From Electric Lit:

I was balancing a plate of honeydew in the green room of a book festival when I walked by a white man bemoaning the state of the publishing industry. The man wore a suit, and he spoke to a white woman; both of them looked to be in their 40s. As the man speared a clump of melon, he explained his frustration that editors kept buying memoirs. At this point, as a memoir-y writer, I had no choice but to sit down at the nearest table. To hear something like this, amidst casual eavesdropping, was like finding $20 on the sidewalk. I sipped my coffee, took out my phone, and pretended to gaze at the screen.

Why are memoirs still being published, the man asked. It was beyond him. It fed a nonsense cycle. Why do people keep reading them? Worse of all: Why are they being written at all? He leaned back, smug, as if he had just landed a well-placed punch against Big Memoir. The woman nodded politely, burrowing into her yogurt with a silver spoon. People are publishing them too young, continued the man. They are publishing too many. He paused, throat puffed with conviction: There’s no reason for that, unless you’re an admiral or something. He stabbed a strawberry. Eyes on the city skyline, he shook his head.

At that moment, the open tab on my phone was the Rachel Cusk profile of Nobel-prize winning memoirist Annie Ernaux. “Her art bears no relation to a privileging of personal experience,” writes Cusk. “What Annie Ernaux understood was that as a female child of the regional laboring classes, her self was her only authentic possession in this world, and thus the sole basis for the legitimacy of her art.” I was thinking about how the life we live determines our perceived authority around what we can write about, or rather, what we are allowed to be experts on, which is to say published experts on. 

When I heard his line about the admiral, I stopped looking at my phone. I became very fixated on carving the melon from the rind. I needed a knife in my palm. I needed to separate that which was sweet from that which would lodge in my throat. 

I am not going to tell you who this author was. Not out of any sense of protection, but because I realize I was not meeting him as an individual. I was meeting him as the vessel of a voice that had, until that moment, been only in my head. His was the voice that tripped me when I sat down to type, that hissed at me whenever someone (usually a man) asked “So you’re a journalist?” and I said “Well, not exactly,” then went on to explain, his face pinched into a pitying smile, that my nonfiction reliably included myself, too. When I heard this man at the festival, I became convinced that every ghost who haunted my writing desk would, one day, appear in human form. That they might be friendly in the elevator. That when I dropped my fork, they’d hand me another.

. . . .

The first-person writing that I love refutes—critically—this myth of neutral narrator.

A few months later, I was traveling for the book in a different corner of the United States when, on a morning jog, I came across a historic waterfront sign about “naval stories.” I immediately thought of admirals. And then I thought of my belly.

To think of the belly-button is to think of navel-gazing, which is to think of the charges brought against those of us who write about ourselves, a kind of writing allegedly so myopically focused on the self that it does not see the world beyond it. Ted Kooser defines a poet as someone who stands before a window, controlling the strength of the sun outside, but the metaphor extends to creative nonfiction as well: Your silhouette can fade when you make the world outside brighter, just as your reflection can sharpen when that world darkens. Every time I sit down to write, I find myself in front of this window, fiddling with the lights. Who, or what, do I want the reader to see most clearly? 

It is true that a first-person author turns their own narrative presence up or down, but I have come to resent the idea that I must choose between seeing my navel or seeing the world. When I say I am omnivorous, I mean I am hungry to read and write about everything. I do not want to pick between writing about another subject—as my training in academia and journalism taught me—and writing about myself. I look at the world to understand my life even as I mine my experiences to learn about the larger world. 

Writing is the act of making one’s thoughts visible to other people. My pencil scrawlings are, very literally, the bridge between my interior and exterior world. Writing is an art form that lends itself, then, to complicating—to detonating—the binaries between self and other; inner thought and outer action.

Let us think literally about the alleged insult of “navel-gazing.” Imagine writing about your belly-button, a puckered lint-specked innie that nobody else, ostensibly, should care about. Then consider how looking at one’s belly button is not only to consider the bridge to one’s mother, but the body’s first interaction with civic infrastructure. 

. . . .

Can you see that each navel has a different story? That to tell a navel story is to tell a story of labor, not just of your own mother’s, but of a system around you? Can you see how this story might be as important as a story about the life of a naval admiral?

To imagine that writing about oneself is not also writing about these larger systemic inheritances is utterly wrong. The writer’s job is to make visible the structures which might otherwise be unseen. We live in a world of interconnection, but we exist in a society that often tries to silo us into our factions, our nations, our species, our careers. To make us forget, for example, that the money our government spends on war is money they don’t spend on education. It is the writers’ imperative to illuminate the linkages between us, and to the histories we all carry. Not as a mode of teaching the reader facts, but as a way of helping them see their own body in union with the world. 

Link to the rest at Electric Lit

From Writer Unboxed:

“The world is a mess.”

I keep hearing this from people who are finding it hard to access their creativity or justify making time to write.

This seems like a new challenge, partly because of the full-on speed of news stories hurtling at us in the digital age. But it’s not new. I would submit that:

A) the world has always been a mess and

B) creative works are the most powerful tool we have to oppose the black-and-white, them-versus-us, whataboutism lack of subtlety in the news.

The arts change hearts, and changed hearts can change the world.

Your creative work is important.

The world is a mess and nevertheless…we must find time to create.

It’s where we are reminded that people are complex; that we can love and hate a character; where we learn to understand why a person might make dubious choices and still be worthy of love; where we see the real, everyday impact of policy decisions made by politicians…and laugh along with characters who are living and loving and laughing amidst the consequences.

In Neil M. Gunn’s The Silver Darlings we follow the lives of displaced Scottish Highlanders forced, after the Clearances, to go from homesteading to learning to be fishermen. The social message lodges in our heats only because we fall in love with Catrine and Roddy and their communities.

In the 1960s in the US you could argue that music and movies helped end the Vietnam War. (SIng it with me: “War! What is it good for?”)

Musicians, artists, and yes, athletes, refusing to visit South Africa helped overcome apartheid.

I grew up in Thatcher’s Britain, where mainstream entertainment encouraged everyone to aspire to be Laura Ashley-clad yuppies. In reality  most of us lived in or near towns dealing with miner’s strikes and teachers’ strikes and 10% unemployment and the decline of manufacturing.

Artists like Billy Bragg and Sinead O’Conner, The Specials, Pink Floyd and U2 made art out of those turbulent times.

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

The first page of your novel is vitally important, but not necessarily because the action starts there. The first page, and first several pages, should:

• set your tone and reader expectations. In a thriller, that means establishing a rhythm that will push forward rather than linger, and maybe having some sort of stakes already in play, even if they’re unrelated to the central plot. (Your protagonist is running late to get to a meeting and is running to catch a bus pulling away from her bus stop.)
• make your reader care to continue on: have a hook that grabs the reader’s attention, makes them think, “now that’s interesting,” and pulls them from one paragraph to the next. Make them interested in solving a mystery from the first paragraph, even if it’s a minor question only pertinent to your opening scene. (Why was she running late? Where was she rushing off to? What are the consequences of her tardiness?)
• introduce some important aspect of character or theme; setting can be introduced here but is easy to overdo. Don’t make setting the only thing you talk about; it is impersonal exposition and therefore doesn’t make the reader care. In a thriller this is especially true; don’t describe setting with any more words than you need to unless it can be worked into what the character is doing or is itself inherently thrilling.
• be without flaws. It’s early, you don’t have to defend or overcome structural weaknesses here– but you do have to polish your writing to a mirror finish.

. . . .

The first page (and first sentence, and paragraph) is important in the same way your first meeting with somebody new is important. An agent or publisher (or indeed a customer thinking of buying your book) is going to read the opening line, the first paragraph, the first page to see if they like your style of writing, and see if you know how to begin a story and get the reader engaged.

They want to see if you make dumb mistakes (typos, grammar, clichés, other beginner errors like opening with a fight in progress, or opening with an info-dump, or detailed character descriptions, or the history of your setting, etc).

Agents (and the readers for publishers) reject 95% (or more, seriously) of the books or queries they receive, which means (practically speaking) they have to make snap decisions, and they do. Otherwise they’d have no time to do work that actually pays them money. They expect you to put a great deal of care into the opening sentence, the first page, the first ten pages (which many request).

They expect your most careful and attentive work there, and if it sucks, they don’t need to read the rest. They aren’t there to fix your work, or critique work, or help you get better, or see a promising young talent, or spot a diamond in the rough, they are there for one thing: to find writers that are already good writers, and represent already good writing, and make their 15%. That’s it!

The service agents do for the publishers is screening, searching through the flood of dreck to find some gold nuggets.

No, it is not advisable to move the “thriller” to the first page.

The opening of the book is expected to be an engaging introduction to the main character(s) and the setting, a setup for a story to come. The setup usually lasts for 10% to 15% of the book, before the big problem of the book appears.

Nevertheless, this first 10% is supposed to be engaging. One way to do that is to introduce your character(s) by giving them a “little” or “throwaway” problem of some sort, not necessarily a problem important to the plot but a kind of problem they might encounter in their everyday life. This gives you a chance to talk about setting, show us some of their personality in the process of dealing with their little problem.

The problem with opening in the middle of action is closely related: If you do that, readers don’t really care, because they don’t know who is fighting, whose side they should be on, or anything else. In the opening pages, readers don’t care because they don’t have any context for understanding what is going on.

That is why nearly every movie and story begins with “The Normal World” of the hero; and the main problem first appears 10% or 15% of the way in. If the setting is complex (with magical, fantasy or scifi elements) the main problem is delayed somewhat, until the reader/audience is “up to speed” and has a basic grasp of what the heroes and villains can do, or what their ships can do, etc.

In some series (movie or TV or books) we can cut “The Normal World” quite short, since the audience is up to speed from the first book and doesn’t need much reminder. But in a “from scratch” novel, don’t rush the main conflict, it doesn’t make the book more exciting at all, it makes it boring.

Your query letter, the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page, the first ten pages, the first chapter: This is how you will be judged, quickly and ruthlessly, by agents and publishers. Nobody is going to invest the time to read your whole book or story if these alienate them.

From Jane Friedman:

One of the key pitfalls of backstory, especially early in a novel, is either confusing backstory or overly coy and “mysterious” backstory. Here’s what it looks like.

In the enigmatic town of Serenity Falls, nestled deep within the embrace of towering pine forests and shrouded in perpetual mist, secrets were as abundant as the whispers that echoed through the labyrinthine streets. The townspeople moved with an air of quiet reserve, their eyes veiled and their lips sealed, guarding the mysteries that lurked in the shadows of their collective history.

Isabella, a newcomer to Serenity Falls, with a past as elusive as the morning fog, felt an inexplicable pull toward the town’s enigmatic allure, drawn by a sense of curiosity that she could neither explain nor ignore. She found herself embroiled in a web of intrigue and suspense that seemed to emanate from the very soul of the town itself.

Editor Tiffany Yates Martin discusses this terrible passage of backstory (written by AI, in fact) and then shows how to improve it. 

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

From Writer Unboxed:

I am drawn to the things that people won’t talk about. That may be obvious, if you know that my first two novels were about body image and suicide. When was the last time you asked a new mom about her poochy, post-baby abdomen, or what it was like for your neighbor to find her son dead by his own hand? Body-altering, life-changing events happen to us every day that most people just won’t talk about, even though staying mum feeds a churning magma of shame.

Secrets and lies are everywhere in contemporary fiction, and will often drive the entire novel, as David Corbett covered well in a 2022 post. For the purposes of this post, if the protagonist participated in “the thing that shall not be mentioned,” it’s probably more like a shameful secret that someone might lie to cover up.

What I want to look at today is a subtler contribution to characterization—unquestioned taboos passed down through your character’s family or tribe of origin.

Our understanding of what behavior is acceptable in society can come from what we’re told—“No sweetie, we don’t bite our friends”—or, sometimes more powerfully, through what’s never spoken about. If you’d like to try this way of enhancing characterization, look for a taboo relevant to your premise that is specific to the character’s family, as in the examples below. Because it won’t ever be talked about, the character may not even know why it’s taboo; they’ve simply accepted it as forbidden. These silent influences can add shading to a character, impact goal achievement, or dam/damn their inner arc of change.

Love. A man approaching a dock in a motor boat is met by a four year old waving his arms. “Uncle Jim, Uncle Jim, I love you!” The man climbs onto the dock, says hello to the child, then marches up to the boy’s mother and asks why her son would say that to him. She says, “Um, because he loves you? Wild guess.” The uncle harrumphs. “Well. We don’t do that.” What if using the word love causes suspicion in a family member instead of pleasure?

Money. Even though your character’s father was a vice-president of a major company, she had no idea what he earned except that according to her mother, the money didn’t stretch far with five children. This might leave the character clueless about budgeting, saving, and investing in ways that could impact her goal achievement. If her best friend hinted at “how much more money” she was making at her new job, your protagonist might feel prompted to ask for the details her friend longed to spill, but, believing it was crass to talk about money, have to force those words through the involuntary constriction in her throat. What if making money made her feel uncomfortable rather than successful?

Age. At dinner, a girl once asked her favorite aunt how old she was. Her mother cut her a stern look. A long, tense pause ensues. Her aunt finally says, “Old enough to know better.” How might this impact the girl? Would she think that aging is shameful and to be avoided at all cost? Might she be waiting for the day when she knows better?

Emotions. As with many who will not talk about the trauma they’ve suffered, there might be only two prevalent emotions at home: silence and anger. How might this impact a sensitive boy, who perceives the emotional world in many more shades, and cannot stop his tears despite his mother demanding that he do so? Might he see his emotional intelligence as emotional damnation, instead?

. . . .

 Interpersonal issues. An only child grows up to be a mother ill-equipped to manage the five children she has after she marries, especially since her husband works long hours supporting them. Her strategy when trouble erupts is to divide and conquer. How might this impact her daughter, when she’s called upon to resolve conflict in her own life?

Mistakes. A boy grew up never realizing that the parents he’s been emulating made mistakes. They certainly never admitted to any. How might this hamper this young man later in life, when an important relationship requires that he make use of the fine art of apology? And might he dismiss as weak an important mentor after the man admits to his own mistakes? How can he leave perfectionism behind in order to allow new awareness and personal growth?

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

From BookTrib:

I launched my podcast Making It Up nearly three years ago with the goal of interviewing writers not for any particular work of theirs, but to talk to them about their lives. I didn’t want to ask them what famous author they want to have dinner with or what their top five favorite books are … yech. I wanted to know what their childhood was like, what inflection point made them want to write, and to hear about the years of glorious rejection letters. Most readers pick up a book and assume the author has always been an author, and they make gobs of money writing. I wanted the real, raw truth.

After nearly 150 conversations with writers of all backgrounds (from NYT bestselling thriller authors, to hopeful debuts, to historians, science writers and poets), I’m still amazed how much connective tissue binds us writers together. A few commonalities I’ve evidenced throughout my interviews:

• Most writers can name a specific person or event that happened in their teenage years that made them want to write.
• Writing is less a plan than it is a purpose. Despite all efforts to do anything but write, the act of writing will burrow its way to the surface at some point in a writer’s life.
• No one sets out to write because it’s a solid business decision.
• Nearly every writer has suffered (or continues to suffer) from impostor syndrome. We all feel like frauds, no matter how successful we may get.
• There is no linear progression to a writer’s career. Some become hugely successful with their first book, but struggle to repeat the magic with the next several. Others find their best sales after ten books. You can’t count on anything, but yet the best may always be yet to come.
• Writers can easily name a peer of whom they envy their success.
• Writing is hard. It gets easier as the muscle for it develops, but it’s never easy.
• Writing is meditation. It’s one of the few times in a person’s day they have to be fully focused and, more importantly, completely present.
• Most writers hate social media and eschew the idea of self-promotion, necessary as it may be.
• Writers view the publishing industry with a mixture curiosity and frustration. We all agree the industry is incredibly opaque, and there’s no formula for success within it.
• Writers in the same field or genre don’t view one another as competition, and are often generous with their time supporting and promoting each other’s work. They view the true competition as anything else that vies for a potential reader’s attention, namely smartphones and Netflix.
• Finally, from my experience, most writers are deeply kind, humble and just happy to share their time and opinions with you.

That last one is a universal truth I’ve seen throughout my podcast career. I’ve never talked to a jerk. Sure, some are shy, awkward, and certainly technologically challenged, but always generous and honest. Moreover, these writers are fountains of wisdom, doling out indispensable truisms from which not only my listeners benefit, but I as well. My favorites include S.A. Cosby talking about the equitability of writing (all quotes slightly edited for clarity):

“I think writing, of all the creative arts — acting, singing, dancing — it’s the one where everybody has the best shot. You can be a 75-year-old first-time author, you can be a 35-year-old author that’s got six or seven books under your belt, or you can be a 21-year-old wunderkind. Everybody has that same shot because nobody knows what’s gonna click, what’s gonna break out. And so for me, writing is that thing where I just feel like it’s the most equitable creative art.”

— S.A. Cosby on the Making It Up podcast

Or listening to Robert Dugoni tell me about taking advice from a friend, which led to him diving into learning the craft of writing:

“He said “immerse yourself in the community in which you want be involved.” So I started going to conferences, and I’d be sitting at tables with people that I had just met, and they’d be talking about these books that they read on story structure, or on character development, and I’d be like, what? So I took a step back, and I took about three years, and I gave myself an MFA. I have about forty binders, all full of different tabs, things like development, tension, what you’re trying to do. I had to learn, and, lo and behold, three years after I initially started, after I’d spent years and years studying, I started to have some success.”

Robert Dugoni on the Making It Up podcast

Link to the rest at BookTrib