The Mail Never Fails

I’ve debated the longer-form answer format, and in this round, it lost out to bullet style answering. It’s about time I clear out my question backlog anyway. Inquiring minds want answers. Good thing I’ve got those on hand.

[Insert common writing mistake here]

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Is it possible to really use too many adverbs? 

—Greg Simpson, Albany, N.Y. 

Absolutely positively yes. For every adverb, there’s a remarkably stronger verb or adjective. Use those instead. Seriously.

I’ve got a great story in the works; it’s a mystery with a twist ending. Should I make it a short story, a novella, or a novel?

—JoAnn Hendersen, Kirkland, Wash. 

Doesn’t a mystery end with a twist anyway? Go write it as a mystery novel where the twist is that it’s actually a short story. Let me know how that works out.

Hi, I hope you can answer my question. I’m thinking of entering the chick-lit genre, but I need to know whether a first-person or third-person narrative is the most appropriate. Thanks!

—Ruth Hambrick, Columbia, S.C. 

Appropriateness is irrelevant. Aesthetics are everything.

First person: “I was lonely.” Pedestrian.

Third person: “Cinthya was lonely.” Bland.

Use the fourth-person instead: “One could be lonely.” Ambiguous, intriguing, effective.

You seem in the know when it comes to literary trends. In this age of communication, do you think there’d be a market for text-message based epistolary novels?

—Robbie Bryant, Redding, CA.

y not? r u 4 rl? not that i h8 on new forms of lit, but rly? cant c this gettin off the grnd. u can try 2 rite 1, sure, but its not going ne where, not even in todays age of communication. can u imagin readin this thing? i dont thin [SEND]

Shucks. Reached my character limit.

I’ve read that Shakespear [sic] knew or used about 3,000 [definitely sic] words in his writing. since he’s pretty much the best there is, even though there’s no one better, how many words on average should a writer know?

—Casey Cruz, Edgewood, N.M.

On average, a writer needs to know about one million, three hundred fifty-six thousand, seven hundred eighty-one words, give or take. You can get by with an even million, but the more words you know, the better. Some writers knew upwards of a billion words, like William Shakespeare. When it comes to vocabulary, you need to know where you stand. The best way to figure out your vocabulary is to write out all of the words you know.

Here’s a handy chart to go by:

50-100 words: I don’t know if you’re trolling or just being stupid.

100-250 words: (see above)

500-1000 words: Finish preschool first before considering a career in writing.

1000-10,000 words: Below average, just like everyone one.

10,000-30,000 words: You might be qualified to write a letter to the editor of a small town newspaper. I’m talking small, population in the dozens.

30,000-75,000 words: Good work in maximizing the use of “your,” “you’re,” and “ur.”

75,000-500,000 words: If you break the 75,000-word barrier, then you could be mistaken for a literate human being.

500,000-1,000,000 words: You are capable of constructing a Flesch-Kincaid sentence with a reading level of 10.

1,000,000-1,500,000 words: Congratulations! As long as you have a decent idea, you can probably write a story (even if it’s a crappy one).

1,500,000-5,000,000 words: Most good writers find themselves well within this range.

5,000,000-500,000,000 words: Most of the best writers stop here, only because they have better things to write.

500,000,000-1,000,000,000 (that’s one billion): John Milton. Ain’t no one touchin’ him.

1,000,000,000+: William Shakespeare, because he’s the boss. And he could so take on John Milton in a fight.

1,967,677,323.98: Dictionary bot? DISQUALIFIED.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and entered as a racehorse, since it doesn’t exceed the 15-character limit.


In the Beginning

So it begins.

The story’s there in the mind, nowhere on the paper. There’s a great tale somewhere within your grand idea, but getting into it remains the dilemma. The beginning is your builder of momentum. Get the right push, and the narrative carries itself. Start by languishing in the mud, forgo your impetus, and we have a story that’s fighting the doldrums when it should be developing.

Describe your setting, too pedestrian. Set the stage, whisk us away. Talk about your character, invite us to ignore them. Have us tag along with that character’s goings-on, we’re in. Tell us, and we won’t listen. Show us, and we might glance. Take us, and we’ll go. Anything less, and there’s nothing but a journey not taken.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

how do i begin my story. do I start by descirbing [sic] the scenety [sic] or should I tell a little bit more about my character? Its pioneer romance with a feel-good feel and i dont kow [sic] whether or not i should start with the pioneer setting or whether or not I should start with my pioneer heroin [sic, I think]. 

—Gabey Meeks, Hagerstown, Md.

Well.

The short answers: 1) I don’t think you should begin this story. At all. 2) If you’re faced with a choice of “descirbing scenety” and telling more about a character, I’d go with what makes actual sense. 3) Maybe you can tell me more about this “feel-good feel.” 4) Be careful with that pioneer heroin. I’m assuming it’s a touch more potent.

The long answers: Depends entirely on where you’re taking this story. You could start with a standard intro, bringing the protagonist’s struggle to the forefront right away:

“Across the dusty thoroughfare, she could hear the doctor cursing about his missing needles and syringes. She hoped the apothecary wouldn’t also notice anything missing from his reserves. Her desperation led to constant fear.”

You could also lunge into your character, as you tried to suggest:

“Martha sobbed, tears tracing through dusty cheeks. She winced after tightening the bandana on her arm, battered from self-infliction and addiction. The remnant strands of her pale hair fell prey to gusts of sand and wind.”

Perhaps the setting then? Not going to offer much in that vein, other than mentioning that you’ll see this often. Narrative absorption is predicated on some mode of mental/spatial transportation, hence the prevalence of setting first, then story. It sets the mood, the tone, with the place making space.

But for a pioneer heroin romance with a feel-good feel? I recommend beginning another story altogether.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and begun with the letter W.


Endgame

The end. It fails or succeeds. It completes or leaves hanging. It fulfills the promise or cheats the premise.

Reaching the end and closing with brilliance takes a wholly different set of masterstrokes. Anyone can begin a work, and most anyone can keep it going. Bringing it full circle is the provence of the devoted.

When you’re at the end of your cliff, do you give the hero wings? Do you paint his next adventure? Do you let him fall? Do you leave the chasm in the void? There’s no right answer, but an answer that doesn’t live up the journey leading to the cliff’s edge undermines the effort in getting there. In these cases, Occam’s Razor cuts backwards; the simplest answer is not always best.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Hi Writing All Wrong, I hope you can help me out here. Im halfway through my first fantasy novel and its going great. While I think I’ve mastered the meat of the story, I’d like to try to end it in a significant way. Since it’s about two warring kings who don’t know they’re brothers, I’m curious whether I should make more of a surprise ending (where one finds the other’s family heirloom on the other), or if I should go for a more triumphal sort of victory to end it? What do you think? Thanks.

—Josiah Sparks, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Remember, you can pick however you want to end this story. It doesn’t have to be anything worth reading. You’re shooting yourself in one foot already, while keeping the other in a bear trap. I think we can salvage the rest here.

Let’s list the predictable endings. Don’t use any of these.

1: King finds revelatory clue on the other king during battle, ends the war.

2: King finds revelatory clue on the other king during battle, kills him anyway, suspects fraud.

3: King finds revelatory clue on the other king during battle, gets killed by maniacal lieutenant.

4: King finds revelatory clue on the other king during battle, later kills his own “adopted” father for engineering war.

5: Yeah, I’m not discovering anything grand in the revelation sweep here.

6: The triumphal sort of victory. You can do better than this.

Now for the worthwhile endings, if you really want to craft something that you don’t want as a dust magnet on the shelf. That is, the shelf of your own house where you keep all the unsold copies of the book.

1: King kills king, only to have dying king claim to be his brother all along. (Wait for it…) In grief, king murders his “adopted” father and mother for pitting him against his brother (wait for it…), only to find that the dead king’s parents are the “real” “adopted” parents, who then claim (wait for it…) that his real brother wasn’t the dead king at all, but rather another king of a stronger rival kingdom that they feared would alliance with the “adopted” son’s “adopted” brother’s kingdom.

Then again, I’m not so sure about that one.

2: King reaches truce with rival king, as they discover they both came from a noble family of a third kingdom, which they once had mutually loathed, despised, and eventually eliminated. The animus turns to the respective sets of parents for their deception. Each king kills his own, thus fulfilling some sort of obscure prophecy that the third kingdom would rise from its death to engulf its tormentors. It is later revealed that the deception was a mind-altering curse of some sort, leaving the kings unknowingly guilty of wrongful patricide/matricide.

3: Kings battle with more fervency, driven to rage at the knowledge of their lost brotherhood. The revelation doesn’t halt the warfare. Kind of an anti-twist, left ambiguous. Pick your winner.

If I commandeered your novel, I’d go with this ending. It cannot be surpassed.

4: Each king finds that they cannot kill the other, no matter how fiercely they wound one another. This confirms what they both suspected to be true: they are in fact separate parts of a bifurcated soul. After performing an obscure ritual based on a lullaby sung by their respective parents, they fuse into one entity: the Overlord of the Realm. Taking a sober look back at their past, they (or he) begin(s) to realize that their (his) combined efforts were part of a larger plot to destroy the weaker kingdoms of the realm and eventually turn on one another’s kingdom. They soon discover the architect of the grand scheme: the Dragon Mage, Explausibius. He summons a dragon kingdom from another dimension, irrupting into the human kingdom universe to keep this newfound alliance from forming against him. Since his grand design failed, the Dragon Mage takes it upon himself to destroy the remaining armies sooner than expected. As the Overlord of the Realm and the Dragon Mage rage their war, they soon realize (again), that they’re unable to mortally wound the other. This confirms what neither of them suspected to be true: they are in fact two additional parts of higher bifurcated soul. By reciting forward and backward an obscure prophecy of dragons and men, they form into a unified OverMage of the Dragon Realm, Expossiblissimus. This transformation summons an even grander architect of evil, a Dark Celestial Mage, who—

Nevermind. This is going nowhere. Now that’s an ending for you.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and fused into a celestial being if you sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to the tune of “Greensleeves.”