Happy New Writer Resolutions

Lots of folks, including writers, consider resolutions hopelessly artificial. Yet there’s a good chance you recently promised someone (even if only yourself) that you’d exercise more, eat healthier, and quit muttering obscenities at thoughtless drivers unaware of your existence. Resolved anything about your writing? It never hurts to take stock, make plans, celebrate successes, and renew goals. Starting now.

Craft resolutions

~ Don’t deprive readers of the chance to infer.

~ Don’t irritate readers with extra words, gratuitous information, or belaboring of setting, emotion, or anything else.

~ Don’t be afraid of the dark: “…literature begins at the well you leaned over as a child and with the black fear that looked up at you from its depths. From the puppy you patted that turned out to be rabid.” – Aharon Appelfeld’s  Suddenly, Love (translated by Jeffrey M. Green)

~ Don’t patronize: “A good writer, like a good lover, must create a pact of trust with the object of his/her seduction that remains qualified, paradoxically, by a good measure of uncertainty, mystery and surprise.” –  Francine du Plessix Gray

~ Do choose details that take readers where you want their minds to go.

~ Do introduce a third character: “Character triangles make the strongest character combination and are the most common in stories…there’s actually a rather obvious reason for it: balance…. One person isn’t enough to get full interaction. Two is possible, but it doesn’t have a wild card to make things interesting. Three is just right.” –  Ronald B. Tobias

~ Do cut scenes that don’t fulfill their purpose: “If the character leaves the scene essentially as s/he entered it, your reader may become emotionally disengaged. However, if the scene shows great character development but doesn’t move the plot along, then it’s only done half a job. Good scenes should do both.”  –  Rachel Simon

Psychological Resolutions

~ Do try to write (or think about your writing) every day. Even if you can only squeeze out fifteen minutes.

~ Do formulate realistic goals. Then meet them.

~ Do embrace risk: “All the intelligence and talent in the world can’t make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can’t be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.” –  Willa Cather

~ Do learn from your mistakes: “There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, ‘Mistakes were made,’ you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.” ― Charles Baxter

~ Do be yourself: “The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.” –  Neil Gaiman

~ Do respect your talent enough to demand your best from yourself.

~ Do respect yourself enough to be kind and realistic about own very human foibles.

Tip: A good writing year mixes discipline with tenderness, high standards with empathy.

Deeply Different, Deeply the Same

Readers know perfectly well that passion and romance intertwine, that selfishness and generosity diverge. If, as E.B. White observed, “Writing is both mask and unveiling,” then fiction must offer something new. Obviously. But as Willa Cather observed over half a century ago, “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” What’s the poor novelist to do?

Why “mask and unveil,” of course. The secret is to “unveil” the subtle distinction between ardor and devotion and the subterranean similarity between selfishness and generosity. As your characters travel from tribulation to maturity, their struggle “masks” these truths.

It doesn’t ultimately matter if you use plot to find truths or use truths to instigate plot. But if you want your novel to have layers, texture, richness, originality—all those things we all hope our novel will have—then you need to dig deep.

If you start with your characters and plot, weigh some tough questions about the significance of those.

·         How are your protagonist and antagonist alike?

·         How could the dilemma one protagonist faces represent dilemmas that protagonists have faced independent of time or geography?

·         If the protagonist’s dilemma is personal, how would it play out in the sociopolitical sphere? If it’s sociopolitical, how could it simultaneously be personal?

·         What did your protagonist believe to be true when the journey began that proves false by the journey’s end?

If you start with theme, tackle some tough questions about the beliefs your novel expresses.

·         Develop a convincing argument against the theme you unequivocally believe with all your heart.

·         Explore how the theme would or would not change if you shifted it to another time, country, even planet.

·         Brainstorm until you find a metaphor that captures the truth of your theme.

·         Investigate why you believe this. Culture? Religion? Personal experience? Uncover at least one new reason for your belief.

Tip: Surprise us with what we never knew we knew.