Style, tone, pacing, telling, expericial

adam wrote: 1) Formal vs informal in the voice (both character and narrator) 2) Colloquialisms with verbose colorful flare VS grounded concrete real life images. 3) telling vs showing (experiential) writing. 4) active vs passive voice 5) direct description vs Metaphoric description  6) Pace from action vs pace from sentence structure.

I think your list is exactly the right size while being entirely too long (or maybe it just can never cover everything?)

The point of the short is more journalistic than the things you appear to be near-agonizing over. Not crap J, good J.

The prescription is simple. Read a lot of short stories. See how they do it.  When I was in seventh grade, I bought a book, you know, from those little pulp-printed Scholastic lists, I'd just go for bang-for-buck. When I saw, "100 Short Short Science Fiction Stories" for $1.75, I was like, oh yeah. You kidding me? That's 1.75 cents per story, a literal deal on on the figurative "my two cents" (and I was a math geek).

One of the stories I'll never forget was entitled "Science Fiction For Telepaths".  It read:

Aw, you know what I mean.

That's the short end of the short word count. The punchline. Then there's the vignette, the story that isn't really a story because it's just a scene. It doesn't matter how exquisitely that scene is described -- you need plot. That gets you to a real story. Beginning, middle, end. Luckily, you don't have to go far to find good samples -- we all read them in high school (if not before).  Faulkner, Hemingway, O'Connor, Carver. Check out a couple anthologies from the library and you're all set.

The key is to lead with the critique -- to learn.  Yeah, it's OK to critique the greats.  It's OK not to like them. But you'll learn something. You can't not.  I'm not putting down anyone here, and there's plenty of material in these parts, but read some greats. Learn the shorts: plot, characters, dialogue, irony, etc.

And then write.

Write a memory. Write a shopping list. Write the first idea that pops into your head. Write a great idea, and then write a sh*tty idea but finish it. Every writer I have ever respected, when asked, says one thing in common: "When you write something, finish it." That's because that's how you learn, and if you're doing anything less, you're writing schlock -- punchlines and impersonal vignettes. You'll feel forever disconnected because you'll be thinking there's a magical formula out there.  There isn't.

To put it all another way, stop trying so hard.  *smile*  Like any other problem, face it with staid pragmatism and method: read other works, try yourself, find good readers who help you out, lather, rinse, repeat.

That's my advice, from an author who's never published a thing and probably never will (and who doesn't think it's necessarily important to do so).  If you can't trust me, who can you?  *grin*

Thanks,
JoeK

Hey Joek, I definitely hear what you are saying and no doubt, writers write. And read. That is essential. But, I do believe the craft can be taken apart, and tools sharpened. I would like to make an analogy with football.

A football player, has to play the game. When you really want to improve though, you do not just play. You run drills, hit the gym, watch films of yourself and others.

I think of writing the same way. Reading is critical, second only to writing (including editing because writing is re-writing) But it is the techniques and the philosophical approach to those aspects that I was kind of hopping to spark a heat of ingenuity and exploration. 

The best writing is the natural kind, I just think it takes years of study and to make it natural.

One exercise  I thought of was writing a simple scene.  Then, taking the scene and changing the voice. Changing the tone from formal to informal. Sentence style from long and drawn out to short and staccato and look at the resulted effect. all the things listed above.

I also thought of a second exercise  in terms of character. Take two completely opposing styles of dialog and give them a reason to be in one room speaking through various characters. for example, a college professor, being tied up and robbed by a tug only latter to have the thug in his office asking for a job. That kind of stuff could leave lots of room for playing with speech patterns and done from multiple angles.

I was wondering if others had things they felt or learned about these elements they wished to share, or writing Prompts/exercises. It is good sometimes to bounce stuff off others. Or go through some things techniques like that writing prompts and give each other feed back. Sort of throwing it up and out there in a hail Mary hoping for a touchdown. (just to round off the analogy)

As always though man, I love to hear what you have to say. So, duly noted on the reading thing, and a good way to find my personal style is to find other styles I like and ones I do not.
Thanks for joining in
Adam  
 

I think the idea of "running drills" is a good one.  And for your scene-writing idea, you can work the technical details as well as the stylistic ones: change verb tense, change POV, use dialogue, don't use dialogue, etc. If nothing else, that makes some of the basic skills so reflexive that when it is time for writing you can concentrate on plot, character development, etc. In keeping with the football analogy, a successful player is probably going to have good muscle tone and stamina as a given before he/she starts tweaking the finer points of play making.

To this end, I would also suggest writing workshops ranging from a free, informal ones to higher-end, more symposium based stuff. I'm not the right guy to ask on that, but several folks around here have tried various things on that front.

JoeK

sutekh137 wrote: One of the stories I'll never forget was entitled "Science Fiction For Telepaths".  It read: Aw, you know what I mean.

Trillian4210 wrote: sutekh137 wrote: One of the stories I'll never forget was entitled "Science Fiction For Telepaths".  It read: Aw, you know what I mean.   That is awesome.

The other one (even shorter) was titled "Sign At the End of the Universe".

It was only three words long, but I can't do the formatting here, so I will include it as an image:



(I should probably stop posting entire stories now, or at least go find the authors!)

Thanks,
JoeK