To all you novel writers.... - Page 2 - WritingForums.com - Writing Forums, Writing Challenges, Critiques and Help for Writers

JosephB · 06-07-2009, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adrianhayter

It’s exactly the same. Sure it can be done, a five-hundred pound dyslexic gorilla can pound out a story and have it published – It happens to me at times, but the reality is the rarity of the occurrence.

Adrian

I bet with a little research I could show you it's not that rare.

But let's take it out of the realm of brilliance. So I'll add there are lots of decent, mediocre or poorly written books published by authors who sat down and knocked it out in a relatively short period of time without the monumental decade-long struggle. That just might even be the rule rather than the exception.

Why is that so hard to accept?

Mermaid on the breakwater · 06-07-2009, 10:16 AM

You have to really get into the shape of it. Poetry, short stories, Novels, they're all different shapes with different structures holding them together. Everything has a different shape and style so all you can do is learn where the differences are between short stories and novels, that's more helpful than tryingto find an exact shape. Because the writing process is organic, a definitive shape is almost impossible to define at the start. Let it evolve a bit as you write and just keep in mind your basic idea.

The idea itself is not important. We have ideas all the time it's what you do with the idea. You have to cook it in the furnace and then hammer the hot iron into shape against the anvil. The properties it has will be revealed over a long period of time if you stick at it. That's the joy of it, for me.

JosephB · 06-07-2009, 10:20 AM

Quote:

The idea itself is not important.

Say what?

Mermaid on the breakwater · 06-07-2009, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JosephB

Say what?

The idea itself is not important. It's a seed that can grow either errant and turn into bin fodder or, if well-pruned, may turn into something worth reading by someone other than yourself.

We all write about things that interest us - or we should - and there are plenty of things which interest us so ideas are easy to come by. Connecting unconnected images and characters is where the element of shape and craft comes in.

JosephB · 06-07-2009, 10:38 AM

Whatever. I subscribe to the notion that ideas are more important than anything -- and that after that there are just varying degrees of how well that idea is brought to fruition. But however you want to look at it.

Again, there is no one-size-fits-all way to write or think about writing. Whereas these discussions can be fun and even interesting at times, they are pretty pointless in the long run. Something to do while I drink my Sunday morning coffee.

Mermaid on the breakwater · 06-07-2009, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JosephB

Whatever. I subscribe to the notion that ideas are more important than anything -- and that after that there are just varying degrees of how well that idea is brought to fruition. But however you want to look at it.

Again, there is no one-size-fits-all way to write or think about writing. Whereas these discussions can be fun and even interesting at times, they are pretty pointless in the long run. Something to do while I drink my Sunday morning coffee.

That too has its purpose.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution but there are many helpful answers.

JosephB · 06-07-2009, 10:47 AM

I appreciate that.

Oh shit. My wife will be home any minute. I was playing hookie from church. Better grab a shovel or something and run out into the yard.

Mermaid on the breakwater · 06-07-2009, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JosephB

I appreciate that.

Oh shit. My wife will be home any minute. I was playing hookie from church. Better grab a shovel or something and run out into the yard.

There you go, another idea for a story. The mad guy who buries people in his back garden while his wife is at church.

I may just incorporate the essence of that into something I am currently working on.

Sam W · 06-07-2009, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JosephB

Whatever. I subscribe to the notion that ideas are more important than anything -- and that after that there are just varying degrees of how well that idea is brought to fruition. But however you want to look at it.

Again, there is no one-size-fits-all way to write or think about writing. Whereas these discussions can be fun and even interesting at times, they are pretty pointless in the long run. Something to do while I drink my Sunday morning coffee.

What's your problem, Joe? It seems like there's a stick stuck up your arse on this subject. What's pointless about a person asking for tips on how to transition from writing short stories to writing novels?

Ideas are the same as everything else. That is, they're pointless if you can't put them down on paper.

All Adrian is saying is that not everyone can produce a brilliant novel the first time out. The more you write, the better writer you become. That's not a myth. How's that hard to understand? It's simple logic. The more you do something, the better you get at it. I look back at my first novel and compare it with the one I'm writing now, and I think: How could my writing have been that poor? But when I think about it, the answer is quite simple: I was finding my feet. I was learning a trade. Much like how it took four years before I became a qualified plumber.

It may happen now and again, but it is by no means common for someone to sit down and produce a magnum opus on their first go. To use Adrian's analogy, that's like me picking up a basketball for the first time and beating Kobe Bryant in a game of one-on-one. Doesn't happen often. It's a Cinderella story.

Mermaid on the breakwater · 06-07-2009, 11:34 AM

I think that's fair comment, Sam, although you do tend to find a significant number of geniuses in the arts. Mozart was doing things as a five-year-old that people who play instruments and compose music all the life might never do (maybe a slight romanticism). In sport, because it's a physical exercise, you simply have to train your body and because it is a direct competition you have to be better than the guy opposite. You don't have to be in the arts; you can be good in a "different" way and there is value in it.

People do improve with their writing much like all other things, though. It's a bit like someone who listens to a music recording and can then play it straight back while it might take someone else days and weeks to learn, but they still end up with the same product, one just has to work harder than the other. The most important thing for any writer is to strive to be better every signle day. To never stop moving forwards. That's the biggest talent you need, that and the determination to keep coming back for more even when people say: "what're you writing about that for?" And, "you'll never be good enough to make it as a published author." Let it make you even more determined to establish your own worth as an artist. That's a writer's biggest quality. The guts to put these ideas on the page and stand by them.

The Wrong Writer · 06-07-2009, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Sure that's true but you can also say plenty of young boys that play basketball end up in the NBA.

By no means similar. Nobody ever just suddenly decided to play basketball and went out and made the NBA. Ever. Once in history.

However, there are MANY writers who have written best-sellers or are critically acclaimed who just got bored or figured they had a story that could make them some money or whatever and sat down and wrote a novel and sold it. It's not the norm, but it's not a rarity, either.

The chances of your dyslexic doing it are miniscule. But working out for ten years isn't going to help him.

My guess is that you've been trying to write a novel somebody would buy for ten years and have approached it by the method you mention. Doesn't mean it will work for anybody else. In fact, has it worked for you?

The idea that if you write enough short stories you'll be novelist timber is like saying that if you play table tennis for ten years you'll be ready for Wimbleton.

This from Wikipedia:

Quote:

In the mid-1940s Spillane was stationed as a flight instructor in Greenwood, Mississippi, where he met and married Mary Ann Pearce in 1945. The couple wanted to buy a country house in the Newburgh, New York, 60 miles north of New York City, so Spillane decided to boost his bank account by writing a novel. In 19 days he wrote I, the Jury. At the suggestion of Ray Gill, he sent it to E. P. Dutton.

A huge, world-wide best-seller, there.

Bret Easton Ellis studied music and worked as a musician. At the age of 21 he wrote "Less Than Zero", which sold big, spawned a film, and was widely praised in big culture mags like Village Voice and New Yorker and such. Did he start his ten years of study at 11?

Tama Janowitz sold her first novel at 25. She also had books filmed and got a lot of literati adoration.

Harold Robbins devoted his energies to becoming a millionaire by age 20. He blew that and went to work for a movie studio, then whipped out his first blockbuster novel.

Carrie Fisher started dancing and acting in school, worked as an actress full time. Then decided to do a novel, Postcards From the Edge, that was a best-seller, a damned fine book, and a motion picture (full of oddities like the "Princess Laeia" actress being protrayed by Meryl Streep and her mother Debbie Reynolds done (wonderfully) by Shirley Maclaine.

Why go on? This doesn't even tap into all the people who retire and write solid, successful novels out of boredom. Suffice it to say that there is more than one way to skin this cat and talent is at least a big a factor as all the vaunted hard work and study. At LEAST.

And apart from talent, another valuable factor not helped by study: having a story to tell. A few years in a war, a career in a police force or hospital, suriving a genocide somewhere, being part of a celebrity entourage, etc. etc. can have way more to do with producing a book than sitting around pondering on adverbs and participial phrases. Because, ultimately, books are stories.

Consider the effect on a young writer who for some reason believed the "you have to spend ten years of tedium" stuff. Think about it.

JosephB · 06-07-2009, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam W

All Adrian is saying is that not everyone can produce a brilliant novel the first time out.

No I don't think that's what he said. He said:

Quote:

Just an opinion but I believe that most writers fail to recognize how long the road is. If your dream is a novel, plan on spending ten years learning the craft by weaving sentences into paragraphs and on into short stories that people are interested in reading. Once you’ve accomplished that, then go forward.

That sounds pretty definitive to me. And I'm saying that may hold true for some but not others. It's that simple.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam W

What's pointless about a person asking for tips on how to transition from writing short stories to writing novels?

Clarification: No offense to Mermaid, but I was referring to our side conversation, which in my opinion had gone off the path of tip offering and into the theoretical and highly subjective.

PS -- In reference to magnum opus or the idea that the first effort we are referring to might be brilliant etc. I also said this:

Quote:

But let's take it out of the realm of brilliance. So I'll add there are lots of decent, mediocre or poorly written books published by authors who sat down and knocked it out in relatively short period of time without the monumental decade-long struggle. That just might even be the rule rather than the exception.

adrianhayter · 06-07-2009, 12:34 PM

I actually am required to work in the real world occassionally and this is one of those times but until I can get back, read this to see what I'm trying to say.

According to author, musician, neuro-scientist, Daniel Levitin in his book; "This is Your Brain on Music" ( a New York Times best-seller, Plume Printing 2006) , an expert or master of any craft is measured by that person practicing their craft for 10,000 hours.

Here is how Daniel Levitin puts it...
The emerging scientific picture is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.

Now how long is ten thousand hours? It is equal to roughly 3 hours of practice a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice for ten years. Of course some people never reach mastery, which is not really explainable yet. But, no one has found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery. -Daniel Levitin

Mermaid on the breakwater · 06-07-2009, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adrianhayter

I actually am required to work in the real world occassionally and this is one of those times but until I can get back, read this to see what I'm trying to say.

According to author, musician, neuro-scientist, Daniel Levitin in his book; "This is Your Brain on Music" ( a New York Times best-seller, Plume Printing 2006) , an expert or master of any craft is measured by that person practicing their craft for 10,000 hours.

Here is how Daniel Levitin puts it...
The emerging scientific picture is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.

Now how long is ten thousand hours? It is equal to roughly 3 hours of practice a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice for ten years. Of course some people never reach mastery, which is not really explainable yet. But, no one has found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery. -Daniel Levitin

This doesn't explain how some people learn at a much quicker rate than others then does it? And I simply don't believe there is a "mastery" of anything. You could sit two people down to study a select few examples of poetic form and one would grasp them and be able to put them into working practice far more quickly than the other. It's the old saying: "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

JosephB · 06-07-2009, 12:48 PM

OK, Adrian. But there is a list as long as your arm of cases where that doesn't apply to writing novels. I don't care what Daniel Levitin says. These are things that have actually happened -- they aren't theoretical.

You don't have to take my word for it I suppose. But I'm not going to spend the 15-20 minutes on Google gathering evidence that would tell you definitively that what I'm saying is true. Wrong Writer gave some good examples, and it wasn't enough to convince you.