Keep it simple.

You don’t often hear this.  I don’t know why.  Maybe because if people knew how easy it was to write a story, they’d stop paying professional novelologist to do it and just do it themselves.  Although perhaps easy is the wrong word because novelology isn’t easy.  It’s a lot of work.  It’s just that people tend to think the easy part is hard and vice versa.

This is only my own personal experience.  I can’t speak for every writer, but the hardest thing about writing is sitting down and actually making yourself do it.  This is why most people never actually become writers.  Most people don’t have the indefinable quality to sit down and finish a story.  Not even a short story.  Much less a novel.  But it’s not always their fault.  Sometimes, they’re getting bad advice.

Writing a novel is difficult enough.  I know I wouldn’t do it if I believed half of what I’d read about “How to write” books.  These guides come from a well-meaning place, but they tend to put a lot of pressure on writers.  They might ask for plot outlines, character studies, world building, thematic construction, character arcs, etc., etc.  These aren’t always bad things to have in mind when writing a story, but as often as not, I find they get in the way of the creative process.

To begin with, they’re usually so much boring prep work.  It’s like arranging all your cleaning supplies on a shelf in the order you plan on using them, then measuring out how many rolls of paper towels you’re going to need, how much time must be allocated for vacuuming, when would be the optimal time for dusting, and deciding on how long your lunch break should be.  You could waste hours preparing to do something when you could just be doing it instead.  And those hours of prep work give you the illusion that you actually accomplished something, when all you did was get ready to accomplish something.

The same thing happens to writers, especially aspiring writers.  They might be able to tell you everything about the history of their elaborate fantasy world.  Or they deep, pychological scars that drive their detective to deliver justice.  Or the reason their character always wears sandals and likes cats, except for tabby cats.  They might be able to detail the nuanced arc their protagonist undertakes to learn that life is worth living again and that tabby cats are okay.  They can give you all the elements that make a story.

They just can’t give you the story.

Keeping it simple means forgoing the tedious arranging of elements, of doting loving detail on every single element of the story, and just getting the damn thing done.  You might make mistakes that way, but you’ll make mistakes anyway, regardless of how much time and effort you put into quantifying how magical powers work in your universe or how many hours you spent studying handguns or flamingoes or the history of Napoleonic France.

Keeping it simple has more advantages than just allowing you to get your novel done.  It allows you one of the greatest assets a writer can have.  You can be the audience, sit in their seat, and watch the show unfold.  If you’re eager to see what happens next, then how can your audience not be?  If you are just following an outline, screwing together plot points like rivets, you don’t really know if that’ll translate.  It very well might, but to me at least, that’s a lot of work to put into something that could just as well be working against you.

I keep it simple.  I don’t write intense backstories for characters if they don’t need it.  (And so far, only one has needed it, and that didn’t even come up in the book.)  I don’t worry about a central theme at the beginning, except when it’s so obvious that I didn’t need to think about it at all.  And world building should be minimal.  Enough to make it look like I know what I’m doing without pulling it out of the air.

The advantage for me is that when I sit down to write a story, I just sit down and write.  I don’t often know where I’m going, and I rarely, if ever, know how it will end.  This is what keeps me writing.  I want to know why endless waves of zombies are attacking the diner, why a hapless loser has been made immortal, and what would happen if we invited mythological gods into our homes and onto our sofas.  It’s what compels me to write these stories because, until I do them, I’m not honestly sure either.

A good story is a complicated thing, an amalgamation of intriguing questions, characters, memorable moments, and so much more.  It’s magic.  And maybe some folks can take all the ingredients of a great story and look at them before they’re mixed together and know exactly what they’re going to get.  But not me.  I throw them in the pot, stir liberally, add spices, strain out the unnecessary, and by the time it’s done, from almost out of nowhere, a story is born.

Maybe you are one of those writers who benefits from prep work.  Good for you.  More power to you.  But if you’re not (and I think most writers aren’t) it’s all right to work in a different way.  It’s already to take it easy, keep it simple, and just write to see what happens.  It’s what I do, and so far, it’s worked just fine by me.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

So much praise, so you will probably not be too heartbroken if I offer some criticism?
I read “In the company of ogres”, and sort of liked it. But it was something about it…
Then I stopped reading, as the next books (or former) did not seem to appeal to me. I don’t know why.
Then I picked up “Monster”. And read it. Some of it was funny. Some of it was really funny.
But I did make the mistake of visiting your blog before I had finished the book. And I read what you said about “TOO MANY CURSES”, about you being proud of writing a novel without any real “shift” in characters, and no romance, and that being the point. Then it struck me. What I had problems with in “In the company…”  I read the rest of “Monster”, with this thought in the back of my mind. Stuck, couldn’t get it out. I was expecting the same feeling I had when I finished “In the company…” And I got it. It might have been because I was expecting it. But I don’t think so.
The “problem” was that the stories seemed too much like “this happened, and then we went back to nothing (i.e. our ordinary lives)”. No closure, just “back to normal”.
So, you may be very satisfied you managed to write “too many curses” without any “shift” in the characters and no romance, but me personally, I am a bit dissatisfied that I feel you managed the same in “In the company…” and “Monster”.
I still might pick up your next book, though. Two books may not be enough to make a viable conclusion

Well, first of all, thanks for taking the time to post a comment.  Good or bad, it’s always flattering when someone takes the time to offer their opinion.  And you have some interesting ideas here.  I don’t necessarily agree with them, but hey, that’s what makes life so damned intriguing, isn’t it?

I’m not interested in defending my work, of course.  Neither of us are likely to change our minds, but since you went to the trouble of posting a comment, I thought I’d at least offer a reply.  So here goes.

I think you’re misunderstanding my idea of no major shifts in character.  I don’t mean that the characters don’t undergo some subtle changes in their personality through the events of the story.  They just tend not to be radical shifts.  Still they are profound and important elements to every story I write (with the possible exception of MONSTER, which I will get into in a bit).

Your assessment of IN THE COMPANY OF OGRES is intriguing, but I have to disagree quite a bit about character growth in that story.  In particular, Never Dead Ned grows immensely.  Ironically, he grows by accepting himself for who he is.  Going “Back to normal”, as you put it, isn’t Ned refusing to grow.  It’s Ned becoming exactly what he must.  I know the books been out a few years now, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t get any deeper than that.

Meanwhile, Regina has learned that there’s more to life than just kicking everyone’s ass.  Frank has taken steps toward a relationship.  And the soldiers of Ogre Company, while still a group of hard-luck misfits, are on their way toward becoming the military outfit they could always be.

True, none of this is a radical shift.  But by the end of the novel, all the major characters better understand themselves and each other.  It isn’t a huge alteration in their characters, but they are not the same people they were in the beginning of the story in many important ways.

As for TOO MANY CURSES, again, it’s difficult to quantify because, on the face of it, the protagonist starts out as a sensible, level-headed character and remains so throughout the book.  But her transition from lowly servant to mistress of the castle is the crux of the story.  It’s true that she doesn’t rise to this position by becoming all-powerful.  In fact, she does so mostly through the realization that she has been the mistress of the castle for a long time and just didn’t know it.  But even this realization means that “back to normal” is not possible.  (Having not read the book, you, of course, will just have to take my word on it.  Or you could take a chance and buy it, but that’s your call.)

Thinking about it now, I think all my books have this quality.  The characters do not transform in any earth-shattering fashion.  They remain consistent throughout their stories.  But they do change.  They do grow.  They just do it in small (yet important) ways that I find more realistic and satisfying.

I hate to use the word subtle because, damn it, it just sounds pretentious.  But, what the hell?  I’m a semi-successful novelologist.  I have the books on the shelves to prove it.  Just this once, I’ll be pretentious.

As for MONSTER, I agree with your assessment.  Monster, our hero, starts out as a down-on-his-luck pessimist, and by the end of the novel, he really hasn’t grown one damn bit.  That was intentional though.  Sometimes, we just don’t learn.  If you don’t find that satisfying from a story perspective, who could blame you?  I knew when I wrote it that many wouldn’t.

But what about our other protagonist, Judy, who is finally free to pursue her own happiness for the first time?  While she might be the same person, more or less, her circumstances have changed in important ways.  Her life is certainly not “back to normal” by the end of the novel.

And let’s not forget the universe of Monster itself, which has already begun to change after the climax.  Trying to avoid spoilers here (again), but if I wrote another book set in this universe, it would have to be quite a bit different because the very rules of magic and reality that govern Monster’s world have been altered.  I could even argue that the universe itself is the central character of the story and that its transformation by the end could constitute real character growth.

I’m not suggesting that your interpretations are wrong.  All art is filtered through the audience, and if the audience doesn’t like it, then the art has failed.  There’s no debate on that.  I wish I could tell you that you would like my other books better, but I’m not sure you would.  Some of the major characters in DIVINE MISFORTUNE change and grow (though again, nothing very extreme).  Others don’t.  I don’t feel like the book goes “back to normal”, but I didn’t feel that way about the other books either, so what do I know?  I’m just the writer, and in the cosmic scheme of things, my opinion matters far less than the audience’s.

Still, I want to thank you again for taking the time to comment.  If you ever feel like giving any of my other books a try (hey, that’s what libraries and used book stores are for) then I hope you’ll find them worth your time.  If not, well, thanks for giving me a shot.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

It’s time for our infrequent and irregular Ask A Smart Guy segment.  Let’s start with this comment someone recently posted on the site.