Perfection & Writing

Finish your story; let go even if it's not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.--Emma Coats

I'm a perfectionist. I don't think I always was, but somewhere between becoming a teacher, being a wife, and having children it happened. And for me, being a perfection means that if I notice halfway through that something isn't the way I want it, I stop and start over. Is this a practical way to be? I think it has its place. I mean, I'm a super amazing stay-at-home mom, so something's working.

With writing, though, perfection isn't immediate, and expecting it to be is dangerous both to the writer and the story. It's world building and character development, all things that involve time and process. You, as a human, were not born as you are today. You grew. You changed. You met obstacles and challenges. You succeeded and you failed. It isn't fair to expect that a character in a story will pour from your head immediately perfect, any more that it's fair to expect a child to grow up without making a mistake or ever changing. And what's more, it wouldn't be very interesting.

If you plug on, and find yourself growing frustrated or bored with your story, it's time to throw in a twist or turn. Fling your main character down on some railroad tracks, or have them go skydiving. Are they claustrophobic? Lock them in an elevator with their archnemesis. As much as it's anything else, writing a first draft should be like playtime for a writer. Have fun. Know going in that no one needs to know about the imperfections, and you're perfectly okay in ignoring them. It's all a means to an end, really. Because, you see, if you never get to the end, there won't ever be a whole story. And that sort of imperfection is one that a real writer can find devastating and discouraging. Knowing an unfinished story looms like a week's worth of laundry. You never want to go back to it because it's become too overwhelming.

Would it be great to spit out perfect and complete stories every time? Of course. But it's not realistic. So suck it up, plug on, and when it's over, take a step back. It's time to revise and edit, and...well, that's the time to go all perfectionist crazy.

Please check out what the other bloggers are saying about Rule #8:

Kate Brauning  Alex Yuschik  Regina Castillo  Talynn Lynn

If Only (Rule 7)

Here is the next segment in the blogging challenge in which I am taking part, where we consider the Rules of Storytelling as listed by Pixar writer Emma Coats. That list can be found here.

Rule 7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

My favorite books are the ones where I'm surprised by the ending. And if it's well written, when I get to that surprise ending I'm able to think back and recognize all the clues that were in place leading up to that fantastic finale. That's great writing.

Think of your story like a relationship. We've all had a few. Now think of the one that ended badly. One of the worst feelings in the early weeks after that breakup is, "I've wasted time. I would have done so many things differently. It all would have been so much better if I'd only known."

Boom. Your story is your opportunity to know the outcome ahead of time and make sure your characters act accordingly. And if you've got a character who's meant to learn the same as you did, there's still an opportunity for you to make it all happen the way you wish it would have. The ending can at least be fair! Or fitting. You are the mastermind. Make things as they should be.

But if you don't know how it's meant to end, your characters will be bumbling idiots just like you were in that ill-fated relationship. The one that makes you cringe. The one you hope no one ever brings up. The one that forces the need for a phrase like, "What was I thinking?"

So, painful as it might be, force yourself to ask what you have in store for your characters. Since nothing else has happened yet, make it great. Make it fantastic. It can be anything! Keep it in your heart, or write it down somewhere. Whatever you prefer. And then...fill in the rest. Your characters will thank you.

Please check out what the other bloggers are saying about Rule #7!

Kate Brauning  Alex Yuschik  Regina Castillo  Talynn Lynn

The Best Sort of Conflict

6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

I've often told my middle school students that being an author of fiction is like being God in your own universe. You make everything, you decide what will happen. You give characters gifts and strengths, you decide what color their hair is, you make them live in Arizona or Iceland. And most importantly, you're in charge of the WHY of it all. You, the writer, understand what it's all supposed to mean.

I hate conflict. I hate it in real life, I hate it in movies and television, and I hate it in books. I might be the only person who really wouldn't mind reading a story that from beginning to end only says good things. I have no idea why this is. I also really despise the villains in stories. I know what you're thinking, because it's probably the exact same thing my husband says to me every time I get upset with a villain in a story. He says, "But he's supposed to be bad. That's his role. You're supposed to hate him." It took him a long time to realize that I would actually prefer the story without the villain at all. Now he just shakes his head and stares at me in total bemusement. I know. I'm weird.

So writing conflict is, of course, inordinately difficult for me. In fact, the novel I most recently completed took me five years to write because I didn't want anything bad to happen to my character. I really love her. Plus, I have an irrational fear that whatever I write, fiction though it might be, will come true and happen to me. A sort of twisted version of do unto others, except in this case, the others are not real people. I finally had to sit down with friends, present the character to them, and ask for help. It worked, and once I did it, I loved helping my character overcome and all, but still. Getting there was rough.

What I'm thinking now is that this rule not only makes sense to real life (seriously, whenever something bad happens, don't you always think, "But why THIS? THIS is the worst possible thing that could have happened to me right now!"--I know I do), but it's a really useful tool for a conflict-hater like me. What do I love about my character? What should happen to a person like that? Now, write the exact opposite. It's hard. It's really hard to make bad things happen to the fictional people I love, but at least this is a simple and easy way to make sure the story is authentic to the person it's about, and realistic to the reader. Not only that, it does also bring the reader deeper into the character's psyche. It's not just about strengths and weaknesses once they're up against impossible conflict. It becomes about what it takes to make that person stronger, what makes them grow and change and be better, which will ultimately bring us to that WHY factor I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Although now I suddenly feel that the bigger question to ask in not whether or not this rule is valid for writers (which, btw, it totally is), but why it's so true to real life. Like, what's up with you, Universe? Deliberately giving us problems we're not equipped to handle! Because, as I've said in every one of these blogs so far, writing simply is meant to mirror real life. And now I'm suddenly aware of the sucky truth in this one!

This disgruntled writer is now going to go sit in a corner with her arms crossed for awhile.

Please check out what the other bloggers are saying about Rule #6--it will probably be much more normal and helpful than mine!

Kate Brauning  Alex Yuschik  Regina Castillo  Talynn Lynn

Simplify; Hop Over Detours

Rule 5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

Once again I am struck by the way that the Pixar Rules of Storytelling match life. Imagine this not as a strategy for good writing, but one for life.

Think of the most recent problem/setback/stress in your life. The one that gave you that piercing headache in your eyebrow, made you want to pull the covers over your head, and eat a lot of carbs. (Wait. Doesn't everyone do that?) What did you have to do to get through that problem? Well, honestly, I can't know. Maybe you did fill up on bread and French fries and pretzels and...okay, pregnant lady is getting distracted...

Back to the point. Whenever we're bogged down by life, we generally need to take a step back. See the proverbial big picture. There are a lot of details about the situation, a lot of backstory, that we get all hung up on. There are what-ifs or could-haves. There are worst case scenarios and distant, but probably unattainable, possibilities. There is so much to the whole circumstance that our brain overloads just thinking about it, resulting in that piercing eyebrow headache.

So what do we need to do? Cut to the point. Every problem has its solution, even if we don't like it. Even if it's hard. And it's not just hard to carry out that solution, it's hard to forget the little things that we know about all the rest. The he-saids and she-saids, the fine print, the emotions. But we have to forget all that, and ask, "What is really the issue here?" and "How can I best fix it?" So we have to forget. Or put to the side. Grow larger and force ourselves to remember those things are smaller in the grand scheme of things.

Simplify. Focus. Hop over detours. Let go of what seems important (probably only to you) in order to be free to correct the problem.

And that part about combining characters? In writing, this is important because too many people with too many roles is confusing and cumbersome both to the reader and to you, the writer. There's too many "he saids" and "she saids" and varying scenes and details to remember. In life, it's no different. We tend to spread ourselves out among the people we love or value or even dislike, wearing ourselves thin and knowing we'll never please everyone.

As a writer, I say choose the qualities you like from each character and place them into one great person, or two great people. For a life situation, limit yourself in a situation to the people who will help you the most. If you are bogged down by the negative things people have said, or the scary things they've predicted, or how a person has hurt you, cut it loose. Forget it. Focus on what you can learn, what you can change, and what you can control. The rest is useless.

The truth is, life is just writing your own story. No, I know I didn't invent that. But it's such a valid point I had to use it here. In both a good story and the lives we want to lead, we've got to eliminate what holds us back. We must be strong, we must be choosy, and we must make our story worth telling.

Please check out what the other bloggers are saying about Rule #5!

Kate Brauning  Alex Yuschik  Regina Castillo  Talynn Lynn

Rule 4, Filling In the Blanks

I'm still participating in the Pixar Blogging Challenge, in which we discuss the 22 Rules of Storytelling according Pixar writer Emma Coats (find that list here if you are interested).

Rule 4: Once upon a time, there was ____. Every day, ____. One day, ____. Because of that, ____. Because of that, _____. Until finally, _____.

I wish I'd had something written out so simplistically when I assigned creative writing projects to middle schoolers. Because without this, no matter what I explained or told the little darlings, they would spring forward from a winning opening line and never look back. They never really looked forward, though, either. As pre-teens tend to do, they didn't really pay attention to anything except what was right in front of them. This made their stories about one person to whom five-hundred things happened, with no connection between events and no resolution in sight.

Rule #1 explained that our hero must fail, preferably several times, before he succeeds in the end. If he succeeds in the end. This rule simply applies a structure to that rule, and prevents what I call, "The Downfall of the Middle School Writer."

Basically, love your character. Build your character. Make them whatever you think they should be. ore But remember to put them in situations that will be difficult. Better yet, have some idea what those situations will be, and have an ending in mind as you write. A lot of writers rail against this, because writing is a magical process that comes from within, unfolding before us in a mysterious and wonderful way. But if your story is meant to be quite good, to have purpose and to please an audience, you might want to have an end point. Otherwise, you'll do what the middle schoolers do: go on and on and on and be very surprised when you just get tired of writing.

And it isn't just Pixar that came up with this as a structure. Pixar, wildly successful and stupendously awesome Pixar, was just smart enough to know that utilizing a formula--as a starting point only--makes a solid and complete story every time. You can change things as you can go. You can rewrite and revise and be true to your character and your craft, but without structure and control, you won't end up with a very good story. I know one particularly great writer who was a great fan of this. His name was Shakespeare and he called it the three-act play.

Please check out what the other bloggers are saying about Rule #4!

Kate Brauning  Alex Yuschik  Regina Castillo  Talynn Lynn

Letting Life Happen (And Rule 3)

Rule 3: Trying for theme is important, but you won't see what the story is actually about til you're at the end of it. Now rewrite.

There was this boy I knew in high school. Average height, blond hair, blue eyes, always wore his varsity jacket. He scored crazy high on his SATs, getting the math part totally perfect and coming close on the verbal. He had two sisters and a brother, and he drove one solid minivan.

Oh, yeah, and I was in love with him.

The night we met, I found out his name, where he went to school, and what sports he played. That was when I decided I wanted to marry him. Astonishingly, he did not feel the same way. But I persisted. I was like a hangnail, I was. Impossible to get rid of, constantly annoying. Even when he tried to forget about me, I made sure there were constant reminders of my belief that we were meant to be together (phone messages, notes, a mutual friend dropping "accidental" hints). After awhile, he relented and got to know me as a friend. It was probably both his biggest mistake and best decision.

To him, I was Annoying Girl Who Inexplicably Loved Him. To me, he was Amazing Guy I Would Someday Marry.

By becoming friends, however, and having to bother getting to know each other, I found out he had a strange and quirky sense of humor. That he laughed too loud at movies and ruined every romantic moment by shouting something obnoxious and irrelevant. I learned that while he didn't love the idea of accounting, he knew he'd be good at it and wanted to be successful in life. He loved funny movies and he was really good at making me laugh when I was having a bad day.

About me? Well, quite honestly I have no idea what he found out. I never really asked him, because I was so busy being shocked by the fact that this guy, this Amazing Guy I Would Someday Marry, was an actual person. His name was Joe and the things he said and did reached into my heart and made me feel tingly.

For awhile, I tried reading into the nice things he said to me. Things like, "Your hair curls up in a crazy way at your temples. I call it your Squiggle," and, "Why don't you ever just be yourself around your friends? I can tell when you're pretending," said to me, "He notices me! He sees all the things no one else does. He loves me!" Because I was still rooting for my first impression to be right, to be real.

And then one spring night, he told me he wanted to ask my best friend to the prom.

I had spent all my time trying to force a theme into our relationship. I wanted it to be romance. I wanted it to be true love. But that's not what it was. It was friendship. And I had to acknowledge that as much as it pained me, the two characters in our story took the plot in a different direction.

We can't force themes into our lives. We can't take the things that happen and make them mean whatever we want them to. Rather, we have to look at the things outside of ourselves to find meanings. Whether they're real people, characters in books, or characters we write. If you want an authentic story, fiction or nonfiction, the characters will be different from each other and have minds of their own. Their interactions will build the plot. Sometimes, it will be exactly what you want. Other times, it will serve a crushing blow. But most importantly, it should be surprising. Stories are meant to mirror real life, and real life never turns out the way we think it will.

Because if it did, once I realized that Joe liked my best friend and not me, we would have drifted apart, lost touch, or maybe I would have forgotten him. But I never did. I never could. And it turns out, he didn't forget me either. We lived our lives, we wrote our stories, until one day, we came back together. And I don't think it took him more than five minutes to tell me that seeing my face was like "coming home."

In less than a year after that, he asked me to marry him.

I think it's always best to let a story unfold in the way it's meant to. Let it surprise you, or make you cry, or be angry, and let it live. A story, truly, has a life all its own, as unique as the people in it. And it's only once we look back on it that we see the themes that truly matter. Not the ones we tried to make happen, but the ones that did all on their own.

Please check out what the other bloggers are saying about Rule #3!

Kate Brauning  Alex Yuschik  Regina Castillo  Talynn Lynn

Pixar Rule #2 (and me as a writer)

Rule #2: You gotta keep in my mind what's interesting to you as an audience, not what's fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

I think this one depends on what your ultimate goal is. I mean, if you're just writing for yourself in an Emily-Dickinson-locked-in-a-bedroom-hiding-poetry-in-a-box kind of way, then, hey, knock yourself out. You can write about gremlin toes and fungus to your heart's content. But if you're interested in having people read your work, nay, wanting to read your work, then it's all about what's relevant.

I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen years old. Let's hope that never sees the light of day. My second novel was much better, but it was the 90s and my computer was old and erased the whole thing when I went to hit save after typing, "The End." (No, not kidding. And no, not over it.) 

I fell away from writing for awhile when I entered the "New Adult" phase of life, because having a career, getting married, and having a baby all kind of made things a little crazy. But you can't ever kill the writer inside you, not if it's what you really are. I'll never be able to stop my brain from punctuating people's sentences while they speak. I'll never stop adding descriptive narrations about what people do when they aren't speaking, and I'll always add, "he said," along with a jaunty adverb when people have finished talking. So one night, a dark, rainy night when wind was rattling the windows of our little starter house and rain was pattering the roof above my sleeping baby's head, I sat down in front of my laptop, and did something I hadn't done in a really long time. I opened a Word document.

A beautiful, blank Word document. The cursor blinked at me. I blinked back.

And then my fingers took over. When a writer writes, it's like the brain is connected directly to the fingers, pushing those words out onto the screen in a magical way. At least, that's how it is for me. And that rainy, windy night, I had things to say. After a few years of silence, I had a lot to say.

And it was one of those things where when I finished, I looked back over what I'd written and I was pleased. I laughed at my own jokes, loved my own voice, and knew I'd accomplished my point fluently. I saved the document. I titled it, "Venting." Because that's what it had been. I'd had an argument with my husband--my arrogant, snooty-falooty, "I was in the Honors Program" husband--and I'd put all my thoughts about it into that one document.

The next night, I was excited. After tucking my son into his crib, I walked/ran to the family room where my laptop waited. I couldn't wait to write again. It was like I'd torn down the dam and everything was spilling out. I opened the same document, "Venting," inserted a new page, and titled it, "Chapter One."

From there, I began the tale of how I met my husband at fourteen. Every meeting, every exciting moment, every letdown. I loved writing it! I was long over our little argument, of course, and was positively giddy to have all these stories and memories fresh in my mind when he came home from work that night. He walked in the door, and I greeted him with a huge smile. "Remember our first date?" I asked him, throwing my arms around his neck and kissing his cheek. "Which one?" he replied, because when you meet at fourteen and stay friends for ten years but are always secretly in love, there are a few first dates, not just one.

I loved writing "Venting." I loved when my mom and my sister read it, too. (They both cried.) I loved sharing it with my husband Joe. But in the end, it wasn't marketable. Not even close. It was meaningful to me because it was mine, and it was a hard fact to face when I realized the rest of the world didn't really care. The rest of the world has its own stories that are just as personal and special. 

Had I taken time to consider that while writing, what would I have done differently? I would have left out a lot of fluff, for one thing. Does a reader really need to read every second shared between two people from 1994 to the present? Not if it lacks conflict. Not if it lacks jarring and interesting stakes. A long, linear list of events that only mattered to me, my story was both too much and not enough, and it had to be shelved. With a lot of revision, it could be something. Some day. But not any time soon.

That's just something that I think every writer must face. You decide how you spend your writing time, and what you want to come of it. But if you want other people to be interested in what you write, it has to be something they want to read. I write this blog mostly about parenting and life, and sometimes I include some of those stories from "Venting," but I'm also well aware of who most of my readers are. They are fellow moms and wives, people who grew up like I did with a crazy family they stayed close to, who love another person with everything they've got even on the bad days, who know what it is to love a child even when they drive you crazy (like my Noah, the self-proclaimed rock star), and who understand that life is something to be taken...one day at a time. 

I have an audience who wants to read that. So the trick is, find your audience, and write something they want to read. Make it relatable. Make it real. Build a world that is familiar, but interesting in a way they hadn't thought of. Write people who they feel they've always known, or would want to know, and more importantly, who they will care about. And I think the beauty in it becomes that once you begin to accomplish that, you'll love writing it, anyway. Even if it's not what you originally wanted to do.

Please check out what the other bloggers are saying about Rule #2!

Kate Brauning  Alex Yuschik  Regina Castillo  Talynn Lynn

Pixar Blogging Challenge #1

Hello! I'm really excited to be taking part in a new blogging challenge, started by writer, teacher, and industry intern Kate Brauning.  For more details on the Pixar Blogging Challenge, check out the details here: Blogging Challenge: Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

Last year, Pixar writer Emma Coats tweeted 22 Rules of Storytelling, all things she had learned, discovered, or been taught in her time with Pixar. In this challenge, we're looking at each one every day for twenty-two days. So...here we go!

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling, Rule #1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.  

Unavoidably, we grow to know a character as they carry us through the plot, as we watch them...try. We learn about them through their methods and their reactions, whether they grow angry and bitter over failure or whether they dust themselves off and begin again. And I think it's true because it doesn't just apply to fictional stories. It applies also to the way we view real people. Life is nobody's instant success. We all come to it in different ways, but at some points, many points, we are presented with challenges and we fail. It is these moments where we discover, and show the world, who we really are.

A mother of two little boys, I consider myself something of a Pixar expert since I've seen all the movies at least thirty times each. (I really don't think I'm exaggerating.) If I'm going to point to a Pixar example on this, the first one that springs to mind is Marlin in Finding Nemo. I will never forget when I watched it for the first time in a movie theater, long before I had children actually. It was that moment in the very beginning where the boat is motoring away, a churning wake behind it. We hear Nemo shouting, "Daddy!" and Marlin is both terrified and helpless as his child is taken from him. I sat in the theater thinking, "Well...that's it. This is hopeless. He's never getting Nemo back."

Quite honestly, I didn't like Marlin very much up to that point, and I don't think I was meant to. We see him blundering his way through social conversation among the other dads at school. He is overprotective and a bit of a nag. In fact, we mustn't forget that the reason Nemo was taken by divers is because he felt pushed to defy his father, who had humiliated him in front of his friends by following him on his school trip.

But that's just it. That's where Rule #1 comes in. It is Marlin's failure--when he attempts to protect his son a little too zealously, thereby losing him--that brings us to sympathize with his character. How unimaginably terrible, horrifying, crippling, to watch your child be taken from you. Powerlessness and loss.

And how does Marlin deal with it? Annoying, irritating, overzealous, overprotective father that he is? He chases that boat. Long after its trails have disappeared, his son's cries are lost, and hope is gone, Marlin takes on the entire ocean to save his son.

Many people could argue that the success of the rule is only there because this is Pixar. Because the colors and the images are so vivid, bringing scenes and emotions to life in a much more powerful way than any other story could do. The violin music swelling and flowing with the sway of the ocean throughout the film certainly helps to play my emotions, but it is really that moment. That crushing moment where every parent in the world knows what Marlin is thinking: "Oh my God. What have I done?"

Stepping away from the movie screen and into literature, call to mind the characters who have stayed with you the most. The characters who have nestled themselves in your heart so that when you hear mention of them, you say, "Ah. Elizabeth Bennett," and, "Oh, Pip!" In Great Expectations, we follow poor unfortunate Pip through his life, wondering at each chapter whether he will ever truly have what he wants, what he deserves. With each disappointment, we see his hopes and dreams, his kindness and love, and his perpetually good conscience. As he grows and learns about his world and the world at large, it is these good qualities that have us rooting for him, begging the book itself to allow him to overcome and succeed. That feeling, the wanting for our protagonist to do well, that is what drives us to keep reading. And that, on its own, is evidence enough of Rule #1.

When my oldest son Joey was reading Harry Potter for the first time, he was only five, but extremely precocious and intuitive. My husband and I were going back and forth about the various winning qualities of Gryffindors, most specifically of the leading trio of the series. Joey was quiet for several moments before suddenly interjecting. "I feel bad for Percy," he said, naming the lesser loved Weasley. He went on to explain how Percy's older brothers have all grown up and done great things, and his younger brothers are always getting attention for being wild and funny. "I think he acts mean and bossy because he doesn't know another way to fit in."

Of all the characters in the Harry Potter series for a little boy to pick up on, and mine chooses Percy Weasley. And yet...what was it that struck my little reader? The fact that Percy is a character who tries very hard, and never seems to please anybody (at least not as far as Joey, a kindergartener, could tell).

So, to conclude my first blog for this challenge, I'm going to shout AMEN! to Emma Coats and her first rule of storytelling.

Please check out what the other bloggers are saying about it:
Kate Brauning  Alex Yuschik  Regina Castillo  Talynn Lynn