Tips to convey to a class in creative writing.

[gunhilltrain]

Don't write poetry, nobody reads it.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

Okay, so he's T.S. Eliot and we're not.

 

[CockSparrow]

Not specific to dialog, but one of the things I've had to learn is to let your readers discover the story as they go. One of the things new writers tend to want to do is to explain the story first, then start the story.

I think I may have shared this tip before, but here goes ...

As the editor of one of my early books said (many years ago): Tell the reader only what she needs to know and only when she needs to know it, and everything will fall into place.

Possibly the best bit of advice I was ever given.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Don't write poetry, nobody reads it.

Rubbish.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If you really want to give the reader that emotional experience, you have to feel those emotions as deeply as possible when you write them.

I'm with you on this. I've never quite understand those who write erotica that's outside their kink, it seems a waste of time to me.

I get the whole, "Don't limit yourself to one genre," thing, and I get the, "I want to see if I can write it, just to see if I can," idea. But when you read the results, there always seems to be some indefinable thing missing. I can sense they don't quite believe it, they're not visceral with it, it's a little remote.

It's hard to put your finger on, but on the other hand, when it IS there in the mind of the author and they're fully into their content, you can sense it, through the words on the page. Even if they're not the best writer - I'll forgive technical flaws and blemishes if I can see the heart of the writer in their prose, the flesh under their skin, that visceral, intimate feeling you get when someone has bared their soul. That's when you really feel their kink.

It's seeing J. Alfred Prufrock's body stretched out on that table, seeing the carnal flesh underneath the skin. T.S.Eliot might have been a mild bank clerk, but he gets it!

My tip, therefore, is to put an absolute, utter personal truth into your writing, however small. Readers might not consciously spot it, but subconsciously they'll sense it, and they'll suspend a million miles of disbelief to follow it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm with you on this. I've never quite understand those who write erotica that's outside their kink, it seems a waste of time to me.

I get the whole, "Don't limit yourself to one genre," thing, and I get the, "I want to see if I can write it, just to see if I can," idea. But when you read the results, there always seems to be some indefinable thing missing. I can sense they don't quite believe it, they're not visceral with it, it's a little remote.

I understand this point of view, intellectually, but I don't agree with it. We've talked about that before.

People write great murder mysteries without any desire to murder people or to be detectives. It's what being a writer is all about.

An analogy might be the difference between method actors and non-method actors. Method actors, like Daniel Day Lewis, completely take on the character for a while, sometimes driving their castmates crazy in the process. The results can be great. But so can the results from non-method actors, who just show up on set and say, "Time to act!"

I don't see why erotica would be any different. We're writers. I don't write about personal experience; I mostly make it up. I admit when I write I'm constantly asking, "Do I find this sexy?" I want to be erotically engaged with what I'm writing. But I think I could do that writing a foot fetish story, even though I don't have a foot fetish. I don't accept the idea that readers are necessarily going to think, "He's not really into it." A good enough writer can find a way to engage the reader, whatever the writer's personal desires.

For me personally, part of the pleasure of writing is taking my imagination to places I've never been before. It's a form of projection. I'm not a gay man, but I can get my imagination into a state where I can imagine what it's like to be turned on by a man, and that can be fun creatively. With erotica, I like to imagine what it would be like to be turned on by something completely different. It's a different way of being turned on.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

The other side of the coin is that you shouldn't over do it with dialogue. In real life, people gas on and talk about stuff that doesn't matter. If you wrote dialogue the way people actually talk, your story could get bogged down fast. Dialogue has to strike a balance between naturalness and economy.

I believe this is a good advice, one people often tend to overlook in their writing. As you said, real-life dialogue is full of redundancy, overexplaining, and repeating and it quickly gets boring to read such a dialogue. I have read some stories on Lit where dialogue drags on for thousands of words and gets incredibly tedious, but when you try to analyze it, you see that it does sound natural.

I would also say that the same advice applies to exposition and the way it should be delivered. In real-life discussions and conversations, one would expect you to explain the setting and the background in detail at the start, in order to be able to follow the reasoning and the logic. The same approach is good when you are writing a technical paper or maybe a script for a documentary, yet terrible for fiction where such exposition would be clunky and putting off.

 

[intim8]

People write great murder mysteries without any desire to murder people or to be detectives. It's what being a writer is all about.

All stories are about people. Even stories about aliens or talking fish are about people, about human beings. That's the part a writer needs to "feel".

Plots can be researched, and they don't need to be "felt" by the writer.

 

[SimonDoom]

All stories are about people. Even stories about aliens or talking fish are about people, about human beings. That's the part a writer needs to "feel".

Plots can be researched, and they don't need to be "felt" by the writer.

That's exactly how I feel.

As I said, I'm not a foot fetishist. But if I wrote a foot fetish story, I'd project myself into the role and try to tell a convincing tale about myself as a foot fetishist. I don't believe I have to be a true foot fetishist to pull it off. The keys to success are having a good imagination, being able to write well, and having a certain degree of human empathy--being able fully to imagine the feelings of a person who has a fetish I don't have. I think a good writer can do that.

 

[intim8]

I don't believe I have to be a true foot fetishist to pull it off. The keys to success are having a good imagination,

On the other hand, writing from experience is more likely to come off richer and more realistic than writing just from research and/or imagination. Just more likely, not a definite thing.

On the gripping hand, few people write directly of their experiences. I've written one story that takes place in a pizza joint. I delivered pizzas for years, so I know that world. But the only place the experience came into it was the general vibe of the place and some details that fleshed out the setting and some of the activities. Other than that, nothing about that story related to my experience working in a pizza place.

Even if I did have a foot fetish, whatever story I wrote about it would use experiential details to make the story more resonant and richer, but the actual story would not be my experience. It would be the experiences of my characters, and even among people with a foot fetish, everybody is different and experiences it in a different way. We "normies" like to lump everybody with this fetish or that into a big box where they're all the same. They're not. Even though I have no experience with it, I know this, because I know people.

 

[gunhilltrain]

That's exactly how I feel.

As I said, I'm not a foot fetishist. But if I wrote a foot fetish story, I'd project myself into the role and try to tell a convincing tale about myself as a foot fetishist. I don't believe I have to be a true foot fetishist to pull it off. The keys to success are having a good imagination, being able to write well, and having a certain degree of human empathy--being able fully to imagine the feelings of a person who has a fetish I don't have. I think a good writer can do that.

"Kinks" are not an all or nothing interest. There are some that I may be very interested in, some that I'm mildly curious about, and others that I can't abide at all. I've mentioned Kinsey's idea that sexual orientation is a spectrum of desires, not a series of distinct categories. Probably that applies to most sexual activities or interests.

Probably being on Lit and other sites has broadened my outlook, allowing me to look at things that I knew little about before. Even so, there still remains some items that I just don't want want to write about.

 

[SimonDoom]

On the other hand, writing from experience is more likely to come off richer and more realistic than writing just from research and/or imagination. Just more likely, not a definite thing.

On the gripping hand, few people write directly of their experiences. I've written one story that takes place in a pizza joint. I delivered pizzas for years, so I know that world. But the only place the experience came into it was the general vibe of the place and some details that fleshed out the setting and some of the activities. Other than that, nothing about that story related to my experience working in a pizza place.

Even if I did have a foot fetish, whatever story I wrote about it would use experiential details to make the story more resonant and richer, but the actual story would not be my experience. It would be the experiences of my characters, and even among people with a foot fetish, everybody is different and experiences it in a different way. We "normies" like to lump everybody with this fetish or that into a big box where they're all the same. They're not. Even though I have no experience with it, I know this, because I know people.

Personal experience matters, and to some extent I agree with the idea "write what you know," but this is my idea about that. I never worked in a pizza joint, but when I was young I worked at a fast food restaurant. I know what that's like. If I wrote a story about working in a pizza joint, I might bring my own fast food experience thoughts and memories into play to give the story authenticity. I think one can do the same when writing about a fetish one doesn't have. Make it real by bringing your own personal experience, whatever it is, into. I don't have that fetish, but I DO have other fetishes, and I know what's it like to have fetishes.

 

[KeithD]

There are levels involved in writing. A story can explore what you know of the personally experienced emotions or found "truths" in an intimate relationship event that have been packaged in a different time, setting, and even an entirely different relationship setup. I've tried to do this with many of my stories.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

As I said, I'm not a foot fetishist. But if I wrote a foot fetish story, I'd project myself into the role and try to tell a convincing tale about myself as a foot fetishist. I don't believe I have to be a true foot fetishist to pull it off. The keys to success are having a good imagination, being able to write well, and having a certain degree of human empathy--being able fully to imagine the feelings of a person who has a fetish I don't have. I think a good writer can do that.

Agree absolutely.

Is George Lucas an actual Jedi? Of course not.

Can he write a convincing Jedi character? Of course he can.

That said, I've never done any plumbing in my life and don't know a thing about plumbing, but a little research, some determination and sprinkle on a little skill and I can write a convincing plumber.

 

[TheLobster]

Can he write a convincing Jedi character? Of course he can.

Well, we don’t know. We’d have to ask a Jedi if Lucas’s depictions have been convincing but that’s sadly impossible because of the whole Order 66 thing.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Well, we don’t know. We’d have to ask a Jedi if Lucas’s depictions have been convincing but that’s sadly impossible because of the whole Order 66 thing.

Luke, Obi-wan, Vader and Yoda. Not one of them was convincing for you?

 

[TheLobster]

Luke, Obi-wan, Vader and Yoda. Not one of them was convincing for you?

Sorry, I was being half-facetious and the point didn’t carry.

What I mean is that it’s not possible to judge the fidelity of one’s depiction of a fictional concept when the same person is also the one who invented the concept in the first place. We cannot say if Lucas is good at describing Jedi because the whole idea of who a Jedi is comes from his mind.

What we can do, of course, is to dissect the whole concept, e.g. whether or not it’s convincing or believable. Since knight templars are a rather popular trope, I’d say the idea of a Jedi definitely is (assuming appropriate suspension of disbelief about the sci-fi parts of it).

 

[enbiji]

Luke, Obi-wan, Vader and Yoda. Not one of them was convincing for you?

Yoda, convincing he was not. Stilted and awkward, his dialog was.

Talk like that, a True Jedi would never.

 

[nice90sguy]

I don't believe I have to be a true foot fetishist to pull it off.

I've had a PM exchange with another writer who tried to "pull off" a kink they didn't have, but I did. The story totally didn't work for me, but was well-received by others, who clearly also didn't have that kink.

So I disagree, and I like to think that I can sense authenticity in that way, even by "bad" writers, and, vice versa, I can sense when somebody is basically doing it as a writing exercsie, even if they're a good writer.

I get that way with pop music too -- I can tell when somebody is jumping on a bandwagon, doing all the right things, but the song as a whole doesn't come off as genuine.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Agree absolutely.

Is George Lucas an actual Jedi? Of course not.

Can he write a convincing Jedi character? Of course he can.

That said, I've never done any plumbing in my life and don't know a thing about plumbing, but a little research, some determination and sprinkle on a little skill and I can write a convincing plumber.

Do you mean the plumber and the unfulfilled housewife trope? Somehow it's rarely or never an electrician. (I think I've seen cable TV installer stories.) Anybody try a female plumber and an unfulfilled house husband? Also, the pizza delivery guy. Amazon drivers are too time-pressured for anything but the briefest encounters.

Milkmen, when they existed, seemed to have had rather relaxed schedules allowing for that kind of thing.

 

[jehoram]

I remember something about a writing class that Kurt Vonnegut taught. He told his students that the main character has to need something, even if it's only a glass of water.

 

[ElectricBlue]

So I disagree, and I like to think that I can sense authenticity in that way, even by "bad" writers, and, vice versa, I can sense when somebody is basically doing it as a writing exercsie, even if they're a good writer.

We're on the same page. When I'm writing erotica, I'm writing for arousal, intimacy, desire, memory, fantasy; all of that. I'm digging deep into my psyche, it's visceral. That's why I write erotica, it's that deep psychological intensity that I'm exploring.

When I'm writing a murder mystery I'm tapping into none of that. My psyche is there on the page for the erotica, but never there for the murder. That's the fundamental difference, for me.

I have no problem with people writing about a kink that's not theirs, and good for them if they can pull it off. But my view is, they can't, not really, because there's always that indefinable something missing. And if the kink is really intense (and some really are), that intensity somehow finds its way through writing that might be technically less competent.

Writing erotica "that doesn't do it for you" is a bit like eating food you don't like, when you don't need to. Why would you bother doing that? I get it, to see if you can, but it still seems a waste of time to me.

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

I've never taught CW, but I have taught English. If my students ever ask for my advice, the one thing I tell them is to not waste the reader's time. Most writers don't write too little, they write too much.

Apart from that? Learn the rules of writing. Not because you're going to follow them, oh not at all. You learn them because then you can learn of all the new and exiting ways in which you might go about breaking them.