Practice May Not Make Perfect, But It’s the Only Way to Ever Come ClosebyJennifer Weigel

 

Practice May Not Make Perfect, But It’s the Only Way to Ever Come Close

 

 

 

When asked how does one get better as an actor, artist, musician, writer, fill-in-the-blank etc., the answer often comes down to one word.

 

Practice.

 

But it’s not just a word. It’s a matter of putting in the effort.

 

Work is called work for a reason. It’s not easy, and it’s not immediate. It’s a result of labor – it comes from hours poring over a manuscript and nitpicking every single word, rewriting that ending five times so it packs the punch you’re after, getting as much feedback as you can so you are sure that your words ring true in the way that you meant them to…

 

And to make your work stronger, to make it grow, you have to feed it your time. I’m not just talking a couple of hours every third Saturday when you’re bored because the game got cancelled. Because every creative endeavor is a hungry beast, never satisfied, and a couple of hours a month just isn’t going to cut it. In order to make your work good, you have to nurture it. The Infinite Monkey Theorum requires an inestimable number of monkeys tapping away at typewriters over an incomprehensible amount of time in order to eventually possibly replicate Shakespeare (among so many other random things, not all worthy), and even in that ever-expanding alternate universe, I think we may be lowballing the actuality of the ask (there’d certainly be a lot of crap to sift through to find the Shakespeare you were seeking). So seriously, your novel isn’t going to write itself. To make your work happen, you have to do it by building it into your routine and putting in the time – you have to make it important.

 

But that takes effort. It means forcing yourself to sit and work even if you aren’t feeling it, even if you think whatever you’re doing at that moment is crap and you’ve rewritten the same bad sentence four times, even if all that you can muster is to write a poorly planned outline for a story that you’ll probably never finish fleshing out… Building a routine means actually writing out that story that’s been sitting in your head for the last two years, not just casually noting it in your journal and getting distracted by your next big, shiny idea while never finishing what you started. Pushing through those moments is important because it’s those struggles that lead us to look at things in new and different ways, to solve problems, to make our work actually matter, actually manifest. It’s this drive to improve that leads us to seek others’ opinions, to attend workshops, to read blog posts like this. Because there is always room for improvement, new forms to learn, new tricks to master. And we have to up our game if we want to be competitive.

 

The competition is stiff. It’s a harsh reality, but there are hundreds, nay thousands – probably even millions – of writers out there, all trying to get their work published. And, as said writers, we create amazing ways to collaborate and to lift one another up, to create networks of support like this one. I have never seen so much outreach and opportunity as I am seeing right now in the whole of the literary community – we are more connected than ever. But there is still a lot of competition, especially when it comes to viewership, to get your work in print where it can be seen outside of the limited scope of your own personal pet projects. One call for writing can get hundreds of submissions for a coveted ten or twelve slots. And there are hundreds, nay thousands, of such calls, the outputs of which are still vying for limited readership. If you want to really be in the running, you have to be at your peak performance. You have to make something worth reading. You have to do your research, to find someplace where your words will fit, that gets you. So, at the end of the day, it all comes down to you, honing your craft, learning how and where to make your words count.

 

And that takes practice.

Abou th author 

ulti-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist Jennifer Weigel lives in Kansas, USA. Weigel was a staff writer for Haunted MTL and is involved with Nat 1 Publishing. Author of Witch Hayzelle’s Recipes for Disaster trilogy and a smorgasbord of writing and art drifting about the Interwebs. jenniferweigelart.com

Narrative Balance

 

Your prose fiction text should have a good narrative balance. That is, a good balance of: description, dialogue, action, inner monologue and exposition. The balance shifts a little in different genres: mass market / genre fiction may have more dialogue and action, whilst a more literary text may have more reflection and description.

Exposition is a little out of fashion at the moment. This involves “telling” instead of “showing” and can be boring for the reader. Can you tell your reader any back story or anything about an alternative world by putting the words into a context?

In all cases, no one narrative element should take up more than a page at a time.

 

Description

We need less of that now than we did in Dickens’ time. Then people in the country didn't know what it was like in the town. Indeed, even people who lived in Bolton may have been astounded by Manchester. These days a little description goes a long way. Tell us about a pub having a patterned carpet and we immediately know a lot more about it. On the other hand writing with the senses always produces excellent writing. What do you or your character see, hear, smell, feel (in both senses) or taste? We tend to get stuck on the visual. Try using the other senses.

 

Dialogue

This is one of the most effective ways of showing us character. It can also push the plot forward and help to create atmosphere.  However, avoid using it deliberately for exposition or back story. Would your characters actually have that conversation if you weren’t there? 

 

Action

Short, sharp sentences can increase the pace.  Avoid using adverbs and use a more effective verb. E.g. ‘he ran’ instead of ‘he moved quickly’ ‘he gobbled his dinner up’ instead of ‘he ate his dinner quickly' or ‘she clattered around in the kitchen’ instead of ‘she worked noisily in the kitchen’.

 

Inner monologue

Get right into your character’s head. Avoid using “thought”; that immediately puts up a barrier between your character and your reader. So: ‘Would he be back in time?’ instead of ‘"Will he be back in time?" she thought.’ Not even ‘"Would he be back in time?" she thought,’ as, if we are already in her point of view, we know that it is she who is thinking.

 

Exposition

If you really need to tell your readers something about a world you’re creating think very carefully about how you do this. For example, don’t say ‘On the planet Zog the rain was so acidic that it cut through anything that was unprotected.’ Try 'Zenny bit his lip.  They’d been too late covering the carts.  The rain was now eating through it. He could only watch as the vehicles fell to pieces.’        

 

 

   

Writing Prompt – All about time

 

Write a poem, script or story about time behaving badly. For instance, dinner comes before breakfast, it is now November but yesterday was July or you are still at the beach but you flew home yesterday.

Why has this happened? 

What are the knock-on effects? 

Is time actually real?  

Do we still need clocks? 

Maybe you will find out something about time by actually about writing it. 

Think about time markers: seasons, plants, weather  

Perhaps you can show the difference between observed and elapsed time.

What about time travel? Can it exist? What are the consequences?   

If you're choosing poetry can you use the rhythm of the clock?  

Lessons in Living the Creative Life By Dale Scherfling

When I was a young student at San Diego State, my creative writing professor, Dr. Sanderlin, asked me what I wanted to do for a living.

“Write,” I said.

He studied me for a moment. Then he said gently, “Yeah, but what do you want to do for a living?”

At the time, I didn’t understand. He explained that even though he was published in The Saturday Evening Post every few weeks — an achievement that seemed like the height of success to me — it wasn’t enough. “Why do you think I teach?” he said. “I love teaching, so I’m lucky. But I live in Southern California. $1,500 every six weeks might work in for a single guy in Lorain, Ohio, but not in San Diego with a wife, three kids, and a swimming pool.”

Later, Robert Wilder told me something similar. Wilder was a successful novelist, but he didn’t pretend the royalties kept him in La Jolla. “I don’t live here on my books, Son,” he said. “Movie rights to those books bought this house.”

And years afterward, Gordon Jump, the actor from WKRP in Cincinnati, echoed the same point. We were both teaching continuing education classes — he in voice-over, me in creative photography — while I was also working at a newspaper. He laughed and said, “Maybe one percent of SAG actors live on acting.”

It wasn’t just the big names. A colleague of mine — a successful “more-than-an-extra” with some forty film credits — worked in the same department as me as a building inspector for the County of San Diego while I was employed on the County newsletter. As a full-time actor, he had been a divorced alcoholic. As a carpenter and building inspector, he was married and sober for twenty years. Movies on one hand, steady work on the other. That was the reality.

Different men. Different careers. Same lesson: very few people in the arts live on the art alone. Writing, acting, painting — the dream may fuel you, but the living usually comes from teaching, options, or steady work elsewhere.

And yet those lessons never discouraged me. They grounded me. They made clear what so many learn the hard way: you create because you must, not because it pays.

Dr. Sanderlin was right. Robert Wilder was right. Gordon Jump and my colleague were right. The art is the passion. The paycheck comes elsewhere.

And in the end, maybe that’s how it should be. The work pays for the life, and the art pays for the soul.

About the auhtor  

Dale Scherfling is a former National Guard and Navy journalist and photographer. His work has appeared in Third Act Magazine. Does it Have Pockets Magazine, Lost Blonde Literary, All Hands Magazine, Pacific Crossroads. 

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Writng Prompt: Play with narrative style

 

Should we use the first person? We know that it can be unreliable and that the character has often already had the growth so that the reader cannot enjoy growth with the character.

However, it often works well in YA when a particular type of first person narrative is used.  It seems like a best mate telling you what has just happened but when s/he has not yet worked out all of the implications. Shall we call this the immediate first person?   

Third person close often works well for many forms of fiction. We have the closeness yet we can watch the growth.

Then there is the question of whether we should use past or present tense.  Present tense can create some immediacy but can also come across as if the narrator is walking around with a note-book in their hands.

Take a passage you have already written and try it out with different narrative styles:

·         close third person present tense

·         close third person past tense

·         first  person present tense

·         first  person past tense

·         distant third person present tense

·         distant third person past tense

·         special first person present tense

·         special first person past tense

Which works the best? Do you have the courage to change the whole of your text if this suggests you should?

Ideas - where to get them from

 

Get out and about

Take a walk, go for a bus ride or browse through the shops. Try not to have too much expectation. Listen to snippets of conversation. Have a note-book or your phone ready in case you have some sudden inspiration.

Story cubes

These are available at https://www.storycubes.com/en  You can get them as physical objects or as app on your phone.

Prompts books

Check out my Big Book of Prompts

Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you,  may go to Bridge House Publishing.  

Twitter and Blue Sky  #

Check out the Twitter hashtags #writingprompt and #writingprompts. And there are also a lot of prompts on this site.  

Pictures on the net

Use the first picture you see on the internet as a prompt.  This may well be a picture on your Blue Sky or Facebook feed.

Retellings

Consider bringing a well-known story into the 21st century.  Or make the enemy or a minor character the main character. You might use well-known fairy stories, stories from the Bible and other religious books or tales from Shakespeare.

Old postcards

Get yourself a bunch of old postcards. Which stories do the pictures tell? What about the messages on the back?

Gallery visit

Visit an art gallery, museum or historic building. Make notes about the pictures. Can you build stories from what you see?

News as fiction

Find a local newspaper.  Look for some of the little stories. Can you use those as a basis for a story?

Repurposing your own work

Can you tell the story of one of your lesser characters? Can you even write a cycle of stories where a minor character form one becomes a major character in the next?