Kapka Kassabova

A guest post by Kapka Kassabova

‘If you want to work on your art, work on your life.’ – Chekhov

Ten years ago, I was a single East European émigré living in Auckland and caught between Old and New Worlds, two passports, the end of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the 21^st century.

How timely, then, that one night I should walk into a bar and see a couple on the dance floor, moving to what sounded like the soundtrack to my life. Their chests were glued together, their hips rigid, and their faces lost in some fantasy of a better world. They were, of course, doing the tango. And that fantasy soon became mine. The soundtrack to my life turned out to be Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Oblivion’, tango’s most existential tune and a must for all melancholics.

I say ‘timely’ for two reasons. One, because you can already tell from the above sketch that the young émigré took herself very seriously in her culturally dispossessed predicament. And what dance is better suited to the culturally dispossessed than the tango? I could have taken ceroc, salsa, or any other happy dance where I could have drank mojitos, shaken my hips, and grinned with all my teeth at the uncomplicated blokes partnering me in our three basic steps. Cha-cha-cha!

But I didn’t. I took up the world’s most complicated and nostalgic couple dance. Which brings us to reason number two: in the next couple of years, I joined a world-wide tango community made up of hundreds of thousands of people of every colour, neurosis, and cultural complication under the sun. People like me.

Tango became my religion, my primary romantic relationship, a home of sorts. I learnt Spanish so that I could understand old songs like The Day That You Would Love Me (note the problematic conditional tense) and the title of electro-tango band Gotan Project’s hit album La Revancha del Tango. Tango Gets its Own Back.

It did, but it took ages. About three years into it, I knew I had to write a book about tango. After all, I was a writer first, and a tango maniac second. Dancing was no longer enough. Reading everything on tango I could find was not enough. As with everything else in life, I knew I could only truly understand tango by writing about it. But how do I even begin?

From the wrong end, that’s how. Which is to say, fiction. So, during  a year in Berlin on a generous Creative NZ writer’s residency, I plunged headlong into the researching and writing of my Big Tango Novel. It was going to be about Buenos Aires, Argentina’s Dirty War, Nazi War Criminals in South America, Emigration, Music, Poetry, Relationships, Jorge Luis Borges, and Tango.

There was no shortage of Big Themes. What there was a shortage of was characters. An honest intention. An authentic voice. A narrative focus. An actual story. At the end of my residency, I had to admit that My Big Tango Novel was a dud with a soundtrack.

My second doomed attempt took place a few years later. I was living in Britain now. A great brain wave came over me. This time, I was going to do the right thing. I was going to start with the characters. So, there is this lonely youngish British woman who gets hooked on tango. She falls for a mysterious guy she meets at tango. When he goes off to South America on a mysterious trip, she follows him. They get sucked into the underworld of Buenos Aires. Then something mysterious happens, involving tango. It was going to be a very Mysterious Tango Novel.

My agent read the first chapters. My agent is the smartest woman in the British publishing industry. ‘This reads like notes towards a novel,’ she said. ‘Some good stuff, potentially, but… Have you thought about writing a more personal kind of book about tango?’

No, I said, went away, and sulked for a year. Actually, I went away and wrote a childhood memoir for a year, signed up by the other smartest woman in the industry: my editor.

Then I wrote another novel. Nothing to do with tango. To hell with tango! Actually, tango was bringing hell into my life. In the space of two years, thanks to tango’s mysterious ways, I lost my partner of five years, my best friend, my place in the local tango community which constituted my entire social life, and very nearly my mental health. I pulled back from the brink just on time.

‘You know,’ I said to agent and editor. ‘I’m thinking of writing a more personal kind of book about tango. But I don’t know what the story is. And who the characters are.’

‘Really?’ said agent. ‘I think you do.’

‘I can think of at least two characters,’ said editor. ‘Tango. And KK. It’s a start.’

‘I think I know what I’m going to call it,’ I said. ‘Something about the average duration of a dance with the same partner…’

Between that distant Auckland bar and Twelve Minutes of Love, there lie the mangled embryos of two abandoned novels. But I had the time of my life writing Twelve Minutes of Love. It took a year. It came out almost perfectly formed. It had a voice. It had a story. It had a beating heart. It was populated with characters I knew well. It had poetry and music. It had emigration and history. Even Jorge Luis Borges managed to sneak in. And each chapter presented itself with a natural ‘tango lesson’ which of course meant a life lesson I had learnt in the past ten years.

1. Fascination
2. Infatuation
3. Revelation
4. Temptation
5. Disconnection
6. Connection
7. Tourism
8. Home
9. Homelessness
10. Ecstasy and agony
11. Freedom
12. Love

Tango, like literature, is a hall of mirrors. I had seen the true nature of my quest, as a dancer and as a writer, only after I’d had a few false starts. Bad things come to us all, but good things come to those who wait. And who use the paper bin.

My ‘tango novels’ had been built on clichés. I hadn’t been ready for my own book. I hadn’t had the necessary humanity. I had suffered too little, fantasised too much, and taken myself too seriously. I had lacked the lightness of touch it takes to treat dark matter.

This memoir is the most authentic thing I have written. As if it had been secretly gestating for ten long years. It had been.

Kapka Kassabova is a poet, essayist and travel writer who was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. After leaving Bulgaria as a teenager and living in England and New Zealand, she now resides in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Image of Kapka © Gerry Walden/gwpics.com

“And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” – Lewis Carroll

I can manage books without pictures, but I know how Alice feels about the conversations. When I’m browsing, I flick through books to see how much dialogue there is. If there doesn’t seem to be much, I’ll put the book down and choose something else.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who does this, either…

As a writer, dialogue lets you:

• Show rather than tell – when characters act and speak, they become real to us
• Build tension and drama, furthering the plot
• Reveal character in what’s said (or what isn’t said)
• Create white space on the page – attractive to busy readers

But many writers list “dialogue” as one of the key things they struggle with. I love writing dialogue, and I still have to work hard at it – though thanks to the wonderful Lorna Fergusson from fictionfire, I’ve definitely improved.

So what makes for good dialogue?

#1: Watch Your Dialogue Tags

A “dialogue tag” is the bit you put before or after the dialogue, like:

• he said
• she asked
• I replied

In primary (elementary) school, I was taught to vary dialogue tags with words like whispered, shouted, pondered … This might be great for encouraging kids to grow their vocabulary, but it’s poor advice for any adult fiction writer.

Normally, the word “said” will do just fine. Throw in an occasional “whispered” or “shouted” if you need to, but don’t get fancier than that. The reader will barely notice the word “said” – but when characters start “mumbling awkwardly” or “opining” then the dialogue tags end up distracting from the actual dialogue.

(I particularly dislike the use of words like “laughed” and “giggled” as dialogue tags. Does anyone really giggle a whole sentence?)

You can normally avoid adjectives and modifying phrases, too. If the dialogue is well-written, readers will know that it was “said happily” or “shouted furiously”.

#2: Ground Your Dialogue in a Scene

It’s easy to fall into the trap of “talking heads” – two characters discussing something in bare lines of dialogue, with little or no supporting text.

Every conversation that takes place needs to be somewhere. The location or scene makes a difference to the actual dialogue. Think about:

• Where are your characters? In a busy coffee shop, driving in a car, on a train, at home…?
• Who’s nearby? Nosy onlookers, young children, the boss…

You don’t have to have action or description after every single line of dialogue, but you do need a sense that your characters are physically located in a particular setting.

It can be tough to manage dialogue on the phone, where characters can’t see one another; you can use tone of voice or background noise to help add to the scene.

#3: Use Dialect and Accents with Caution

One mistake that newer writers often make is to go over the top with dialect words or accents. This can make the text incredibly hard to read – and it can also be unintentionally comic, or even offensive.

Generally, less is more. If you have a Scottish character, they don’t need to sound like a Burns poem. Use the occasional dialect word like “wee” and the reader will get the idea.

Similarly, if you have an uneducated or lower-class character, using non-standard grammar or phrases (e.g. “ain’t”) will establish their voice – you don’t need to start knocking letters off every word.

#4: Don’t Let One Person Speak for Too Long

In real life, we don’t normally give long speeches during regular conversations. There are some circumstances where one person might speak for several minutes at a time – during a lecture, sermon, etc – but this is limited to special occasions.

If your characters have long blocks of speech, break those up. Other characters could butt in or simply ask for clarification. You could also have non-verbal responses from the listeners (nodding, sighing, frowning, etc).

When your plot requires a character to speak for some length of time, don’t give us the whole speech! A few lines from the start and end, plus a narrative summary of what was said, will be enough.

#5: Realistic Doesn’t Mean Real

This was one of the areas I struggled with in my novel. I tried too hard to make my dialogue realistic – with lots of “ums”, hesitations, repetitions and so on. It was over-the-top. Dialogue is supposed to give an impression of real speech; it’s not supposed to be a transcript of how we really talk.

When I went back and cleaned up the dialogue, my text flowed much more smoothly. That meant having my characters speak in realistic-sounding but clear sentences. They did hesitate or stumble at times – but only when it was really warranted by what was going on.

#6: Give Your Characters Distinct Speech Patterns

Do all your characters sound exactly the same? If so, you need to do some tweaking.

Think about:

• Age: a 13-year-old will speak differently from a 70-year-old
• Gender: women and men may use different vocabulary
• Social background: does your character use down-to-earth words or “posh” ones?
• Education level: does your character have a wide or limited vocabulary?
• Geographical area: where do they live?
• Particular catch phrases: don’t go overboard here, but consider whether your character has any common phrases (things like “for sure!” or “good good” or “awesome”)
• Verbosity: some people tend to babble, others will be taciturn

One good trick is to take just the lines of dialogue in your short story or novel – cut out the action and dialogue tags – and see whether you can work out who said what.

#7: Don’t Put Exposition in the Dialogue

Sometimes, you need to convey information about the characters. Don’t try to force this into the dialogue – it’ll come across as stagey and fake. Avoid having characters tell one another things that they logically should already know. This sort of dialogue is a particular problem for sci-fi writers: “But captain, if the unobtanium runs out, the whole ship is gonna blow…”

If you’re really keen to get information across during a conversation, then make sure that the set-up for the conversation is appropriate. If two friends are catching up after 10 years apart, they might well fill in one another on the details of their work, family and lives in general.

#8: Use Silence as Well as Words

Sometimes, what’s not said is more powerful than what is said.

If one character says “I love you” and the other person doesn’t say anything at all, that’s often stronger than a response like “Oh, okay” or “Yeah, right”.

When a character refuses to respond to a particular question, or refuses to speak to a certain person, we immediately know that there’s something going on – without the author having to say “James didn’t want to talk about his marriage” or “Mary hadn’t been on speaking terms with her mother-in-law for years.”

#9: Get in Late, Leave Early

I’m indebted to Lorna for this particular tip: you don’t have to begin the conversation at the first word and end at the last.

If someone’s talking on the phone, cut out all the “Hi, how are you?” “Fine thanks, and you?” bits at the start. Yes, they’re realistic – but the reader isn’t interested.

Often, it’s powerful to end a scene on a line of a dialogue. We don’t need to see how the other character responds. We definitely don’t need the conversation to tail off into “Bye” and “See you next time.”

#10: Punctuate Your Dialogue Correctly

This is crucial if you’re going to be submitting your work to publishers, or if you’re entering writing competitions. It’s also vital if you’re self-publishing – you want your story or novel to be as professional as possible.

Dialogue should:

• Begin on a new line for each new speaker
• Have double or single quotation marks around the words (be consistent with which you choose – as a rule of thumb, the US standard is double and UK is single)
• Have punctuation inside the quotation marks
• End the dialogue line with a comma if you’re adding a dialogue tag, but with a full stop if you’re adding an action.

Here’s an example:

“Joe, please come here,” Sarah said. “We need to talk.”

“What about?”

“You know what.” She folded her arms.

If you’re struggling with dialogue, try writing a new scene that involves an important conversation. And if you’ve already written lots of dialogue that’s not quite working, go back through with these ten tips in mind – see how you can strengthen it.

Got any questions, or any advice to share? Just pop a comment below…

Ali Luke has just launched her first novel, Lycopolis, in ebook form. It’s a supernatural thriller with a good dose of online geekery, and it’s been described as “fast and furious” and “absolutely gripping” by readers. You can find out more – and get the first five chapters for free – at www.lycopolis.co.uk.

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By Mary Jaksch

What are you working on right now?

A blog post? A novel? Your best article ever? A poem? A film script? An Ebook?

Maybe you’ve just finished something you’re really proud of? Or you just can’t tell whether it should get a Pulitzer or be thrown into the trash?

Or maybe you’re noticing some barriers that are getting in the way of your creativity?

Here’s your chance to share and discuss with each other what you are writing about. And how it’s going.

Whet our appetite with the opening paragraph of your future bestseller, give us a link to your best article, or tell us what you are writing at the moment.

Who knows, your piece might even attract the notice of a major publishing house!

Here are some guidelines:

A. Writers:

• State what aspect you’re working on. For example, you might want to say, “Here’s a link to my article “The Role of Rabbits in Nuclear Science”. I’m currently working on eliminating superfluous words.”

B. Commenters:

• When commenting, first list everything you really like about a piece.
• Only then offer careful suggestions.
• Treat each other with respect, friendliness, care, and honesty.
• Remember that we are all still learning.

Now it’s over to you. Take a deep breath. Then jump into the comment section and bring out your treasures!

Mary Jaksch is the Editor in Chief of Write to Done
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What are you writing?

By Mary Jaksch

What are you working on right now?

A blog post? A novel? Your best article ever? A poem? A film script? An Ebook?

Maybe you’ve just finished something you’re really proud of.

Or maybe you just can’t tell whether it should get a Pulitzer or be thrown into the trash.

Here’s your chance to share and discuss with each other what you are writing about.

Whet our appetite with the opening paragraph of your future bestseller, give us a link to your best post, give us a taste of your awesome poem – or tell us what you are writing at the moment.

Who knows, your piece might even attract the notice of a major publishing house! Here are some guidelines:

A. Writers:

• State what aspect you’re working on. For example, you might want to say, “Here’s a link to my article “The Role of Rabbits in Nuclear Science”. I’m currently working on eliminating superfluous words.”

B. Commenters:

• When commenting, first list everything you really like about a piece.
• Only then offer careful suggestions.
• Treat each other with respect, friendliness, care, and honesty.
• Remember that we are all still learning.

Now it’s over to you. Take a deep breath. Then jump into the comment section and bring out your treasures!

Mary Jaksch is the Editor in Chief of Write to Done. Together with Leo Babauta, Mary runs a spectacular training environment for bloggers: the A-List Blogger Club. Join our 900 motivated and supportive members! If you’re a blogger and want to create an online income the ‘Good Karma’ way, check out Mary’s brand-new blog A-List Blog Marketing

A guest post by Lisa Kilian of What Not To Do as a Writer

There comes a time in every writer’s life when the plot is adequately twisted, the characters are adequately developed, and all the typos have been eliminated with a laser gun. You think.

Actually, you’re not sure if any of that is true because you’ve been staring at the same document on your computer for so long you’re kind of wondering if maybe you didn’t go blind last week. You think you’re reading words. You think those words are good. The dreams about your story have stopped and now all you dream about is book parties and signings and big wigs and wine.

You think you’re ready to submit. To publish. To throw caution to the wind and send that manuscript off for some close reading. Except you haven’t been able to read your own manuscript closely for months now and you’re honestly not sure what it says anymore. Your characters could be marrying dogs or lost somewhere else in the muddle, you have no idea.

That’s why you need an editor.

Someone who doesn’t know you or love you but knows writing and loves reading freshly pressed work. Someone who will look at your characters and say, “Hey, cool story, but did you notice Sally marries a dog on page 23?”

When I receive a manuscript to read, I welcome it with open arms. And the brave writers who have sent their words to me wait patiently in the background brimming with nervous energy. It’s a great relationship. We email back and forth about little things. We laugh. I read and make notes.

And then I send the editorial letter. And that’s when the fun stops.

Right there, in one convenient document, is an overview of all the concerns I have regarding their manuscript. Plot holes, flat characters, lagging prose, over-telling, over-explaining, back story — all of it. Their manuscript is suddenly less pristine and more of a mess and I know I’m not gonna be the one to clean it up.

Receiving an editorial letter after you’ve paid to have your novel edited sucks. It just — sucks. That’s pretty much the only thing I can say. But! That same editorial letter that sucks so much to read is also the heart and soul of what you paid for. You asked someone professional with an objective eye to read your manuscript and deconstruct it — and that’s exactly what they did. And they even went one step further and gave you suggestions on how to clean up your mess.

Still, I can hear it through the email; the writer’s happiness just deflates. I receive an answer just dripping with defeat. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Steel your skin and prepare your mind before you open that letter. And remember these things:

1. What is a Finished Piece to You is a Rough Draft to Me

You may believe your manuscript to be finished and polished — but if you’re sending it to an editor, it’s not. Why else would it end up on an editor’s desk? There are things going on in your manuscript that you are simply blind to because you no longer have the distance and objectivity to see it. Why would you? You’ve spent months with your nose to the screen trying to figure out how to finish this thing.

2. Just Because You Receive In-Depth Edits Doesn’t Mean You Suck

Everyone receives in-depth edits. Everyone receives suggestions for change. Everyone has to get edited. I, too, am a writer. And my critique group always makes suggestions for changes. They even tell me ::gasp:: that something is not working. And I get sad. I go home. I take a nap. And then I rewrite.

3. By All Means, Get Angry — Just Don’t Call Me

When you receive edits and they seem overwhelming, you’re going to get angry. And you’re probably going to be angry at me. That’s the nature of the beast. So get angry. But remember that it’s not me you’re angry with. Frankly, you’re upset with yourself because you sent something that you thought was ready to go and it turned out to not be so ready after all. And that’s okay, really. It’s human nature to get upset when things are hard and writing is just that. So read your letter, take a few deep breaths, hit a punching bag, and take a nap. Seriously. Naps fix everything. When your emotions are defused and you’re ready to get back to work, then you can email me.

4. I’m Not Here to Make You Feel Bad

My job is to make your writing better, and by default, make you a stronger person. My job is not to take your money and rip your work to shreds. It is not in my interest to be snarky and make you feel like shit. I don’t want to make you give up.

I want to make your writing better. I want to make your writing better. I want to make your writing better.

That’s the first and last concern on any editor’s mind when we read your work.

Lisa Kilian is the author of the blog, What Not To Do as a Writer. She has had essays published at Beyond the Margins, Best Damn Creative Writing Blog, and Write It Sideways to name a few. Follow her @LisaKilian or email her at lr.kilian@gmail.com She would love to read your work.

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The Art of Mayhem

A year and a half ago my life was in the midst of mayhem. The company I was working for went bankrupt and I was let go. I had just come out of another failed relationship. I had just come to terms with a failed attempt at entering a graduate school, and I was also given the great responsibility of taking care for a loved one with an illness. Yes, my life certainly felt stuck in incredible mayhem.

But mysteriously, in the midst of all this mayhem, all I felt called to do was to write a novel.

This was a very mysterious urge for me because I had been studying acting at a university for 4 years, I had earned my bachelor’s degree in Drama, and had been acting in plays for most of my life. For all intents and purposes, my life was on an actor’s trajectory and everyone, including me, was resolutely convinced that I was going to become a professional actor one day.

But even though I had spent so much time investing in an acting career, in the midst of all the recent mayhem in my life, I was surprised to find that I had no desire to be an actor anymore, and that my true passion was for writing. I had never written a novel before, and so starting it would mean having to embrace the mystery of this urge, and let the future unfold as it would.

My sister had encouraged me to write a blog about the experience, hoping it would motivate me. There was no expectation for the blog to be any bigger than just a personal online journal.

But a year and a half has passed and the blog has gone from obscurity to Top Ten Blogger status in less than a year; thousands of people from around the world visit the blog now and hundreds are subscribed. Today, I’ve completely ditched acting and have become a freelancer writer in order to earn a living as I write fiction. I’ve even had clients take the writing consultation service I offer to my readers through my blog—effectively turning my blog into a business within year.

Meanwhile, I am working on finishing my life’s work, my novel, which is currently on its a second draft.

All of this was accomplished without much intention, but simply by following the mystery underneath all the mayhem, until it led me to the magic.

The Art of Mystery

There is a wonderful book by the late psychologist Dr. Gerald D. May. Dr. May found that in the writings of two Catholic saints, there was a profound wisdom that I believe stretches farther than the confines of any religion.

Dr. May explained that these two saints spoke about the mayhem of life, but they referred to it as “the dark night of the soul.”

Dr. May explained that “the dark night of the soul” is a moment of incredible turmoil in our lives where many of our previously held conceptions and beliefs are called into question; and in which we are forced to detach from feelings, thoughts, or objects that beforehand had given us great peace and comfort. This intense process opens us up to a moment of great mayhem in our lives that may appear very dark to us.

For Dr. May, the reason that this time is “dark” is not because it is evil, but because it is “obscure.” It’s hard to see what is actually going on. Because in actuality, although we cannot see it at the time, beneath all the mayhem, there is actually something wonderful secretly blooming inside of us. It’s as if this dark period is a womb in the midst of our lifetime; and this womb is providing the right amount of nourishment and care for you to one day be reborn as a newer, more liberated you.

Dr. May also said that the “mysteriousness” of this mayhem has a very practical purpose: because if we knew what was going to unfold in our lives before it actually happened, we might end up sabotaging our own success.

The Art of Magic

After I read Dr. May’s book, I wondered if I would I have sabotaged my current success if I knew where I was truly going to end up.

After a moment of thought, I concluded that yes, I would have sabotaged myself.

You see, today I have a great responsibility to my blog readership. They can certainly live fine without me, but from what they have told me, it gives them great joy and pleasure to have me around in a online world that is sometimes so filled with hateful, negative, and sensationalist language.

However, if I had known I was going to be given such a great responsibility a year and a half ago, I certainly would have not started my blog and would have probably ditched my novel.

Why?

Because my intention at the time had been to keep myself loyal to my novel, and any plan to “help” or “inspire” others would have been interpreted by me as a purely egotistical. I also would have likely given up writing the first draft of my novel knowing that, soon, hundreds of strangers’ eyes would be scrutinizing my progress.

So in order to keep me from sabotaging my future success, the process of life wisely kept me in the dark for a period of time.

Fortunately, today, I recognize that part of my purpose in life is to provide inspiration, hope, and encouragement to the struggling writers of the world. Today I continue writing my novel because I’ve already invested far too much time into it to give up now, even if I feel the pressure of the whole world watching.

It turns out there was a method to the mayhem after all.

Preparing For Your Opening Night

I recall that back in my acting days, it was well-known theater wisdom that when a production gets close to opening night you can almost be certain that several things will go terribly wrong: essential actors will drop out, sets will fall apart, props will go missing, the director will come down with the flu, etc.. But as soon as the curtains part on opening night, the mayhem subsides, everything falls into place, and the play goes on with little or no difficulty, as if by some mysterious magic.

I wouldn’t believe this mysterious phenomenon myself if I hadn’t witnessed it every single time I had acted in a play.

It is good to remember that when it gets closer to the opening night of your life, everything can and will go wrong. The mayhem will be everywhere. But if you carry conviction during the dark times, and trust that the mystery will lead you to a better, more liberated space, then as soon as that curtain opens, the mayhem will subside, everything will fall into place, and you may be surprised to find that the show goes on without a hitch.

Just like magic.

Ollin Morales is a writer whose blog, Courage 2 Create, chronicles his journey as he writes his first novel. His blog offers writing advice as well as strategies to deal with life’s toughest challenges. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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A guest post by Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com

When we believe that, at least when it comes to writing, we are wrong.

About both things.

In many other aesthetic pursuits we can indeed reach a level of art without having to fit into anybody’s box.  We can skip all that boring discipline stuff and ignore any prevailing commercial tastes and trends and just do our thing.

But where writing is concerned, all that changes.  Because in the eternal tug-of-war between art and craft in this avocation, craft is winning.

The acid test on this issue relates to why you write and what you hope to get out of it.  If you’re in it for fun, sure, do it your way.  But if you want to become a professional author, one whose work attracts a readership and perhaps a publisher with a checkbook, craft simply trumps art all to hell.

Craft depends on discipline.  On function as well as form.

And that, by definition, establishes a set of rules that, at first glance, can look a lot like a box.  But don’t be fooled.

A guy named T.S. Elliot says it better than I can:

When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost… and will produce its richest ideas.  Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.

And sprawl won’t get you published or read.

Just don’t call it a box.

Here’s the newsflash that rubs some writers the wrong way: there are storytelling principles and expectations in place, at least at a professional, commercial level.

The moment we depart from those standards, if we try to negotiate them or attempt to reinvent them from a context of either ignorance or defiance, our work becomes less than commercial.  In doing so we may indeed become artists – very lonely artists – when the higher goal is to become a writer (preferably one with an audience) who has perfected craft to the level of art.

There are consequences to writing without parameters and honoring accepted standards.

When your writing ceases to be commercial you’ve just shot yourself in the foot – at least if your goal is to turn pro – perhaps in the name of art.

The concept of selling out isn’t about writing commercially, it’s about writing at a level that’s beneath you, which is a completely different thing.  When you disrespect the principles of craft, you are already in that free-fall.

We all get to choose.

I’m not crazy about rules, either.  That’s why I’ve coined another term for the discipline of writing, a way to organize the various aspects of craft into separate yet ultimately dependent categories of essential principles, skills and criteria.

And essential they are.

I like to think of these categories as buckets rather than boxes.  I’ve stuffed all the things a writer of stories needs to understand and master – the craft – into one of six different buckets of intellectual and creative awareness, and delved deeply into why they are essential and how they remain connected to each other.

Skipping or mangling these criteria isn’t art, as some might believe.  It’s storytelling suicide.

Why we need these buckets.

When you talk about storytelling without differentiating between, say, the essential elements of concept, character and theme… if you view the narrative process as some mysterious and organically intuitive flow defined by obscure, impressive lit class rhetoric more suited to book reviewers than writers of books…

… well, I think I speak for millions when I say there has to be a better, clearer way to wrap your head around the craft of storytelling.  One that doesn’t elude you for years and even decades.

I call these buckets of awareness the Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling.

And there is only one rule in play.

Actually, an unavoidable and stark truth: you have to be competent to the point of mastery in all six core competencies before you can write a commercially viable and successful story.  A weakness in any one of them will kill your chances.

I didn’t make that truth up.  Always been there.  Even though you’ve never heard it capsulated in this fashion, or this clearly.

The inherent opportunity residing within these buckets.

Books from new writers that actually sell are the ones that offer something special.  The trick is to understand what this means, and how to make it happen.

The answer awaits inside the buckets that contain the six core competencies.

When one or two of them, as executed in your work, are astoundingly original, creative and compelling, then you’ve just separated yourself from the crowd.  A crowd, by the way, that for the most part is already competent in all six, which makes wrapping your head around these competencies (or, if you prefer, sticking it into each of the six buckets) is just the ante-in to the game.

In writing, the essential elements of a story become the physics of what makes a story work, and when viewed as an entire discipline (which is precisely how they should be viewed), they become the stuff of story engineering that cannot be ignored or, unless you spend decades paying attention, intuitively absorbed.

When one or two are super-charged, the entire story kicks into a higher, better gear.

Introducing The Six Core Competences

Don’t mistake this for over-simplification.  Storytelling is still hard, and there is a long and challenging list of attributes, skills, nuances and mechanical gizmos you must understand and put onto the page.

That said, it’s a lot easier to group them into six separate affinities that share common standards, criteria and expectations.

Four of the six core competencies are elements, the essential aesthetic building blocks of your narrative.  They are: concept… character… theme… and structure (plot sequence).

You can’t skip one and get away with it.  And you can’t knock one or two out of the park until you completely wrap your head around what they each mean.

Separating them is essential, because the criteria for, say, concept and theme are very different.  Many a manuscript has tanked because the writer didn’t understand this premise.

The other two core competencies are issues of execution, the application of the four story elements to the blank page.  They are: scene execution… and your writing voice.

When you isolate these six essential realms of storytelling, they can be broken down, analyzed, studied and practiced in context to the larger, integrated whole of a story.

Once introduced to the six core competencies – you’ve met them before, just not quite this clearly and stripped of mystery and pretense – your entire writing life will change and expand.

Because suddenly, perhaps for the first time, you will understand how to determine what to write, where to put it, and why it works there.

Which, regardless of how you’ve approached storytelling in the past and intend to get it done in the future, has always been the goal.

Larry Brooks is a bestselling novelist and the creator of Storyfix.com, recently named to the top spot on our recent Top Ten Writing Blogs list.  His latest book, “Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing,” has just been published by Writers Digest books, and since its release has been at or near the #1 bestselling spot on Amazon.com’s fiction writing/craft list.

A guest post by K.M. Weiland of Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors.

Writers come in all shapes and sizes, from all personal backgrounds, all walks of life, and all cultures and countries. We’re a varied bunch, but we all have something in common: in order for any of us to make it past first base in this business, we have to possess three traits. These traits are non-negotiable. If we don’t possess all three of them, we’ll never be writers, and we’ll certainly never find marketable success.

What are these traits, and how do we solidify them in our lives?

Trait #1: Talent

In some ways, talent is the easiest of the three, since it’s something over which we have no control. We’re either talented, or we’re not. Generally speaking, talent incorporates one or all of the following:

• An aptitude for words, which can include (but isn’t necessarily limited to) an understanding of language and a perceptive ear for powerful and rhythmic phrasings.
• An instinctual understanding, however raw in the beginning, of story structure.
• An insatiable curiosity, a desire to discover truth, and a willingness to be audaciously honest about the human experience and the world in which it takes place.

I consider talent the least important, simply because it’s the only one of the three traits that is useless without the other two. Still, it’s important to recognize that without that original kernel of talent, all the watering and weeding in the world won’t cause the growth of a burgeoning tree.

Trait #2: Learning

I use the word “learning” instead of “knowledge” because “learning” indicates more than a static pile of facts stored in our brains. Learning encompasses the following ideas:

• An ongoing process that suggests a mindset in search of enlightenment more than a simple checklist of facts to be mastered.
• A hunger for knowledge that is further stimulated, instead of sated, by the actual discovery of knowledge.
• A willingness to devote an endless amount of time and energy to studying the craft.

Even the largest measure of talent can only carry an author so far. We must study to show ourselves approved by reading widely and voraciously, researching the tenets of the craft as seen by other authors who have proven themselves through their own devotion, and seeking and accepting the wise criticism of readers, editors, and other writers. Writing is a skill that can be learned by almost anyone, and it is in the learning that we raise ourselves above raw potential to refinement and eventual mastery.

Trait #3: Diligence

Finally, we come to the most important of the three traits, the bottom of the pyramid, the foundation for the previous two. Without diligence, we will inevitably lack the ability to grit our teeth and put our innate talent or our sought-after knowledge to practical use. Writers who possess diligence are able to bring the following to their writing desks:

• A commitment to writing, even in the face of its difficulties.
• A certain amount of hardheaded tenacity that allows them to keeping marching right past the inevitable discouragements.
• A consistency is showing up for work every day, no matter what else has to be sacrificed.

The writing life is filled with setbacks and even outright failures. Without the determination to persevere, no writer will make it past the starting gates. We have to be willing to devote our time and energy to pursuing our craft, polishing it, and loving it even when it isn’t lovable.

In order to call ourselves writers, we have to act like writers. We must recognize our responsibility to our talent. We must open our minds to studying and perfecting the art of writing. And we must be willing to do these things day in and day out. Writing isn’t always a hobby; it isn’t always a career; but it is a lifestyle. If we can devote ourselves to pursuing these three traits, we can wake up every morning with assurance that we are writers.

K.M. Weiland writes historical and speculative fiction from her home in the sandhills of western Nebraska. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, editing services, and her recently released instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

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A guest post by Ollin Morales of Courage 2 Create

About a year ago, when I decided to sit down and write my first novel, my biggest problem with the writing process wasn’t that I was a bad “proofreader,” or a bad “goal-setter,” or a bad “blog monetizer.” No, my biggest problem with the writing process was… my life.

About a year ago, I had already come out of the long and arduous process of trying to get into a Graduate School for Creative Writing. After giving my graduate application my all, and after turning it in, a few months later, I received a response in the mail. I unfolded the letter and then folded it back up again as soon as I saw the word: “Unfortunately” in the second sentence.

About a year ago, I had been let go from my job as an English Tutor because the company I was working for had gone bankrupt after the recession hit. The company loved me, but they could no longer pay me. My mind sort of checked out as soon as my boss shifted the conversation and started with the word: “Unfortunately…”

About a year ago, I had come out of my fourth failed relationship, and for anyone who has ever had a heart-broken more than once, you’ll agree that a consistently broken heart is a vastly underrated phenomenon. It can get the best of you, if you let it. I think I went into shock when my ex-boyfriend pulled over his car and began to say: “You’re a really great guy, but unfortunately…”

Finally, a year ago, someone close to me, who I love very dearly, and who I had been taking care of for two years, fell into another bout of her Depression. For those of you who don’t know, Depression takes over the body of the person you love until you find yourself living with the disease itself. Living with Depression is like coming home and discovering a black hole of grief and sorrow greeting you at the door. The best–and only thing–you can do in that situation is to orbit the edge of this black hole, spin frantically like a lesser version of Mars, and try not to be torn out of orbit and swung into the dark abyss.

That was it. That was the last straw for me. I was no longer in an “unfortunate” situation. I was in a crisis.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had to become wise, and I had to become wise fast.

Why? Because I knew that if I didn’t gain the wisdom I needed to survive in that moment, I would end up drowning in my own ignorance.

Now, the only way I was going to gain that wisdom was to take the steps necessary to vastly transform the way I approached my life.

These were the necessary steps I took in order to go from being 1/4 of a writer to becoming whole again:

• I began meeting regularly with a therapist to learn how to deal with my emotions
• I trained for a 5K to learn how to deal with my body
• I kept a daily journal to learn how to sort through my heavy thoughts and clear the way for the lightness of my truth
• I developed a daily meditation routine, hiked in the mountains, and began to pray so that I could learn how to reconnect with the universal, sky-bound spirit that unites us all.
• Most importantly, I reached out to friends and family, wrapped my arms around them, and allowed myself to burst open with the greasy showers of pain, letting all that was broken slice through me, until the release of life’s vicious shrapnel lubricated my blackened, rusted heart. It was this “reaching-out” that taught me how important it was to be part of a larger community.

It was all of this work, and this work only, that allowed me to continue my writing, and helped me survive a very challenging year.

So, Then What Happened?

Don’t worry. You’ll be happy to know that at the end of that tumultuous year, not only did I finish the first draft of my novel, despite everything that stood in my way, but I wrote a blog chronicling this journey that went on to become one of The Top Ten Blogs for Writers.

Oh, um—what’s the word for when something good happens, unexpectedly?

Ah, that’s right. Fortunate. Haven’t heard that word in a while. Nice to hear it again.

What does this have to do with my writing?

“I’m really happy for you Ollin, but, what’s the point? I mean, what does this story have to do with me being a writer?”

Fair enough. Here’s the point:

After everything I went through, the most surprising thing I learned was that being a writer requires MORE than just your mind.

Why? Because you don’t write with only your mind. You write with your heart. You write with your spirit. You write with your body. You write as a member of a community.

Now, you can ignore all these aspects of your being, sure, but then you would only be about 1/4th of a writer.

On the other hand, if, every now and then, you listen to the intelligence of your heart, or to the intelligence of your spirit, or to the intelligence of your body, you might find the solutions to about 75% of your writing problems—problems that your mind told you were impossible to solve.

This “well-rounded” approach to writing isn’t always easy. I still struggle to master the skill myself

Take this year for instance. Although the challenges I faced last year are all resolved, this year I am faced with a whole new set of challenges.

Once again, I am being forced to become wise—fast—or risk drowning in my own ignorance.

But this is the journey of life and the writing process, isn’t it? Both require that you have infinite patience. Both require that you fall in love with the painfully slow progression of things. Both require that you face a set of problems one year, master them, then face a whole new set of problems the next year, master those, and keep this going until you’re forced to accept the humble truth: that no matter how much you learn, you will, forever and always, be a novice.

If you want to BE a great writer you need to LIVE a great life

Let me conclude with this thought:

You, as a writer, are FAR more complex than your ability to write flawless grammar.

You, as a writer, have a life to live, and you need to live it well.

Because when you ignore your life, you become like a concert pianist who has been given the best training in the world, the best piano to play, the best musical score to follow, the best audience to bear witness, but who does not show up to his own concert.

On the other hand, when you do pay attention to your life, you not only become the artist who shows up, but the human being who relishes his moment in the spotlight.

much love,

Ollin

Ollin Morales’s blog, {Courage 2 Create}, chronicles the author’s journey as he writes his very first novel. His blog offers writing tips as well as strategies to deal with life’s toughest challenges. After all, as Ollin’s story unfolds, it becomes more and more clear to him that in order to write a great novel, he must first learn how to live a great life. You can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.
Note: Ollin’s blog, Courage 2 Create is a winner of the Top Ten Blogs for Writers 2011 Contest.

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Many years ago, when I was a starving writer wrestling day and night with the phenomenal angel of the fiction craft, I got thrown on my back a lot. I’d lie there wheezing until I could breathe again, then I’d gamely hop back up and go at it again.

Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. Up. Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. This went on for a really long time.

So now that I’m a professional indie editor, I know what’s going on at your house. And there are things I’ve learned about this craft that could make this wrestling match a whole lot easier on you. These are my secrets, the things you should know:

1. 1. You need far more discipline and profound human compassion than you think.

You guys. You bring me your precious manuscripts, written in ink from the opening of your own veins, these symbolic versions of the very real and tragic heartbreaks you yourself have survived, and you tell me, “Don’t be gentle. Lay it on me. I can take it.”

Fortunately for you, I’m the wimpiest writer ever in history, so I just ignore you. I know that every mild criticism is a slam to the writer’s solar plexus and every compliment is a faint voice mumbling unintelligibly in the distance.

Only when you’ve gotten a hefty dose of compassion for you, the writer, can you hoist up your suspenders and set about the Herculean task of applying the discipline and ruthlessness your manuscript needs. There are always piles, mountains, avalanches of it. If I simply laid the discipline on you first, you’d be humiliated—silenced.

This is why I’m not just an editor. I’m a writing therapist. Half my job is being really good at handling manuscripts, and the other half is being really good at handling writers.

2. Writing fiction isn’t expressing yourself, it’s creating an experience for your reader.

And yet we all write because we love it. Right? I’m not sitting here at my desk thinking about you. I’m actually sitting here thinking about me, about the fact that I know something important and I want you to get a kick out of learning it from me.

Which leads me inevitably to admit that the reader is the only one in this relationship who counts. I might very well have something you need, but if you don’t want it I’ve done all this work for nothing. Not only that, but you’re not here just for what I know, you’re here for the experience of learning it, and even more than that you’re here for the indescribable magic that happens when you find yourself sandwiched between what you’re learning and how you feel about learning it.

That’s the magic that changes a reader’s life. And the writer’s job is working that magic.

3. No one can properly line edit their own writing.

This point sucks, but it’s a simple fact, so we might as well all get used to it, the same way we’re used to dentists, freeways, and working for a living. I would far rather be independently wealthy on a chateau patio overlooking the 1920s Mediterranean coast, words like pearls falling in perfect order from my quill, bouncing over my feet and across the worn flagstones.

But that’s simply not going to happen.

Instead, I’m going to write as clearly and succinctly and vividly as I know how, and then I’m going to hand it off to someone else—my writer husband, my writer friend, or the editor of whatever publication or blog I’m writing for—to be line edited. They’ll catch the awkward phrasing and constructs that make a reader stumble over my words. They’ll smooth the rhythm I’ve worked so hard to achieve (and, hopefully, catch most of my typos.)

They’ll see my words the way a reader sees them. And that’s professional polish.

4. The publishing industry is not Cinderella, and neither are you.

Or, to paraphrase Dylan: they ain’t a-going nowhere.

I know everyone’s breathing down your neck, exhorting you with the authority of wild-eyed fanatics to hustle your fanny out there and get your novel published. I know this is why you ask for blunt criticism and hope to skimp on the line editing, why it’s so daunting to be told this work is, more than anything, about magic.

But honestly. . .what’s going to happen if you don’t get published PDQ? Are the publishers all going to turn into pumpkins at midnight?

No. And neither are you. Novels have been written and published for over four hundred years. They will continue being published a good four hundred years from now. I spent thirty years delving into this craft in the privacy of one cozy little workspace after another, across three states and half a dozen countries, one desk in a closet and another on a minuscule Hawaiian lanai overlooking the endless ocean. You have time to immerse yourself in this craft for a very, very long time indeed before you need to start looking over your shoulder to see if the end is gaining on you.

Seriously.

5. Your manuscript is in much worse shape than you believe it is, but you have vastly more potential as a brilliant writer than you can imagine.

Now, you may have seen my recent moment of online glory in which I was immortalized in the Huffington Post for being dissed by my agent. That story was absolutely true. Every single manuscript that comes to me is the best, brightest, most word-perfect work of which its author feels capable, and every single one of them has aspects for which an agent with a caustic tongue could get them into the Post.

But that’s okay. I learned how to fix all that stuff.

Even more importantly, every single manuscript that comes to me has its moments of ineffable glory: a facility with words, specific telling details that snap scenes into three dimensions, plot twists and developments that carry me right out of myself, laser-like snippets of dialog and amazing character insights, things that make me sit up, make me laugh, torque my heart exactly the way a reader’s heart needs to be torqued.

These moments are the stuff of which brilliant fiction is made.

6. Your job is to go beyond the limits of possibility.

Of course, the biggest thing I know that you don’t is that writing fiction is an impossible labor. Great art is never as transcendental as its creator has in mind.

Readers might be happy enough with less than transcendental (but not much). Publishers and agents might be as happy as they’re ever going to get. (It’s hard to tell.) But once you’ve seen your vision and known what it’s like to capture even a fragment of that iridescent substance for your own in words, you will never again be satisfied.

So you keep at it—the impossible. Even though you know it’s impossible. That’s what you, great writers, and immortal protagonists all have in common.

7. Fiction isn’t really about reading or writing, it’s about living.

Finally, not the biggest thing I know that you don’t, but the most important: there’s no such thing as either “escapist” or “literary” fiction. There is only storytelling to which all of us, readers and writers alike, go over and over again, to find out what life is, learn the basic skills we need to survive it, and discover the unspeakable beauty and subtlety and significance that makes it worth living.

You don’t have to be a writer. You simply do this work because we human beings need it done.

Victoria Mixon spends her time blogging for the vast tribe of aspiring great writers in the blogosphere and editing their work with her suspenders hoisted up. She is the co-author of Children and the Internet: A Zen Guide for Parents and Educators and author of the recently-released The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual.