Is There a Right Way to Write?

I’m happy to hear that a number of people like the idea of the Writer’s Corner and think it might be helpful to them. That being the case, I’ll try to get these features done in a somewhat more timely fashion--while still working feverishly on Fiery Cross. OK. On with a few specific questions that people have asked me since the last WC:

Q: I want to write a book, but I don’t know what to write about. Any suggestions?

A: Sure. How about a techno-fantasy set in the near future, in which the President of the United States is killed and replaced by an android, programmed by the KGB, only a teenage computer hacker accidentally discovers the secret, and nobody will believe him, but...

Or, how about a fictionalized (and unauthorized) biography of the Crocodile Hunter--that Australian gentleman on the Animal Channel who keeps leaping out of cars and boats in order to seize dangerous reptiles by the tail and point out how beautiful they are?

Or a piece of experimental fiction in which you have one character, who appears naked and only speaks in questions?

Or...

Good grief, what are you asking me for? I’m not going to write the book, you are. (Or we hope so, anyway.) How can you write about something unless it interests you?

Look, what do you like to read? What kind of interests do you have? What kinds of stories do you find fascinating? Who are your favorite authors? I don’t know this kind of stuff about you--but you do. If you’ve never written anything and just think you’d like to write--well, so write. Begin with a journal, if you can’t think of anything in particular. Or letters to friends, or brief, witty accounts of that Incident with the Pencil-Sharpener and the Vice-President of Accounting, to be circulated anonymously through your workplace’s email system.

The important thing, to start with, is to put words on paper. This is often harder than people think. It’s also often easier than people think--or at least more fun.

Once you have something of a feel for what the writing process feels like, you’ll be in a better position to decide what you might like to write. Nobody can tell you what you should write, because until and unless someone is paying you to do it, there’s no "should" about it. (If someone is paying you to write ad copy about washing machines, then that’s definitely what you should write. They might be annoyed if you gave them six haiku on bumblebees instead. If nobody’s paying for it, though, you’re free as the breeze. Enjoy!)

And three questions that share an answer:

Q1: I think I have a good idea for a book, but I don’t know how I should start writing it. Any ideas?

Q 2: I’m planning a story which is turning out to be longer than I expected. (I know the feeling! ) Everybody tells me that a book shouldn’t be longer than 100,000 words, but how do I know what to keep and what to cut? I don’t want to waste a lot of work writing things that I have to cut out!

Q 3: I’m stuck in the middle of my outline. How do I get past this roadblock?

A: If you haven’t started writing the book yet, you probably cant_ tell what to cut. Now, as to the writing...

Um...I know there are people, books, teachers and articles who all insist that you must have an outline before you start to write, but...ah...it isn’t true.

Before I start getting hate mail from English teachers, let me note that there is a good reason why they teach kids to write with outlines in school. It’s because you can teach somebody to write with an outline. That doesn’t mean it’s the only way to write, or necessarily the best way.

See what I said above about writing being self-discovery. Now, what with one thing and another, I’ve talked to an awful lot of writers over the last ten years. I’m therefore in a position to tell you that there are two general styles of writing, and they both work fine.

BUT, they’re different.

About half the writers I know really profit from some variation on outlines, character sketches, or at least generally planning out the progress of their story in advance. In fact, they feel dangerously adrift if they don’t have some kind of plan to follow.

The other half write sort of like I do--intuitively, in pieces, and often without having any idea where this story is going or what will happen next! This really, really bothers the linear kind of writer, many of whom absolutely refuse to believe it’s even possible to write this way. But it is.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with either way. It’s just that, as I said, you can teach someone to write with an outline, whether that’s their preferred method or not. You flat can’t teach somebody to do it the intuitive way, if it isn’t natural to them.

Most of successful writing is figuring out what works for you. So if you’re trying to write with an outline because somebody told you you had to (who? There aren’t any Writing Police, you know.)--well, abandon the outline and try writing some bit of the story just because you know some of what happens there. If you don’t know what comes next--do you know what comes after that? If so, write it. See if that frees up your blockage, or casts light on the part you were stuck on.

Now, some people really do need outlines; I have a lot of friends--published and un--who just can’t write without a fully worked-out outline. But there are an equal number who start work with only the roughest of notes, or with no outline at all (me for instance).

The thing is, writing is the only important thing; it doesn’t matter how you write; nobody can tell, looking at the finished book, whether you had an outline or not, and who cares? If it’s helpful to you, that’s one thing--but sometimes an outline may seem as though it’s holding you back and preventing you from writing at all.

Look--a book is a very organic thing. It grows, and it changes, as you write it. It doesn’t matter how detailed your outline is, once you’re in there writing, you’ll see things you never thought of, your characters will begin to talk to you (if you’re lucky, they’ll take over and tell parts of the story to you), and the whole thing will take on a life of its own. As you work--or after you have a complete entity, at least in rough draft--then you’ll have enough feel for it to make decisions about what to cut, what to keep, what to expand.

I’m not saying this works for everybody, but I started my first novel--for practice, I never meant to show it to anybody--with no outline, no plot, no characters, even; all I had was a time and place, and a vague notion that there should be a man in a kilt .

I just started in where I could sort of see something happening, and wrote. The next day I wrote some more. Then I couldn’t see any more happening there, so I wrote something else I could see. I kept this, and as I wrote tons of these little pieces, I got a sort of feel for the overall shape of the story, and could start to stick the pieces together and move them around.

Anyway, it worked. I finished the book, and my agent sold it--and two unwritten sequels--in four days.

Just don’t feel that there is One Way to do this--there isn’t.

There are as many ways as there are writers. All you have to do is find out what works for you. But I would strongly recommend starting in to write. It’s way scary, but it’s fun. It’s also the only way to get a book done.

Good luck!