Helpful Stuff for Writers

With the ultimate writing competition, the Nanowrimo, just round the corner, it's the right time to put up some links to the good stuff you can find online to help you write November's magnum opus.

(You don't know what I'm talking about? Go visit the website.)

First off, do you need an instant plot for your work of genre fiction (whether dragon-filled, neo-noir or dismally dystopian)? This hilarious generarator from Wondermark [found via]... well, it might not actually help you, but it is sure to raise a good chuckle.

Paperback Writer links to Ten Things for the NaNoWriMoer's including blog badges; a progress graph so you can chart your progress towards the 50,000 word target; a random name picker to help you name your hero or heroine; and advice to help you write the outline of your novel in 30 minutes.

Mashable also has a very useful toolkit for the writer with plenty more nice things to play with.

I'm finding Twitter enormously helpful as a blogger (since it enables me to scoop up interesting stories quickly, and I can tweet even when I haven't time to blog) and it is nice to discover about how it can also help writers. Debbie Ridpath Ohi lists ten ways, and has blogged A Writer's Guide to Twitter with lots of good advice.

There's nothing like advice from the master, and Kurt Vonnegut gives us some excellent advice about how to write with style, which he nicely distills into 7 principles (Finally someone who doesn't feel the need to have as many points as they have fingers!) :

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

Our Lady of the Metaphors

My Facebook buddy, Maximilian Loh, tagged me on his note to share this wondrous classic of overwriting (Click to enlarge to readable size.) :

Because bad writing has to be shared. And pointed-and-laughed at. ... This has to be the worst description of a person/character that I have ever come across, in fiction or not. Hopefully, you'll have as many laughs as I did while reading this.

The original blog entry is here on vadonavan's page on Live Journal and stirred up a lot of comment ... and even some attempts to paint a portrait of the character described, including this one dubbed Our Lady of the Metaphors.

The extract is taken from is the second volume of a fantasy tetralogy Bronwyn : Silk and Steel by one Ron Miller. It managed to muster one and a half stars on Amazon.com.

Arthur C. Clarke is quoted as saying of it :

Ron Miller is unfairly talented.

Though he was probably talking about Miller's ability to cause enormous mirth.

Silk and Steel deserves to become a cult classic ... and I desperately want a copy!

DIY - Tips From the Greats

Ever wondered how Hemingway would hang wallpaper or Anaïs Nin paint a panelled door or Dostoevsky tile a bathroom?

In Sartre's Sink, Mark Crick lets us into their secrets. His previous book, Kafka's Soup, parodied how the great authors would cook.

Nuke Them Darn Apostrophe's!

Ahah! I said to myself. A typo. A carelessly missed apostrophe.

Why it should be there on the second page of the novel, I couldn't imagine: this was certain not the first edition of this book, it was published by Random House, honoured with the Pulitzer, endorsed by our beloved Oprah.

I looked again.

He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure.

Frustrations of frustrations - I didn't have a free hand to fumble in my big bag for an editor's pen (automatic reaction), trying to read while strap- hanging on the LRT.

And then the next sentence:

He hadnt kept a calendar for years.

Ouch and double ouch!

Because now I could see that the novel was part of a sinister plot to rid the world of its apostrophes. I flicked through the pages with my nose to confront my darkest fears. With great relief I saw that this strange disease had not yet spread to other contractions:

I'm ... they'd ... there'd ... what's ...

maybe there was hope for the world after all!

As soon as I got home after teaching my class I googled:

"cormac mccarthy"+apostrophes

and found that numerous others had the same problem with his writing. Kimbofo of Reading Matters went so far as to write the author an open letter:

Dear Mr McCarthy,

I am currently about a third of the way through your latest book, The Road. I am very much enjoying it. The post-apocalyptic setting reminds me of Mad Max meets Stephen King's The Stand. However, there is one thing that is really bugging me, and it is this:

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE APOSTROPHES IN THE CONTRACTED WORDS?

For example, why have you written don't as DONT, won't as WONT, couldn't as COULDNT?

Is this some kind of clever literary thing I don't understand, or a lazy editor's error? I find it so annoying I have to do everything within my power not to scribble proofing marks in red pen all over the book's crisp white pages.

Yours sincerely,
Kimbofo.

P.S. I wonder what the Apostrophe Protection Society would have to say about the matter.

Another blogger, Jodi of iwilldare.com writes:

The random apostrophes are bothering me and take me right out of the story. See, he apostrophizes I’m, I’ll, I’d, and It’s, but not cant, wouldnt, aint, isnt, and dont. It drives me bonkers. I think I am paying more attention to the contractions then to the story. While reading, I’m constantly making a mental tally of the apostrophes and trying to figure out the mystery. Why do some words get them? What could possibly be the symbolism? Does anyone have any idea why he did this?

Jordan Lapp reckons with some justification that McCarthy is resorting to what he calls Stupid Pet Tricks to get attention, and takes issue with his use (or lack thereof) of other punctuation marks.

But it's Sam Leith on the Telegraph blog who really gets it right about The Road:

Why, for example, is his vision of the apocalypse one in which the imaginary holocaust seems to have destroyed apostrophes? This is hard core stuff. ... These people don't just need gasoline and tinned food: they need punctuation.

Now I can live with the short choppy sentences, the incomplete sentences that present themselves as sentences, and the dropping of colons and semi-colons. The paucity of commas holds no fears for me. (Peter Carey didn't use a single one in True History of the Kelly Gang, recreating the voice of an unschooled man, based on the style of Ned Kelly's own writing.) And I'm perfectly happy to see inverted commas dropped from dialogue anyway.

But please, Mr. McCarthy, hands off the apostrophes.

Maybe Oprah can set you right when she interviews your reclusive self on her show tomorrow (only the third one ever). But then again, I think she (or whoever writes her publicity blurbs) might be apostrophically challenged too:

Oprah's Book Club has approximately one million online members. Each of it’s selections have skyrocketed to the top of bestsellers lists.

Punctuation aside, McCarthy's novel is very well worth reading, if harrowing. I'm reviewing it so will post more about it later.

Neurological Opiates and Agatha Christie

If you find Agatha Christie unputdownable, there could be a medical reason for it.

A neurolinguistic study of her novels by more than scientists at three universities in the UK (and here I resist the tempatation to ask, didn't they have anything better to do?) concluded that Christie's language patterns stimulate higher than usual activity in the brain, the BBC reports. Common phrases used by Christie act as a trigger to raise levels of serotonin and endorphins, the chemical messengers in the brain that induce pleasure and satisfaction.

It seems that perfectly mundance phrases (bordering on the cliched!) such as "can you keep an eye on this", "more or less", "a day or two" and "something like that", coupled with a limited vocabulary that doesn't distract readers from the plot and the use of dashes to create "a faster-paced, unreflective narrative" do the trick.

Okay dear fictionaters, now you have the formula, go run with it!