Category Archives: Life Philosophies

It’s been said, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before, that all characters in a story have a bit of the author in them. Everything you write is colored by your personal preconceptions, observations, experiences, and random thoughts about life and your place in it. In a very real way, who we are leaks into the text whether we want it to or not. I don’t know if I’m the only one who has had this happen, but I find it interesting, and sometimes unsettling, when I realize something about a situation or a character is actually something about myself that I had not realized until I saw it on the page. In a very real way, our characters are our reflections, though sometimes distorted ones. Their experiences and reactions to those experiences are deeply colored by our own.

Now, this doesn’t mean that one could use a piece of fiction as a case study of the author. Authors don’t directly translate themselves onto the page. Most of the time this is an unconscious phenomenon.

In fact, this happens so often and with so little thought that it’s almost impossible not to write what we know. Our subconscious does it for us. When we need a scent, we pull one from memory. When we need to show an emotional reaction, we look at how our own bodies might feel in the same situation. If the character experiences something that we never have, we might find an analogous experience to inform what is on the page. While in most cases writing fiction is writing stories about other people, we cannot help but write about ourselves at the same time.

On some level, writing what you know comes without thinking. But notice the “without thinking” part.

The difficulty comes when we let our own experiences limit what we can and do show in a story. It’s extremely easy to fall back on our own point of view. For example, I find that my characters can sometimes be reserved, even repressed, about their emotions. As a result, I often find it difficult to push the emotional dial up to full for an explosive moment of conflict. That comes from me. I’m a pretty laid back person who doesn’t feel all that comfortable when people around me are really emotional. While I can bring tension, sometimes just bringing tension isn’t enough for a big scene. I’ve seen and heard about other writers who will actually skip hugely important scenes in their books because they themselves have no reference point, or their own beliefs or view of the world make it difficult to face what their characters have to do.

And of course, there’s that ever present failure when an author writes a gross generalization or something just flat out wrong that is deeply insulting to an entire group of people because said author didn’t look outside their own point of view.

For instance, I once knew a real young man whose personality was so over the top that he seemed almost like a caricature. At the time, I thought he’d make a great character in a book, but part of what made him utterly ridiculous was intrinsically bound to an entire group of people who are mostly not ridiculous at all. That character isn’t showing up anywhere in my work as a result. Some might think, to avoid this, one should steer clear of any type of character that is not like them. Sometimes this might be the right call, but limiting oneself to just the familiar often leads to boring characters and lackluster plots. Variety is, after all, the spice of life.

My point here is simply to be mindful of what is going into the mixing pot that is your story. Pay attention to those moments when a character trait or bit of setting or what-have-you relies a little too much on what you know. Look for those opportunities when something different can strengthen and deepen what you’re working on.

Who knows, your characters might rub off on you for a change.

Write What You Know or No?

February 1, 2016

Kristin Luna

Action & Adventure Author's Perspective Character Craft & Skills Ideas & Plotting Kristin Luna Reflection Suspension of Disbelief The Fictorians The Writing Life The Writing Process Writing Tools No Comments

All right, Mark Twain, sounds simple enough.

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard this sage advice: write what you know.

Our experiences help shape who we are and what we believe about the world, so they can be valuable veins to mine when it comes to writing. No one person in the world has had the same combinations of experiences as you. However, many have had similar combinations of experiences and have lived in the same time as you. That connection of shared, similar experiences can help engage readers and draw them in to your book. This is why the saying, “Write what you know, ” is so popular in writing circles.

But this advice isn’t the end-all be-all. Plenty of arguments can be made against it.

What if a physical handicap has limited the writer in combat experience, but the writer wants to write a medieval sword fight?

What if you’re a boring person? Do you just write about owning seven cats at one time because that’s what you’re familiar with? What not showering for three days does to the human body? Not clipping your toenails for three months?

While those topics can be very interesting and you should totally write about those, perhaps there is room for adding more information to your story even if you haven’t yourself experienced it.

This month, the Fictorians will discuss personal experience verses imagination: which

Okay, I don't even know anymore. — Okay, I don’t even know anymore.

is more important and where the two intersect. We’ll also consider how far you can/should/maybe shouldn’t go to experience what your characters experience. We’ll include some interesting experiences we’ve had, which may or may not include learning how to deal with post-combat stress, retracing Nikola Tesla’s footsteps, butchering our own meat, and breaking bones.

Later this month, we’ll get an exclusive interview with Fictorian Frank Morin, author of the series The Petralist.

Now we’re curious. In the comments below, please tell us how far you’ve gone to gain experience for writing!

A Pantser’s Plight

January 26, 2016

Jace Killan

Finish It! First Drafts Jace Killan Making Progress as a Writer Motivation Rewriting Self-Awareness The Writing Process Writing Tools 2 Comments

I was in elementary school when I first recognized that I hated outlining. I didn’t see the point. I remember watching The Return of the Jedi with a misperception that each scene was written then shot sequentially. I thought that George Lucas dreamed up Endor after he had already filmed the demise of Jabba the Hutt.

Writing after brainstorming always felt bland and shallow. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized my condition had a name. I am a discovery writer.

I’d rather get a root canal than put together Ikea furniture. I can’t stand building something from plans. There’s absolutely no joy in it for me. My wife on the other hand loves these type of projects. She likes seeing them develop exactly as they should. When I cook, I seldom use a recipe. If I have a recipe, it’s more of a suggestion tool than a plan. In fact, I make a note to deviate from the recipe. I think that the reason I don’t like Ikea plans and recipes are the same reason I don’t like to outline. For me, the fun is discovering the end result. With recipes, plans, and outlines I can easily visualize the ending and so the final result isn’t gratifying, it’s just expected.

But discovery writing while fun and enjoyable is probably the least productive form of writing. I knew that I’d have to face these demons if I ever wanted to be a successful writer.

David Farland wrote a book called Million Dollar Outlines. For it’s title alone, I avoided it like a plague thinking that it would chastise me for being a pantser and seek to take some of the fun out of my writing. A couple of years ago, after months of less than productive writing, I consulted this book.

First off, it doesn’t push you to outline or discovery write, but helps you recognize your writing tendencies. Second it gives a ton of information on how to use your style to write really good stories.

After reading Million Dollar Outlines, my productivity shot through the roof. I realized that everything I had written before was pretty much garbage, and I started integrating tips from the book to help my stories develop.

Before the book, I had this hangup where I viewed anything that I discovery wrote as “artistic inspiration” and therefore was off limits to modification. After reading the book I was able to give myself permission to make adjustments that greatly enhanced the story.

A little over a year ago, I came across a story idea that I just had to write. Before He Was Commodore is a middle-grade historical fiction based heavily on actual events. In a way, the actual events provided an outline. I was able to map out a skeleton of the story and then discovery write parts of the tale that were missing. Even though I kind of knew how the story went, I still experienced it as I added the meat to the bones.

Another problem with being a discovery writer is my WADD-writing attention deficit disorder. I am currently writing four novels simultaneously. It’s absurd, I know, but I’ve learned how to make it work. The trouble is that what I read, what I watch, what I play, all has influence on my writing. Two weeks ago I was working on my novel Veil Breaker because I was also reading Maze Runner and something there pricked an idea. This week I am watching Breaking Bad and Reading a John Grisham novel which means I am working on my thriller Unknown Soldier. Mistborn and Way of Kings lead to me working on The Broken Amulet. Steelheart to me working on Biverse.

I use to get frustrated with my methods, but now I realize that this is how I eat an elephant, or four. One bite at a time, off whatever one sounds appealing in that moment. All four stories are progressing and I know that I can finish them, as I finished Before He Was Commodore.

I’ve given myself permission to take it easy. I can discovery write a bunch of crap and that’s okay because I can tune it up in the the second and third and fourth passes. I’ve given myself permission to write what I want when I want. I’ve written near thirty thousand words this month and edited another thirty thousand. Even though that word count was across four different stories, they are all further ahead than they were last month. I’ll get there eventually, just got to keep writing.

I live in Arizona with my family, wife and five kids and a little dog. I write fiction, thrillers and soft sci-fi with a little short horror on the side. I’ve got an MBA and work in finance for a biotechnology firm.

I volunteer with the Boy Scouts, play and write music, and enjoy everything outdoors. I’m also a novice photographer.

You can visit my author website at www.jacekillan.com, and you can read some of my works by visiting my Wattpad page.

The Power of the Word Count Tracker

January 22, 2016

Evan Braun

Editing Evan Braun Finish It! First Drafts Goals Making Progress as a Writer Motivation Self-Motivation Successes The Writing Process 4 Comments

Last year, when January rolled around, I had to face facts: I had to somehow wade through the toughest writing of my career so far—and in record time. The third and final book of The Watchers Chronicle could not wait another spring, another summer, another year. It was summer 2015 or bust. That wasn’t a lot of time to wrap up my most ambitious book to date.

I needed help. I need motivation.

Some other writer on Facebook (I don’t remember who it was) seemed to be in the same boat, and they shared a blog post which espoused the practice of using an Excel-powered word count tracker.

The picture got my attention right away, and I said to myself, I must try this.

That happened on December 30, so I didn’t have much time to waste. I jumped on Excel and did my best to replicate what I’d seen on that timely, heaven-sent blog.

Sixteen weeks later, this is what it looked like:

The essence is that you write down your daily word total—honestly—and color-code your achievements. Maybe only a minority of people will respond to the reward of getting to upgrade the color of a little spreadsheet box, but I am unashamedly one of those people. I would get near to the boundary between yellow and orange, and pick up my pace significantly.

Of course, the color-coded word count tracker only works well when you’re actually writing loads of new words. And by the eighth week of 2015, I finished my first draft and had to jump straight into some heavy editing.

As you may intuit from my picture above, I reworked my spreadsheet to allow me to account for edited words. Two passes are clearly recorded. From Week 8 to Week 12, I focused on cutting as much as possible, since my first draft was about 25,000 words too long. Each day, instead of counting new words, I counted the number of words I had cut. This worked well enough.

Then, in the middle of Week 12, I set upon my final draft proofing, a kind of work no longer conducive to counting cut words. What I did was count the overall number of words I edited in a given day, then halved that number. This produced numbers generally in line with the rest of the chart (this seemed important at the time, because I was also calculating daily and weekly averages).

Though it’s been less than a year, no matter how long I squint at the chart, I can’t quite remember just what exactly I meant by those brown-colored, italicized “750” boxes in the last couple of weeks. I think I was doing edits of polished material, resulting in very high numbers—and in order to keep those numbers in line with the rest of the chart, I just wrote down an arbitrary average. Hence, 750.

Which is kind of dumb, if I think about it too hard.

Anyway, my point is this: I finished my book at the end of Week 16 and entered into a period of extended hibernation—a state with which I suspect most writers can identify. As a result, I abandoned the chart. After entering in a week and a half of black zeros, I finally deleted the shortcut from my desktop and tried to forget this word counter ever existed.

But the word counter was very helpful for the time that I used it, and a part of me greatly regrets that I didn’t carry on with it for a full year.

That’s a goal I hope to achieve if not in 2016, then at some arbitrary 365-day period in the future that doesn’t have to begin and end at the turn of the calendar. Who’s to say you can’t start on February 22? No one. Absolutely no one.

Today I encourage you to keep yourself accountable, even if just long enough to complete an important goal. As for me, I’ll be starting my next first draft in March.

I smell another word count tracker coming on…

Evan Braun is an author and editor who has been writing books for more than ten years. He is the author of The Watchers Chronicle, whose third volume, The Law of Radiance, was released earlier this year. In addition to specializing in both hard and soft science fiction, he is the managing editor of The Niverville Citizen. He lives in Niverville, Manitoba.