The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (13 page)

As I'm sure you know, the human brain is composed of two hemispheres. The right hemisphere, or half, is the seat of emotion, imagination, creativity and intuition. The left hemisphere is the logical side, the analyzer, language processor, critic. The two halves of the brain communicate with one another, but imperfectly, there is even one theory that says much of psychological theory is really the result of the left hemisphere's attempts to make sense of stuff felt and done by the right side, which is impulsive and basically kind of crazy, and essentially unexplainable!

Given this bicameral brain of yours, consider what goes on when you write. Ideas, pictures, characters and plots drift out of the right hemisphere. They have no shape and no linearity. So you turn on your left side and analyze, logicalize, form,
plan
. Then you sit down to write your first draft, which is to say, to dream a patterned dream; and the right hemisphere is called on to do that.

The left hemisphere, however, is not entirely decommissioned while the first-draft dreaming is going on. The left has to process the language, and it has to stand by in the wings, watching the performance, auditing it to make sure that the dream doesn't suddenly lose all form and direction. Then, later, during revisions, the left-side critic may come much more to the fore, seeing logical problems, examining story pattern, character motives, the purity of the grammar and spelling, and so on.

So writing fiction becomes a most strange and wonderful product of an alliance between the hemispheres of your brain, in which first one, then the other, hemisphere is dominant.

Note: during the dream stage of the writing, as you are actually producing copy, it is the creative right hemisphere that is in charge, with the leftside critic only passively watching most of the time. But any thought such as "
This is dumb!
" or "
People are going to think this scene is dumb!
" are obviously messages from the left side of the brain—critical messages that you don't need at this time, while the right side is rolling.

To put this another way, I think most "this is dumb" fear messages are destructive for two reasons: 1. They get the wrong side of the brain in charge and thwart the creative process, and 2. They signal a revolt inside your head that can only lead to fear and further slowing of your story's progress.

There is a time for the left-side critic. But during the writing of a draft is not that time. You use your left side to make your plans, draw your outlines, lay out your characters. But once you start down the creative highway of writing a draft, you keep that logical roadmap on the seat beside you;
you don't keep reading it while you're driving
.

Once you have made your plans and started writing, it's part of your writer's discipline to recognize the negative, destructive nature of all "this is dumb" fears. We all have our writing tied closely to our ego, and we're all scared. But we can't let the fear slow us down, and we can't let that old villainous left-hemisphere critic mess things up. Once under way, you have to trust yourself—that partly logical creative roadmap of an outline or synopsis you planned earlier—and follow it with enthusiasm and imagination and joy.

At this point I can almost hear you the reader of these words wailing, "But sometimes what I write really
is
dumb!"

Well, sure. Even Shakespeare wrote some dumb stuff. So what? If you write something really dumb, the world isn't going to end. And please note: if you're writing, your first job is to press on and follow the imagination, located in your right hemisphere. If what you're putting down is really dumb, you can fix it later, during revision.

How will you know later if it's really dumb? Sometimes you can never be entirely sure and have to make an arbitrary decision, almost a coin toss—"It really is dumb, so I'll change it," or "I don't think it really is dumb, so I'll leave it alone." Most of the time, however, if you write through the original yammering of the left-side critic, when you come back to the questioned segment later you will have a clearer head and see at once whether it really is dumb or not. It's the impulsive fear during creation that's seldom if ever clear and accurate.

Plan... write... then fix. Keep the phases separate as much as possible. And don't beat up on yourself during any phase.

Recognize this: part of growing up as a fiction writer is the ultimate recognition that
all
of us are scared—of looking dumb, of running out of ideas, of never selling our copy, of not getting noticed. We fiction writers make a business of being scared, and not just of looking dumb. Some of these fears may never go away, and we may just have to learn to live with them. The fear of looking dumb, though, can be tossed away once you've recognized it as the jealous yammering of a left hemisphere critic who's tired of being forced to sit silent in the corner while the right side plays.

You'll still get the thought that it's dumb, sometimes. And you'll still be scared, worried about embarrassment. But maybe now you see that the only really dumb thing is to think it's dumb.

Finally, look at the other side of the question. Your plight could be infinitely worse. You could be one of that small, truly doomed minority who thinks every word they write is precious, every idea immortal, every character a demigod, every plot a classic. They
never
think anything they write is dumb. So they never self-criticize even at the times they should, never listen to advice, never study published writers, and spend all their emotional energy defending the rocky turf of their enormous ego. You know the type I mean; you undoubtedly know one of them. Mention a problem you see in one of their stories and they say you just don't understand. Suggest changing so much as a punctuation mark on their page and they go crazy: "Don't change my copy!
My
copy is perfect! To change a word
of this"
(slapping the page with the back of her hand) "would be a violation of my artistic inspiration and integrity! "

These
are the folks who really should be worrying, because if they won't listen and be open, they can't grow. And if they can't grow, they've had it.

So maybe you now see why your worries about "being dumb" aren't nearly as bad as other things that could be messing you up. All you've got to do, after all, is
stop it
.

So stop it.

In the last chapter we pointed
out how unhealthy frightened self-criticism can be for the fiction writer. Closely related to this kind of worried hang-up is concern about what other people might think of the writer once her story is published.

Usually the feared future critic is mother. Sometimes it's a husband or wife, a child, or even a dear friend. (I spent some time during the early years of my writing career worrying what a sainted aunt would think.)

Such worries are normal, but you must not let them hamstring your creative efforts. If you can't entirely banish such worry from your mind, then consider adopting a pen name. For you have plenty of other things to worry about, and frightened self-censorship simply has to be jettisoned at once.

Of course you want to be bound by the dictates of good sense and good taste. But these are a far cry from groundless worries about a stern and unforgiving moral arbiter. One of the great joys of writing fiction is that
you are free
. You must believe this and act like it You must never, ever allow yourself to get hung up on fears of what some family member or friend might think on a personal level.

Closely related to frightened
self-criticism and worry about family or friends is a more subtle fear that some writers carry to their work without ever realizing it. That is the fear of strong emotional feelings. I have met several enormously talented students who never sold their stories because their copy was devoid of real emotion; these writers feared strong feelings in real life and simply couldn't face such feelings in their writing.

If you want to succeed as a writer of fiction, you must never hide from your own feelings because they provide for you your most essential contact with your story characters—and potential readers.

Now, in real life many of us were brought up to distrust or even ignore our innermost emotions. Our "training" as children or young adults may even have been so strenuous in this regard that we do not recognize the self-censorship.

Do you recognize any such distrust or blocking of emotions within yourself? Perhaps as a small child you gave in (quite naturally) to infant feelings of fear and abandonment; perhaps you had all sorts of problems coming to terms with your baby-impulses to have what you wanted or needed,
now
, and a growing and unpleasant awareness that Mother or Dad suddenly expected you to "behave," "be patient," or "be responsible." Maybe you had a temper tantrum and were punished; or you cried in frustration of your wishes and were studiously ignored; or you yielded to some vengeful impulse and were severely scolded (and therefore scared all the more).

It's a ghastly process, when you stop to think about it, this business of growing out of infanthood into childhood... the later process of "acting your age," "being a good soldier," etc. You're
little.
You're
helpless
. You're
scared
. If Mother doesn't attend to you instantly, your fear rises that she won't help you at all; and without her you're
dead
. At a very young age you resent this, and want to be on your own; but you can't be, yet, and even if it were physically possible, all sorts of psychological drives push you desperately toward reunion with Mom at the same time a little bit of you ... maybe... resents and even hates her.

Many of these primitive feelings are unacceptable. We know it at a very early age, and God knows our parents start telling us about it very soon. So we are torn, and our very survival seems to depend on our "doing better." We learn to do better either by hiding what we're feeling, or denying—even to ourselves—that such unacceptable feelings are inside us.

These same mechanisms are reinforced later, in school and with friends and associates. We continue to learn about our feelings, and unfortunately a lot of the lessons in life tend to tell us:
Be cool. Don't feel that way
.

But if you do feel that way, don't show it
.

And so sometimes we really and truly block out many emotions—perhaps blocking out some "good" ones with all the seemingly "bad" ones—and perhaps we become "adult" by really and truly not feeling anything at all very much anymore.

Or we still feel... some... but hide it from everyone else, and feel guilty and try to deny even to ourselves.

It may be that you are one of the lucky ones, in touch with your feelings in all their ranges, and capable of expressing such emotions in a healthy way at least part of the time. Even if you are one of these, however, I suspect that when it comes to your fiction writing, you may have an impulse to "cool it" somewhat in dread of looking odd to your reader, or "dumb," or "too sentimental."

We still live in an age that looks askance at direct confrontation with many feelings, especially elemental ones such as rage and fright. But you as a writer of fiction must never hide from such feelings because they are absolutely essential to good stories.

You must observe yourself... your innermost, secret workings... and consider your feelings, working always to be more aware of them. Remember: You do not have to
act on
whatever feelings are there; but the more clearly you are aware of them in all their nuances, the better you can know and understand yourself.

You must observe others around you, using your references in your own emotions to try constantly to understand what they must be feeling emotionally, what primitive fires must be goading them.

And you must confront such feelings in your stories. Fiction characters who only
think
are dead. It is in their feelings that the readers will understand them... sympathize with them... care about their plight in the outcome of your fiction.

William Foster-Harris, a wise writing teacher who preceded me at the University of Oklahoma, used to talk endlessly about the necessity for a subjective view of reality if one were to write decent fiction. Foster-Harris, like a good parent, seems to me to grow in wisdom with each year I grow older. Strong emotion—so often ducked or ignored in real life—must be at the center of your stories.

The first roadblock, of course, is that you may not know your own feelings very well. I have known young writers who had to spend a brief time with a professional counselor or therapist to overcome this kind of blockage. However, such a step usually is not necessary. For you, it will probably be enough to make a strenuous attempt, in your private journal, to write down an honest and blunt description of your emotional state every day. Additionally, you may try to write brief descriptions of the exact emotional state you observe in some other person—or imagine in your character.

When you write, you may not write so overtly about the feelings... or sometimes you may. You might develop ways to show the physical effects of strong emotion—tears, a palsied hand, or clenched fist—and so define the imagined emotions indirectly, through the presented evidence. But in any case you cannot write fiction without being aware of the feelings inherent in your story people—and then having the courage to put them down on paper in some form.

In first draft, I think you would be wise to avoid any chance that you might still duck confrontation with powerful feelings. In other words, I would much prefer to see you write "too much" of feeling in your first drat you can always tone it down a bit later, after sober reflection, if such trimming really seems to be called for. On the other hand, a sterile, chill, emotionless story, filled with
robot people
will never be accepted by any reader.

One more word on this topic: whether defining a character's inner life or planning a powerful and harrowing scene in your story, you should avoid the impulse to "play safe." The world's greatest literature has been produced about people on the edge—by writers with the gumption to walk on an edge of their own, on the precipice of sentimentality, melodrama, or some other literary excess. "Better safe than sorry," goes the old warning. But in fiction it just doesn't work. "Safe" will
always
be sorry for the writer dealing with character emotions and strong plot situations.