A Writer's Tale

It is not even a good idea to ask a professional writer for an opinion of your manuscript.

You should never do that, even if the writer is a good friend. Especially if he is a good friend.

Because there is nothing to be gained, and plenty to lose. If your work is wonderful and flawless, no advice from the professional writer will improve on it. If things are wrong with it, however, the writer is not likely to tell you about them because he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings or turn you into an enemy. If he does tell you what’s wrong with it, you’ll probably turn on him with an arsenal of resentment and scorn.

Also, sending your manuscript to another author creates huge burdens for him. As mentioned above, he won’t dare offer even the most valid of criticisms. (Not if he’s smart.) And if he reads it at all, you might some day accuse him of stealing your material.

Even if the author ignores all the risks to himself, reads your stuff and dares to give you advice, it may turn out to be bad advice.

What he tells you might be excellent as it applies to himself, but bad for you. (You need to discover your voice, not his.) A fellow writer might also give you bad advice on purpose, hoping to derail you.

Trust no one.

Trust only your own instincts.

Keep your mouth shut, write your manuscript, show it to nobody. Make a photocopy and send the photocopy to your agent.

Your agent should be the first person, other than yourself, to find out what you’ve been writing. Otherwise, you’re asking for a legion of troubles.

Rule 8

“Persist.”

I read somewhere, “Persist, even if the world calls it doing evil as it is most likely they will.”

Persistence will win out.

Show me a published writer, and I will show you a person who has kept on writing in spite of every obstacle.

He has found time to write. He hasn’t let rejection stop him. Or poverty. Or writer’s block.

Or people saying he shouldn’t write about that sort of thing.

No matter what happens, he keeps turning out the stuff.

Because he’s a writer.

It’s what he does.

So he does it.

He persists.

And through the persistence, he succeeds.

You Might Be A Lousy Writer If…

1. Your character “produces” his gun, wallet, or other item without benefit of a factory…

2. You’ve written a story that contains no scenes…

3. Your short story takes place over a period of weeks, months, years, decades…

4. Any of your characters experience an “involuntary shudder…  ”

5. You have a character switch the safety off his revolver…

6. You describe the same thing three or four different ways in the same paragraph, if you needlessly repeat yourself, if you are so enamoured of your own words that you aren’t satisfied unless you’ve given your readers the same information several times without letup or mercy…

7. You write your stories in the present tense…

8. You write an entire story in the second person viewpoint…

9. You allow a character to “hiss” a sentence that hasn’t a single sibilant…

10. “You write a sentence like this,” he smiled.

Turning A Incident Into A Short Story:

An Experiment

WHEN WRITERS ARE FIRST TRYING TO LEARN THEIR CRAFT OR ART, THEY often have trouble understanding what a story is. Frequently, they’ll mistake an “incident” or “occurrence” for a story. There is a difference.

But the difference is very difficult to explain and difficult for aspiring writers to understand.

Understanding what makes something “a story,” however, is essential for success as a writer. Let me give you a quick test.

Picture this. A guy walks into a convenience store, sticks a handgun into the face of the clerk, takes money from the cash register then shoots the clerk and runs out the door.

If you expand that situation into ten or twenty pages, describing all the details and fleshing it out with dialogue, have you written a short story? Nope.

It’s an incident, not a story. Now, suppose you want to turn it into a story. Maybe you learn about a new fiction anthology that’s in the works. It’ll be called Stick-Up. The theme of the anthology is that every short story has to be based on the idea of a guy committing armed robbery in a convenience store and shooting the clerk. And you want to create a story appropriate to the theme.

How do you turn any incident into a short story?

This slams us straight into the question: What is the difference between an incident and a story?

A story, in my opinion, is an incident with a striking, unexpected element.

What is striking and unexpected about a guy sticking a gun in the face of a store clerk and shooting him? Not a thing. Not where I come from. Happens all the time. While such an occurrence is terrible and shocking and sad when it happens in real life, it makes for lousy fiction. Because it isn’t a story.

To become a story, the stick-up needs a “trick” or “gimmick.”