Before I begin, let me just mention that Points of Departure, the anthology of Liavek stories Pamela Dean and I did, is going live on May 12, and we just got a very nice starred review http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-62681-555-1 at the Publisher’s Weekly website. This is a very big deal, as PW affects things like library purchases. I’m not sure how this will work for an ebook, but libraries do carry them now and it is also available as a print-on-demand paperback, so I guess we’ll find out.

Also, we are in the process of migrating the website to a new server and new, more mobile-friendly design. I am hoping that we can do it seamlessly, but hope and practice are seldom the same, so if the site goes missing unexpectedly or suddenly becomes illegible, that’s probably what’s going on. I’ll let you know when we’re safely done.

One of the problems with nearly all how-to-write advice, including this blog, is that in order to talk about writing fiction, we inevitably focus on one aspect of it at a time. The more analytical advisors tend to break things down along lines that focus on story: this is how you do characterization, here is some advice about plotting, that is how you do setting or style, dialog or action, pacing or structure; always remember these important things about theme, beginnings, suspense, tension. The more intuitive advisors talk mainly about the writer: this is how you get motivated, cultivate your inner idea-generator, take yourself on “creative dates,” get over your hangups about your unworthiness or lack of skill, let go of your inner critic.

The truth is that when you are writing, you have to do all of that at the same time. You have to be motivated while you are writing the action that shows off the characterization that furthers the plot as you get over your hangups while you continue writing the dialog that goes along with the action to keep the pacing consistent as you invent new ideas and squash your inner critic so that you can keep the suspense up and the middle moving.

This is why writing is hard.

A writer who spends too much time focused on any one aspect of writing, whether it’s something about them and their process or some more analytical thing having to do with the story itself, almost always ends up unbalancing the story. In the worst cases, the whole thing sinks; in less extreme ones, the book ends up full of lumps: here is a page of characterization, then two pages of pure action, followed by three of dialog. It’s like driving over a corduroy road, or like mixing butter, flour, and milk and getting dumplings when what you wanted was a smooth cream sauce.

What advice-givers seldom mention is that all these things – including the writer-specific ones as well as the story-specific ones – are ingredients. You do want to use the best and freshest ingredients possible, but that alone will not guarantee that you end up with cream sauce instead of dumplings. You also have to get the proportions right, and mix them properly, in the right order, and under the right conditions, and then cook the result in the right way for what you are making. You can make a perfectly fine cake batter, but if you try to cook it in boiling water, the way you would make dumplings, well, it is not going to work very well, that’s all.

Unfortunately, nobody has come up with recipes for the novel equivalents of cake vs. dumplings vs. cream sauce. Writing is much more like the kind of recipes my grandmother used: take some leftover mashed potatoes, mix with flour, and roll out; spread with some cut apples and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Roll it up and bake in a hot oven until done. If you’re an experienced cook, you can probably make something edible from that recipe; if you’re not, it will probably take some experimentation, even if you have seen the dish made (or eaten it) and therefore have some idea what you’re going for.

Having some idea what you’re going for is important, because, as with cooking, different end results require starting with different proportions and preparations, and not necessarily all the same ingredients. Cake uses flour, butter, and milk, but also eggs, sugar, and a rising agent; cream sauce is generally just flour, butter, and milk. Dumplings…well, it depends on whether you’re making them to go in chicken soup, or whether you’re putting them in a stewed blueberry dessert, and also on whether you like yours light and fluffy or solid and chewy. Personal taste is an important factor.

What ingredients go into your novel depend, in part, on what kind of thing you want to do, in the most general sense. Fluff or drama? Comedy or tragedy? Specific genre or subgenre, or let’s-just-write-it-and-see? Planner or pantser? Different genres and subgenres require different proportions; a sweet Romance will have a lot more characterization and emotion and a lot less physical action than an action-thriller. A murder mystery pretty much requires a murder, the way stuffed mushrooms pretty much require mushrooms. If you hate the idea of writing a murder the way some people hate mushrooms, best pick a different story.

It is perfectly possible to cook/write something that you dislike yourself, but that people who do like that sort of thing really love. It takes a lot of motivation, though, because it’s usually not much fun, and usually quite a bit of experience, because if you don’t like it, you don’t know a good-tasting one from a bad-tasting one. I don’t make coffee for my guests because I hate the stuff and have no idea how to tell good from bad. On the other hand, my sister, who hates ginger but who is a very good cook, made some fabulous sweet-and-savory ginger not-quite-cookies for the three of us who came for lunch last weekend, because she knows we all love ginger…but she made us take the leftovers away. (It was a sacrifice, but somehow we managed.) I don’t think she’d have done that for very many other people.

So if you like light, fluffy fiction that’s heavy on characterization, you perhaps ought not to start off trying to write a gritty, action-packed dystopian novel. And when you are frustrated over your inability to shoehorn in more action or characterization, perhaps you should stop and think. Maybe your cream sauce isn’t supposed to have sugar in it.

14 Comments
  1. Good luck with the site transition!

    I’m struggling with this balance act now. I’m trying to add more depth to my plot from the get go (rather than adding it in later) and it’s proving to be problematic. Sigh. But hopefully once I nail down an outline, things will run smoother. I could never be a pantser if I tried!

  2. and new, more mobile-friendly design.

    Oh, dear. I hope that doesn’t translate to a non-mobile less-friendly design, as several other sites I frequent have recently done. One does get tired of feeling like a second-class citizen because one’s reading on an actual computer, not a phone.

    This is why writing is hard.

    This and the preceding paragraph made me laugh out loud. And I think it’s why so much how-to-write instruction leave me cold; the analysis breaks it down after-the-fact in a way that’s completely different from the way it works in practice. Especially to because-it-feels-right me.

    the way stuffed mushrooms pretty much require mushrooms.

    *grin* I have, on occasion, been tempted to order the stuffed mushrooms and just eat the stuffing.

  3. It is, however, possible to concentrate on one ingredient in a draft.

    When I was teenager, I would write down the plot and never mind the characterization. Once I had the entire plot in hand, I could look at it and say, “Ah, that’s why he acted” and go back and fill in the thoughts and motivation on the second draft.

    • Yes, I forgot to mention layering as an option. I’ll deal more with that in the next post. I don’t know very many writers who work that way as a usual process, so I think my point still stands, but it IS a good way of dealing with a specific problem area that you know needs work.

  4. The only problem I have with this particular culinary analogy is that suggests I tend to write pemmican.

    • I don’t think Pemmican has nearly enough ingredients to be comparable to your stuff, Graydon, though I’ll grant you the density and nutrition aspects.

      • Thank you!

        Five game, three berry artisanal pemmican. 🙂

        (Which I like a lot better than the burlap lingerie analogy — hardly anyone is going to want this, but anyone who does want it will want it a lot.)

        • Would you please explain the burlap lingerie analogy? After trying a couple of Web searches for clarification, I am thoroughly confused about what you meant.

          • There’s a Flanders and Swann sketch that contains the phrase “And I do doubt me an it be commercial.”

            That’s my fiction; whether or not an editor at a commercial publisher likes it themselves, they’re not going to want to acquire it because the potential audience is very small.

            Which is where the burlap lingerie analogy comes in; most people actively do not want any such thing, but there may be a small group whose tastes are such they are absolutely delighted to discover such a thing is available.

            Which is why I like the pemmican analogy better; it seems more virtuous to produce something that takes a certain effort to chew.

  5. Is this going to be Liavek stories that weren’t in the original books?

    • No, this is all the Wrede and Dean stories that were in the original books, plus two that weren’t. One was cut for reasons of space the first time around, the other is one the two of us wrote together to smooth out a gap in the plot. So there’s a little something new, but only a little.