A Writer's Tale (14 page)

Rule 4

“Write Truly.”

The notion of writing
fiction
“truly” may sound a trifle contradictory.

After all, fiction is
made up.
How can it be true if it’s made up?

In fact, most fiction is mostly true. You are obliged to be accurate about every detail that isn’t directly related to your story. For instance, such matters as historical, geographical, scientific and technological facts (including how firearms
really
operate) must be true.

Readers have to be given the straight scoop except when you are manipulating the truth for the sake of the story (in which case, your readers need to be tipped off that you’re bending the truth).

In some cases, novels provide valuable information about fascinating subjects. Most Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton novels, for example, give a lot of insight into one topic or another. Their stories are made up, but their information isn’t.

No matter what you’re writing about, your background material should be as close to the truth as possible.

Which really should go without saying.

But I decided to say it, anyway, on my way to the
real
subject of my rule,
“Write Truly.”

It’s this.

Everything you write should come out of yourself. Every character, every scene, every story, should be a reflection of
you.
Pull it out of yourself, not out of movies or television shows you’ve seen, not out of news articles or books you’ve read.

If your stuff is nothing more than a rehash of
other people’s
work, you’re not accomplishing much. Even if you’re able to make a success of it (which isn’t likely), you’ll be little more than a hack.

To be
good,
your stuff has to be yours and yours alone.

You accomplish this by writing about what you’ve personally experienced in the real world, not what you’ve experienced vicariously in other people’s books, movies, etc.

For example, suppose you’re eager to write a vampire novel.

Don’t set out to write a book “like
Dracula,
but different.” Instead, look for a way to make the subject of vampires
personal
to you. How might
your
life be affected if you should encounter a vampire? Where might
you
run into one? How might you, your family, your friends react to the situation?

A hack will do a “mix and match,” creating his stew by throwing together bits and pieces taken from other sources.

A good writer’s novel might also be a stew, but whatever ingredients might be lifted from other sources will be awfully hard to identify and there’ll be a whole new taste due to the author’s secret sauce.

The secret sauce is what makes it good makes it more than just a trite mish-mash of old material.

Pushing this analogy well beyond the boundaries of good sense, I’ll go on to say that the secret sauce is made of the blood, sweat, tears, heartaches and joys of the author’s life.

Every writer’s secret sauce has a different flavor.

Some writers have lousy secret sauce that you just can’t stand. Some don’t even use the stuff at all.

You can tell when it is there and when it isn’t. It’s what makes the difference between a bland story and a rich, spicy one.

It makes the difference between an
artificial
story and a
true
one.

Have you ever wondered why you want to read more of certain authors?

‘Cause you like their secret sauce!

But let us now abandon that analogy (a little bit late) and say it straight out: To write truly, you need to tap into yourself as deeply as possible and use what you find there.

Every character, scene, word of dialogue, plot development, etc. is your creation.
Allow them to look like your creations.

This is what will make them unique and valuable.

If anyone tells you to write more like Tom Clancy or Mary Higgins Clark or John Grisham, politely tell them, “Thank you very much and go to hell.”

There is only one you, so
write like yourself.

It’s what might make your stuff worth reading.

It’s what could make your readers come back for more.

Because, if you do it right, they can’t get the same taste from anyone else.

Rule 5

“Finish.”

Whatever you are working on, get it done.

Just as the world is loaded with aspiring writers who claim they can’t find any time to write, it is also chock full of folks who are busy on a work in progress.” This is usually a terribly wonderful epic novel sure to set the literary world ablaze when the author sets it loose on the public in some unspecified, distant decade.

Yup. Sure.

A work in progress might make for good brag, but it’s otherwise useless.

The artist concentrating on his work in progress and never finishing it is probably afraid it’s no good. And afraid that, if he does get the masterpiece done, he won’t know what to do with himself afterward.

You don’t want to be one of these people.

You want to be a writer. Right?

So do it.

Write the story, write the book. Get it done, send it off, and get started on the next.

In addition to the dangerous WIPS (Work in Progress Syndrome), and somewhat related to it, is the malady that I’ll call LWD (Life’s Work Disorder). Writers suffering from LWD are inclined to
stick
to a project forever instead of finishing it or abandoning it and moving on to a new project. (It differs from WIPS in that people suffering from Life’s Work Disorder may actually be talented writers seriously trying to create a marvelous book.) They labor year after year on a book, sure that they’ve got a
great concept
that’ll put them on the literary map or bestseller charts if only they’re eventually able to get it right and/or some agent or editor will finally discover its merits.

Maybe the thing
has
merits. Or maybe it’s a dud.

The deal is, you might not want to be working on the same book for five, ten or twenty years. If you
are
devoting that much labor to a book, follow Tom Snyder’s advice and take look in the mirror. You’ll probably see the face of a moron. Or a lunatic.

Here is what to do.

If you have a concept that you think is spectacular, give it your best shot. Do whatever preliminary work might be necessary (research), then write the book. It shouldn’t take you longer than a year if you’re serious. Give it a revision, then send it off, sit down and come up with a
new
great concept, turn that one into a book, and go on to the next.

Whatever you do, don’t just sit around to wait for the “great book” to get accepted. If it is rejected (which is not exactly unlikely), don’t devote months or years to reworking it in hopes of “getting it right.”

Just put it away. (Maybe go back to it some day, but not now.) Instead of hoping to revive Lazarus, make a baby.

And another, and another.

If you are behaving properly as a writer, you will have a second novel finished before your first novel has had time to find a publisher or accumulate more than a few rejection slips.

At the opposite end of the problem from Work in Progress Syndrome and Life’s Work Disorder is a malady that I will simply dub
Quitties.

This is one of the most common disorders, and probably inflicts all writers to some extent.

It happens this way.

You get started on a novel, thinking it is brilliant. You write ten pages or sixty or three hundred then give up on it.

There are a couple common reasons for quitting.

One, you decide the story isn’t working out the way you’d hoped. In other words, it no longer seems overwhelmingly wonderful. So it isn’t worth continuing.

Two, you’ve come up with a
new
great concept, so you’re compelled to drop the work in progress and start in on the new one
immediately.

On occasion, perhaps a work
should
be abandoned for one or the other of those reasons.

But rarely.

As a general rule, you should resist the urge.

Because, believe it or not, the book you quit writing might have turned out just fine. It might’ve even been better and more successful than the one for which you abandoned it.

But you’ll never know if you don’t finish it.

Your initial enthusiasm for
any
novel is almost certain to diminish as you get into it.

You’ll have doubts about whether it’s any good at all. You’ll be tempted to give up and try something else. The deal is, it’s natural to feel this way.

And if you
do
quit and go on to a new novel, guess what pretty soon, you’ll start having your doubts about
that
one.

You’ll be tempted to stop writing it, too.

If you don’t resist these urges, you’ll end up with a room full of unfinished novels and nothing accomplished.

An unfinished novel is no good to anyone. All it does is take up space.

This is true not only for authors suffering from
Quitties,
but also for authors trying to sell their work on the basis of a “proposal.”

If you have to submit sample chapters and an outline to your agent or editor, go ahead and do it. But go ahead and do something else while you’re at it:
write the book.

Best case scenario: by. the time your proposal gets accepted, you’ll have the book ready to send in.

Worst case scenario: your proposal is rejected. But if it
does
get rejected, you still have a completed manuscript.

An unfinished novel is a waste of space; a
finished
novel is an asset. Just because a novel is rejected by darn near every publisher on the face of the Earth today doesn’t mean it won’t be bought and published
tomorrow.

Rule 6

“Read.”

It should go without saying that writers need to read.

However, I’ve frequently heard authors claim that they don’t have time to read, that they only read non-fiction (research for their fiction), or that they only read books in the genre they hope to conquer.

My “rule” is to read as much as possible across the whole spectrum of published material.

There are several major reasons for this.

First, reading is the best way to learn how to write. Each piece is a sample showing how some other author chose to put words and sentences together, how he described a sunset, developed a character, dealt with dialogue, structured a scene, manipulated a plot.

Basically, everything a person needs to know about writing can be learned by reading other people’s stories, poems, plays, screenplays, novels, etc.

Second, by reading omnivorously, you protect yourself against one of the most common problems encountered by aspiring writers wasting a lot of energy and time trying to write a story that has already been done. If you don’t
know
the other stories, you’re too ignorant to avoid them. And you really must avoid them. Nobody wants to publish a story that looks as if it’s a remake of an earlier piece by someone else.

If your apparent re-hash
does
get past your agent and editors and sees the light of print, then you might end up in legal trouble with the author of the original material. And if you’re lucky enough to escape that fate (for instance, if the author is dead), you might end up with a lousy reputation among readers who recognize the similarities and figure you’re a rip-off artist. This can happen even if you’ve never heard of or read the earlier piece.

Third,
knowing
the other stories not only allows you to avoid them, but to
play off them.

Just because there have been a gadzillion vampire books doesn’t mean
you
can’t write one, too.

But if you want to write about vampires, you’d better do some research first by reading
Dracula, Salem’s Lot, Interview with the Vampire,
etc. The more vampire stories you read before embarking on your own, the better. It’s as if you are making yourself a map of a minefield. You find out where
not
to step, but you also find out where you
can
step in safety. You want to reach the point of being able to say, “Hey, I don’t think anyone’s used
this
angle yet.” So you use it.

I’ve so far written two adult vampire novels,
The Stake
and
Bite.
All I hear about these novels is how
different
they are, how fresh, how they broke new ground and went against the reader’s expectations. In my opinion, there are
always
fresh ways of dealing with any subject even something as overdone as vampires. But you can only find the new angles if you’ve read what else is out there.

Fourth, it is very limiting to read
only
in the genre in which you write or aspire to write.

Don’t make the mistake, for instance, of reading only horror. (And don’t make the enormous error of
not
reading horror in the mistaken notion that, if you haven’t read it, you can’t be accused of copying it.)

If you want to be a horror writer, read plenty of the current stuff being written in the field, read the classics of horror, but also read in every other area possible. You need to be familiar with the whole scope of literature. For a list of reading material that has been important to me, see my reading lists in this book.

By reading broadly, you gain a great store of knowledge about literature and about the human experience. You see how the writing was done by others throughout history. Such literature enriches your imagination, shows you the range of possibilities, and can’t help but give your own writing more breadth, depth, richness and weight.