I've been asked to use this blog to give advice on writing and it seemed like a pretty good idea. As anyone who's spoken to me for any length of time can attest to, I can get pretty long-winded. Especially on the subject of writing. So if you have any topics on writing you'd like me to talk about, please feel free to drop me a line and I'll be happy to do it.
The first thing I was asked to talk about is how to start a story. But I think before you can even begin to write, you need to know the rules. These are my Five Rules of Writing, and they're rules that I believe every writer should follow. Every writer has their own process to follow and their own style to write in and that's great. But these are rules that apply universally to all forms of writing.
That brings me to my first rule of writing, which is find your own path. Writing a story isn't like putting together a piece of furniture—there is no instruction manual, there is no correct way to do it and anyone who tells you otherwise is, pardon my French, full of shit. I strongly encourage you to not only listen and experiment with the method I lay out, but to also look into other methods and then find what works best for you.
Of course, every story needs to start with an idea. Don't ask me where ideas come from, because the answer is they come from anything. There isn't a state of mind or an alternate plane of existence where ideas grow on trees and writers just pop in there to pull them out. I've gotten ideas from dreams, meditation, from watching movies and reading books, or even from a conversation with someone or something I see while driving.
So my second rule of writing is this—good writing comes from experience. By this, I don't mean you can only write about your own personal experiences. The literary world would be a pretty dull place if people only wrote about their own experiences. When I say good writing comes from experience, I mean that you need to expose yourself to other things and get out of your comfort zone. Don't just read a lot of books or watch a lot of movies (but I will get to that in a minute). But go out into the world. Everyone has a story, so go out and talk to people. Find out what their stories are. When you want to go on a vacation, don't go to DisneyWorld for the umpteenth time—visit new locations which are different from the ones you've been exposed to your entire life. Talk to the people there. Not only will this help you find new ideas, but it'll also give you a much more culturally-rewarding life.
I mentioned reading books and watching movies, and that's my third rule of writing—read more than you write. Derrick Ferguson has told me on more than one occasion that he's always surprised at how many aspiring writers he meets who tell him they don't read at all. The reason they give is that they don't want to be influenced by anyone else. Look—if you want to be a writer, you're going to have to be influenced by something. Virtually all creative endeavors are influenced from previous endeavors. We wouldn't have Goodfellas without The Godfather, there would be no Spider-Man if not for Superman, Star Wars and A Fistful of Dollars would be nonexistent without the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, which also wouldn't exist without the American Westerns which preceded them, and I think you get the picture.
Read books. Watch movies. Read comics. And not just within your own discipline. Casablanca is one of the greatest films ever made, and it's a film that doesn't really fit within one, identifiable genre. Sci-fi, action, romance, comedy, crime, horror—expose yourself to all these genres and others.
Don't just stick with fiction. In the film Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage) remarks to Robert McKee (played by Brian Cox) that nothing happens in the real world. In response, McKee flips out and goes on a rant, which I think it's very useful to quote here:
“Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the fuck are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!”
Remember the old adage of “truth is stranger than fiction.” And for this reason, you should expose yourself to nonfiction. Read through the encyclopedia. Watch documentaries. Read newspaper articles. Look through books on history, politics, psychology, medicine, science, archaeology, sociology, religion (which depending on your views, may be fiction but I won't get into that), philosophy, etc.
There's another reason why you should read voraciously, and it's more important than just falling into the experience category—if you want to master your craft, you need to learn from the masters. Every discipline in the world requires training and writing is no different. I once heard a story about the famous playwright George Bernard Shaw. Now I'm not sure of the authenticity of this, but even if it's false, it's a pretty good story. The legend goes that Shaw was at a dinner party and talking with a neurosurgeon. The doctor remarked that when he retires from medicine, he wants to become a writer. Shaw supposedly responded with, “when I retire, I plan to operate on people.” Just having an idea isn't enough to make you a writer. Any idiot can come up with an idea, but only a writer can turn it into a story.
That's my fourth rule: never stop learning. You're a writing apprentice now, and your masters are every writer, past and present. And no matter how successful you become, no matter how many of your stories are optioned for movies, no matter how much your sales increase, your apprenticeship never ends.
Now for my fifth rule, and this is probably the most important one of all—have passion. If you want a hobby, take a class at the city center. Writing is not a hobby—it's an obsession and a compulsion. Real writers don't want to write, they have to write. It's a stressful, nerve-wracking existence and you will fail far more often than you succeed. Real writers know this, but they can't help themselves. Writing is a way of life and it invades every aspect of your life.
Anyone who wants to be a writer because they think it's an easy job or because they want to make a lot of money is fucking delusional and if you're one of these people, stop right now. Because your work will be half-assed, devoid of passion, and of use to absolutely no one. The story you write should be the story you want to write—not the story you think people want to read. So if you have an idea about secret societies and unrevealed history, that's great, but you should write it because it's a story you want to write. If your only motivation is, “well The Da Vinci Code is popular, so this will be, too,” then you're not passionate—you're opportunistic.
Time to recap—the Five Rules of Writing are:
- Find your own path
- Good writing comes from experience
- Read more than you write
- Never stop learning
- Be passionate, not opportunistic
These are general rules I've come to learn about and believe over the years, and I think they're essential for every writer, regardless of discipline. Next time, I'll get into my actual writing process.
0 comments:
Post a Comment