading The Three Musketeers and, although I didn't love it, it did have some nice plotting going on. I'll definitely be looking up Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy as I'm doing something similar right now with linked stories. I also highly enjoyed China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh which is a near-future novel written as a series of linked stories.
Also, it may depend on the type of story. Thrillers and suspense depend on fast pacing, and definitely need the ratcheting up - constantly until the end. Epic fantasies can also have interludes where things go off...somewhere else...for a while. I like both kinds of stories.
I'm not a bona fide romance reader, but I've been devouring Georgette Heyer's Regency romances at an alarming rate (will probably blog about it at some point) and she definitely uses the ratcheting up method to advantage. I'm still trying to figure out how she does it.
This post pretty much reflected a snapshot of my writing development as I was probably finishing up my third book in The Schattenreich series and getting ready to publish the second one. I didn't outline the first two books, but did outline the third, and it proved to be more difficult for me than not outlining. I have returned to what Dean Wesley Smith calls the writing in the dark method of novel writing even though I still think extremely short outlines (one sentence per scene) will continue to be useful for certain types of books. I'm more comfortable now trusting to my subconscious to not send me into areas where I emerge screaming for help.
I think you're right about making things worse as being a good thing for the middle. Also, that the middle is often a good place to take a complete left turn with the plot. :) And getting voice right is also one of my major concerns. I never know if I've done it, to be honest.
Thanks for your comment.