Blog
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How to write fiction in 10 steps (Do the Wikihow listed steps really work?)
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com Yeah, that’s right. Before I got myself entangled into the amusing task of writing seriously… I didn’t read a single book, a sole webpage or tried to get myself into any of the many, overflowing courses out there.
Disgraceful? Let’s say that any other way; I wouldn’t have learnt a thing. Why? Cause failing, teaches us we must learn. Which is why TODAY, I can review the 10 steps to write fiction you can find in Wikihow (with images). All from my own inexperienced unpublished author, in a congenial way.
So… do the 10 steps work? I’m going to review it in a easy access content table and afterwards, I’ll think to explain it all detailed to an I’s dot.
THE 10 STEPS TO WRITE FICTION WITH THE OCASSIONAL INTERRUPTION
Advice from the renown webpage According to me Be creative! Imagination has no limits. Don’t let others to steal your ideas. Creativity has nothing to do with veing able to finish a plot. Artfully, you require it to start one, you are going to need a lot more knowledge to write a novel. And lots and lots of stubborn energy. Learn to start and see through things. Get an idea. Simple, it can come in a dream or any daily happening you have noticed. Always, always, always, do have something to write on reach. It doesn’t matter if digital or analog. Though, an idea alone can’t be stretched as chewing gum if what you might is to write a novel. Turn that idea into conflict. Write your idea. No matter how stupid it sounds like. You just write. Don’t think how stupid or bad the idea is as step number 3 says. Thinking something as stupid will only deter you from doing. Work out the details and the main story. Create unique characters. Whatever it is you will write is determined by what you have read or seen. As a scientist said: “we stand on the shoulders of giants” Whatever you do will never be absolutely original. What makes it unique is your own voice. Study and research. Don’t copy from others. Be yourself. Copy. Learn how it Works and why it Works. Once you know, you can and will use your own voice. It might not sell to write as a XIX century writer but it certainly helps to know how it works. Decide if what you want is a short novel or a novel. How many words? (In the Spanish speaking world, you will be counting pages) Be yourself. There are authors who write little and authors who write 400 pages just to choose a plot. Write a manuscript EVERY single job is an sketch until you have reviewed it or given it to a skilled editor for help. Review your spelling and gramar. In case you don’t know how to write something, check it up in a dictionary or ask. Write every single day but take everything calmly. Life tends to get in the way. And YES, BUY YOURSELF A DICTIONARY. Read it again and ask help from a friend or family Learn to trashcan. NO matter how much youlike a scene, if it doesn’t work… IT IS GARBAGE. It is better to get a beta reader, frequently friends or family have no time or are not cultured enough in plots to give a useful review. Plus, you need someone to tell you stuff. Write it all over with the corrections. Have fun. Even if the process makes you scream, feel like washing the dishes or clean the cat’s litter. If you don’t have fun, no one will want to read you. (This and number one are interchangeable). Next entry, why and how is it the such advice works. And why to keep an eye in other stuff.
IT WILL CONTINUE
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Strange
Photo by Anete Lusina on Pexels.com Strange…all weird…
I had my head all lost in the woods,
Those in the moon.
Wasn’t it rare I don’t remember your face
But crave for tha’ skin?
How suddenly I am, squeezing my memories,
To think in your eyes.
Ice is what should be,
Deep inside of my heart
When it skips,
One or two beats.
For I recall your hands into mine.
The thumb with the ring
Pinching my cheek,
In awe for a smile.
Ice is what should be,
Deep inside of my heart
When it skips,
One or two beats.
Don’t know if I hated or loved you at first sight,
But this warm is to melt what remains frozen my dear…..
Even if lil’ by lil’
For it ain’t one, such a heat,
It’s not a passion you see…
Tender…coiling up.
You didn’t know…
I wouldn’t have even thought
Come my tough cookie,
Give it your all
Ice is what should be,
Deep inside of my heart
When it skips,
One or two beats.
For I recall your hands into mine.
Lovely, lovely chips of reason
May fall…
My heart skips
One or two beats
If I dream those hands into mine
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Cómo escribir ficción con (el valor de) la verdad 2
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com LA MENTIRA
“Cuando ni es ni se construye una apariencia, no puede existir como actor; cuando parece lo que no es, su identidad será una mentira.”
Mieke Bal. Teoría de la narrativa. Introducción a la narratología.
En otras palabras, todas las tramas buenas (sin excluir las que realmente no hacen uso de esta máxima como los cuentos de hadas y los mitos); en las que las cosas no son como parecen ser; tienen como principio LA MENTIRA.
Porque, desde la perspectiva de Mieke, los textos narrativos como los policiacos o los de espías que tienen como principio estructural la mentira o la construcción de apariencias engañosas o el secreto, se pueden inscribir en una categoría aparte. Y, puesto que la mentira es cuando lo que se dice del personaje no coincide con su identidad real; prácticamente todas las tramas donde las cosas no son lo que parecen, tienen como base estructural la mentira.
COMO ESCRIBIR FICCIÓN DEJANDO CAER LA BOMBA
La segunda guerra mundial finalizó de modo dramático con la rendición de un país muy chiquito (Japón) sobre el cual cayó una bomba. Atómica. Una cosita de nada.
Antes de eso, el país grandote que la dejó caer, se dedicaba a mirar como los países europeos se daban en su máuser e; incluso, jugaba un poco a los ideales nacionalsocialistas de tapadillo[1] (Estados Unidos de América). Hasta que al país chiquito se le ocurrió bombardear una islita del Pacífico, donde el país grandote tenía una base militar.
…¡¿Y qué diablos tiene eso que ver con la verdad y escribir ficción?! ¿Cómo se relaciona eso con LA bomba?
A que en una historia, una buena historia, las cosas o los acontecimientos suceden de modo similar a este asunto. La verdad cae como una bomba sobre los desprevenidos lectores, los cuáles creen en la absoluta maldad del país pequeño por atacar (pérfidamente) al país grandote. Los que apenas sospechan, que la verdad es un poco diferente. Un poquito. Lo suficiente para sorprender.
En otras palabras, la bomba es la verdad. Pero para que la verdad sobre la naturaleza real personaje sea una bomba, debemos construir de modo creíble la mentira (o medias verdades) que le darán forma a dicha verdad para que la sueltes en el escenario.
Déjame un bombazo de verdad en forma de comentario. Dale like. Construye la mentira del mito de este blog. Pasto kalo.
[1] Segregación racial… Intereses colonialistas…
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How to write fiction deciding how much to describe
Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Pexels.com There are descriptions more detailed than others. An editor I’ve read in LinkedIn is of the opinion that some are quite boring since they’re too long. But there are… those too short as well to stablish a mood or a character.
I know this petty problem won’t scare the comic drawer; they laugh it since they only draw the character. Script writers might despair torn between the wish to detail and the imperious need to give room to reality to settle among fiction. After all, they can’t choose the casting and describing too much backfires for reality has much more options where to choise from.
So, to business Chencha.
A weak stroke in a book, a faint one in a new book and Montalbano still keeps his hair, is slim and sports a mustache. What colour are his eyes? Is he tall? All that, was left to reader’s imagination by Camilleri. Given chances, the reader resisted the urge to watch the TV series. Otherwise, their imagination has been destroyed and given way to what the screen has shown to us. My Catarella was anything but fat.
A few brush strokes are enough to paint a “happy accident” over the white canvas of our minds.
Contrarily, J. Ward’s vampires are super tall, muscle fib as wrestlers whose dumb bells fell into their T’s 0 (for disambiguation, you can take a look at many ML of romantic webtoons or BL such as My omega leader nim or Marry my husband), they possess a savage rage against thir enemies but are such cotton dabs to their “females” or “males[1]” — J. Ward is an inclusive writer thus she has created hetero and gay vampires. They sport long har, favolous golden locks, multicoloured ones, buzz cuts. Amen of being blessed with fantastically hued eyes from white to Bahamas blue or two shades at the same time. All these details and we may get a robot portray in a local police station…. Any other country, but mine.
DOES IT GROW IN SIZE AND DETAIL GIVEN THE AUTHOR’S GENDER?
Overviewed and at first sight. It might seem the descriptive overflow is related to author’s gender. Until we meet Anette Levy-Willard. Or John Updike. Updike is capable of describing autumm’s colours in chemical terms and creates characters of weight, manias, hands and feet so artfully detailed, we almost touch them. And he ain’t as graphic as Ward.
Whilst Levy-Willard in Me Jane, looks Tarzan drives us as gracefully but without as many visual details. Light strokes here and there such as; the petite French one of beautiful breasts. Anything else? No more than the same French one being short sighted and that only tells me she must have slightly puffed eyes[2].
IS IT RELATED THEN TO NATIONALITY?
No… Maybe. Hemingway didn’t describe with the lush of anatomical details in his stories. However, forcing my memory to remind The old and the sea, I believe that of the old man he truly does a more accurate graphic description and over all, an emotional state portray. Maria Louise Ascott, Jean Webster… Though the details, their descriptions are not good enough for the robot portrait. They are, Bob Roses of imagination, too.
Overflowing of description might be taken as a byproduct of young adult’s literature as Vampire diaries[3]. Mario Puzo describes more than a secondary character as if they were main ones in an environmental display which takes you to criminal world as per exterior features. All of these authors are American.
Judith Kerr, Christine Nöstlinger are more economical towards character description. Humberto Eco describes deeply and profusely the surroundings but stills keeps this elegant minimalism about character’s details. But them… are European.
TO DESCRIBE A LOT OR NOT TO DESCRIBE A LOT?
I guess this sounds a lot like Hamlet’s dilemma. If we kill the assassin at the prayer, he’ll go to heaven and his crime will remain unpunished. So we need to wait for the proper moment. So long we prevent the revenge business to go wrong.
I mean, don’t describe when the action or the imagination count more than the detail or the party will sink. And this is not a rule, more like a general idea because who knows how to get that balance if not the experienced writer?
Are you stingy with descriptions or are you extra generous?
Don’t be stingy with your likes and subscribe.
[1] Don’t look at me. The writer herself pigeonholes it as a result of the “biology” she invented for these novels. And, given this is erotic feminine lit, we can’ really demand a lot. No one demands too much from “Playboy”, do we?
[2] It seems us very shortsighted can not oly suffer a cornea detachment if we were to practice bungee jumping but as a result of morphologic features we also own protuberant yes. Which doesn’t make us Simpson’s relatives.
[3] This of the Vampire Diaries reminds me of the entry Unbelievable. Because in the fifteen inutes I managed to stand of the TV series —capital sin, I love vampires (I’m a fan of Underworld) — everybody in the main character’s classroom is so good looking — teacher included —, they might had been super selective to collect as many guys who wouldn’t require an extra sized pair of jeans; neither girls pretty enough to be Miss Highschool pageant to say the least. Where is the talent? Ah. Being beautiful is a talent since it takes keeping yout mouth closed in front of chocolate bars and exercise like 10 hours a day. No kidding. I DON’T have such a talent. I’d chow down the chocolate bar and the most I exercise is ten minutes a day which is better tha none (what I used to before). On the other side, it keeps you from developing DIFFERENT talents.
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Time god
Photo by Anete Lusina on Pexels.com Corrupted and tempted to lust;
Such is the path, oh my GOD.
To worship you, time lord,
You evil and bad luck,
All sense lost and sanity gone.
Blood sacrifice.
To you, dainty fair rose.
All in awe to become your merry,
blooming love.
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Cómo escribir ficción con relaciones psicológicas e ideológicas
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com
Sea cual sea la forma de considerar la literatura, que se valoren los libros como obras autónomas del arte literario, como productos de un individuo o grupo, como objetos de comunicación, o como forma específica de un sistema de signos, nunca se podrá eludir el hecho evidente de que la literatura está hecha por, para y -normalmente[1]– sobre gente.
Mieke Bal.
En este pequeñísimo apartado, Mieke explica en… Menos de 10 minutos lo que a Robert McKee le toma casi lo mismo pero con casi todo un libro como precedente.
Y para explicarlo tengo que regresar al primer párrafo. La literatura o — siendo menos ambiciosos, la narrativa comercial; está escrita por personas hablando de personas. Y como las personas tienden a vivir con otras personas (las narrativas del sujeto aislado, solo contra un montón de tierra encima no suelen ser muy comunes); lo más normal es que esos individuos tengan un trasfondo psicológico y un trasfondo de lucha de clase…
EL CONFLICTO
…. Cuando escribimos ficción, que demonios, incluso las personas que escriben novelas históricas, nos enfrentamos al hecho de tener que introducir el conflicto en la vida del personaje. Tanto si el conflicto nos lo inventamos nosotros al crear un rival amoroso, como si el conflicto es el sujeto contra el mundo (Enrique VIII contra sus espermatozoides de cromosoma X casado con una mujer que no le gustaba); la base de todo texto narrativo es el conflicto. Sin conflicto, tenemos rositas y besos y lindos niños que nunca lloran y juegan calladitos en el suelo sin correr ni gritar… Sí, algo que está muy bien para cuatro páginas de manga o webtoon pero para lo que no vale la pena gastar más de dos párrafos de escritura pero que los lectores piden más y más (con lo que podríamos empezar a definir la narrativa cómo algo muy distinto). No sé cómo la narratologia aún no ha descubierto el conflicto y su resolución como señal carretera de texto narrativo y busca otras muchas formas de definirlo.
En fin, que se puede escribir con clasificaciones psicológicas de los personajes o con clasificaciones de clase social.
ASUNTOS PSICOLÓGICOS
Uno de los consejos más comunes para crear personajes inolvidables, es usar la psicología para cubrir esto, lo otro, lo de más allá en el terreno de la personalidad. Llámese introversión, extroversión, amabilidad, desagrado, ambición o personalidad múltiple[2].
Algunos han propuesto la psicología de personajes como un medio de clasificación en el que las relaciones padres-hijos definen la comedia o la tragedia (Freud estaría de acuerdo con sus caracterizaciones teatrales de los síndromes que catálogo). Otros autores, usan el trauma psicológico para justificar las acciones criminales llevadas a cabo por los personajes (algo que la psicología criminal de testigo experto ya no acepta) para brindarnos un entretenimiento más sustancioso y jugosito.
No obstante, este asunto mental es algo muy gracioso. Porque la psicología fue inventada en 1879 por Wilhelm Wundt y Voogle me dice que la primera novela psicológica fue escrita en 1344 (Giovani Boccaccio, La flammeta). Hamlet se escribió en 1601 y El Quijote (para abreviar) en 1605.
Es decir, crear personajes «modernos» no tiene nada que ver con su «psicología» si concluimos cronológicamente qué la inclusión consciente e informada de conocimientos de psicología no pudo ocurrir hasta después de 1879…
De todos modos, conocer al ser humano es algo genial para escalar el conflicto. Mientras que Hamlet como adolescente ya puede tirarse en la cama y llorar solo porque Ofelia no le hace caso; al añadirle una venganza que no resulta sencilla, la muerte de su amada y su propia muerte inminente, se añaden factores estresantes que no nos dejan indiferentes.Así que podemos tomar el enfoque de la personalidad psicológica, decidiendo de antemano si nuestro personaje será IMJB o cualquiera de esos acrónimos de 16 personalidades para decidir cómo reaccionará al conflicto[3] y si eso será un chiste o una tragedia.
LA LUCHA DE CLASE
Para McKee, la lucha de clase que escala el conflicto no es tanto buscar la transformación social del cambio de los medios de producción. Es algo un poco más sencillo y sin embargo, terriblemente difícil de incluir como base del conflicto narrativo.
Y es que para él, escalar el conflicto consiste en llevarlo del terreno del individuo al terreno de la colectividad en la que más de una persona se ve afectada por los intereses de un grupo o el conjunto entero de la sociedad ….Una vaca no hace el efecto de invernadero. Son un montón de vacas las que lo causan. No porque seamos vacas sino porque escalar de este modo requiere de más gas metano con el cuál crear explosiones más grandes. Y soluciones. O salir de escena con elegancia. Como en Soylent green, donde nos plantean el problema y nos dejan con éste, a ver qué hacemos con él.
Por supuesto que hay historias donde existe este conflicto: «Pertenemos a mundos (clases sociales) distintos» sin que ni si quiera se aparezca el romance. Como en Los miserables[4].
O la típica historia de amor en la que él príncipe se enamora del plebeyo y el plebeyo medio (imaginado por algún autor japonés) tiene un alto sentido de la responsabilidad y decide que no debe causarle problemas al príncipe… (La persona media normal occidental decidiría que no quiere causarse problemas ella misma con una vida llena de estrés)
También están estas cosas de cliché pionero (inventoras de) en el que El orgullo y el prejuicio provienen de pertenecer a clases sociales distintas.
Con lo que yo (de modo rápido y poco reflexivo) concluyo que escribir ficción con base en el conflicto de clase; es un asunto más bien personal del autor y sus intereses que de la trama propiamente dicha.
Un autor al que no le interesa resolver el conflicto secundario de fondo del cambio climático en el que ambienta su guión de película romántica; pondrá a su heroína como activista de logo de Panda contra la despampanante abogada de la fábrica de tintes tóxicos y malolientes, para que ambas terminen en la cama sin resolver nada más que su relación. Los ríos que se jo… roben.
Lo que no es malo, ni bueno. Es una estrategia de mercado. ¿Quién es tu mercado y qué le interesa? ¿Les interesa resolver conflictos de clase o le interesa «ver» las bragas de encaje?Por supuesto que Mieke no llama lucha de clase sino RELACIONES IDEOLÓGICAS, por lo que no las limita a la clase social y habla de TODO TIPO DE OPOSICIONES. Simplemente agrupaciones de personas conflictuadas con personas diferentes de ellas mismas por el color de la piel, el idioma, cualquier cosa que nos ponga en lados opuestos del ring. Yo lo pongo así porque involucra aspectos mucho más complejos de lo que parece a simple vista.
Ah… Dolor de cabeza mayor. Pensar en la moralidad de los conflictos me da hambre. ¿A qué te dieron ganas de darle like y suscribirte si no lo has hecho?
[1] Esta nota es mía y Mieke Bal no tiene nada que ver con ella: excluyendo los haikus escritos por inteligencias artificiales por supuesto
[2] Si te gusta el tema, puedes profundizar un poco más en https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-create-and-interpret-characters-in-fiction-and-film
[3] If aliens abduct extrovert
[4] No la he leído o visto… pero he leído/visto un montón sobre qué trata sin querer.
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How to write fiction writing scenes
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com Scene 1 Take 2
It seems that for once, I won’t hate its very own and bureaucratic habit of his in which the dictionary orders you to go from here to there; in your quest for knowledge without it clarifying absolutely nothing. Dictionaries are a pool filled by wisdom… a very dark and twisted wisdom but the same they’re the Mimirs of words’ kingdom.
Do you remember what an ACT is? No?
Act. m. Heroic deed
Or such are the words of Mr. Larousse. Heroic deed. Given such clue, we’re in green light to pursue the clue Nuval Yoah Harari mentions about the actantial worth of characters: only the facts of kings matter.
Narrative happenings are born with the heroic deed. To rescue the lass. Decapitate the dragon. The act as an artificial subdivisión was born later; when little by little the idea[1] that worth telling facts were not just kingly or knightly ones, started to percolate. And even then, daily stuff (nonetheless the existence of something called slice of life) is not heroic. Unless it means to survive extraordinarily to the incitation event irrupting EVERYDAY life.
From this moment I can start summing two and two. Heroic deed + a set of decorations. In this, I’ve cornered the elusive unicorn called scene. No matter if what I’m holding inside my fingers is nothing but shiny mane hairs due to the fact the beast escaped.
Since it comes[2] (it might seem obvious but it might not be, evolution is a business involving a lot of things which used to be there and now aren’t or very few trustable rests still stand) from the theatre, we can agree physical limitations circumscribe a plot to happen only in a single place or a limited set of places; reducing our choices to a limited physical space.
Therefore, a scene happens in a single place and stage change is automatically a scene change and the beginning of another; where the most important thing id this physical change. I won’t discard there being scenes happening in two physical spaces —despite them being ultra complicated to accomplish given space-time continuity and I don’t want to bring anyone from Back to the future here!
Is the scene limited to physical space? Maybe. It might be posible to limite it to mental/emotional states. Something like phone calls, monologues, schizophrenic hallucinations. A vision is interrupted and we change scene, the telephone call makes place for another and the monologue is interrupted or ended. Thus, interruption and change of <<place>> or <<space time continuity>>.
All right, I’ve summed two plus two. Can we add another number to the possibilities in a scene definition?
An “event considered as a spectacle worthy of attention” is a new possibility. There are activities, daily life or not, that matter to us. They matter because they make us get up in the morning instead of staying tucked in our warm beds.
They matter because they tell us things. They matter since, disregarding the mental sewers, the dark cringe corners of mean wishes and strange ideas next to blue prairies; they tell us who we are. Like letters or half sincere posting in Facebook we laugh of due they’re full of meaning.
This is it. My brain is running in the backstage the app “I must finish that crimson stupid thing[3]” or “I need to write more paragraphs about that witch” or “Oh no, I must read more narratology”. Being things as they are, I must settle a period about. Till next nonsense.
Like it, subscribe to the cuckoo’s nest (this one) and don’t miss the recordings of Crimson Relish en Merriam radio in Telegram.
[1] Can we unsafely say Shakespeare and Cervantes started to introduce the idea in The merry wives of Windsor and Don Quixote?
[2] Plus, I can be wrong.
[3] Stupid novel… It’s not stupid but sometimes it irks me. I’m still fixing it cause the sentences were too long and devoid of commas and semicolons. I need to breathe looooongly to read it aloud.