There comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to embrace who you are, faults and flaws included, although we may try to avoid being that truthful with ourselves. We love to tell ourselves lies—calories don’t count on Sunday, I’ll make up for it tomorrow. In the end, though, we are ourselves whether we own up to it or not. These lies hamper us and our writing.
I work in the film and video industry, when I am not writing speeches, social media content, articles or a novel. Although the novel thing is rather new.
(Okay, it’s not really new, but it’s been recently that have I written the first draft of the only novel I want to edit. So that’s new.)
As I am transitioning from film to fiction, I have run into a host of problems: the biggest being a serious lack of B-roll.
I was a double major in college–Creative Writing and Music. While my parents were not thrilled with my choices, I was, even though it happened by accident.
I wanted to be a singer. It was my goal from an early age. I was that child who would hold her hairbrush and sing for hours, dancing around the basement or my room pretending I was performing in front of crowds. The only odd thing was that I always envisioned myself on USO tours instead of huge stadiums. I wanted to live that iconic image of the Bob Hope show for the troops in war zones, otherwise the touring did not appeal to me.
So off I went to college with the hope of someday cutting a platinum album and going off to war to sing. I was young. It is my only defense. That and being a military brat.
Writing is more than a collection of words strewn across the page. It has life and voice. We hear it when we read to ourselves. It speaks to us and takes on a life of its own depending on the author.
The voice of a story is what makes it come alive in the reading and it is the most important skill a writer can have. It’s what sets one writer apart from another—a Hemingway (short, short sentences) versus a Faulkner (who goes on and on), a Gaiman from a Melville. These are not the same voices. They sound different in our heads. The way these authors string words and sentences together creates different rhythms and cadences as we read along. They pull at us differently.
Below are a few examples of voice in writing. The first example is from one of my favorite authors.
Writing comes to life in the detail. Get those wrong and watch out. Readers will revolt. They will spam your Twitter feed, your inbox and anything other avenue they can use to reach you. People love to correct mistakes. It’s in our nature. Readers most especially. They take their facts seriously, in fiction or no.
Don’t believe me? Try giving incorrect directions in a novel about Los Angeles. Readers will tear you up. There is something that drives people in LA to obsess about their roadways in a way that I have never understood. Read any story set in LA and you will find a jumble of numbers scattered throughout–the 5, 10, 110. Get one turn wrong and let the harassment begin.
The same reaction holds true for any specific group–military, law enforcement, medical professionals, lawyers, etc. Each group knows the verbiage particular to their trade and they know when people are posing.
Writing requires motivation. It is that thing that requires caffeine, purpose and often a Herculean-sized will power, not to mention the real possibility of therapy.
Motivation is what propels action in both people and characters. It was what gets your butt in the seat and the words flowing, whether like creeping lava or a flash flood.
Motivation is what keeps you coming back day after day to write, even when you don’t feel like it.
The truth is there are days when sitting down to write is not easy, before the first word is even conceived. But no one said it would be easy. It’s not. It is also not the point of this article. We all know writing is hard. (You can talk about your personal motivation with your therapist or friends.)
I dislike tossing books aside even when I don’t like them. Sometimes it is out of loyalty to the author, particularly if it is someone I have loved in the past. Sometimes it is because I need to know how it ends, even though the story or characters are disappointing. Sometimes it is simple stubbornness to finish what I have begun.
These books can be helpful though.