From Dave Farland:

Sometimes when people look at a writer who produces a lot, they make exclamations like, “Wow, how do you get so much done? You’re amazing! How did you get to be so prolific?”
Of course, as a writer, I don’t feel prolific, especially lately. I never think of myself in those terms. I do think about how to be more productive—almost every day.

. . . .

A few years ago, I was in a car with Kevin J. Anderson, a writer who is more prolific than I am, and we passed a corner where literally hundreds of young people were loitering. They weren’t going anywhere. It was merely thousands of young people just watching cars cruise the strip. We looked at one another, and Kevin was the first to break. “How can they waste their lives like this?”

No idea. But I do know that many people who want to be writers spend too much time watching old television episodes or movies that they’ve seen ten times before. They waste hours on Facebook, or play videogames. They sit around talking. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for enjoying life, but for me a big part of that joy comes from my art.

So here’s how you start:

1) Work through the heat of the day. While others are whining or trying to figure out how to “get more comfortable” or flirting or dreaming of glory or griping about the weather or watching television or getting together for parties, keep working. Don’t look up to see what they’re doing. Focus. Make writing your #1 goal.

2) Study other productive writers. Find out how they do it. What are their working habits? Seriously, do you need to take a typing class? If you could type 30% faster, would you get more accomplished? If you could read faster, could you study more effectively? If you bought a new chair, could you work for half an hour longer per day? Should you be setting different types of writing goals? For example, would it help you to say, “Instead of writing for one hour before I take a break, I’m going to write a chapter”? (I find that it is hard to “get on a roll” with my writing, but once I’m on it, it’s easy to stay on.) What about your computer and its software—is it optimized for the job?

3) Look for time to write. Could you spend your time in the shower in the morning thinking about your novel, so that by the time you got groomed, you were ready to write? Or would it help to brainstorm a few minutes as you prepare to fall asleep? Can you eat a smaller breakfast, so that you don’t feel tired mid-morning? Can you take your computer on the subway and write on your way to work, or write during your lunch break? In other words, see if you can discover hidden moments to write.

4) Take advantage of your own gifts. As a writer, you may have some unique talents. Some writers are great at tuning out the sounds of people talking, so that they can write well when waiting at restaurants. Others might get by on very little sleep, so that they can write in the quiet hours of the night. Discover your own strengths.

Link to the rest at David Farland

From bestselling author and former writing professor Dave Farland:

I was rewriting a scene this morning, listening closely to the sound and rhythm of the words in a passage, looking for ways to strengthen it, and it made me wonder: how many new writers take the proper care with their words? How many truly listen?

There are a number of ways to show that you’re a genius at writing. You might have break-neck pacing, or characters who become more and more alive as the reader learns about them. Your plots might be brilliant, or your argument scenes might impress and inspire.

But guess what? If your story doesn’t stand out based upon the beauty of your words—your sensitive use of language, your tone and style—it really won’t matter.

You see, lackluster prose is perhaps the biggest bar to publication.

. . . .

We look for authors who convince us through their use of words alone that their work will stand out. That’s why so many editors say that the first thing that they look for is a powerful and convincing voice—either the author’s narrative voice or the character’s voice.

. . . .

Many writers come to the craft late in life. They may have been computer programmers or healthcare workers or policemen, but they’ve always had that nagging desire to write. They’ve read great stories and may even have some wonderful talents—a gift for setting, or a deep understanding of businessmen and thugs—that can help them find huge audiences. But such writers often feel that they don’t have time to learn the writing craft, explore it. They don’t have time to take poetry writing classes, for example, and they think that it’s optional.

Guess what. It isn’t optional. If you worry that I may be talking to you, I’m talking to you.

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From NYT bestselling author Dave Farland:

Many authors write tales where every character sounds the same. Everyone in their stories seems to be college educated, just like the author, and everyone seems to come from the same area as the author. That can be a real weakness in your story.

If your characters don’t have different voices, your story will never come to life. It’s so important, that recently while looking at the websites of several agents, I noticed that about half of them mentioned “voice” as the first thing that they look for when judging a tale, and I have to admit that when I pick up a story with a good strong voice, I instantly breathe a sigh of relief, feeling that I’m in the hands of a real pro.

. . . .

So give each character in your story a distinctive voice. You don’t have to be in-your-face about it. The distinctions might be slight. For example, two neighbor boys, even though they are the best of friends, might use slightly different slang. One might say “whoa” when an alien ship crashes into the woods, while the other says “awesome.”

One technique that I find helpful is at the end of each story, I go through in editing and make a “dialog pass.” If I have a character, Bron, I will search for instances of “Bron said” so that I can pinpoint his scenes and make sure that his dialog sounds like it is coming from him. This needs to extend beyond the level of just dialog. It might force me to ask questions like, “Is this what Bron would really say in this situation? Is that how he would say it? Would he really think that? Is this how he would react? Is this what he would notice?” In other words, part of editing his voice is also to reexamine every aspect of him as a character.

Link to the rest at David Farland

From David Farland:

As authors, we’ve all read stories by authors that make us think, “Wow, I wish that I had his/her talent!”

We’re trained to believe that writing well is somehow . . . mystical. We’re taught that we have to be born with talent, or perhaps a muse must whisper into our ears.

But good writers don’t rely on inspiration. They don’t use “talent” as a crutch. They don’t need luck. Instead, they develop skills.

. . . .

But for everything that you do easily, you’ll find that there are another ten skills that you struggle with.

For most people, writing at all is hard. Most people don’t even discover what natural talents they have until they’ve written for a million words or more.

So forget about talent for a bit. Too many people born with a specific talent for writing will lean on it so much, they never develop the rest of the skills that they need to become master storytellers. As a new writer, I looked around at the most talented beginners, and used to wonder which would be my biggest competition later in life. Guess what? They all gave up long ago. Many of them never wrote more than one award-winning novel.

. . . .

When I was in my twenties, a researcher discovered that the average writer takes seven years to go from becoming a “novice” to the point where he’s published. I began looking at other writers and soon realized why: most of them spent far more time talking about writing in writing groups (or online) than they actually spent writing. If you want to be a writer but haven’t written anything in three months, you’re probably not making much progress. Yes, you can learn a certain amount of information by talking about writing and by study, but many of the toughest skills can only be learned by practice.

. . . .

So I decided to “cram seven years of practice into six months.” I studied the craft diligently and wrote a great deal, composing poems, short stories, and novel chapters. Within six months I began to get rave reviews from fellow writers, and within a year I began to publish. I even won the grand prize in the Writers of the Future Contest. But mind you, for six months I spent 14 hours per day in practice. When my name made it on the cover of USA Today, a group in San Francisco, thought it would be funny to hold a similar contest—the “Writer with No Future Contest.”

Link to the rest at David Farland

From Kami M. McArthur via David Farland:

The stories that you read and the movies that you watch can have profound effects on you. Reading, and writing, are both immersive experiences.

In a recent study, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to peer into the brains of people who read. Scientists found that when a person reads the word “bicycle,” for example, the area of the brain that controls the leg muscles used when riding a bike “light up.” Similarly, if you read a passage about eating a feast, the area that controls your chewing muscles will activate, while if you read a love scene, portions of your brains that recall emotions become excited. In fact, with every paragraph that a reader reads, dozens of connections are made that the reader doesn’t recognize.

In short, at a subconscious level the reader experiences the tale.

. . . .

When we’re reading and become completely immersed in a tale, we feel as if we have lived through it. When this happens, researchers call it “experience-taking,” and research shows that with certain stories, this can have a very positive effect.

Researchers at Ohio State University found that when reading a story, a full 65% of the readers engage in “experience-taking.” (Please note that these results are similar to ones where many readers report that they can’t identify with protagonists of the opposite sex. Some ten percent of women say that they can’t do it, while over 30% of men can’t. In other words, some people just find it difficult to become engaged by a story.)

. . . .

Similarities between the protagonist and the reader make it much more likely that the reader will engage in experience-taking. Stories that are written in first person are twice as likely to engage the reader as stories that are written in third person. Tales set in the reader’s hometown, or which have the protagonist similar to the reader, also are more likely to get the reader to engage. If a protagonist is different from the reader in some way—for example if the protagonist is black while the reader is white—the writer can engage still get the desired effect if the difference is not expressed until late in the story.

Link to the rest at David Farland

Bestselling author and former writing professor Dave Farland has just released a new ebook entitled, Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing.

PG usually doesn’t do book plugs, but he’s tapped Dave’s writing advice columns so often for The Passive Voice that paying a little back seems fair.

From bestselling author and former writing professor Dave Farland:

When I was thirteen, I met my grandfather for the first time, and he told me about his life in the Mafia. “I ran whorehouses and gambling joints in the Midwest, for more than thirty years,” he said, “mainly from Detroit down into Chicago.” It’s the kind of admission that I would expect a person to shrink from making, rather vile and repugnant. But you should have seen him. His back straightened, his chin rose, and his gaze drifted wistfully to the horizon. He was so proud to have been a mob boss.

I learned a lot about my grandfather that day, but he spoke little, so the most important things that I learned came from visual cues.

For writers, learning how to describe the physical manifestations of emotions is vital. But just as important is knowing when to focus on showing an emotion and what emotion to focus on.

As a judge for a large writing contest, I frequently read manuscripts where new authors spend a great deal of time giving me the physical cues of emotions that we rather all expect. Thus, the descriptions can feel boring and over-wrought, even if they’re honest and completely accurate.

. . . .

You see, if your character is facing a charging rhino, your reader will expect him to be scared. In fact, if you depict the charge well, the reader will actually feel some fear. His adrenaline will surge, his heart will beat faster, his muscles will tighten, blood will rush to his brain, his mouth will dry. The physical manifestations won’t be as strong as when you actually live through the incident, but the echoes will be there.

. . . .

So how would such a Neanderthal react to such a charge? Imagine that his children are hiding in a cave. His pregnant wife is hungry, and god has come to give himself. An eager hunter might react to the charge with tears of joy. He might race toward his prey singing songs of thankfulness. And once again, I want that account to be drawn to graceful perfection.

Link to the rest at David Farland

From bestselling author and former writing professor Dave Farland:

There’s nothing that makes an author feel quite so helpless as his or her cover. In most cases, you don’t have much or any control over what your cover looks like. In fact, you may get no input at all.

More than once I have seen an author who got a bad cover and tried to change it—to no avail. For example, I’ve seen genuinely ugly pictures on cover. One friend complained to the publisher who said, “We agree. But we already paid the artist his $12,000 fee, and we don’t have the time and budget to do another.” Case closed.

On one occasion, I saw an author who got a fairly good cover. His book was scheduled to be the “lead title” for the month from a large publisher. But another author, a much more famous one, turned in a novel at the last minute, and my friend’s book got demoted to the number two slot. The publisher didn’t feel that it would look right for the number two book to look better than the number one, so they darkened the cover considerably, making it look muddy and worn. Case closed.

. . . .

Another way to get a good cover is to make sure that you create a scene that can be used for one. I recall once picking up a book by a friend and reading it through. The cover was drab, and as I read through the book, I kept looking for a scene that would have made a better cover. There wasn’t one.

So when you write your book, consider ways to insert scenes that will capture an illustrator’s imagination. Make sure that the scene has the proper characters and conflict that the illustrators needs, then give your artist the details needed to put the illustration together—such as the character’s costumes and so on. My illustrator for my Runelords novels, Darrel Sweet, has never asked which scene I would like to have illustrated, but he’s gotten it right every time. Why? Because I wrote the key cover scene with the illustrator in mind.

. . . .

You can even take this process farther and hire your own cover artist. On my novel Of Mice and Magic, I selected a small publisher that normally only budgeted $800 for the art for a cover. I knew that I wanted interior illustrations and I wanted a better cover than I thought that they could provide, so I asked if I could hire an artist to do some illustration work for me, and then let them reimburse me for only part of the costs. It cost me a few thousand extra dollars up front, but I felt that it would be worth it. By investing in a good cover, I’d make the money back on foreign sales.

So I hired Howard Lyon to illustrate the book. He soon sent a sketch for my approval. I made a number of suggestions, asking him to change the composition of the bodies in order to form what is called a “golden torus” figure. I also asked him to fill the background with flowers behind my female mouse, and to put masculine objects in the background of my male mouse.

The cover worked well—enough so that Howard won an award from the World Society of Computer Graphics Illustrators for best piece of two-dimensional art for the year.

. . . .

The publisher of course was happy to use the art, and I made back my investment with our very first sale.

Link to the rest at David Farland

To forestall comments from those who don’t know Dave, he has published a large number of books with traditional publishers but has also self-published so he understands covers from both sides.

From bestselling author and former writing professor Dave Farland:

I mentioned a few kicks ago, that when you’re new as a writer, the fear of criticism is one the greatest stumbling blocks. You don’t want to tell people about a dream that might sound foolish or unrealistic. You may not want to risk criticism.

. . . .

3) When you’re writing, write about themes or topics that are important to you. As I mentioned, as a teen I was terrified that someone might read my work. I know the very minute that that changed. It happened like this:

I was working my way through college as a prison guard back in 1980. We had been having some racial tensions in the prison. Members of the Aryan Brotherhood had been building light-bulb bombs–putting gasoline and an oil-based glue into light bulbs, so that when a Black inmate turned on the light in his cell, it blew up.

At this time, I was put in charge of the inmates who worked in the kitchen, and shortly after starting there, I hired two Blacks as chefs. The Aryans were not pleased. One of my superiors tried to get me to fire the Blacks, and I resisted.

The next day, the Sergeant-At-Arms of the Aryan Brotherhood had a little talk with me. While one of his men sat sharpening a butcher knife, he suggested that if I didn’t fire the Blacks, things in the kitchen would get “so hot that you won’t be able to run out of here fast enough.”

Now, I had been a meat cutter for years before taking that job in the prison. I had very strong wrists and excellent knife skills. And as I watched that Aryan sharpening his blade, I thought, “You know, I believe in racial equality. I believe in it so strongly that if these guys try to stab me, I’m going to take that knife away from them and gut them where they stand.”

I of course refused to follow their advice. Later that night, me and some other officers went to their cells and escorted them to some new accommodations in the hole.

The next day I went into our kitchen’s basement to fetch some supplies. When I turned on the light, a bomb went off over my head. Fortunately, the makers had put just a little too much glue in the light bulb, and the bomb fizzled.

. . . .

Since then, the fear of being criticized for my writing seems like a minor thing.

Link to the rest at David Farland

From bestselling author and former writing professor Dave Farland:

Orson Scott Card has said that when we tell a story, our viewpoint character should usually be the person who is “in the most pain.” Very often that pain is caused by others, but in the real world the truth is that so many of us suffer from various ailments and mishaps that we have no one at all to blame. It’s simply misfortune. As authors, we are typically hesitant to write about characters who suffer from horrific ailments. After all, we don’t want to be accused of being maudlin. Yet one of the best ways to gain a reader’s sympathy is to put a character in pain.

There are a couple of rules that you have to follow, though, in order for this to work. First, look at the cause of the pain. If another character is causing your protagonist pain, your character needs to confront the source. That means that if a boss is abusing women, your female protagonist needs to talk to him directly or even take legal action in order to resolve the issue. In fact, you can create a perfectly satisfactory tale in which your protagonist commits murder in order to put an end to the abuse.

If the pain is caused by nature—by an illness, for example—the character still must do all he or she can to resolve the problem.

. . . .

Any time that a character breaks down, we as an audience may cast judgment upon that character. Different cultures have widely varying standards about who should cry and when. I used to have a Latin American/Italian friend who would cry about anything—the weather, his shoes being too tight, a girlfriend that left him, or the people he’d had to kill when he was in the CIA.

Link to the rest at David Farland