Write It Ugly: What The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing Taught Me
(A self-help book published by the editors of Writer’s Digest.)
“Always begin with your protagonist. Establish time and place, and announce the stakes.”
— N. M. Kelby, self-help author of The Constant Art of Being a Writer
“Sometimes one can overanalyze. If you preordain, you stifle yourself. Have a general idea, and let the rest come naturally, out of the characters and their situations.”
— Robert Ludlum, author of the Jason Bourne trilogy
“I say the hell with plot! I’m going to write stories about people the way I see them. I’m sick of formula—Hero, Heroine, Heavy. I’m sick of ‘Neat and Tidy,’ with every puppet jerking its strings through what ought to be.”
— Leigh Brackett, Hugo Award-winning author and screenwriter of The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and The Empire Strikes Back
“Two questions form the foundation of all novels: ‘What if?’ and ‘What next?’ A third question, ‘What now?,’ is one the author asks himself every ten minutes. That’s how you write.”
— Tom Clancy, creator of Jack Ryan and inspiration behind Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell
Last night I was writing about you.
I know you’re still my love.
— Tegan and Sara, “I Know I Know I Know” (2004)
How can you not go Ga-Ga over advice like that?
I know things that I know you should know about being a better writer. It comes as facts and information from The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, by the editors of Writer’s Digest. In this book is a cast of hundreds, with stellar advice from the likes of John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Tyler, Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, Karen Wiesner and Ray Bradbury.
Oh! I’m getting the vapors just from thought of them! And so, here for you to utilize is the output of my fever, where I relate to YOU—The Author!—everything I’ve learned from reading this awesome tome.
Let us begin:
Essay #1 – Rough up Your First Draft
Hello, Lovely Reader! On occasion during my journey through the Universe of Writing, I find myself referring to a book that I adore. After many decades of viewing writing simply as a hobby—or maybe as a sport—I got serious about crafting novels around the turn of the century.
And found that I sucked.
I’d taken college level courses on creative writing. I organized creative writing clubs with fellow students, and poetry clubs and song-writing clubs, and wrote short stories and poems, and song lyrics galore. But nonetheless, at novel-writing?
I sucked. Big time.
After much research, I began asking questions and posting content on author-related websites and online forums. I volunteered my services at Project Gutenberg, and became a Top-Rated Source of information at Yahoo! Asks, in categories that included Creative Writing, Poetry, Action and Adventure, and Science Fiction.
Yet my sucking at writing a novel continued. Unabated, it seemed.
But then! I found my savior! I bought The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing—a series of essays and lessons, and interviews and personal stories, compiled by the editors of Writer’s Digest. It features an amazing number of luminary figures; authors and agents, publicists and editors, screenwriters and poets.
It is indeed most awesome-saucy.
I believe everyone who writes can benefit from the wit and wisdom found in this book. So thus, and now with that, please allow me to take you on a recap of my journey toward becoming a better writer.
My first post ever in regards to The Handbook (as we shall call it for short) came during a discussion I was having online with friends over the length of novels, novellas and short stories. They were working on the format for the Rules and Requirements of a now-famous writing contest. During our conversation, I informed my friends that the editors of Writer’s Digest offer specific guidelines for the length of a piece of work, which are allowed to flex a bit with regard to certain genres (Fantasy can be longer, while Literary Fiction can run a bit short.)
To wit:
Short stories range from as few as 1,500 words, on up to to 30,000. Novellas run from 30,000 to 50,000 words. After that, a quote in The Handbook from Agent Lori Perkins (of the L. Perkins Agency in New York City) states that it’s easier to market a first-time novel if the word count is between 80,000 to 100,000, which is considered to be the length of an average novel.
After having stated that fact to my contest-running friends, I felt compelled to post a quote holding a further bit of information that I’d learned from reading The Handbook.
And I pasted this on my personal Message Board:
Chapter 31 – Rough up Your First Draft, by Elizabeth Sims
“Why does a perfectly written first draft sound stilted? Because you haven’t allowed it to flow. You haven’t given yourself permission to make mistakes. And if you’re not writing at full throttle, you’re not giving your story everything you’ve got. Creativity isn’t a linear process, even though a finished novel is. If you can’t be gut-level honest with your writing, you haven’t got a shot at getting any readers. For your story to come alive, you must barter away some control.
“You must embrace anarchy. Ignore sentence structure when writing your first draft. Write what comes to mind next, not what should come next in your story. Transitions are unimportant at this stage. Your first ideas must be as unfettered as possible, which means, yes, you will produce some crappy writing. That’s fine. Get it out now. It will only contaminate your story until you do your second draft.
“If you think of two different ways of saying something, write them both. Later on, you can decide which way you like better.”
I ran into the 2,000 character limit that the website I was using had for creating posts, and thus ended my review of Chapter 31 of The Handbook.
At the time, it was such a shame.
So! Shall I continue?
Ha! Of course I shall.
‘Make a mess!’ Ms. Sims suggests, in the chapter she penned for The Handbook. Draw boxes around key passages. Stack up modifiers, from which you’ll choose the one you like best later on in your edits. Take notes, scribble in the margins – whatever it takes to get thoughts out of your head and onto paper.
…
Ahm. ‘Scribble?’
Ms. Sims, I would think, was rather old-school at the time when she made that statement. But I took her advice to heart. And here is another suggestion from her that I use all the time!
Hit the Return key. A lot!
She suggested—as I often do!—to give the Return a few good whacks whenever an important idea pops into your head. Then write about the idea for a while and, when done, whack the Return key again a few times, and go back to whatever it was that you were writing prior.
Don’t wait until the moment in the story where the idea you had fits in! Don’t hurry up your process, and try to write your way to that passage, or that scene or line! Just whack at the Return key, and get it out right now. Later on, you can Cut and Paste and Copy and Save, and jigger things around in your story until everything fits together.
Or maybe you’ll find that the idea sucks, and you should throw it away! And now at least you know what you ought not to write.
I love being a Return Key Whacker! I do it all the time!
Elizabeth Sims reflects on this matter again, near the end of her chapter. Why write in such a sloppy manner? Why not create the Perfect Novel right away, during your first draft?
Well, she says as she answers herself, you liberate your mind when you suspend criticism and judgment, and surprising stuff pours forth.
Stuff that makes you laugh!
Stuff that makes you gasp!
You cry! You cheer! You linger!
You’ll experience sudden moments of inspiration, where you find that you’re unable to scribble (or type) fast enough. And you’ll come to understand—as Ms. Sims states in her closing piece—that when beginning a novel, there’s no difference between a first time writer and one who has a hundred best-sellers under his or her belt.
Each of you start to write.
So do it! You know you can!
Write something amazing right now!
Most sincerely yours,
R.D.Burger
Author
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