RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
//Tough love talk on how our families and the people who love us most can be the biggest obstacles to getting that writing time. Related: wants and needs, the difference between them and how other people try to tell what ours are.
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Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is writing emotion and whether you as the author have to feel the exact emotion you’re writing.
There’s this tale about acting that’s been making the rounds for ages – it’s possibly apocryphal – about Dustin Hoffman being a method actor. That method asks actors to find the emotions within themselves to play the character, to find essentially their alternate self who would be that person and feel that way. The story goes that Hoffman spent an hour getting into that character’s skin and Sir Laurence Olivier strolled in, did his bit, and left again, saying, “My dear boy, it’s called acting.”
The point of this (again, possibly apocryphal) tale is twofold: the first that you can create the appearance of emotion without feeling it, and the second that everyone does things their own way.
You all should know by now that my primary mantra is this: figure out what your process is and own it.
People like that story because they can smirk at poor Dustin Hoffman doing things the American way, the overly-complicated way, the fancy way, but… is he wrong? Hoffman has an amazing acting career. He’s widely acknowledged as a brilliant actor. Clearly his approach isn’t “wrong.”
Is Olivier wrong in this story? Clearly not, for the same reasons as above. There is no wrong. There is no right. Both things can be true. Both processes work for those performers.
So, do I have to feel the emotion I’m writing in order to put it on the page? Nope. Do I sometimes? Sure, though it depends. Do other writers need to feel the emotion to write it? I’ve heard they do.
And it’s all good. Both things can be true.
//How I’m getting better at balance, increasing my wordcount, getting business done, and having more time to relax! Also, using AI “tools” as a writer and examining the whole point of being a creative in the first place.
//What it takes to be a career author – particularly a novelist – the kinds of sacrifices you have to make to carve out enough silence to hear the words of a story, and how there are no straight line trajectories.
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Happy Summer Solstice, all!
This week at the SFF Seven, we’re talking about our greatest writing challenge and how we manage it.
In some ways, this is a moving target for me, because it seems that – like clockwork – each book presents its own challenge. With 64 published titles under my belt, I feel like I should have this process down and there shouldn’t be surprises.
No such luck.
What I have to constantly remind myself is that the creative process is its own creature. It’s this connection to something beyond ourselves and thus is not within our control. Particularly for a writer like myself – I am incapable of pre-plotting and write for discovery, relying entirely on intuition – letting go of that desire to control is critical. It can also be difficult, especially when I’m trying to write to a particular idea or market.
For example, I recently wrote one-hundred pages of a book for my agent, according to a very particular comp. Let’s call it Ghost meets Out of Africa. (That is NOT it, but that’s one of my all-time favorite fictional comps. Points if you can name the movie it’s from.) In thinking about this project, I consulted my friend, Melinda Snodgrass, incredibly talented novelist and screenwriter who counts among her credits the Star Trek: Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man. I asked her how closely I should follow the beats of Ghost, if at all. She gave me an incredulous look and asked why, when I had a hugely successful story blueprint right there, I would do anything but follow those beats?
So, I tried.
Turns out that, not only am I incapable of pre-plotting, I also can’t follow an outline to save my life. I struggled to write that book. Having the story laid out in essence should have made it easier. Instead it made it 1,000x worse. For me. Because that’s not my process. Once I abandoned that outline (sorry, Melinda) and followed my intuition, the words began flowing.
That’s the major challenge for me: remembering to trust the process. Particulars change with every book. This principle endures.
//Ruminations today on what we mean by the “strong female character” and why this might be a more relevant conversation than I thought, given the state of feminism and challenges some female friends are facing.
//Happy to report that my training program to increase creative flow and word count is working! Also, additional thoughts on the ethics of using AI-generated work and how money factors into that for some people.
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Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: Pinch Points or small turning points. We’re asking each other if we plan them, use them as foreshadowing, or just let the story flow?
So, I read KAK’s excellent post from yesterday explaining WTF “Pinch Points” are and how she uses them. Spoiler: yes, she plans them out.
Cannot possibly be a spoiler for anyone who knows anything about me: No, I plan them, I might use them?
YES, I LET THE STORY FLOW.
I swear, I need to start adding topics like “when you’re intuitively letting the story flow, how do you…. ” Except then I get stuck because there’s just not a whole hell of a lot to say about writing intuitively. Yep, here I am, letting things flow. Still flowing. How will it end? I have no idea!
LOL.
Amusingly enough, however, what KAK explained in her detailed analytical post is pretty much the exact scene I wrote yesterday in my current manuscript: ONEIRA.
(If you haven’t been following the podcast, ONEIRA is a Totally New Thing – new world, new magic system, unrelated to anything I’ve written so far. I’ve been calling it the book I’m not supposed to be writing – it fell on me from out of the sky and insisted on being written – but all of my friends have finally convinced me that clearly I am supposed to be writing it, so I’m trying not to say that anymore.)
It’s almost eerie, how the scene I wrote yesterday matches exactly what KAK says the pinch point with the villain is supposed to do. But I didn’t plan it at all. In fact, this scene introduced a new POV character and a new plot element, totally unexpected. But this is how I write and how I write this book in particular. It’s insisting on doing all sorts of things that I haven’t done before and don’t expect and I’ve just surrendered and am going with it. Which actually makes this project really fun, because I’m just letting it be whatever it is and not worrying about reader expectations or where it will fit in the marketplace.
All of this is to say that we all have our own process. My mantra: figure out what your process is and own it.
KAK loves to geek out on analysis, minutely controlling her stories down to pinches.
My stories just go their own way and I try to cling to the saddle.
It’s all good.
(Except sometimes I end up writing something I’m not supposed to be writing….)
//A concern I have about a book cover designer who is offering discounts to authors who approve the use of AI-generated art. Also thoughts on training to improve wordcount and recognizing overdoing it.
//A round-up of what I’ve been reading lately, including several excursions from my normal reading. I’m thinking about female/femme narratives and how we center those (or don’t) in terms of stories about men.
