Useful tips.
1. “Instead of writing about a character, write from within the character. This means that every way the character describes the world must describe the character’s experience. You and I never walk into the same room as each other. We each see the room through the lens of our own life. A plumber enters a very different room than a painter enters.
This means you can’t use abstract measurements. No more six-foot-tall men. Instead you must describe a man’s size based on how your character or narrator perceives a man whose height is seventy-two inches. A character might say ‘a man too tall to kiss’ or ‘a man her dad’s size when he’s kneeling in church’…All standardized measurements preclude you describing how your character sees the world.”
Every description in your story is an opportunity to shape your reader’s perspective of the characters – I love his observation that no two people walk into a room in the same way – that immediately gets you thinking.
2. “[When writing in first person] always keep your camera pointed elsewhere, describing other characters. Strictly limit a character’s reference to self…Each narrator acts as a foil — think of Dr. Watson gushing about Sherlock Holmes — because a heroic character telling his own story would be boring and off-putting as hell. In addition, don’t screen the world through your narrator’s senses. Instead of writing, ‘I heard the bells ring,’ write just, ‘The bells rang,’ or, ‘The bells began to ring.’ Avoid, ‘I saw Ellen,’ in favor of, ‘Ellen stepped from the crowd.’”
-Chuck Palahniuk
If you decide to write from the first-person perspective, Palahniuk recommends to “submerge the I.”Whenever possible, refrain from using phrases like “I saw” or “I heard.” Point the lens on someone else to avoid boring your reader. Your goal is to help the reader envision themselves inside the world you’ve created. To do that, describe the scenery around your character such that the reader can practically see, smell, taste, and touch the surroundings (showing not telling!) – I thought this submerging the I idea was very interesting and it helps removed the repetition of ‘I’ through the story.
3. “If your stories tend to amble along, lose momentum, and fizzle out, I’d ask you, ‘What’s your clock?’ And, ‘Where’s your gun?’…In fiction the clock I’m talking about is anything that limits the story’s length by forcing it to end at a designated time.”
Palahniuk explains that the authors of Rosemary’s Baby and The Grapes of Wrath use a pregnancy to serve as a clock. Their readers knew the story would crescendo in nine months. Agatha Christie used the name of her novel as a clock in And Then There Were None. As one character after another bit the dust, readers knew when the story would ultimately conclude.
I love the idea of finding a way to insert a clock into your story to build suspense and tension – in The Killing Sensewe know Kate’s only in Paris for 5 days. In Something’s About to Blow Upwe know something is going to happen in twenty-four hours. Using a time frame/ticking clock also helps you hugely in the execution of your story. It keeps everything tight.
4. “Before you sit down to write a scene, mull it over in your mind and know the purpose of that scene. What earlier set-ups will this scene pay off? What will it set up for later scenes? How will this scene further your plot? As you work, drive, exercise, hold only this question in your mind. Take a few notes as you have ideas. And only when you’ve decided on the bones of the scene — then, sit and write it. Don’t go to that boring, dusty computer without something in mind. And don’t make your reader slog through a scene in which little or nothing happens. This last point is especially critical. With my students, I put it this way: “What is the point of the scene?” And the point generally has two parts: The purpose of the scene as it relates to the Plotline and the purpose of the scene as it relates to the Themeline. That is, there’s something going on through characters’ actions and dialogue (External World), but there should also something else be going in the emotional life of the scene through characters’ intentions and subtext (Internal World). So the advice is not only about the focus of the scene, but also about giving it depth and texture.
1. “Instead of writing about a character, write from within the character. This means that every way the character describes the world must describe the character’s experience. You and I never walk into the same room as each other. We each see the room through the lens of our own life. A plumber enters a very different room than a painter enters.
This means you can’t use abstract measurements. No more six-foot-tall men. Instead you must describe a man’s size based on how your character or narrator perceives a man whose height is seventy-two inches. A character might say ‘a man too tall to kiss’ or ‘a man her dad’s size when he’s kneeling in church’…All standardized measurements preclude you describing how your character sees the world.”
Every description in your story is an opportunity to shape your reader’s perspective of the characters – I love his observation that no two people walk into a room in the same way – that immediately gets you thinking.
2. “[When writing in first person] always keep your camera pointed elsewhere, describing other characters. Strictly limit a character’s reference to self…Each narrator acts as a foil — think of Dr. Watson gushing about Sherlock Holmes — because a heroic character telling his own story would be boring and off-putting as hell. In addition, don’t screen the world through your narrator’s senses. Instead of writing, ‘I heard the bells ring,’ write just, ‘The bells rang,’ or, ‘The bells began to ring.’ Avoid, ‘I saw Ellen,’ in favor of, ‘Ellen stepped from the crowd.’”
-Chuck Palahniuk
If you decide to write from the first-person perspective, Palahniuk recommends to “submerge the I.”Whenever possible, refrain from using phrases like “I saw” or “I heard.” Point the lens on someone else to avoid boring your reader. Your goal is to help the reader envision themselves inside the world you’ve created. To do that, describe the scenery around your character such that the reader can practically see, smell, taste, and touch the surroundings (showing not telling!) – I thought this submerging the I idea was very interesting and it helps removed the repetition of ‘I’ through the story.
3. “If your stories tend to amble along, lose momentum, and fizzle out, I’d ask you, ‘What’s your clock?’ And, ‘Where’s your gun?’…In fiction the clock I’m talking about is anything that limits the story’s length by forcing it to end at a designated time.”
Palahniuk explains that the authors of Rosemary’s Baby and The Grapes of Wrath use a pregnancy to serve as a clock. Their readers knew the story would crescendo in nine months. Agatha Christie used the name of her novel as a clock in And Then There Were None. As one character after another bit the dust, readers knew when the story would ultimately conclude.
I love the idea of finding a way to insert a clock into your story to build suspense and tension – in The Killing Sensewe know Kate’s only in Paris for 5 days. In Something’s About to Blow Upwe know something is going to happen in twenty-four hours. Using a time frame/ticking clock also helps you hugely in the execution of your story. It keeps everything tight.
4. “Before you sit down to write a scene, mull it over in your mind and know the purpose of that scene. What earlier set-ups will this scene pay off? What will it set up for later scenes? How will this scene further your plot? As you work, drive, exercise, hold only this question in your mind. Take a few notes as you have ideas. And only when you’ve decided on the bones of the scene — then, sit and write it. Don’t go to that boring, dusty computer without something in mind. And don’t make your reader slog through a scene in which little or nothing happens. This last point is especially critical. With my students, I put it this way: “What is the point of the scene?” And the point generally has two parts: The purpose of the scene as it relates to the Plotline and the purpose of the scene as it relates to the Themeline. That is, there’s something going on through characters’ actions and dialogue (External World), but there should also something else be going in the emotional life of the scene through characters’ intentions and subtext (Internal World). So the advice is not only about the focus of the scene, but also about giving it depth and texture.
thx for sharing!
