Writing Advice

From Master Class:

Authors employ different literary devices to create plot twists and conflicted characters. One of these devices is the unreliable narrator—a storyteller who withholds information, lies to, or misleads the reader, casting doubt on the narrative. Authors use this device to engage readers on a deeper level, forcing them to come to their own conclusions when the narrator’s point of view can’t be trusted.

What Is an Unreliable Narrator in Writing?

An unreliable narrator is an untrustworthy storyteller, most often used in narratives with a first-person point of view. The unreliable narrator is either deliberately deceptive or unintentionally misguided, forcing the reader to question their credibility as a storyteller.

4 Types of Unreliable Narrators

An author typically assigns different characteristics to a first-person narrator to compromise their credibility and fuel their unreliability. Unreliable narrators can fall into four categories based on those qualities:

• Picaro. The picaro is a character who has a knack for exaggerating. Moll Flanders, the main character in the book Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, was born to a mother in prison, but lies about her social standing in order to wed wealthy men and inherit their money.
• Madman. The madman is unreliable because they are mentally detached from reality. In Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, Patrick Bateman is a self-proclaimed serial killer—or is he? The Wall Street investment banker narrates his killing spree until it’s revealed that one of his supposed victims is alive and well, forcing the reader to question Bateman’s story.
• Naif. The naif’s narrative abilities are impacted by inexperience or age. In Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, 15-year-old Christopher weaves the tale of his supposedly deceased mother and the murder of his neighbor’s dog. Both his age and his Asperger’s syndrome color his narrative, and how he comprehends the world around him. Holden Caulfield, the narrator of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, is another famous example of a naif narrator due to his youthful ignorance.
• Liar. The liar is the most deliberate of all the unreliable narrators. The character fabricates stories, often to paint a better picture of themselves or achieve a desired outcome. In Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Dr. James Sheppard narrates as he helps detective Hercule Poirot investigate the murder of a mutual friend. WIth a reputable prefix before his name, Sheppard is a trusted confidante. But, as Poirot solves the crime, the reader realizes they’ve been fooled—Sheppard is actually the killer.

. . . .

5 Examples of Unreliable Narrators in Literature

Literary critic Wayne C. Booth first coined the phrase “unreliable narrator” in his 1961 book Rhetoric of Fiction, but authors began using this literary technique long before that. Here are some famous examples of books with unreliable narrators:

• Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl. When Amy Dunne takes on the role of the narrator halfway through Gone Girl, it comes as somewhat of a surprise. Readers have spent the first half of the book thinking she is dead thanks to the novel’s first unreliable narrator, Amy’s husband Nick. With two unreliable narrators—Amy and her husband, Nick—Flynn doubles down on the novel’s conflict and dismantles the story’s moral compass.
• Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. The narrator’s unreliability in this 1938 novel comes from her highly subjective retelling. When Mrs. de Winter talks about her predecessor, the first Mrs. de Winter, and the mystery surrounding her death, it is all speculation, with a touch of jealousy. The reason for her jaded perspective is finally exposed when the tragic truth comes to light.
• Winston Groom, Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump’s tales of becoming a ping pong champion and NASA astronaut are questionable, but his earnest unreliability, due to a low IQ, allows the reader to forgive his possible embellishments. Groom creates a very likable narrator in Forrest Gump but lets the matter of his credibility rest solely with the reader.
• Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club. From page one, Palahniuk hints at the fact that the enigmatic Tyler Durden is not just a friend of the narrator—he is the narrator. Palahniuk ultimately pits the narrator’s alter ego against him, creating a satisfying narrative conflict.

Link to the rest at Master Class

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

From Writer Unboxed:

I’m writing this post in a public library. It isn’t a research library, the awesome university kind where you might go to dig up fabulous story details. It’s a humble branch library. The patrons are either kids from the nearby high school or their moms. The adult fiction shelves are not deeply stocked with classic novels but rather with plastic-jacketed titles from recent decades, the kind of stuff that regular people want to read.

It’d say that 70% of the fiction titles on the shelves are mysteries and thrillers. We’ll come back to that.

First, a nod to my fellow WU contributor Ray Rhamey. His monthly Flog a Pro posts are popular, and with good reason: They highlight first pages and ask us to judge them, yes or no, would you turn to the second page or not? Brilliant.

Ray knows a lot about first pages. His website has a checklist of things that a first page should accomplish. There are two primary areas. With respect to character, something should go wrong or challenge the character; the character should desire something; the character should take action. With respect to setting, the reader should be oriented, what’s happening should be happening “now” not “then”, set up isn’t needed.

The final element is a story question. Got all that and you get a gold star. I like Ray’s checklist; it is a good, basic starting point for beginnings, which bring us right away into the story action and are how the vast majority of manuscripts begin. Ray is the first to say that his checklist is only a guideline and that’s wise. There are many ways to open a novel besides kickstarting the action. There are atmosphere openings and voice openings (sometimes called the letter to the reader) among a variety of other approaches.

Whatever the opening strategy, in my observation effective openings offer us the following:

• Commanding voice. Skillful language, sonority and cadence lull us into the semi-dream state in which story begins to seem real. I’ve written about that previously HERE.
• Character presence. Whether first person or third, close or distant, we are anchored in a character and strongly sense who that character is. Furthermore, we have a reason to care about, identify with or hope for that character.
• Intrigue. This is commonly understood as story question, the puzzle unsolved, the mini-mystery that doesn’t yet have an answer. Intrigue, though, can be anything anomalous, odd, out of the ordinary, curious or leading. The crude application of intrigue is seen in thriller hook lines, but there are many other ways get us interested.
• Story expectation. The type of story experience we’ll have is signaled through tone, sensibility and word choice. I’ve written previously about promise words HERE.
• Necessary knowledge. This is emphatically NOT set up. Set up is the unneeded explanation of how the story circumstances came about. It assumes that the reader is a dummy, unable to understand or accept why a story is happening. Necessary knowledge, on the other hand, tells us something specific about person, place or story that is different enough as to be critical to the verisimilitude of the story we’re going to read, or at least is unique detail or unusual perspective that, paradoxically, contributes to the illusion of reality.
• Mood. Our frame of mind is set. Stories can be broken down into two fundamental categories, invoking in us either fear or hope. Gloom sends us one way. Delight sends us another. As with the underlying musical score in a movie, we’re emotionally prepared.
• Story world. We find ourselves in a place which is not only particular—a place which we can imagine in the mind’s eye—but a place in which we sense that things are going to happen. Big things. Significant things. Meaningful things.

However, my post today is not about openings. I’m fairly confident that the opening of your WIP is going to bring us some, if not much, of what I’ve identified above. My post today, rather, is about page 98.

When we are that deep into your novel, is page 98 still bringing us stuff which engages, intrigues, informs, sways, and suggests to us that there is more to come? Is there still a strong feeling of character, sensibility, and promise? Do we find ourselves in a particular mood or frame of mind?

Or to put it simply, is page 98 as good as page 1? To find out how—or even whether—that can happen, let’s go back to the library.

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

From Women Writers, Women’s Books:

For me, one of the hardest parts of the writing life is the fact that one does it on one’s own. I can discuss plot with friends or family: I can meet fellow writers and share thoughts on characters or dialogue or structure. But neither lessens the fact that the actual writing of a book – the setting down of words – is a solitary act: just me, my computer and a pot of tea.

Mostly, I don’t mind it. I enjoy solitude – in fact, I need it to think clearly. Also, there are times (as with my most recent novel, The Night in Question) when a protagonist is so formed and alive that you feel they’re in the room with you, cheering you on. But there are, invariably, times when the writing life feels lonesome – and when finishing a novel feels, suddenly, like an impossible task. Self-doubt is never far away. The dreaded words writer’s block whisper themselves from dark corners. And, in those moments, the writer can feel foolish, unnerved – and alone.

However, over the past twenty years in which I’ve been writing, I’ve found a trick that helps: I collect quotes. In a little brown notebook, no larger than a playing card, I keep quotes from other writers which advise on certain writerly problems, rejuvenate my tired heart – and which remind me of all the beauty and magic of the written word. Writers? We’re all in it together: we all understand the long, quiet hours, the tangled brain, the despair that comes when the writing isn’t working. I read these quotes to remind myself that I am not, in fact, alone, that so many others have felt as I do; and, having read them, I will breathe deeply, refreshen my teapot – and try again.

Below are six of my favourite quotes. They have helped, in various ways, to improve my writing – and to reignite my wish to keep doing it. I hope they might help you, too, on your own difficult days.

‘Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell me about it.’ Mary Oliver. 

Oliver meant for these three commands to be instructions for living well. But I think they work beautifully as advice to writers: we must pay attention. It is the small, extraordinary, overlooked details that illuminate a scene or bring a character to life. This quote reminds me to avoid cliché, to be honest in my descriptions. And I love, too, the gentle instruction to ‘be astonished’: retaining one’s astonishment at life brings such energy to prose. (As a reader, I can feel who the astonished writers are.)

‘Write hard and clear about what hurts.’ Ernest Hemingway

I had this quote on a Post-It note by my computer for years. It’s the simplicity of it that I love; Hemingway’s stark command reminds me of what I both read and write for – which is to feel a deep human connection. (Hemingway is implying, I think, that we must say to the reader, Your pain? I’ve felt it, too.) Also, the tautness of those seven words reminds me of the need to edit, edit, edit …

‘Be kind: everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.’ Attributed to Plato

This is, for me, the lifeblood of characterisation: I ask myself, always, What does this person want? How are they hurting? What frightens them? If I sense a character isn’t working, or I can’t feel them, it is nearly always because I haven’t nailed down what their personal battle is. This quote reminds me to do that. Seeking out the weakness in a character is what, in essence, strengthens them on the page. 

‘We write to taste life twice – in the moment and in retrospect.’ Anais Nin

My writing life began when I was eleven: I tried to describe – in pink felt-tipped pen – the Welsh farmland that I’d just visited in the hope that, by doing so, I might carry it home with me. Nin’s quote reminds me of the alchemy of words: good writing can capture a moment, place or person so that we may keep them forever. (That Welsh farmland found its way into my first novel, Eve Green – and, by reading it, I can still feel like I am walking there.)

Link to the rest at Women Writers, Women’s Books

From Jane Friedman:

On New Year’s Day, during my senior year of college, a gruesome double murder took place in my hometown. The couple stabbed to death in their sleep lived across the street from my aunt and uncle, around the corner from my childhood best friend, doors down from where another old friend grew up.

Like everyone else in the town, I was shocked and frightened by the news. Although fingerprints were left all over the house, no match for them was found. Time passed but the case remained unsolved. The theory: it was a drug crime. The victims were doctors, so someone in search of drugs followed them home on the commuter train, and something went terribly wrong.

Four years later, when a suspect was finally arrested, my connection to the murders became even closer: the young man indicted was the quiet boy from the back row of my fourth-grade class. I was shocked all over again.

The case was big news, not only for those of us with connections to the town, but for the courts as well: the defendant confessed within the supposed guarantee of confidentiality of an AA meeting. He had been drunk; the murder took place in his childhood home; he thought he was killing his parents.

I couldn’t stop thinking about his childhood—what went on in that home that would drive him, in a drunken rage years later, to murder his own parents. And also what it was like for his parents, defending the son who the world knows tried to … meant to … did! kill them. And was he one of the boys I briefly crushed on in fourth grade?

I encourage my writing students to take their obsessions seriously, to follow them, delve into them. What we obsess about is our material. The story of the murders obsessed me. Because it took place in my hometown. Because I grew up with the man who committed the murders. Because the victims were not the intended victims. Because the intended victims were the parents of the man who killed them. The story of the murders, though, had already been told in countless news articles. Even in an episode of Law and Order. My task, then, was to find a way to tell my fiction about the facts.

So I went back to what the story did to me. It destabilized me. I could relate to everyone in the story—the dead, the convicted, the relatives of the dead, the intended dead. Then I asked myself: what else destabilizes me? Contemporary art—its rawness and its familiarity; secrecy—its power to protect and its certainty to betray; #metoo stories—their ubiquity and their endless ability to enrage.

Through the expanded field of these other concerns, I found my way into my own telling of the story: in “The Audio Guide,” a young, female museum intern takes revenge on the museum director (an older married man who seduced her and ditched her) by recording an explicit, tell-all narration for visitors to a disturbing art exhibit inspired by the double murders.

While headlines may inspire stories, ideas need not arrive as made-for-television crime dramas. With a properly tuned antenna there’s enough everyday strangeness to power an observant writer for the rest of their days: At the end of a yoga class one day, I had the distinct impression that we’d been left in savasana a bit too long. I opened my eyes to check the clock and noticed that the teacher was lying awfully still. For a moment I imagined she’d stopped breathing. Sleeping Beauty came to mind. (The yoga teacher was, as central casting and life in a 21st-century yoga studio will have it, a fairy-tale beauty—lithe body, perfect skin, waist-length hair.)

By the time I made it home, the idea of a story had hatched—Sleeping Beauty as told today, in her own words. I am obsessed with fairy tales, especially the original ones that are darker and stranger than their commonly known, sanitized versions. A little research led me to, “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” Giambattista Basile’s early 17th-century precursor to Sleeping Beauty replete with death, rape, birth, and betrayal.

But to allow for the story to explore something meaningful to me I needed more. Something to rub up against, a question to vex. When my students feel stuck, I tell them to think of a story as a braid—what three strands might wind themselves around one another to create a denser texture to their fiction?

So here we are, back to our obsessions. Keep track of them, note them down. I have obsessions enough to weave into a goddess head of plaits. “Corpse Pose” is a braid of Sleeping Beauty, a yoga studio, and a mother-daughter relationship. In my version of the fairy tale, Beauty works for her mother and is laid out on the dais of the studio she owns.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

From Vulture:

What I really liked about reading this book was — well, my writing advice is like yours. You have to write a lot. Sure, be nice to yourself, but go. But then other people had other kinds of advice. J. Courtney Sullivan’s thing was so brilliant. She had a really young kid. She didn’t have child care. And so every night she would send herself an email with the same subject line. And when she came back later, she called these emails her bread crumbs waiting for her to come and write them through. That’s a brilliant technique. 

I could write this book because these people all told me I could.

You said recently you’ve been thinking a lot about aging, as one does at our age. Are you leaving yourself bread crumbs about aging?

I think so. I started this other little newsletter about it. It has to do with aging as a woman, menopause, the culture. It’s very small, personal stuff, building a little community out of it. But it’s not the big thing that I do — well! I always say it’s not the thing that I do and then it’ll always become something more. I think I’m using this thinking for a character. If you’ve been writing professionally for a long time, nothing you do is a waste of time. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah!

It’s the same thing as the vibe of the book. It’s not a waste of time. People worry too much about that. Why don’t you be playful? Why don’t you enjoy what you’re doing and not worry, not compare yourself to other people or say, Oh, I’m not this. I’m not that. Just sit down and try it.

All of our lives show that if you follow interests, they take you somewhere worthwhile. This book is really interesting about — this is really ’90s — but about declaring, “Well, I’m an artist. I’m living an artist’s life. Where I live and how I live reflect these choices.” It’s refreshing to hear.

I was thinking about the very first time I met you, I think you had a party for bloggers? It was on the Lower East Side, and maybe it was even that bar that looked like an airplane. [Idlewild, on Houston Street, opened in 1998 and there is not a single picture of it online that I can find! The staff wore “stewardess outfits”!]

That is so funny. Co-hosted by writer and writing teacher Blaise Allysen Kearsley, I believe.

We didn’t really know what blogging meant or if it would do anything for us or if it would take us anywhere. We were like, “This seems kind of interesting and cool.” It felt experimental. Your imagination never really steers you wrong. Your curiosity doesn’t steer you wrong.

Had you published your first book yet?

No, I just had a blog. And I was making zines. I miss it. I really do. I like having things you can touch, because so much of what we do is ephemeral on the internet. I still have them. They’re like precious little objects to me. And they don’t take two years, too.

Books are so long, and that’s what stops so many of us, or traps so many of us. 

Now that I’ve crossed over the 50 threshold. I’m really seeing, Okay, this is the second half of my life. I figured out what I like to do, but there’s more to learn, more to try. I just want to keep doing as much cool stuff as I can for the rest of my time.

I was thinking about bad habits — habits that have stayed too long at the fair. That’s drinking, eating, smoking. When you quit smoking, were you afraid that you would never write again? 

Oh, I did love smoking. It was definitely how I took a break. If I write a couple hundred words, then I can have a cigarette. And it was part of going out. The conversation was better outside than it was inside. Or so we believed. I don’t know if it’s true, but it is fun to hang out with the smokers. I’m okay without it.

. . . .

You write about the sounds in your house in the front and how that soundscape is different from the sounds in the back. The environment of the place is part of what you’re making.

Everything I do is centered around being creative in one way or another. At this point I have to have my long walks and I have to read and I have to write in my journal. And I know a lot of people who are creative or interesting or open to creative conversations. That’s really helpful. It’s having people you can surround yourself with. The book is so much about community, and I really believe in that. Finding your people is half the battle.

People have asked you since forever: How do I write a novel? Has your answer now changed, cemented? Now that you have a big answer in a book form, do you have a set answer that you give them? 

There are no shortcuts. The most important thing is that the best part of it is the writing. The best part of it is making something cool. We should really enjoy that process and not worry about the book deal or if you’re going to get an agent or if you should build your social-media presence now. Which is a question that people ask: “How much should I be focusing on social media?” And I’m like, “You should be focusing on getting 65,000 words down on the page.” And enjoying it. Why do you want to be here? What kind of writer do you want to be? What kind of stories do you want to tell? Those are the real questions you need to be asking. The answers are going to fill you up. The answers are going to help you grow as a person. Do I sound self-help-y?

Link to the rest at Vulture

From Helping Writers Become Authors:

Storytelling is a mystical crucible. Just as the ancient alchemists sought the transformation of base metals into gold, writers strive for the metamorphosis of their characters’ inner selves throughout the story. Alchemy, as explored through the lens of Carl Jung’s insights, can elevate your characters from the leaden weight of initial flaws to the gleaming brilliance of transformation.

Last fall, I spent part of my month-long writing retreat in the Berkshires auditing a series of online lectures from the Centre of Applied Jungian Studies. These lectures from leading Jungian experts, collected under the heading “The Mystery School,” explored revolutionary depth psychologist C.G. Jung’s writings and theories about how ancient alchemy stands as a metaphor for psychological transformation. Throughout, my excitement grew as I recognized that the four intrinsic parts of the alchemical/analytical process are also reflected in (surprise!) story structure.

. . . .

So what is alchemy, and why should writers care? For me, one of the most delightful mysteries of life is how, when you start paying attention, the theories of story structure and character arc show up everywhere. Not only is this interesting in applying the wisdom of story to life, it also creates opportunities to learn how to tell better stories by examining systems that, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with fiction.

The series of lectures I watched focused on Jung’s recognition that the four parts of alchemy naturally aligned with his own four tenets of analysis and personal transformation. Even though I teach a Three Act structure, this structure divides story into four equal parts. Particularly when examined from the perspective of character arc, these four parts align naturally and perfectly with the four parts of alchemy/Jungian analysis. The pattern deepens!

I’ve written before about how writers can apply various theoretical models (such as the Karpman Drama Triangle and the Enneagram) to storytelling. Alchemy is yet another window through which to view story. It offers a tool to help us shape our stories into greater verisimilitude. Plus, if you’re a pattern hunter, as I am, it’s just cool!

Link to the rest at Helping Writers Become Authors

From Writer Unboxed:

When Emma Stone told director Yorgos Lanthimos that she was nervous about possibly winning an Oscar for her performance in Poor Things and having to give a speech, Yorgos said, “Take yourself out of it.” It comes at a time in our contemporary culture where so many of us are supposed to be cultivating a brand, engaging in self-promotional campaigns—not just around an event, but constantly racking up views and followers, as if we’re all jockeying for Biggest Cult Leader, and not coincidentally, anxiety rates are spiking.

We’re told, in so many ways, to put ourselves into it.

Yorgos’ advice is counter-cultural and, I believe, primal, and may be the smartest antidote to anxiety I’ve ever heard.

It’s also great writing advice—for creatives and entrepreneurs.

First of all, Emma Stone has talked about her relationship with anxiety openly. She panics. She even mentions panic in her Oscar speech, which is where she tells the story with Yorgos’ advice. From previous things she’s said, I take it that she realizes anxiety is powerful and instead of trying to erase it, she works with it. That’s also my take. I can’t make a team of horses disappear, but I can try to guide them in a direction. Fuel is fuel, even anxious fuel is precious.

But what does it mean to “take yourself out of it.” I’ve found that one of the best ways to feel less anxious—when I approach the page as a writer or touring or all the other stuff that comes with it—is to tell myself: Just be of use. Be helpful to someone else. In this way, I take the pressure off of myself to be someone and to perform. Instead, I’m there to help solve a greater problem. I’m there for the small moment when I connect with another human being. It’s no longer about me. It’s about others. That grounds me.

It also, I think, makes people want to work with me. I’m here to help. How can I help?

Does this sound like internalized sexism?

Because I think there’s a case to be made that, as a woman, I’ve absorbed the notion that my selfhood is more comfortable being erased and then replaced with something like servitude. And, raised Catholic, I always have to check myself against dogma and patriarchy. Last thing I want is to do the patriarchy’s work for them.

If I’m to absorb wisdom from the best life coaches out there, I should be stepping into my power, not hiding my light under a bushel, and shining—brightly and publicly—because in doing so I can inspire others.

Got it. Absolutely. I’m checking myself.

But at the same time, I’m also doing a gut-check, and self-promotion—which has been a big part of my job as a writer—still feels awful.

And what if that’s not just me or the patriarchy or sexism but something imprinted on my DNA? What if, hear me out, Look at me! feels awful because, on an evolutionary level, it separates you from the herd? And that separation makes you vulnerable and that vulnerability means you’re more likely to be killed.

Now, this is when, in my head, I cue Orna from Couples Therapy who wants to know about my childhood. I tell her it was a happy childhood. She leans in. “Tell me more,” Orna says.

Well, I was the youngest of four after a notable five-year gap. I was adorable and charming and, just by the function of my birth, I stole the spotlight a little. And I learned that stealing the spotlight was an act of theft and wouldn’t go unpunished. In high school, I had three close friends, all of us were youngests. In my neighborhood growing up, I had three close friends, all youngests. By chance and design, I found other thieves to hang out with and we passed the spotlight around.

My family was a herd. I needed to be inside of the herd to be protected and I was careful not to do too much Look at me!

I went into a career that promised solitude and then I succeeded into the publishing industry and learned to turn that public self-promotional part on and then, mercifully, off—because I needed to reserve my focus for the work itself.

Everything changed. And just as the internet and social media democratized so many aspects of our lives, it also effectively blurred everything seasonal about self-promotion. It no longer required a costly multi-city tour, which was great in many ways. It could be done anywhere, anytime, which could mean: all the time. The way the invention of the washing machine did away with hand-washing, which was a huge reduction of labor, and went from being done once a week on a single day to a never-ending demand with no sense of completion; I should nod here to Marxist Alienation of Labor.

Now, writers are supposed to be putting themselves into the public eye, showing readers more of the lives of the writers behind the books. We can see what poets had for lunch and know when our favorite novelist’s dog has gotten back from the groomers.

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

From Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris:

It’s been said that if writing advice were classic rock, “Show Don’t Tell” would be “Stairway to Heaven. But is it always good advice?

Of course nobody wants to read a novel that tells a series of incidents. That can sound like a four-year-old recapping his day. “I had Froot Loops and then Dad took me to preschool and I played with blocks and ate a bologna sandwich and then I went to the bathroom and did number two…”

You want to show us the action in a series of scenes not tell us what happened. (Well, maybe we really don’t need the author to show the bathroom scene. )We know a “telling” sentence like “Veronica was beautiful,” is bland. It’s better to say something more like “Veronica’s flowing auburn hair and voluptuous figure had a powerful effect on Nigel and Clive.” That way we can show what she looks like and let the reader in on the emotional reactions of the other characters.

But a whole lot of writers, especially newbies (and the dreaded “writing rules police” ) take the “Show Don’t Tell” thing way too far and turn it into an unbreakable rule. That can make for some murky, slow, and downright boring fiction.

Here are some ways that following the Show Don’t Tell rule to the letter can interfere with good storytelling.

Too Much “Show Don’t Tell” Slows the Pace.

If you spend ten pages describing the shabby apartment of the murder witness, and we hear the screaming children and the blaring TV and smell the unemptied cat litter box and overflowing garbage can, you have a vivid description, but no story.

A writer should only dwell on the key scenes where important action is occurring. It’s perfectly okay to tell the reader your detective can see the witness is a harried single mom who is barely able to cope so her testimony may be useless. Then he can move on with the investigation and the story the reader cares about.

Some newbie writers confuse descriptions of violence with conflict. If you describe every blow and scream of pain in a fight scene, your story is not moving forward. The story stops until we know how the characters react to what’s going on and how the fight alters the trajectory of the plot. The carnage needs to do something to the characters and contribute to the plot, or it’s no more interesting than a description of the sofa cushions.

“Camera’s Eye” Showing Skimps on Information

When we write as if we’re a camera simply recording the physical events of the story, we are showing, but we’re also cheating the reader. This is when we simply say, ‘She winced’, ‘He smiled’, or ‘He took her hand,’ but we don’t say how the characters feel about this action.

When we fall into this pattern, we ignore the fact that the reader has no idea what the wincing, smiling, or handholding means. Writers who use this style may refuse to tell the reader what the actions mean, because they are convinced it will violate “Show Don’t Tell.”

This happens partly because most of us have been brought up on television. We have the conventions of the screenplay hardwired to our brains, because we saw TV shows before we could read. But what we see on the screen isn’t a screenplay. It’s the interpretation of the script by actors, directors, cinematographers, composers, and a whole host of other creative people.

When a screenwriter says a character clenches his fist, this clench will be interpreted by a director and actor to show a whole spectrum of emotion. Lighting and music and camera angle will enhance them.

But when a novelist tells us a character clenches his fist, he is not letting us in on much.

Is the character angry and about to punch somebody? Trying to keep from crying?  Suffering from a painful intestinal ailment? We’ll never know if the author won’t tell us.

You’re not a camera. You’re a novelist. And it’s your job to give us as much information as possible to tell your story.

Link to the rest at Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris

From Nail Your Novel:

I’ve seen dialogue tags discussed a few times recently on writing forums.

The discussion goes like this.

‘When writing a piece of dialogue, do you need synonyms for “said”? Doesn’t it get boring for the reader? What about words with a bit more expression, such as exclaimed or spat or shouted or yelled?’

‘Noooo,’ comes the reply, overwhelmingly. ‘Only use “said”.’ 

I agree, mostly.

I also disagree.

Yes, ‘said’ will do most of the time. It’s almost invisible to the reader, so it doesn’t get boring. You’re using it merely to convey who’s talking. And if you feel you’re overusing ‘said’, consider doing without it. In a conversation between two people, the order of speakers might be obvious by the give and take of the paragraphs. There are also other ways to slip in a clue to who’s talking. You can use actions. Eg ‘Molly began to peel the orange.’

On the subject of actions, don’t forget that other things are going on in the scene as well. A common problem with dialogue is that writers get obsessed by the characters’ verbalisations, so they forget to include other sensory details. The rest of the scene disappears, as if the narrative has become a radio play. 

The solution? Write the dialogue, then go back and add other stuff. That’s what most of us have to do.

So remember your characters are also sitting or standing or walking or driving. All of these non-spoken ingredients can help you establish who’s talking.

Link to the rest at Nail Your Novel

From Writers Helping Writers:

Every author starts out as a hobbyist. We write as kids, for fun. As we get older, we write when we have free time or the fit takes us. For many, that’s as far as it goes, and there’s value in that.

But for others, over time, our writing passion grows. Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re looking to take the next step and become a professional author. Here are 8 changes you should make, in no certain order, to level up your writing to pro status.

1. Make Writing a Priority

This one is kind of a no-brainer, but it’s hard to do because we have other responsibilities and activities that are important. Paying the bills (working a day job). Parenting. Developing friendships. Bingeing Stranger Things for the third (fourth?) time.

Life is busy, full of non-negotiable duties and fun stuff that steal our time. But the truth is, we make time for what’s important to us.

Pros prioritize writing. This requires a reshuffling of our To Do list. It may mean jettisoning some things completely. Because only when writing is a priority will it get the time and attention needed to take you to the next level.

2. Practice Patience

The fact that you’re reading this post shows that you recognize the importance of honing your craft and acquiring new skills. Research, learning, application…these all take time.

But once you decide to pursue writing as a career, there’s a natural temptation to escalate the process. After all, this isn’t like other jobs; no one’s monitoring your progress and deciding when you can take the next step. There’s no hierarchical ladder that must be climbed. It’s just you, your computer, and the Publish button.

Patience is a defining characteristic of professionals because they recognize that becoming really good at something doesn’t happen over night. They know that positioning themselves for success takes time. So don’t just focus on the end result of publishing the book or hitting a certain sales milestone. Dedicate yourself to growth and improvement. Respect the journey, and resist the urge to skip steps along the way.

3. Seek Out Criticism (and Be Able to Take It)

I’ve got an eighth-grade son who loves music. He plays multiple instruments but is focused mostly now on the bass clarinet. Recently, he entered a Solo and Ensemble competition, where students perform a piece of music for a professional adjudicator and are given a grade of Superior, Excellent, Good, etc.

I sat in on his performance and was able to listen to the judge’s feedback. I thought Dominic had done very well, so I was surprised to hear the judge offer so much criticism. I kind of wanted to punch her.

Walking out, I said to D that he’d unfortunately pulled a tough judge, and we would just hope for the best. I got my second surprise of the day when my son said he was happy to have gotten this adjudicator because her helpful feedback was going to make him a better player.

Sure, the score mattered (he got a Superior, by the way), but D recognized that if he wanted to become a premier player, he needed to improve his areas of weakness. And he couldn’t see what those weaknesses were. None of us really can. It takes other people to point them out.

If you want to become better as an author, you have to get helpful feedback. Critique partners and beta readers, writing coaches and editors—there are so many knowledgeable people in the industry who can help with this. But they won’t come to you. To become a superior writer, you’ve got to seek them out and be willing to take their feedback.

4. Become a Perpetual Learner

Becoming a pro takes time because there’s always more to learn. New writing methods and techniques, emerging technologies and software (A.I., anyone?). Marketing, bookkeeping, business strategies . . . Pros know that writing, as a career, is always in flux. If you go into it with the mindset of a lifelong learner, you’ll be able to adjust and won’t get steamrolled when things change.

5. Approach Writing as a Business

This is one of the toughest mindset shifts to make because we love the writing so much. We have this image of ourselves as successful authors, sitting in our office typing or scribbling away day after day. And while I would argue that writing is the most important thing, there’s so much more to becoming a pro.

To get there, we have to view writing as a business. Yes, success requires researching and drafting and revising. But it’s also setting up a bank account and ordering checks, filing annual taxes, building a brand, marketing our products, hiring people to do the things we can’t or don’t want to do, creating and maintaining a website, figuring out which distributors to use to sell your books and familiarizing yourself with their platforms…

Oi.

It can be overwhelming because we don’t want to do all that stuff. We. Just. Want. To. Write. Can’t we just write?

Well . . . no. Professional writers do plenty of writing, but they’re also building a business. And all the other stuff is part of that.

This goes back to #4. Broaden your mind and accept this fact: to be a professional, you will have to learn all the things. You don’t have to become an expert; just look at me doing Angela’s and my finances (/shrieks). It’s not easy. It’s definitely not natural, and sometimes it’s not pretty, but I do it because it has to be done. Embrace the lifelong journey of learning these tasks (or learning to

Link to the rest at Writers Helping Writers

From Jane Friedman:

When writers think of writing intimate scenes, our minds often go straight to the bedroom—to romantic or sexual intimacy. But that puts an unnecessary constraint on what intimacy is when intimacy can be physical or emotional, platonic or romantic. At its simplest, intimacy in a relationship is the state of closeness or deep familiarity. Regardless of what their relationship is, emotional intimacy between characters often begins long before they get physically intimate (if they ever do) and some level of emotional intimacy belongs in every close relationship.

No matter what you’re writing (even if it’s not romance), emotional intimacy between characters is important to creating authentic relationships and creates the backbone for deep relationships between characters and readers.

Emotional intimacy is a bond based on mutual understanding, vulnerability, and trust.
Yes, these are necessary qualities of successful romantic relationships and make those steamy scenes in my favorite romance novels even more fun to read. Emotional intimacy can level up scenes with physical intimacy to the place where the physical interaction feels more profound and more impactful for both the character and the reader.

But pause and consider how important mutual understanding, vulnerability, and trust are to other relationships. A friendship or a familial relationship that lacks any of these things will be either flat and boring or will be full of tension and conflict caused by misunderstanding.

Think about your protagonist, regardless of whether they are romantically involved with anyone. They are likely to have close relationships with at least one, if not multiple, other characters.

A character will have varying levels of closeness (i.e., emotional intimacy) in relationships with:

• friends
• coworkers
• parents
• siblings
• cousins
• roommates
• mentors
• and yes, their partner or love interest.

There can even be moments of emotional intimacy between acquaintances or strangers who have a shared experience or mutual understanding.

These various levels of emotional intimacy allow the reader to get to know your protagonist and the other characters they interact with. Showing emotional intimacy between characters is a way to show various aspects of who that character is—what they like or don’t like, what they believe, and who they share their thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears with.

Moments of emotional intimacy enable readers to care about characters by seeing them be cared for and care for others. Writing moments of emotional intimacy (or the lack of it) between characters helps your readers assess the dynamics between the characters, their roles in the story, and the arc of change within the relationship or caused by their relationship.

Emotional intimacy is often shown in the small things, the quiet moments, and even moments unspoken.
In moments of emotional intimacy, characters are increasingly comfortable together. They open up to one another and communicate their truths, fears, and insecurities. They support each other without needing to be asked, or they validate the other person’s feelings.

Emotional intimacy can be shown through:

• remembering someone’s preferences
• shared or inside jokes
• understanding non-verbal cues
• honest conversations about hopes, fears, dreams, traumas
• positive physical reactions to another character that shows a feeling of safety or comfort

Emotional intimacy between friends/love interests: In Ali Hazelwood’s contemporary YA romance Check & Mate, one character anonymously sends a hotel room service order of chicken soup and three Snickers bars to another character who is having a stressful day. The recipient knows immediately who sent it (but tries to tell herself she’s wrong). This moment mirrors a scene earlier in the novel when she made him chicken soup while sick and commented on how she was charging him for the supplies she bought, including the “emotional support Snickers bar” that she purchased for herself.

Emotional intimacy between siblings: In Brenna Bailey’s queer small town romance Wishing on Winter, after retiring from his life as a rockstar, a man moves in with his sister to help her out. He goes grocery shopping to fill her fridge and buys all her favorite foods that he can think of, most notably the cookies with the jam in the middle.

Emotional intimacy between an acquaintance/mentor and mentee: In Julie Murphy’s YA novel Dumplin’, a teenage girl expresses her grief at the death of her late aunt. In losing her beloved aunt, she also lost her compass. Her friend suggests that maybe her aunt was only supposed to be her compass until she was able to be her own compass. This interaction spurs the teen girl to choose her own destiny, and leads to the friend becoming a mentor character later in the novel.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

From Woman Writers, Women’s Books:

Why has Jane Austen endured?

The question is asked so often, as the film industry magics up more adaptations, and the publishing industry burnishes our shelves with more spinoffs and retellings (have you read Death Comes to Pemberly, or seen the television adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberly? So. Good.) Austen fandom is alive and thriving, but how is it that, of all those who have put pen to paper in the past, it is Miss Austen whose works sail forward century after century like this?

When balls and carriages and courtships are long gone, why are we still turning over her pages?

Well alright, the allure of balls and delicate courtship might be easy enough to explain. When modern dating can be reduced to swipe right or left, there is something entrancing in the idea of flickering candlelight and gentlemen murmuring eloquent compliments; of the handsome Mr. Darcy becoming enraptured with Elizabeth Bennet’s sparkling eyes.

The escapism to be found in these novels and that faded world is incredibly tempting, but it is not escapism alone that holds our attention. The sparkle of the Regency world, so well described in Austen’s works is merely the window-dressing, the powdered sugar on top. The underlying substance of the novels are the characters themselves; so rich in detail, so complex in their psychology, so wholly real, that they can, and do, inhabit our modern world.

I mean, who amongst us hasn’t been trapped in conversation with a Mr. Collins? And who hasn’t been taken in by the charm and flattery of a Wickham? Not just in romance, but think of that boss who had seemed so great in the interview process, but turned out to be a horror six weeks into the job, or of that new friend who turned out to be not your friend at all.

When Elizabeth Bennet realizes she has been deceived by Wickham, she reflects back on the clues that were there for her (and us the reader) to have seen all along. She realizes how inappropriate it was for a stranger to single her out in a party and tell her his life story, and how obvious his constructed victim narrative was. She realizes that his actions never matched up with what he said he would do, or said about himself, and that he often ghosted her. She realizes how much he flattered and flirted with her, so that she never looked rationally at his behavior. In contrast, she realizes the awkward Darcy, for all that he always said the wrong thing, in the end always did the right thing.

There are no pantomime villains in Austen’s world, no cardboard cut-out character of a dashing hero. Considering the birth of psychology as a field of study was still some decades away, Austen’s grasp of reading people is a marvel, and she teaches her reader to do the same.

And how did she come by this knowledge? Her life was so limited, her experience of the world so small. Drawing rooms and visiting neighbors, the occasional trip to London or Bath. But perhaps it was her limitations that gave her such incredible insight, to delve so deeply into her subject matter, to really consider all the minute details and foibles of characters like those neighbors coming to tea, to then create such real people in her novels.

Or maybe it was necessity.

Link to the rest at Woman Writers, Women’s Books

From Writers Helping Writers:

DESCRIPTION: This character is new (in town, at work, to school, etc.) and has to learn the rules for fitting in. The newcomer is frequently used as a narrative device to introduce the reader to the world and explain its various aspects in an organic manner.

FICTIONAL EXAMPLES: Bella Swan (Twilight), Claire Fraser (Outlander), Dorothy Gale (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Robert Langdon (The Da Vinci Code), Thomas (The Maze Runner trilogy)

COMMON STRENGTHS: Alert, Cautious, Courteous, Curious, Diplomatic, Independent, Innocent, Introverted, Objective, Observant, Patient, Pensive, Private, Resourceful, Responsible, Sensible

COMMON WEAKNESSES: Apathetic, Childish, Evasive, Gullible, Ignorant, Insecure, Needy, Nervous, Suspicious, Timid, Withdrawn, Worrywart

ASSOCIATED ACTIONS, BEHAVIORS, AND TENDENCIES

• Having a fresh perspective
• Being curious about their surroundings
• Not knowing or understanding the rules of the new environment
• Standing back and observing rather than jumping right into things
• Adaptability; learning quickly
• Noticing everything; being highly observant
• Keeping to themselves until they get the lay of the land
• Naïveté
• Being an easy target due to their innocence or lack of knowledge
• Trying (and failing) to understand the new world through the perspective of their old world

SITUATIONS THAT WILL CHALLENGE THEM
Meeting someone new and not knowing if they’re a friend or foe
Facing hostility and rejection simply because of their outsider status
Being expected to meet certain standards before they’ve developed the skills needed to do so
Getting lost in the new environment

. . . .

CLICHÉS TO BE AWARE OF
The intern who must master the skills they’ll need to be successful in the industry
The “chosen one” newcomer who is the only person who can solve the the new world’s problems

Link to the rest at Writers Helping Writers

From Jane Friedman:

Structure is the safety net readers fall into. Nailing it is the way we hold space for them and let them know that while we might keep them guessing, or stir up challenging emotions, we’re taking them somewhere important.

Structure is a safety net for writers too. When it’s missing, they send anxious emails to me and other writing coaches asking what to do. As a writer, I know what it’s like to hang from the trapeze bar of an idea and wonder if I can hold on long enough to find both a point and a satisfying ending.

Writers need to cultivate two types of structure: process and project. Process structure sustains you while you’re drafting and revising. Project structure is what you employ to give your work shape.

. . . .

Build a secure process

Your first task is to choose a process to follow. Better yet, form a group that can do this work with you. That way, you’ve got a posse to lean on when the predictable struggles follow.

It doesn’t matter if you select the model Allison K Williams shares in Seven Drafts, the experimental invitations of Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, the journey Sue William Silverman takes you on in Acetylene Torch Songs, or the first-draft guidelines I offer in this post. Pick one. Use the content as your safety net—at least for your next draft—but don’t be afraid to wander off on your own.

When the inevitable doubts creep in, refer back to your safety net. Bask in its comfort and fall into its guidance. If you’re still lost, explore what’s going on with your writing group. When you’re feeling more grounded, wander off again.

Build your memoir’s structure

Once you understand what your story is about, you’re ready to tackle your project’s structure. Some of you will know exactly what this should be. If you don’t, consider whether a simple or complex structure is best for your book. Some structures, like the three-act, will feel like their own safety net, because they deliver a certain level of predictability. The more experimental you are, the more you must serve as that safety net for your reader by truly understanding the story you’re trying to tell and ensuring that the structure you’ve chosen leads them in the direction you’re hoping for.

After you’ve chosen a structure, learn both the basics and nuances of working with it as well as the skills needed to successfully execute it. As you do this, identify one or two exemplar texts to study, and feel free to pick something everyone’s raving about (it needn’t be a comp title for your work). As you mull over which structure might be the best fit, read reviews for these books to see what resonates with readers. Attend to the things people say about how the book is structured or how the story unfolds.

Now, pick it apart. Map the major turning points on note cards. Analyze the thematic threads woven through the narrative. Find the beats where inner change occurs. Do everything you can to understand its construction.

In your next revision, emulate this text’s structure. At this point, don’t worry if it’s a perfect fit. Just see if you can mold your content into it using note cards. After completing this exercise, see if you can expand, fracture, or break free of this constraint to make it your own. If you get lost, or it feels like you’ve broken your book, go back to the map you’ve created for the original text and look at what you might have missed. Once you’ve regained your footing, try again.

If it still fails to work, or it feels like you’re trying to strong arm your story into a structure that simply doesn’t fit, stop. This is a sign that you’ve chosen the wrong structure.

While this might seem like extra work, this process will allow you to truly understand your story and why a specific structure works. The more faith you have in your story’s structure, the more you’ll become the safety net your reader is hoping for.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

From Writer Unboxed:

As some of you may already know, in addition to being a highly sought-after shirtless model for romance novel covers, I am also a longtime professional musician, having earned my first money for playing drums at the ripe old age of 14. In fact, music was my fulltime profession until my late 30s. And I didn’t start seriously writing fiction (inasmuch as anything I write could be considered “serious”) until I turned 40. (So you might say that as a writer, I was a 40-year-old virgin. But I digress…)

Coming into a new-to-me art form with a lengthy background in another, I’ve been repeatedly struck by how many parallels I’ve encountered between the two creative paths. It has also been interesting to note the very different experience of learning one art form as a child, and learning another as an adult (inasmuch as a person like me could ever be considered an “adult”).

But I’ll leave the exploration of the whole young-versus-old-artist rabbit hole for some other day. Today, I want to explore five similarities I’ve found in pursuing two art forms – writing and music – at the professional level. I’ll start with the one I think is most important:

1. It’s a business.

Thus far I’ve been calling them art forms, but when you start actively seeking a paying audience for your work – whether written or musical – you quickly become aware that you are dealing with a business, which brings with it numerous rules, obstacles and rites of passage, many of which are not clearly stated or even openly acknowledged. Yeah, it’s fun like that. Trust me: You’re gonna want to wear a helmet.

In each case, because it’s a business, many decisions that will affect your success are A) based on money, and B) out of your hands.

As a musician, this could come down to who is willing to hire you, or to pay to see you perform, or to publish your music (an area that used to be where the money was in songwriting), or to finance your recording and/or tour, or to buy your recordings. Bottom line: It’s about who will spend their money on this thing you chose to do. As the artist, all you can do is make whatever product or service you’re offering as appealing – and as competitive in terms of financial value – as possible.

Writers are in a similar position. Whether you’re pursuing the traditional publishing route, or self-publishing, or trying to get a piece of your dramatic work produced either on stage or screen, somebody else has to decide that what you’re doing (or promising to do) is worth their money.

In both cases, as an artist, you are free to express yourself in any way you see fit. But as an artist who wants to be paid for that art, it quickly becomes obvious that some pathways lead a bit more directly to potential revenue generation than others. Hence my next observation:

2. Genre matters.

For example, a thrilling 70,000-word whodunit with a strong, confident protagonist stands a better chance of selling some copies than a 600-page second-person diatribe exploring the modernist paradigm of discourse that forces the reader to choose between subcapitalist situationism and the dialectic paradigm of consensus. (Incidentally, I have no earthly idea what that means. I got it from the oh-so-useful Postmodernism BS Generator. You’re welcome.)

Similarly, a catchy three-chord pop song performed by an attractive singer whose only formal dance training clearly involved a pole is likely to get far more airplay than say, one of Conlon Nancarrow’s experimental pieces for player piano. (Warning: cannot be un-heard.)

While my examples above focused on some artistic endeavors being more accessible and/or commercially viable than others, genre is about more than simply what happens to be popular. Probably even more important is the way that genre establishes expectation. Genre helps promise an experience to the consumer, sometimes without them needing to read a word or hear a note. When you see one of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels in a bookstore, you know what you’re getting. Ditto when you see a recording by AC/DC, or a poster for an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Like it or not, fitting neatly into a genre makes it MUCH easier to package your work. But that doesn’t eliminate your challenges, because of the next fact I’ll bring up:

3. There’s no “right” way.

If simply checking off some genre boxes was a foolproof formula for success, everybody reading this column would already be a bestselling author. Just because Lee Child earned more money while you read this paragraph than I did in a year, doesn’t mean I can simply write a “Zack Preacher” series of thrillers that will sell equally well. There’s still some magic, mojo and luck involved, along with things like talent, confidence and savvy. And don’t forget determination – most of the “overnight successes” we hear about were years in the making.

But the lack of a “right” way extends beyond genre. There’s more than one route to successful publication, from traditional to self-published, or combinations of both. There are plotters and pantsers sharing space on the NYT Bestsellers list. There are Hero’s Journey writers and Cat-Saving authors and people who’ve never heard of either, all selling beaucoup books. Which is French for “a crapload of,” if I’m not mistaken.

The same goes for music: There are classically trained virtuosos, and self-taught musicians who can’t read a note. There are incredibly polished performers, with seemingly supernatural abilities and machine-like consistency; there are unpredictable punk rockers who can’t be bothered to learn to play or sing, and who may or may not commit a felony during the course of a performance – and that’s if they even bother to show up.

Hell, just among us drummers, there are those who hold their sticks in that rather fancy-looking way you see in Revolutionary War paintings, and those who grip them like a pair of hammers – and an age-old schism between the two schools that can rapidly go off the rails in ways you’d never believe, in the consequence-free verbal-cage-match environment of an internet discussion forum.

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

From Jane Friedman:

The following are some of the so-called rules of writing fiction that I take a special delight in breaking. Creative writing is about possibilities, not about restrictions and limitations.

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.
In 1962, in a letter to a young writer, John Steinbeck added six tips for writing well. The above was one of those tips. Its error lies again, as all rules do, with its use of the absolute never. I frequently will not, because I cannot, begin a story or novel until I have crafted the perfect first paragraph. Of course there is no such thing as a perfect sentence, but the temporary confidence instilled by thinking that I have crafted one is what allows me to tackle a project that will consume my waking and sleeping hours for the next year or more. Stopping now and then to polish a faulty phrase or image is like taking another hit of confidence.

Five or six hits every morning keep me flying through the hours. But if I cannot fix a weakness within a minute or two, I will not allow my momentum to stall out with fretting and hand-wringing. Placing parentheses around the offending phrase, or highlighting the entire scene, will call my attention to it during the first rewrite.

I do not believe, as some practitioners apparently do, that a morning’s work is like a fast-moving stream through which one must dare not stop paddling, not even for a moment. Go ahead and stop if you want to. Pull ashore. Have lunch. Creep up as close as you can to that egret in the tree. Take a nap if you feel like it. In short, do whatever works for you. The imagination is resilient and flexible, and your routine should be too. But only if that works for you. I am most productive when I adhere, albeit loosely, to the discipline of beginning the morning with a bit of meditation, followed by four to six hours at my desk, followed by a good workout or hike. That’s my routine. It doesn’t have to be yours.

Write what you know.
In the days of Thoreau and earlier, when it was necessary to walk several miles to consult with someone more knowledgeable than you, Ernest Hemingway’s write what you know might have been sound advice. Hemingway also said that every writer needs a friend in every profession, someone whose expertise can be accessed—a statement that appears to contradict the earlier statement.

In order to do my research back in the 1970s and 80s, I had to visit a small-town library every week to order another load of books on interlibrary loan, which made the librarian my best friend. Today, a writer’s best friend is the internet.

I feel certain that Hemingway’s write what you know admonition was not intended to be an absolute. A clearer rendition of that advice would be to write what you know after you’ve done a ton of research and before you forget it all. And always remember that you are writing fiction. Fiction is stuff you make up. You can do that too. You can make stuff up.

Back at the turn of the millennium, I signed a contract, based on a single opening scene, to write two historical mysteries featuring Edgar Allan Poe for Thomas Dunne Books. I had never before written a historical novel and was not confident I could create a convincing New York City of 1840. In one scene it was necessary for me to get Poe across the East River in short order so that he could hotfoot it to Manhattan. I spent weeks trying to find a bridge he could cross or a ferry that would convey him in the allotted time. No such luck. I was stuck. I moaned about this impasse to a friend of mine who was also a writer, and he said, “It’s fiction, Silvis. Make up a bridge.”

Frequently it is the not knowing that brings a story alive, the writer’s desire to know what he does not, which then leads to the character’s discovery of what she did not know, and then the reader’s delight in participating in that discovery.

Show, don’t tell.
A favorite admonition among writing teachers all over the world. This admonition is only half false. The true part is that good fiction is built on dramatic scenes comprised of action, dialogue, description, and conflict—i.e. showing through visual and other sensory details and strong, active verbs. But a certain amount of telling is necessary too. Summary and exposition hold the scenes together. Telling bridges the time gap between scenes and between relevant beats. A little bit of telling, even if it’s something as simple as “Two weeks later,” opens nearly every new scene and every chapter.

So, once again, the problem with the rule is not that it is wholly false but that it is stated too rigidly. Summarization complements dramatization in every novel. In some, it shoulders the narrative load. Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End, for example, is a brilliant novel that is almost wholly told rather than shown.

In general, the more “literary” a novel is, the more it relies on reflection, speculation, and summaries of events. That is why a literary novel is so hard to adapt for the screen; so much of the momentum of the story is interior, taking place only in the characters’ heads.

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman ran into this very problem when attempting to adapt Susan Orlean’s nonfiction The Orchid Thief for film. The problem was so infuriating that he finally seized upon introducing himself into the story as twins, one of whom was being driven mad by attempting to write the adaptation without sacrificing the book’s artistic integrity, and the other as a hack only too ready to pander to Hollywood’s lack of artistic integrity by changing the story willy-nilly. “Show, don’t tell” is fine advice if you are aiming for a quick sale of movie rights, or if you are fifteen years old and learning how to write in scenes, but the proper amendment of the phrase for the rest of us should be “show when you can, but tell whenever showing isn’t necessary.”

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

From Writers in the Storm:

You don’t have to know everything about your story before you start plotting.

Since writing is fairly split between character writers and plot writers, you can bet that half the writers you meet have had struggles with plot (the other half with characters, but that’s another post). Even when you enjoy it, and are good at it, plotting has its challenges.

How do you know what your protagonist has to do? What types of problems and conflicts should your protagonist face? How do you fill in the middle so it doesn’t drag?

Figuring out how to get from the inciting incident to the climax is a head-scratcher—even for hardcore plotters like me. But the key to making this easier is structure.

Structure helps a lot when figuring out your plot.

Structure is like the line drawing of your story. It contains all the key turning points and general flow of how the novel will unfold. Once you know the general shape of it, you can color it in any way you want. For genre novels, it’s even easier, because you’ll have expected tropes to further guide you. You won’t have to draw the image from scratch—you only have to color in the lines.

For example:

• In romance, there’s a meet-cute that leads to romance, and eventually a Happily Ever After.
• In mysteries, there’s a body or crime that leads to an investigation, and eventually solving the crime and finding justice for the victims.
• In non-genre novels, there’s a problem discovered that leads to attempts to fix that problem, and eventually resolving that issue and the protagonist finding happiness.

These turning points and expectations can help you develop a rough concept of your plot.

Maybe you know the details early on, maybe you don’t, but that’s okay. The goal here is to find that general framework for your plot to get you started.

I’m in final edits right now for a science fiction detective novel I plotted using this concept. Detective novels have a “formula” of expected tropes and a very clear structure of what happens when. But that didn’t mean my plot would be the same as every other detective story. The tropes and structure gave me a framework that helped guide my brainstorming. I made it unique to my story, based on what that story needed.

Let’s look a little closer.

Readers expect a detective novel to open with either the crime or the PI getting hired. But I didn’t want it to open with the client hiring my PI, because I felt that jumped in too fast. I wanted time to set the scene and ground readers in my science fiction world first. If they didn’t understand the world, they wouldn’t understand the mystery.

So I knew I had to have an opening scene that included the two big tropes of my mixed genres—introduce the PI nature and establish the science fiction world. I didn’t know what that scene would be at first, but it was clear I needed to show my PI at work in that world to accomplish both of those goals. That gave me solid place to start brainstorming.

Using that and the general trope and structure format, I was able to craft a basic outline:

• Protagonist’s job and world introduced
• Client hires protagonist to solve problem
• Protagonist investigates and finds connections to his past
• Crime escalates and new problem occurs (in most mysteries, this is another body)
• Protagonist investigates new crime and tries to figure out the personal connections
• Suspects stack up and are investigated
• Connections are figured out and perpetrator is revealed
• Perpetrator apprehended, case solved

It’s rough, but it’s something I could work with.

This works for genre and non-genre stories.

A romance novel will have a similar conceptual outline. It begins with the two love interests and their problems. Then the plot moves to the meet-cute, the attraction dance, problems with getting together, getting closer and then being torn apart. It ends with working things out, and then finally getting that happily ever after.

A non-genre novel will be more general, beginning with the protagonist living their life. They then encounter a problem and make a lot of mistakes that create more havoc in their lives as they try to solve it. Eventually, they face a moment when they want to give up, but they struggle to pull themselves together and keep going. Finally, they face the main conflict and resolve the problem.

Link to the rest at Writers in the Storm

From C.S. Lakin:

When tackling the art of fiction writing, it’s common to immerse yourself in the fundamentals: plot, structure, characters—the building blocks that demand time and mastery. Surprisingly, writing style often takes a backseat initially, with early attempts appearing clunky and derivative. It’s all part of the growth process.

I think it wasn’t until my fifth novel that I hit my stride and found my writing voice for my fantasy series. If you’re just beginning to venture into fiction, be patient! You have a lot of plates to juggle, and developing a unique, fresh, and compelling voice will take time and work.

Keep in mind, of course, that genre sets the rules. When the publisher of my fantasy series read my relational drama Someone to Blame, he told me he never would have guessed that I wrote that. He couldn’t recognize my writing style at all.

As it should be. Every time I’ve written in a different genre, I’ve studied best sellers and taken notes. Then I practiced until my prose fit right in.

. . . .

Much like a toddler learning to speak by mimicking adults, new writers often start by emulating established authors. This imitation is not just flattery but a smart learning strategy. By studying and imitating the style of great writers in your genre, you gain insights on how to craft your stories.

However, at some point, you must release your tight grip and venture into writing with your unique style. There’s no magic moment, but as you experiment, take chances, and let your imagination roam, your distinct voice begins to emerge.

Listening to Your Body

Okay, I know that might sound weird, but I learned this truth from mystery writer Elizabeth George. Your body will tell you if what you are writing is “spot-on” or if there is something off about it. The key to finding your unique writing style lies in being true to yourself.

Have you ever written a passage you really liked and wanted to use, but you had this nagging feeling it didn’t work? Then, when you squelched that warning and shared your passage with your critique team, what happened?

They all responded the same way. It doesn’t work, they said. It feels wrong. Maybe they had more specific responses for you that helped you see why and in what ways that passage didn’t work. But, hey, you already knew that. Or, you would have, had you listened to what your body was telling you.

There’s an uneasy feeling of discomfort a seasoned writer gets when she veers away from a true and honest writing voice and starts forcing the style for one reason or another. Then again, a writer can just get burned out, or have days or weeks in which she feels uncreative and can’t seem to come up with effective prose that feels like her true voice.

Listen to your body as you write—it will be honest with you. That uneasy feeling when deviating from your true voice is a signal to course-correct.

Inspiration and Creativity

Inspiration for just the right writing style can come from various sources. Reading exceptional prose before writing, as suggested by Elizabeth George, can jumpstart creativity. However, fine-tuning passages, experimenting with different tenses or tones, and using prompts can all be part of honing your style.

You’ve probably heard the adage “garbage in, garbage out.” And then there’s “you are what you eat”—which could be rewritten to “you write what you read.” Keep in mind that reading a lot of drivel (you can determine what constitutes that) can adversely affect your writing.

Be wary of asking for feedback from others. Oftentimes well-meaning critics will end up curtailing your creativity. Conversely, if readers are noticing problems with your style, pay attention and see what you can learn from their criticism (which, I hope, is kind and encouraging).

Link to the rest at C.S. Lakin

From Writer Unboxed:

Fight Club, the book and the movie, comes at you like a right hook. In my experience, you love it or you hate it. But unless you’re tragically hipster or a Gen Z nihilist, the last thing you are is ambivalent.

Which brings us to the topic of today’s post.

Welcome to the Suck.

I’ve been in the publishing industry for nearly 25 years. It’s always been the Wild West. Lately, though, it’s been looking less like a Western and more like a post-apocalyptic dystopia. We went from High Noon to The Hunger Games in six seconds flat.

In this landscape, your story is either a Sherman tank, or a ghost.

“One size fits all” fits no one.

I can’t tell you how many writers I’ve talked to who say their story “could appeal to everyone… anyone from age ten to seventy, any race, any gender, any walk of life!”

No, it really, really doesn’t.

Because nothing appeals to everyone.

Hell, I know people who don’t like pizza, and if that’s not proof there is no universally appealing thing on earth, I don’t know what is.

More importantly, appealing to everyone should never be your goal when it comes to writing, especially now.

“Universally appealing” generally means average, safe, standard.

That’s DMV beige. That’s unseasoned boiled chicken breast.

That’s ghost territory.

Turning it up to eleven.

It started with the rise of the internet, when a plethora of images, information, and interaction were suddenly, literally at your fingertips. Ironically, in a time where we have the largest buffet of brain candy in the world, people are starving for all the choices.

(If you’ve ever spent an hour perusing Netflix titles while choosing nothing, you know what I mean.)

As a result, it takes something truly vibrant, amplified, and dare I say polarizing to connect with the right readers… the ones who will not only love your work, but spread it like an underground rebellion through their various whisper networks.

In this environment, “meh” is the enemy. Ideally, you want people to either love it or hate it, but by God, they have strong feelings either way.

That’s what we’re looking for. Strong feelings.

But how do you do that?

• Start with the right project. Impact has to be baked in at inception. Start by identifying three main elements: personal passion, reader experience… and, quite frankly, a hook that could bring in a marlin.What are you genuinely thrilled to write? What will readers in that genre adore about it? And in the intersection of those two, what will surprise them, compelling them to find out more about it?
• Amplify. You’re then going to turn up the volume on these elements. Ultimately, you want to write things that make you grin and rub your hands together gleefully. Even if it initially feels self-indulgent, a darling that’s going to be slaughtered later, toss it in.
  
  Repeat with reader experience. Think about what draws readers to your genre. For example, in mystery, they love the puzzle, the challenge. They want the clues, the twists, the red herrings. They want to feel smart, but challenged. They want to know they could solve the murder – but still be pleasantly surprised at a fair, believable, yet unexpected finale.
  
  Add depth to your characters without “reinventing” the genre or sacrificing pacing. Play off their expectations, leading them to a lull of “oh this again” before belting them with a surprise.Look for universal fantasy elements, those primal emotional hooks that are irresistible, and incorporate them as often as possible. What are the core emotions for the story and the set pieces, and how can you make them shine? How can you look at each scene, and think about adding in things that will delight your readers?
  
  Finally, what are your (for lack of a better term) “viral moments”… the stuff that’s going to get people talking? Not in a general “I really liked this book” kind of way. In an “Oh my God, that scene, the one at the wedding? I couldn’t believe it!” kind of way. Specific scenes that make them strong-arm friends into reading the book because they’ve got to talk about it with somebody!
• Distill. In a world that has the attention span of a goldfish with ADHD, you’ve got mere moments to make a strong impression. Once you’ve got all the delicious and deliberate material, you’re going to distill the experience down for the most impact. Streamline and reduce. Look at every element – characterization, plotting, pacing, dialogue, setting – for ways to tighten, strengthen, enhance. Story level and scene level. This is a diamond that you’re carving for drama, and polishing for emphasis.

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

From Writer Unboxed:

In 2010, the consensus was that a writer needed to have a blog.

As a dutiful rules follower, who at the time wanted an agent, I started blogging regularly about my journey, about a software program my friend had recommended called Scrivener, and—for more than a year—I penned a weekly blog post called The Sunday Squirrel.

The odd name comes from an experience I had in Toastmasters in my twenties. We had a member, Ken, who was truly a remarkable speaker. Anytime we had an unfilled speaking slot, he would give an impromptu speech using a random topic from the audience. His most memorable was a humorous, completely off-the-cuff, 7-minute speech about hunting squirrels as a kid, that may or may not have been complete B.S. I was impressed.

My hope was that I could grow a similar skill with the written word through extemporaneous writing. I especially wanted to hone my “show-don’t-tell” skills via short pieces of prose with low stakes. So, every Sunday, I picked a random word or topic and then wrote around it, publishing the result immediately, with minimal editing.

The very first squirrel was water bottle, and here’s what I came up with:

He reached for the water bottle tucked into the truck’s console, but it slipped from his grip as he lost the feeling in his fingers. The bottle fell to the floor with a thud, water pulsing out onto the dirty carpet. Every lost drop made him more desperate to quench the fire in his throat as his heart stopped beating and he gasped for his last breath.

A bit, morbid, but you get the idea. These grew increasingly longer, quickly becoming 800-1500 word scenes with a full arc.

Looking back, I’m shocked that I was brave enough to put the results of those impromptu writing sessions out there for all the world to see, and shocked that some of them aren’t too bad. It seems like limiting yourself to a word or specific idea would stifle creativity, but I’ve found that it actually feeds mine. The wilder the concept you have to incorporate, the more creative you have to be.

I’ve done similar prompts at writing conferences, and I’m always surprised how much fun it is and how easily my writer brain takes off when given an assignment.

One of my favorites used three words and a quote.

Words/Concepts: cocktail bar, Sunday school teacher, riding crop

Quote: “I’m just doing what the fortune cookie said. Who am I to stand in the way of fate?”

I somehow wrote a 504-word scene using all the elements in 30 minutes. There are a lot of days when I’d be happy to get 500 words in two hours, so that felt like a breakthrough. Sometimes a blank page is overwhelming. I can write anything! Except, oh, no, I can write anything, what should it be? Where do I start?

Narrowing the possibilities can cut through the indecisiveness and unfreeze your brain.

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

From Writer Unboxed:

A few days before the Solstice, against my better instincts, I opened an Instagram advertisement for a Planner. I couldn’t resist. The ad promised Productivity. Wellness. With this Planner I would achieve not just my goals, but my dreams. 2024 would be my best year ever.

I am a list-maker by nature; I have a day job that is governed by reports, meetings, and deadlines and I live or die by my daily office planner and a stack of yellow legal pads to track my goings-on. Other than the shared office Google calendar, I don’t digitalize my planning. The act of recording a task or an appointment by hand makes a deeper connection with my brain: I feel it as much as I see it.

But this Planner promised next-level empowerment, and for a moment I lingered on the website, wondering if it could be true.

Suddenly, my IG feed was nothing but advertisements for Planners. Gorgeous things, some the size of an atlas, others made to nestle as neatly in the palm as the ubiquitous smartphone. Some leather, others cloth-bound and embossed, like a Penguin Classic, begging to be opened, their creamy pages caressed. Some were filled with motivational quotes or creativity invoking prompts. Others had a Dashboard that would keep me on track or a Workflow System to chart my progress and hold me accountable (How? I marveled. A Planner with a built-in guilt genie, tsk-tsking when I drank a second glass of wine on a weeknight or blew off a Saturday morning of writing to finish the latest Ruth Ware novel?).

What is it about these Planners that is so irresistible? Why did I find myself, overcome by Agenda-Envy, googling “Best Planners 2024”? Yes, there is the allure of fresh starts. The intoxication of untouched pages and untapped pens that goes all the way back to grade school with the perfume of newly sharpened pencils and the smooth glide of Pee-Chee covers unmarred by doodling.

As I plunged down the Planner rabbit hole, I realized my search wasn’t about finding the perfect tool to organize my routines. What these physical objects represent—whatever their degree of bells and whistles—is greater than all the promises they make to optimize our lives. It is what we already carry within us: intentionality.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines intentionality as:

“the mind’s capacity to direct itself on things. Mental states like thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes exhibit intentionality in the sense that they are always directed on, or at, something: if you hope, believe or desire, you must hope, believe or desire something.” *

I think of it as how and where I direct my time and energy to achieve deeply desired goals.

With the recognition of a desire for intentionality came a poignant reflection. Although my day-job life is well-structured and my inner creature of routine regularly trundles her outer self to the pool and the yoga studio, I haven’t given the same attention to my creative life.

Once upon a time I had and that intentionality—the deliberate, directed focus of time and energy—resulted in a writing career that was both inwardly fulfilling and on a public upward trajectory: In a short span of time, I’d landed an agent and took two novels to publication.

That trajectory was interrupted by divorce and its attendant financial distress: I left the full-time writing career that I’d launched only three years before to return to a traditional 9-5 with its steady paychecks and health benefits. Naturally my writing career had to adjust to the sudden change of priorities; however, my expectations didn’t get the memo. I kept up the internal pressure to produce and publish until that pressure became a painful bruise of self-recrimination and its partner, self-doubt.

I restarted my traditional work life, first in the wine industry I had most recently left, then in non-profit administration that had been my earlier professional calling. I stumbled from a bad relationship and into lasting love. Like all of us, I lurched through the pandemic years, with the unexpected grace of finding myself a homeowner again in the opening days of the lockdowns. I was breathlessly busy and distracted.

I kept writing, the thing that gave me a sense of self during a time of massive personal change. But in the five years it took me to write my next novel, I’d let my intentionality as a writer fizzle and flatten.

I can fill the spare moments I have as a writer with words, a what that distracts me from the greater why. But in a writing career that has flowed and ebbed these past several years­, I had lost touch with what brought me to the page in the first place. It wasn’t until this past fall, seven years after my divorce and seven-a-half years after the publication of my first novel, that I stepped back to deeply examine my thoughts and hopes about my writing life.

Late September, I stood in front of a group of eight writers on the first day of a novel-writing course and proclaimed that in our time together—90 minutes over eight Wednesdays—our focus would be on writing, not publishing. We would free our expectations of the external possibilities of our work and instead lean into the challenge and joy of crafting a great story. A principle I, their instructor, had lost touch with some time before.

We’re culturally imprinted to focus our fresh-start energy on January 1. The pool lanes where I swim laps ripple with new bodies the first weeks of the year. Dry January has become a thing. My Substack feed is replete with newsletters about resolutions and renewal. It tracks, of course. We end the year saturated with celebration, decoration, libation. The stark, cold, reality of January (for those in the Northern hemisphere) makes for a natural transition to discipline. But when in the busy several weeks that precede the start of the new year do we really have the time and energy to be deliberate about our hopes, goals, intentions for our creative lives?

I would like to invite in a new New Year practice for my writing, and for yours: Let’s make the month of January our time to actively reflect on our writing goals and intentions.

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

From Jane Friedman:

When mystery, thriller, and suspense authors plot their stories, one of the biggest consistent hurdles is designing twists that work. I’ve written previously about how thinking about your villain’s motivations can unblock a climactic scene in a thriller. But what if we’re still in the planning stages of our novel, and we feel stuck as to how to make the story fit the modern thriller convention of “twisty”? What if we’ve written our story, but our beta readers are seeing our twists from much too early on, or we keep getting feedback that the story is too predictable? How do we ideate twists that work?

These questions come up every time I teach and coach thriller writers, and they’re good questions. First, let’s define a few things:

What is a villain?

Mystery, thriller, and suspense (MTS) stories are the villain’s story, as told and perceived by the protagonist. As such, villains are equally, if not more important to figure out, than the protagonist. In MTS, the villain is the character doing the Bad Thing, and the protagonist is the person trying to stop the Bad Thing. The protagonist may or may not know who this person is, but as the story unfolds, they get closer and closer to the truth, ultimately uncovering what’s actually going on. The villain in these types of stories is sentient, and will go to equally great lengths as the protagonist to achieve their goal. This villain may frame other people to look like the real villain to the protagonist, or may be pulling the strings behind the scenes. Most importantly though, this person has their own wants, needs, motivations, and desires, and they are the person with whom the protagonist will have an ultimate face-off in the story.

What is a twist?

The protagonist’s journey in both thrillers and mysteries is effectively the unveiling of the villain’s plan, as experienced by the protagonist. The protagonist is our (the reader’s) “guide” through the story, because the protagonist is the character leading the reader along as they uncover what the villain was/is ultimately up to. As such, I like to define twists as follows:

Twists are the reveal of the villain’s truth. This truth feels “twisty”, because the reveal of the truth is unexpected to the protagonist.

What makes a twist satisfying?

Satisfying twists are the only logical answer to a puzzle that seemed seemingly impossible to solve as the reader/protagonist moved through the story. Satisfying twists are unexpected, but do not appear out of nowhere. They make perfect sense when the reader looks backwards at what they’ve already been shown on the page via the protagonist and what the protagonist saw, but aren’t easily guessed until they’re revealed because the protagonist led us astray. All the clues were “on screen,” i.e., on the page for us to see the correct answer (the villain’s truth), but those clues were seen (but ignored), or seen (but misinterpreted), or seen (but overlooked) by the protagonist throughout the story.

In other words, the protagonist was dead sure up until the reveal of the villain’s truth that the answer was something else. And because the protagonist was so sure, the reader will be happily led to that same conclusion. These clues were there for the reader to pick up on (and sometimes we do, which is part of the puzzle MTS readers love), but because readers tend to go along with whatever the protagonist thinks/sees/feels about a mystery, by deliberately designing our stories so that our protagonists ignore/misinterpret/overlook clues, the end result is a delightful manipulation of what the reader thinks as well.

By contrast, twists are unsatisfying when they’re predictable, convenient, or feel “unearned,” as they feel when the clues were not on the page for the reader or protagonist to pick up on. For example, if the protagonist has no way of knowing what’s really going on because the villain hasn’t been on the page at all, it can feel very unsatisfying. We (the reader) want the chance to be able to figure out the mystery along with the protagonist, to solve the plot problem, and to see and interpret the clues.

Of course, the flip side of this is if there are too many clues on the page or the villain is predictable, we won’t find the reveal of the villain’s truth twisty at all. It will fall flat. Predictability can take many forms: it can show up when our villain is too obviously evil and therefore easy to guess. It can appear when we lean into tropes in the genre (i.e., the spouse did it), without playing with or changing up motivations. (Pro tip: A trope can become fresh if the reader thinks, via the protagonist, that the answer is obvious, and then the true answer is the villain is someone entirely different.

The key to achieving satisfying, balanced twists and clues is to remember that the protagonist is our guide to uncovering the villain’s truth. Because the protagonist is the character leading the reader along as they uncover what the villain was/is ultimately up to, we as the author have ample opportunity to mislead the reader via the protagonist’s misinterpretation of the clues. Twists feel “twisty” because we (the author) have carefully engineered the story to mislead the reader via the protagonist’s journey and their assumptions.

As such, I recommend keeping the protagonist (logically) convinced about a plausible other solution right up until the point they face the truth. This applies to all the main twists: the midpoint twist (at 50%, where the story takes a turn), the climactic twist (at roughly 85%, where the protagonist faces the villain themselves or the person they think is the villain, and restores order) and the final twist (at roughly 98%, where the protagonist uncovers something unexpected, sometimes facing the true villain).

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

From Writer Unboxed:

Finding ways to deepen characterization

Over the holidays and now into the dark days of winter, I’ve been re-watching The Sopranos. A lot of former favorites don’t hold up, but Tony Soprano is a masterpiece, a combination of great writing with the perfect actor, and I’ve been enthralled. Really, the detail work in the show is remarkable and worth studying. (The New York Times published a guide to rewatching here.)

As I studied the writing, in this and a few other things over the break, I have been working on a theory of character rooted in two things, the wound and the contradiction.

The wound is the simple truth that every being carries with them a wound, a defining pain. The contradiction is that thing that sticks out in their personality or actions that is contrary to every other thing. Together, these two things will do a lot of heavy lifting to elevate your characters and make them memorable.

First, the wound. This is that thing that shapes them, a scar or mark or a memory they carry like a bag of rocks. It’s the think they can’t get over even (or especially) if it seems they’ve put it to bed. My grandmother’s father died when she was eleven, orphaning her and sending her through a long series of homes with relatives until she was old enough to make her own home.

I’m sure it’s not difficult for you to pick out a wound for yourself, maybe lots of them. The one we want for a character is the big one, the hard mark. A loss, probably, something that spun life in new directions.

Tony has been one of my favorite characters to teach for a long time, and I found even more to love this time around. He’s relatable and conflicted and piercingly human, but he’s also this tragic archetype that will never escape his fate.

We can relate to Tony Soprano because despite his status as a mob boss, he is everyman, a guy with a lot of responsibilities and a high-pressure job. He suffers panic attacks. He loves his children. He really listens when people talk to him. He’s a toucher, he puts his hands on people in gentle ways. By the standards of his world, he has absolute integrity. He rules his kingdom and his world with fairness and honor. He tries to prevent wars and unnecessary killing. He rewards loyalty. And he has an absolutely horrible mother he still wants to please.

Tony’s wound is his mother. She is a cruel and distant woman who is never satisfied, but somehow, Tony keeps trying. He can never be the fully realized man he wants to be because a big part of him is still that deeply wounded little boy who loved the mother who was cruel to him.

In the also remarkable television show This Is Us, all of the family members suffer from the same wound—the untimely death of the father of the clan, Jack. Each of them has suffered in a particular way, each not-coping with the wound in ways that profoundly affect their lives moving forward. One is a famous actor with addiction and insecurity issues, another a seemingly high-functioning professional with anxiety that can lay him out, and a chronic binge eater who cannot let go of the father she adored. Paradise lost, never to be regained.

Notice, none of these wounds are particularly original. There are only so many ways humans are wrecked, and most of them are rooted in not getting needs met in childhood, some way or another.

The wound gives us the material to build a character of great depth and width. If you know this wound, you will be able to build in relatability in a dozen different ways. Study trauma and the ways it manifests in personality and you will discover an encyclopedia of personality traits. Tony copes with his loss by serial womanizing. He blunts the pain by reaching for the arms of women, but he also suffers because he dreams of a family that can’t exist. Kate from This Is Us blunts her feelings with food, her twin brother with alcohol.

That leads us to the second half of the idea, which is the contradiction.

Robert McKee in his book Story talks about plotting from a quadrant of values. The lowest point is what he calls “the negation of the negation,” which is a complex idea of reversal which in plotting is the farthest place you can go from where you want to be. In character, that’s often the opposite of the main thing. If he wants love, for example, he doesn’t experience hate, he experiences hate masquerading as love. The main contradiction in terms of character is much the same. It will be something out of alignment with the top layer of character, a quality that almost always holds the seeds of possible destruction.

Tony Soprano’s main contradiction is that he’s a mob boss who suffers panic attacks so severe he has to see a therapist. Since secrecy is one of columns upholding the mafioso life, that presents a really big problem. The anxiety stems from his wound, his inability to make peace with his brutal mother, but at the heart of it, he’s a king archetype who doesn’t want the job. The anxiety, the wound, the panic attacks all hide the fact that he doesn’t want to be a mob boss. The way his wound manifests hold the seeds of his destruction: a mob boss can’t tell secrets, can’t have anxiety attacks, can’t fall apart.

But he does.

Link to the rest at Writer Unboxed

From EF Education:

If you’re learning English in the UK you might think you’ll come home with a perfect British accent that sounds like you got English lessons from the Queen herself.

In reality, there are almost 40 different dialects in the UK that sound totally different from each other, and in many cases use different spellings and word structure. In fact, there’s pretty much one accent per county.

Here are 10 British dialects you need to know:

1. Scottish

Let’s start in the North, with the accent that universally symbolises glassy lochs (lakes), snowy mountains, tartan, and… shortbread? The Scottish accent as we know it now developed as late as the 1700s, but existed in different forms before that.

It was heavily influenced by the Gaelic language, which was (and still sometimes is) spoken in certain areas of Scotland, as well as Norse languages from Viking invaders. Scots would say Scotland as ‘SKORT-lond’ instead of the Standard English ‘SKOTT-lund’.

Take a trip to cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow to hear the Scottish accent.

2. Geordie

People from Newcastle speak a dialect called Geordie, which is one of the strongest and most distinctive accents in England.

Geordie changes all the rules of Standard English, so nothing is pronounced as you’d expect it to be: the word button would be pronounced BOT-tdan instead of BUH-tun, with a ‘ooh’ sound on the letter U and a rolled T. Yeah, best to Youtube it, folks.

3. Scouse

People from Liverpool are called Scousers or Liverpudlians, and their dialect (which, like Geordie, is very strong and instantly recognisable) is called Scouse.

Liverpudlians would say woss dtha? instead of what’s that? with a lot of emphasis on the letters A and Y in words. They also roll their Rs, making it hard to tell if they’re saying L or R. Bless them!

Places you can visit to learn Scouse include Liverpool and nearby Manchester.

4. Yorkshire

One of the biggest counties in England, Yorkshire has a distinctive accent where one of the biggest pronunciation differences is on the letter U, which is spoken as ooo rather than uh – so cut is pronounced coht and blood is pronounced blohd.

Apparently it’s seen as one of the nicest and most trustworthy dialects by other people in the UK, but personally I’ve never met a trustworthy Yorkshire person (just kidding, they’re lovely).

You’ll hear the Yorkshire dialect in cities like York, Leeds and Sheffield.

5. Welsh

Officially a different country, Wales has a culture and language of its own that’s spoken by half a million people. They have brilliantly long and complicated words like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which is the name of a Welsh village (and the second longest place name in the world).

When Welsh people speak English, their accent is instantly recognisable – they pronounce words like ‘Wales’ as WEE-alss unlike the English, who pronounce it WAY-ells.

You’ll learn the Welsh dialect if you visit Cardiff or nearby cities like Bristol.

6. Brummie

Possibly the cutest name on our list, this accent is actually one of the most ridiculed in the UK – which is quite mean, because clearly people from Essex have never heard themselves speak.

The name is derived from Brummagem and Bromwichham, both historical alternate names for the large city of Birmingham, where people speak this dialect.

People with a Brummie accent would say the word ‘hello’ as heh-LOUW instead of HEH-low, although there are lots of variations of the accent across the city (it’s the third-largest city in England).

Link to the rest at EF Education

From Smithsonian Magazine:

The United States may lack an official language, but a road trip across the country reveals dozens of different accents and dialects of English that serve as living links to Americans’ ancestors.

What’s the difference between these two linguistic terms? Accents center on the pronunciation of words, while dialects encompass pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. They both often vary by region.

“Even Americans, most of whom speak only English, usually know more than one dialect,” notes the Linguistic Society of America. Consider, for instance, how an individual might speak to their boss versus a stranger who just rear-ended their car.

Dialects are rooted in the same system, but “their partly independent histories leave different parts of the parent system intact,” according to the society.

Myriad factors influence variations among American accents and dialects, including waves of settlement in a region, geographic location and class differences.

“There’s never [just] one accent in a given place,” says Teresa Pratt, a sociolinguist at San Francisco State University. “There’s so much variation, even in one particular region.”

The U.S. is commonly divided into distinct regions: the West, the Midwest, the Southwest, the Southeast and the Northeast. But broad accent categories based on these regions are more accurately broken down into diverse dialects across different localities.

Dialects in the Deep South—encompassing Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina—are distinct from those in Texas, a large state that’s home to several linguistic varieties, as well as a mix of Spanish and English (nicknamed Spanglish) closer to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The South gets stereotyped as a monolith, which is really unfair,” says Nicole Holliday, a linguist at Pomona College.

The many variations in the American South include South Midland, Ozark, Coastal Southern, Virginia Piedmont, Gullah, Cajun English and Gulf Southern.

The popularity of specific dialects is often tied to regional history. When English colonists first arrived in North America in the early 17th century, they landed on the East Coast, establishing English-speaking communities in the North and the South. The French, the Dutch, the Spanish and other European powers also introduced their own languages as they colonized different parts of the continent. Speaking styles in different colonies remained distinct because travel opportunities were limited at the time, says Jessi Grieser, a linguist at the University of Michigan. “Historically, it’s about migration and who went where,” she adds.

English settlers succumbed to competing influences when they came into contact with Native Americans and colonists from other countries, all while isolating themselves from England. Centuries of settlement on the East Coast resulted in more linguistic variation among the region’s cities because English was spoken there longer, Holliday says.

Link to the rest at Smithsonian Magazine