Category: Brutal

Ten Ways to Move from “Wannabe Writer” to “Writer”

Quit wasting your life as a “wannabe” writer. Be the “is-be” writer.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I’ve always wondered what it would take for me to move from “wannabe” writer to an aspiring—[DELETED]

—Lawrence Axelrod, Des Moines, Iowa.

Well, I scarce made it through that one without a volcanic rage eruption.

Let’s take it through the logical gauntlet. Am I paying any mind or insurance to an “aspiring” doctor? Good Lord, no. How about an accounting “wannabe?” Again, if you “wannabees” wannabe earning my coin, then you need to shed that tag and move into legitimacy.

Your motives, dreams, purpose, aspirations—they’re nothing until you make something of putting pen to paper, pure and purer. Here are a few gracious helpful nice things to keep in mind as you pursue the craft.

1. Shut up about what you’re going to write. Just do it.™

If I had a nickel for everyone I hear who writes more about what they plan to write, then I’d have a lot of nickels. 

2. Success is in doing, not dreaming.

I read a novel the other day, written by an “hopeful” novelist. Wait, no, that never happened. Come to think, I read nothing of the hopeful, the dreamers, the wannabes. I read those who “did it.”

3. “Having good ideas” is like spinning your wheels, only less effective.

Good to know you have some good ideas, chief. Mind paying me to do something with them? You don’t have good ideas unless you have them on paper. And even then, you’re still not writing about them. Turn the Post-It note into something of substance, or get lost. (P. S. – You can still pay me for them. Don’t toss them yet.)

4. “One of these days” = NEVER 

When you say you’re going to write about it/get around to it/write a novel “one of these days,” then you won’t.

5. In writing, you’re either doing or failing. There is no in-between.

Your writing might fill a molded paper bag in a rusted dumpster within a dystopian landfill, but at least you did something. May have sucked at doing it, yes, but that puts you a cut above the empty shelves containing the Collected Works of Brannon Pug-Ugly, Aspiring Novelist. 

6. Quit knocking lesser writers (unless you plan on taking them down with something better).

That’s self-explanatory. If you can write better, don’t say you can. Take two sheets of paper. Wad the first, stuff it in your mouth so you’ll stop talking. With the next, start writing.

7. Quit puffing and promoting other writers.

Because it’s an open tell. Getting the thrill of another writer’s acknowledgment of your over-the-top, effusive praise won’t do a thing for your craft. That’s not how they started, but that’s how you’ll never get started.

8. Writing thoughts > thinking thoughts.

You’re a relevant person. You’ve got a Twitter. Maybe even a blog. Cool. You probably think. And sometimes you might think about writing. That’s not cutting it. Enough of “thinking about writing.” Write one of those thoughts down and step out of the crib. Repeat. Make it a habit. That’s where “writers” begin.

9. Change the approach to “It would make a good story.”

How? Cut out the “it would” and stick with “make a good story.” Even if you don’t have the ability to write it. Maybe you should beef up and unlock that ability.

10. Stop kidding yourself. 

You’re not a writer if you are not writing. Quit deceiving yourself. You’re tagging yourself with a designation that does not belong to you. Yes, you might think, talk, speak, joke, sound, carry yourself about, and communicate like a writer, but you’re not. Unless you write.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com) and followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong).

8 Things to Keep OUT of Your Opening Sentence

In our on-demand culture, we need the best, and we needed it right now yesterday. There’s no time to afford mediocrity developing into greatness. If a TV show isn’t piquing my interesting within five minutes, then I’m switching on “Downton Abbey Zombieland.” If YouTube drivel doesn’t make me “lol” within thirty seconds, then I’m going to chew gum instead. And if the first sentence of a story doesn’t suffice, then your writing isn’t worth my time (or anyone’s else).

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Hi W.A.W.-

What ingredients do you need for the perfect opening sentence?

—Carter Bellamy, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Don’t call me W.A.W. That’s actually Waxing All Wrong, an unaffiliated blog that has everything to do with waxing, and nothing to do with writing.

This is an inexhaustible topic. You’ll find dozens of ways on how to “do it right,” but none on what *not* to do. Since I’m not Writing All Right, you can look for the “Opening Sentence Ingredients” elsewhere. Here’s a blacklist for things you don’t want in an opening sentence.

1. Banal Brevity

(waits for you to look up “banal” – ok, good)

Don’t shoot for the pithy one-worder or the half-sentence. Why can Dickens get away with an opening sentence of “LONDON,” and you can’t? You’re no Dickens. You are not clever if you think “less is more” and fart down something like “Smokehouses,” or “The falling of the rain,” or “Nothing beside remains.” The discriminating reader will see right though your fraudulence.

2. Truths Self-Evident

There’s a way to state the obvious with mastery, and unless you do just that, don’t do that. 

“Yet another day passed where I’d had enough with my boss.” — How insightful. No one thinks that.

“I loathe Mondays.” — Really? Thought everyone liked those.

“The sun arced ‘round the ridge, just as it always had, just as it ever will.” — Nuh uh.

3. Dialogue

Of all tactics, this one might be the most well-known. Doesn’t stop amateurs from disregarding the rule. Unless one of your characters says something that will stop both the revolutions of planet Earth and the bowels of one who binged on Taco Bell at 2 AM, then don’t use dialogue for your first line. Heck, even if it’s a great line, use it later.

4. Mundaneness 

The opening sentence need not be something you can slip into anywhere else in the story unnoticed. “Some character did some thing and yeah.” You’re setting a tone with style, not with slumber. You are allowed to jazz this up. There’s a profoundness in the placing of that opening line. Ignore it at your peril. If you’re going to write boring sentences, write them in the middle of the book, where the flames of spite will eat them at the last.

5. Backstory

“Whaaa? But how are you supposed to introduce the events of the story?” Let the events themselves introduce the story. I do not care that “High King Regurgitus was born on the Nocturnalpictus of Seventhember, thus granting him legendary power, all of which sets in motion our story.” Start too far back, and you won’t have anything at all. Need proof? Star Wars hit the scene halfway into its story, right on the money. What? It’s a movie? Yeah, well, whatever…

6. An answered question

“It was where the dead buried the dead who buried their dead.” Cool, that’s great: another dumb zombie/vamp/undead novel that I really don’t need to know more about. Come on, if you’re going to propose something like that, leave room for wonder, not blunder.

7. Character description

“He pressed a firm handed to his barrel chest, peering through penetrating hazel eyes into a lake that reflected an empty soul within a chiseled frame.” Pardon me while I reverse my dinner in hopes of purifying this sentence. This is one of the weakest of weaksauces. It doesn’t even have the consistency of sauce. This isn’t so much clever or cheating. Unless the description plays a key part in the story (and even then, that’s borderline emesis), don’t start off that way. You know, just don’t start off that way, period.

8. Introduction

“Our story begins in—” 

“Here is the tale of—” 

“Lemme tell ya about a story about—” 

You’ve seen these lazy attempts before. At least I have. I failed them when they were written back in Creative Writing for Kindergarteners. These don’t even qualify as weaksauce, vacuous as they are. May God forgive your talentless soul should such opening sentences issue from your pen.

What else do you try to avoid in your opening sentence?

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com) and followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong). He was both the Best of TIME® and the Worst of TIME® in the same TIME®.

Brainstorming: Bad for the Craft

The genesis of ideas. It needs work. If you’ve found yourself infected with the virus of inspiration, then treat it, don’t diagram it, cube it, whatever. Parlor tricks, the whole lot of them. Take brainstorming, for example. You don’t need it. Brainstorming is an outlet unto itself, a fool’s errand, and a dying pit for the writer who has too many kitschy ideas, not enough product.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Can you share some good brainstorming strategies for writers?

—Brianne McClellan, Fredericksburg, Va.

Brainstorming is for—cue Jabba the Hutt bellowing—weak-minded fools. Well, that could be the post right there, but I don’t believe in taking away without giving back. Writing All Wrong strives for environmental and critical sustainability.

Instead of brainstorming (which is a mindless, scattershot exercise in haphazardness, a poor way to tend the swirl of ideas, taking them from a mental state of uninterpretable incoherence to a written, physical state of uninterpretable incoherence), try these on for size:

1. Barnstorming

Buy a vintage aircraft and put on a show. Well, to translate the idiom, get the idea down and preserve its integrity. Like a relic aircraft, your idea takes maintenance. Don’t plop it on the paper. And once it’s there, don’t toy with squiggly lines and vapid maneuvers. Construct a repertoire, give your idea some moves, solid things you’ll be able to do with it when it comes time to write.

2. Brainbuilding

“Storms” do not imply creation, unless you consider a razing tornado creating modern, deconstructionist art out of an impoverished trailer park. Brainstorming “creates” things, but it creates randomness. Sure, jot down the brain dumps, but make sure those things harden at one point. As often as you can, make that idea flexible and coherent. Don’t settle for a word here or a word there—give your thoughts some muscle right out of the gate.

3. Creative Cartography

“But, but, but, that’s mind mapping! And that’s part of brainstorming, ha!” No, you’ve only confirmed yourself a dunce without much mind to map. Can you make a country, a world, of mind mapping? Not one I’d want to live in. Creative cartography lays out the surface of ideas, placing down roads, villages, peoples, capitals, and empty space. Don’t like hierarchy? Good. Go linear, make boundaries, lay something out that you can tie together. Borders change. Empires overwhelm others. Rivers dry up. Change the landscape of your story how you will, but there’s got to be a landscape to change.

4. Sketchbooking

You would think I hate sketches. I hate them when they suck, and when people make them public. It’s as much a stunt as swallowing a Goldfish™. But good sketchbooking is effective. Write a name atop a page. Give the character a soul. Words. Likes. Dislikes. Pencil in a place name. Give it a blurb. A GDP. Why you would vacation there. Where they hide the bodies. Write a premise. Throw in the people involved. The angles of approach. Why this matters.

5. JUST WRITE, DANGGIT.

If you have more “brainstorms” then written pieces, then you are doing this all wrong. Start doing it right. Write.

 Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com) and followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong). He is a founding member of Brainstorm Preparedness Watch.