Advice on Writing Advice
I remember as a child my mother listing a whole bunch of first lines from bestselling books.
“The primroses were over,” she announced theatrically, referring to the opening to Watership Down.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” she said, quoting from Anna Karenina. I thought she’d come up with this idea herself, so I asked, “Are we unhappy in our own way?”
She dragged deeply from her cigarette, exhaled, then swatted at the smoke. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I held out an ashtray for the length of ash bowing down from her cigarette and she dutifully tapped.
“Mother, I don’t know what you are saying,” I admitted.
“Bestsellers,” she said by way of explanation. “You need a great first line.”
My mother, a journalist, spent her life at the typewriter, so her advice on writing felt credible. I nodded, believing her when she said that bestsellers required a single mesmerizing first line that signalled an unaccountable genius that would bring readers to their knees.
Years passed; I became a writer, myself. But I never came up with that killer first line. When I penned a bestseller of my own, the first line wasn’t much. “Finally I see Gordon…” it began.
Today’s writers are being barraged by advice on how to write, then sell, their novels. You may have read that you should find your category, whether its historical thriller or YA contemporary romance, know it inside and out, and follow the conventions. You may have heard that it’s imperative you keep your readership in mind at all times during the writing process. Write your book for your reader, not for yourself, they say. Begin marketing immediately.
It sounds like good advice, though I’ve never actually followed it. In fact, I had to be told by someone else that my new novel, Dragonfly Girl, was a young adult action thriller. I like YA thrillers so maybe that structure was somehow tattooed into my brain before I began the book. As for the reader, I hope she likes what I’ve done but I don’t spend much time thinking about her. And I definitely don’t start marketing right away. Why punish myself until absolutely necessary?
It’s not that I ignore writing advice. I pay plenty of attention to structure, but not until after the first draft. The structure is given to me by my characters and their initial dilemma. As they figure out the particulars of their situation, the twists and reveals arrive around each bend in the narrative, much in the same manner as my reader will discover them. I embrace the ideas as they come to me with a kind of glad recognition, as though they’d been there all along and were just waiting for me to arrive.
Does this mean I completely ignore what is called “craft”? Not at all. Elizabeth George has a nice statement about craft. She says, “Craft is there to rescue you when the art fails you.” George is ribbing herself here as she states that she never writes anything before first assembling a rigorous blueprint for the work. I lean hard on craft whenever I get bewildered by the reams of pages I’ve produced. I’ve “wasted” weeks, if not months, on storylines I’ve dispensed with.
Personally, I envy people who draw great structures of their novels across taped pages, or work out each scene on a card and then arrange the cards in different orders. I think blueprints are great. I love all those practices. I just never do them.
And I’m not the only one. In Bird By Bird, Ann Lamott writes, “Everyone I know flails around, kvetching and growing despondent, on the way to finding a plot and structure that work. You are welcome to join the club.” She justifies the uneconomic manner with which our club writes as being necessary due to how much we learn from our characters as we work our way through a scene.
Anne Lamott is correct, of course, and she is also correct when she says that, at times, we have to take our already-written draft of a novel and lay it out page for page, or scene for scene, in clumps upon the floor of the biggest room in our house and look at it structurally. For me, and for all of us in the Club Of Inefficiency, this is absolutely fine because we still have the magic of that initial writing, the germ of life that grew into a giant, living thing that wove its way through the whole of the manuscript. Working on it at the revision stage, shaving off this, adding that, re-working the structure, won’t hurt it the way that pre-ordaining its shape often does.
Not that planning is wrong. You don’t have to sit at the desk like a medium waiting to hear from the dead. If you want to plot it out, be my guest. Your process is your process, particular to you. I doubt I could ever craft George’s plot twists and turns even if I adopted her writing habits.
The point is, your process is personal. It’s valuable. It’s the way you work, even if nobody else does. You can play with your process just like you play with your fiction, trying out different ideas. If there is anything I’ve learned through decades of writing, it’s that enjoying your process, whatever it is, and sticking with the work, will bring success.
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Marti Leimbach is known for her bestsellers, Dying Young, made into a film starring Julia Roberts, and Daniel Isn’t Talking. Her
interest in neurodiversity and the future of science influences her latest work, Dragonfly Girl.
Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/MartiLeimbach
Find out more about her on her website https://martileimbach.com/
DRAGONFLY GIRL
Kira Adams has discovered a cure for death — and now her life is in danger.
Things aren’t going well for Kira. At home, she cares for her mother and fends off debt collectors. At school, she’s awkward and shy. Plus, she may flunk out of she doesn’t stop obsessing about science, her passion and the one thing she’s good at…very good at.
Desperate to bring in money, she enters a prestigious science contest with a big cash prize. At the awards, Kira draws the attention of celebrated professor, Dr. Gregory Munn (as well as his handsome assistant), eventually leading to a part time-job in a top-secret laboratory.
The job is mostly cleaning floors and equipment, but one night, while running her own experiment, she revives a lab rat that has died in her care.
One minute the rat is dead, the next it is not.
Suddenly, she’s the remarkable wunderkind, the girl who can bring back the dead. Everything is going her way. But it turns out that science can be a dangerous business, and Kira is swept up into a world of international rivalry with dark forces that threaten her life.
A young adult thriller but great for all ages, Dragonfly Girl is a treat for fans of Orphan Black and The Queen’s Gambit.
“This is a compelling YA debut from the internationally bestselling Leimbach. All the characters have depth, especially Kira, whose growth will entice readers to invest in her struggles and cheer for her successes. Leimbach also handles the science well, explaining what is happening without letting it slow down the action, focusing more on the characters’ emotions than the scientific procedures. VERDICT A thrilling debut with a heroine to root for and an excellent story that will keep surprising readers.” — School Library Journal
“. . . The fast pace and high stakes are engaging . . . An exciting adventure about a girl in STEM . . . ” — Kirkus Reviews
“Dragonfly Girl is unlike any other book I have read. The plot is taut and devilishly cunning, the science behind the story is brilliantly researched, and the writing pulls you in and doesn’t let go until the very last page. You’ll find yourself aching for the heroine’s hardships at first, before suddenly being whisked off into a heart-thumping adventure that will leave you breathless. THIS BOOK SLAPS.” — Jesse Q Sutanto, the author of Dial A for Aunties
“Marti Leimbach has written an intriguing and thrilling novel that could very well entice readers to take a closer look at careers in science, while entertaining them along the way with astonishing facts.” — Todd Strasser, author of The Wave, Fallout and many other novels for young adults
“Dragonfly Girl is a uniquely smart book, with a story you will not see coming, and characters that ring true. Readers will be challenged and delighted. Invest some time in Dragonfly Girl and let author Marti Leimbach take you on a surprising, utterly original ride. I loved it!” — Michael Grant, bestselling author of the GONE series
AMAZON:
https://bit.ly/dragonfly_goodreads
BUY HERE
Category: How To and Tips
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