Writing fiction isn’t easy. Short stories, novels, plays, or screenplays all call for a three-dimensional, high-definition, multi-layered effort on the part of the writer. The endeavor lands us in a matrix as illusive as anything Keanu Reeves stumbled through. Words shift and dissolve, meanings change, the whole becomes lost in its parts. Therefore, diving into the complex world of a story often leaves writers confused and frustrated.

Understanding the elements of craft is only one part of navigating the terrain. Learning how to mesh the elements of craft together, the actual “process” of writing, is the larger challenge. My goal is to suggest a route through the writing matrix. To do this, we need to use visualization. 

Begin with a published book, any book, the rectangular shape of it when closed, its spine, its back and front covers, the thickness of its pages. Now think of yourself opening that book to chapter one, laying it flat on a table in front of you. Stand up and look down at it. You see words lined up on the right-hand page. Sentences and paragraphs, subject+verb+ prepositional  phrase for one sentence, something else for the next. It doesn’t seem that complicated. In the physical world the page is a flat, two-dimensional object, but this impression is deceiving. The creation of those words, sentences, and paragraphs is anything but two-dimensional. It is the process of “layering” tasks onto the same concept in order to shape it into one cohesive piece of work. Here’s a step-by-step look at process via our imaginary book.

7. These thematic purposes, big and small, need to be “joined” to glass one. You look for key words. If your content and structure are about love, you look for places to set up images of love, symbols of love, expressions of love. Maybe instead of a piece of dialogue, you decide to put in a gesture, a finger running down a cheek. All this goes into the pane of glass three: anything that clarifies, intensifies, distills the language. Through this process, pane three fuses to the first two and again, you have a single piece of glass.

We often only think of writing in its final published form, a thick rectangular book with three pages or a hundred pages of clean text written by accomplished writers. We shake our heads and groan and mumble, “I don’t even know where to start” leading to “I’m going to fail.”

We want to give up because we don’t understand that writing is a process, and understanding the matrix of writing: the who, what, where, when, why, and how of content, the organization of structure, the writer’s own feelings (theme) that emerge from the text, and the time and effort of revision and proof-reading. Seeing each of these as a separate step (or a pane of glass) in a process, makes it easy to understand that good results require time, attention, and practice and none of it is easy.

I found this essay when I looked myself up on Google.  Yes, I’m blushing. However, I forgot about this and think I wrote some helpful words here. Check it out.

An old draft, dusty and gray, looks hopefully at its creator, knowing there must have been a kernel of an idea, a set of pictures, a deep emotional tug, that needed to be woven together, but something went wrong, an outward interference or a failure–it it does happen–to bloom.  But what an old draft knows is that time creates distance, and distance brings with it a new perspective.

The draft stares into a mirror unadorned, the author standing behind it.  She turns it around.  Takes inventory.  Begins to ask questions.  The old draft straightens under this scrutiny while the author wonders, “Who is the character here?”

What’s her name?  Where is she and what is her current state of mind? What does she want?  What stands in her way?  What is her key strength?  Her weakness?

The old draft yields up the  information it possesses and hopes the author with see the bits that are strong and fresh, but not gloss over the parts that are missing or weak.  The old draft knows it is flawed, and only wants to get better.

The old draft reminds the author that while characters are important, so is the story itself.  Does the story have a spine and does that spine reflect what the main character wants and/or needs?  How does the story test her, and how does it bring out her strength?  What about who she is bumping up against?  Is he or she a worthy opponent?  Is there real doubt created in the mind of the reader as to who will win?  The old draft knows that in order to propel the reader through the story, there must be suspense, and it is created by the uncertainty of outcome.

The old draft wants the author to know there are many beautiful words contained within its pages, but do they all work?  Do they all serve the story?  The old draft understands that in order to be the best it can be, some things will have to go.  That it must be put on a fat-free diet.  Must spend time moving and flexing.  It must go to boot camp. The old draft doesn’t like it, but knows this is the only way to build muscle and strength.

The old draft is beginning to feel young again, relishes the author’s rekindled enthusiasm, and urges the work to continue and for the author to invite a few readers to check the progress and give honest and constructive criticism.  The old draft consoles the author when some of the readers feel this or that needs an adjustment and tells the author to consider what might work and what won’t, and then to trust her gut.

When the old draft see the author wander away with a gleam in her eye, it knows she’ll be back to put on the finishing touches and the draft  feels fresh and alive once more. ♦

This piece by me was published by D. J. Adamson at LE COEUR DE L’ARTISTE on 8/28/2016. D. J. Adamson is the author of the Lillian Dove Mystery series.

Last night Tim and I ate at the Austria Hof Bar (excellent food) in Mammoth Lakes and watched the Toronto Raptors defeat the champion Golden State Warriors.  I rooted for the home team to come back for one more game against the odds with players limping to the locker room, but it didn’t happen, and I’m happy for Toronto. We watched them throughout the series and rooted for Kawhi and the team. Both  should be proud of their efforts.

What this reminded me of was an essay I published in the now defunct Flash Fiction Chronicles blog about writing and basketball in 2012. The players have changed, but the premise still works. Coaches are to basketball as writers are to stories. Hopefully the names of past players will ring a welcome bell, and the analogy will work for you today. Here’s the piece:

Jun 20 2012

Well, dang. It’s Wednesday and something needed to show up in this spot and I forgot to double-check last night. Blame it on the Heat and the Thunder!

What a terrific game. I just hope the Thunder can come back so the series goes to seven. Nothing like great basketball to get me thinking about teamwork and how it applies to writing. The writer is the coach. The team: each member is a story element and they must work together to WIN.  (Indulge me here. Everything seems like a metaphor for writing to me!)

Think about it. The coach is the one who teaches, guides, plans, shapes, and has a heart attack when all the teaching, guiding, planning, shaping doesn’t work. The team has potential, it may even have talent, but if left to their own devices, the members might play well, might even be brilliant, but going all the way, winning that trophy? Not so easy.

The big man might not let the others play because he never gives up the ball. The point guard might try to get everyone to pay attention, to work the ball around to the player with the best “look,” but maybe there’s a bumping battle for position in the key and the player misses the pass.  You’ve heard it before from the master himself, Michael Jordan, “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” And whose job is it to bring teamwork and intelligence to the court? The coach.

So how does that apply to writing? You guessed it, the author is the coach. He or she is the person in charge, the one who makes the tough decisions, who inspires, motivates, and keeps everything on track. The starting team includes structure, language, content, theme, and characters with dialogue, setting, clarity, metaphor, and imagery coming off the bench.

The coach puts his first team on the court. The best players, but he has to switch them out when something isn’t working, and he has a strong bench to do so. Maybe for one story, language is the focus–the element that never lets the author down. For another, structure is the inspiration, but no matter what strategy the coach decides will work, he has to count on all the elements to do their part.

I love Blake Griffin. Watched him in the NCAA championships and there was something about him that stood out (damn good basketball) and I remembered him, so when he ended up on the Clippers, I was excited. We went to a couple games and the Clippers suddenly had enough talent that we dared to hope they would be contenders, but they didn’t always play as a team. Whoever had the ball tended to shoot. There was little working around the floor and while Chris Paul and Blake Griffin might be two of the most talented players in basketball, they could not bring it in the end without the rest of the team.

The same is true in putting together a story. An author might be brilliant with words, stringing them together like easy lay-ups, but a story needs more than pretty words. It has to have meaning. It has to stir something in the reader. Occasionally, of course, an imagery-rich story might be enough, something there beneath the lines that works for many readers, but we’re talking about the long haul here, making it to the finals, to the championship. Sharp original language is like having a superb big man. You might win over fans for a few stories, but at some point, the author needs to send in the rest of the team.

Language, structure, and content need to work together and still have room for the other elements to play their part in order for a writer to produce championship work. Writing is like coaching. You can’t just put your best two players in the game and hope they can bring home the NBA Trophy while you cheer them on.  You need to coach everyone on the team. You need to get each one to contribute the best version of their skills to the play.

If you saw the game last night, important plays were made by bench-warmers Nick Collison for the Thunder and Norris Cole for the Heat. And what about Mario Chalmers? We expect to be cheering Dwyane Wade and LeBron, but Bosh? And while Russell Westbrook scored a valiant 32 points, the Thunder lost because yes, late in the game, his team ran out of gas.

So enough of this. You get the point. We writers need to consider how all the elements of a story can contribute to the overall story and while one or the other may dominate, it is the contributions from the bench that will often carry the day.

I have a story up at Fictive Dream, “Acadia Lost.” Thank you, Laura Black. Find it here.

“Summer evenings, while the grown-ups smoked Kents and shuffled cards in the kitchen, Denny Dale and I played Superman and Supergirl in his mama’s front room. With old pillowcases tied around our necks, we leapt in single bounds from skyscraper to skyscraper.”

Photo by Gabriel

I have a story up at Bending Genres. Thank you! Find it here:

“The over-ruling concept in public disease prevention is to never go into a wet, dirty, graffiti-ridden toilet stall. Common sense demands you search for the cleanest cubicle. However, if none is available, do not hesitate to comb the nearby neighborhood for a decent restroom rather than risking the dangers of using one exhibiting undue negligence or sexual activity.”

Photo by Hafidz Alifuddin on Pexels.com

My story, Mono Lake, is now up at Sheldon Compton’s “The Airgonaut.” Find it here.

“They waded in the lake’s warm salty water, chasing away black clouds of alkali flies. They felt as if they’d landed on long lost planet and he’d missed it.”

 
Photo of Mono Lake was taken by Ashley Webb from Los Angeles, USA and found at Creative Commons.

• Create content by taking notes, brain-storming, writing a “shit” draft
• Write a draft
• Do research to understand the world you’ve created or the personalities
• Think about story structure
• Make certain everything in a story serves a purpose (especially in flash)
• Be willing to delete that which doesn’t fit into the structure
• Go through the story to improve the language
• Make certain everything that needs to be clear is clear
• Make certain that verbs are active, that nouns are specific
• Proof-read carefully
• Set it aside (this is one of the hardest mini-goals because usually at this stage we are sooooooo excited about what we’ve created, we can’t wait to send it out)
• Reread and make changes after it’s been set aside
• Ask a trusted reader to read it (trusted: gentle, supportive, yet honest, honest, honest)
• Decide what notes you agree with and what you don’t and make edits
• Set aside again, at least an hour or two so that when you proof-read for the final time, you have enough distance to find now what your eye skipped over before
• Send out and cross fingers

• Read widely and deeply
• Talk to others about writing
• Be open-minded
• Try new genres
• Be a mentor