So You Want To Be A Writer - Part 1

 

13 Tips for Writing a First Draft Novel

I spent 30 years as a technical and copy writer and editor. I’ve also written and published nine books, with two more ready to go before the end of the year. During that time I learned a lot about the business of writing, enough that I could share my wisdom with others. I’ve taught creative writing classes at a community center and heard the same questions from aspiring writers. The following is Part 1 of my series to answer those questions.

1.Rule Number 1 should come etched in stone with heralds singing from the mountaintops. The basis for all writing, regardless of genre, category, or audience, comes down to one simple thing–the ability to create a cogent sentence. Without that, to quote author Chuck Wendig, you’re fucked.

At the risk of dating myself, when I was a kid (which, by the way, is my own kids’ least favorite opening to a sentence) we had to learn to diagram sentences in English class. It was boring. It was tedious. It was like pulling teeth without Novocain.

It was also BRILLIANT. They don’t teach that in schools today. Know how I know that? Because if they did, more people would know the basic rules of grammar and how they apply to putting together a sentence that actually says what you want it to say. At the risk of sounding like you mother’s grammar school teacher, here’s a quick remedial lesson in grammar usage:

A. Subject-Verb Agreement. This is it–Newton’s Law of Sentence Structure. Learn it, own it, use it. Certain subjects go with certain types of verbs. For example, he/she/it (third person singular) requires a present tense verb that ends in s. Example: He understands, she learns, it does.

Subjects that are not third person singular (they/we/I/you) require a present tense verb that does not end in s. Example: I know, we walk, they see, you learn.

Naturally, this rule only applies for action occurring in present tense, which leads to…

B. Know Your Tenses. Past, present, future. Past tense: she walked, he saw, we ran. Present tense we covered in A. Future tense: We will walk, she will learn, I will win.

C. The Misplaced Modifier. Example, the infamous “Throw Momma from the train a kiss” sentence. When starting a sentence with a verb, place the subject immediately (or as close to immediately as possible) after the verb. What are we throwing from the train–Momma or the kiss? Correct: “Throw a kiss to Momma from the train.”

D. The Dangling Participle. This has to be the number one most abused grammar rule and involves adjectives ending in ing and ed. A participle is a verb that modifies a noun or, as we say in grammar-speak, an antecedent. The dangling part comes when there’s no clear antecedent for the participle. For instance, take the sentence: After being whipped fiercely, the cook boiled the egg. What is being whipped, the cook or the egg? The way the sentence is written, it isn’t clear. The word whipped in this sentence is a dangling participle. Correct: The cook fiercely whipped the egg before boiling it. (Better would be leaving out the adverb fiercely altogether.)

2. Pronoun Referents. First of all, you do know what a pronoun is, right? A word used in place of or as a substitute for a personal noun. He/him, she/her, who/whom, it/its, they/them/their. The simple definition of a pronoun referent is the noun to which the pronoun is referring. Take this sentence: “Sparta attacked Athens and they won.” Who is they? Sparta and Athens are cities, not people. The pronoun they refers to people, plural. So the correct form of the sentence should be “The Spartans attacked Athens and they won.”

3. Adverbs. One simple rule: If you want your writing to be strong, don=t use them. Weak: He walked quickly. Strong: He raced. Don’t know the right word? Get a thesaurus. Or use one online.

4. Adjectives: (see 3). Use as a few as possible to get your point across. If you need a lot of adjectives to describe your noun, find a better noun.

5. Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases. A preposition is a word that links nouns, pronouns, and phrases to other words in a sentence (example: on, about, after, beneath, against, over, under, during, with, without, beyond, but, by, except, for, from, of, in, out, since, beside, etc.). A prepositional phrase is comprised of a preposition, its object, and any associated adjectives or adverbs, and can function as a noun, an adjective, or an adverb. Example: “The children climbed the mountain without fear.” In this sentence, without fear is a prepositional phrase.

The most well-known rule involving prepositions is never end a sentence with one, which, depending on the sentence, can create a correct sentence that is even more awkward than the one you are correcting. Therefore, if you find yourself facing this conundrum, just rewrite the sentence to avoid the entire situation. And if you can’t do that, go back to START, do not collect $200.00.

6. Punctuation. Learn to use punctuation correctly. We used to have a saying among technical editors: don’t make your writing look like someone used a comma shaker over it. It amazes me how one little curlicue can be so severely misused. There are only two uses for a comma: to separate items in a list, or to indicate a natural pause. Taking the first part of that statement, there are two schools of thought on the correct way to structure a comma-separated list: the Oxford or serial comma, and the AP Stylebook comma. Let’s take Oxford comma first. Take this sentence: “Jane had an apple, an orange, and a banana in her lunchbox.” The comma before the and is what is referred to as an Oxford comma. According to the AP Stylebook, however, the comma before the and (or the or) in a list is understood and therefore unnecessary.

Now, I don’t care to which school of thought you subscribe. Personally, I like the Oxford comma. It’s familiar and cozy and appeals to my orderly sensitivities. The important thing is to know the difference and use it consistently. If you use it one way once, use it that way all the time. No waffling back and forth. Legal documents prefer the Oxford comma to remove all doubt as to what that and or or is joining. I leave it to you to decide.

The natural pause comma, however (and see what I just did there?), is less contentious. Here’s an easy way around it. Say the sentence aloud. Wherever you naturally pause, place a comma. If you don’t pause, don’t place a comma. Simple. Move on.

Semi-colons and em dashes. Semi-colons are used to join two or more sentence fragments. What is a sentence fragment? A phrase that cannot stand alone as a sentence (i.e., it does not contain a subject and a verb). And length has nothing to do with it: “He ran.” is a complete sentence. Semi-colons are NOT used like serial commas to separate items in a list.

Em dashes are used similarly. I like to think of them as a less formal colon. You rarely see colons used in fiction, but em dashes are all over the place. I use the hell out of them myself and love them.

7. Know the Rules. You have to learn the rules before you can break the rules. I=ve heard newbie writers say this all the time–“I don’t have to follow the rules. I’m creating my own voice.” That’s sweet and all that, but don’t use it as an excuse for not learning how to do it right. How do you know you’re breaking the rules if you don’t bother to know what they are?

8. Voice. Use active as opposed to passive voice in your writing. This is the key to compelling writing. Passive voice is weak and wishy washy. Active voice is decisive and in control. Passive sentences often use words like was and is to describe action. Example: The party was attended by ten guests. Active: Ten guests attended the party. Own it, write it.

9. Dialogue. This should be easy for writers, and yet I can’t tell you how many times I read stories where the dialogue is wooden or forced. Listen to how people talk. You have conversations, or have heard conversations (hopefully). You watch TV and movies, listen to the radio, play video games. You KNOW how people talk. Use that. Say the sentence out loud. Hell, act it out loud. If it sounds off or wooden or forced, rewrite it. Have a friend run the lines of your dialogue with you. Dialogue is meant to be spoken, so speak it. And for God’s sake, don’t make everyone sound the same. Little Janie might talk with a Southern accent. Martha might be old-fashioned and proper, never using contractions or curse words. Bobby might be a foul-mouthed mafia hitman from Brooklyn. Each has his or her own voice. Learn it and use it.

 And while we’re at it, learn to write dialogue correctly. Quotation marks are for dialogue. Each line of dialogue should be contained within them, along with any punctuation (periods, commas, question marks, exclamation marks). Each new speaker in a dialogue should begin on a new line. If a speaker’s line spans more than a paragraph, the ending quotation mark is not necessary, however, the beginning one for the next paragraph is in order to identify it as dialogue.

 While on the subject of dialogue, don’t overuse dialogue tags. He said, she said, etc. If there are two people speaking, you can probably get away with dispensing with tags altogether. If it’s a long span of dialogue, throw one in now and then to clarify.

 And speaking of tags, you don’t necessarily need the he said/she said to indicate who’s speaking. You might just describe an action. Example: Robert rubbed his chin. “Okay, you’re right.” There’s no dialogue tag necessarily because we know Robert is the one talking. Nothing makes writing sound more amateurish than a dialogue tag on every sentence.

 10. Exclamation points. I keep this one standalone because it’s a pet peeve of mine. Simple rule: don’t use them unless absolutely, positively necessary, and ONLY for dialogue. Yeah, maybe you like sprinkling them in your tweets or Facebook posts, but this is literature, and everyone isn’t screaming with glee or terror on every line. The occasional “Look out!” is okay, but I have seen writers stick them on the end of perfectly innocuous sentences that have nothing to do with dialogue. In fact, I recently started reading a book in which every sentence on the first page ended in an exclamation point. Needless to say, the first page was as far as I got. You want to encourage readers, not piss them off.

 11. Tense. This might sound obvious, but I can’t tell you how many times I see, when editing a book, a writer jumping between past tense, past perfect tense, present tense, hell, even future tense. The majority of books are written in past tense, as if the action has already happened. If you want to amp up your writing (this is especially effective in urban fantasy and action/adventure-related books) write in present tense. It takes a little more concentration, but the effect is worth it. The point is, however, whatever you do, chose one and stick to it.

 12. Point of View. First person, second person (rare), third person limited, third person omniscient are all forms of point of view employed in fiction. Writing in first person is very popular right now. It gives the reader a greater sense of the story and gets them more involved, particularly in the narrator’s mind (usually, but not always, the protagonist of the book). The problem is, the action is limited to what the narrator can personally experience or is told. And if you have an unreliable narrator, the plot, as they say, thickens deliciously.

 Third person offers greater freedom in telling the story but the trade-off is a watering-down of the readers’ involvement in the story. Most third person books are written in third person limited, which means that while it is third person, the point of view is limited to the thoughts of only one character in a particular scene, chapter, or even the whole book. The biggest mistake in this instance is switching between viewpoints within a scene or chapter. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be writing third person from Johnny’s POV and suddenly be treated to what Mary is thinking. And that’s where a lot of writers screw up point of view. If that’s what you want, then you need to be writing in third person omniscient.

Third person omniscient is like playing God. You know the innermost thoughts, feelings, and motivations of all the characters. This can be both good and bad. Good in that the reader knows everything that’s going on, even the stuff other characters don’t know. Bad in that the reader knows everything that’s going on, even the stuff other characters don’t know. If that sounds redundant, it’s because it is. If third person is a watering down of first person, third person omniscient is a drop of water in a bucket of third person. Not a whole lot of compelling going on.

See, part of the tension of a story is NOT knowing everything. You want your reader to keep reading, to have something to try to figure out. If you tell them everything, what is there to figure out? Which is why few books use this point of view anymore. It was popular in books before the twentieth century when readers weren’t as sophisticated with their entertainment as they are now.

13. Characterization. I saved the best for last because no story, regardless of plot, theme, grammar, sentence structure, or flowery verse is going to succeed without characters. And those characters have to make the reader want to care about them. To do that, the writer has to know his or her characters inside and out. You have to know not just what they look or sound like, but where they were raised, what food they like, what are their favorite colors, movies, songs, seasons, books, etc. Did they break their arm falling out of a tree when they were ten and therefore now have a fear of heights? Did their father drink too much, their mother like to dance, their first bicycle get stolen on their birthday? Do they stutter when nervous, have nightmares after watching scary movies, fear clowns, get heartburns after eating tacos?

These are details you, as the writer, must know in order to create a convincing character. Ninety percent of what you know about your characters will never make it into your books. Doesn’t mean you don’t need to know it. Try this exercise: Go to the store and pretend to be your character. Look at things the way he or she would, buy what he or she would buy, interact the way he or she would interact. Get into your character’s head.

Method actors use this exercise to become the characters they’re going to play. You’ll often hear them say, “What’s my character’s motivation?” If someone asked that about your characters, what would you say? If you can’t answer, you need to get to know your characters a little better.

And while we’re on the subject, give your characters some flaws. No one likes perfection in people. It’s intimidating. Plus it doesn’t inspire sympathy. And you want your characters to be sympathetic. You also want them to have obstacles to overcome. After all, that’s the point of the book, right? If it isn’t, you need to rethink your plot, because the only reason people are going to care about your story is because of what happens to the characters. Make them care about your characters, and they will follow them anywhere.

And this applies whether the character is the protagonist or the antagonist. We’ll all agree the villain is more fun to write, but do we know why? Think about the characteristics that make your antagonist more fun, and use that knowledge to beef up the appeal of your other characters.

And that’s it in a nutshell; the combined advice I’ve learned from writing and editing. In Part 2 of So You Want To Be A Writer, I’ll talk about preparing your masterpiece for publication.

If you would like a pdf copy of this post, please post a request in the comments section and I will be happy to send it to you.