Writers in the Storm

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Clichés aren’t necessarily bad—they’re just not original.

One of my favorite writing T-shirts says “I avoid clichés like the plague.” But clichés are so ingrained in our day-to-day lives that it’s hard to eliminate them completely from our writing. For me, the more casual the situation, the more often I use them. For example, you’ll see me use them a lot more in blog posts versus my novels.

Clichés are not bad. They’re cultural shorthand to convey an idea.

However, it’s this ease of communication that makes them undesirable in our writing.

We’re writers. We’re supposed to be original. Using something that’s been used "for ages" is taking the lazy way out and making the reader do the work. Even worse, because clichés are so culturally known, readers aren’t surprised by them. How many TV/movie plots have you ever figured out right away because of the clichés used? I’d guess a lot.

But you can make clichés work for you instead of against you.

I had a WIP with a director of security type position and a second-in-command guy. It’s a cliché that both these roles are often filled by a character who’s up to no good—the guy in charge of your security is secretly working against you. Your second-in-command is trying to do you in and take over. No matter what the genre, this role is frequently where the bad guy hides.

Obviously, I didn’t want to make either of these guys a bad guy. Readers would see that coming without even having to look up.

But since I know readers will expect them to be bad guys, it lets me play with those expectations. I can twist the cliché and have my characters behave in ways that could easily be interpreted as helpful or hurtful and let the reader assume the wrong thing. I can play into those expectations and later yank the rug out from under readers when they realize those actions weren’t the actions of a villain.

Take a known cliché and twist it.

Years ago, I read a book called Villains By Necessity by Eve Forward. Forward took the tried-and-true “good vs evil” cliché and turned it on its head. The good guys have won, evil is gone, but it hasn’t turned out exactly as all the fairy tales said it would. The world is unbalanced now, and that’s causing trouble. A group realizes that the world needs a little evil, and to save it, they have to turn into bad guys. The “villains” have to save the world. What a great twist!

My own novel The Shifter developed this way as well. I was playing with various fantasy clichés, trying to find a different angle on my idea. I ended up focusing on healing, and realized that you never saw it used for evil. There were rarely any consequences to it at all. I wondered, “What if healing could be bad? What if it could be harmful?” And thus, the book was born.

If you have a clichéd idea, opening, or character, try looking at how you can make that cliché different.

Can you do the opposite of what’s expected?

Can you make it positive if it’s a negative? Negative if it’s a positive? (As in, if the cliché is always for the good guy can you give it to the bad guy, and vice versa?)

Is there something that hasn’t been done with it already? Can you:

• Change the gender?
• Change the age?
• Change the species?
• Change the genre?
• Change the tone?
• Change the format?

Let’s look at one of the more common clichés: Describing a character by looking in the mirror.

How many times have you heard “Don’t have your character look in a mirror to describe themselves.” It’s good advice, but what if your book absolutely needs to do this?

Then twist the cliché.

First, look at how and why this cliché is typically used:

• It’s the easiest way for a writer to describe their point of view character.
• Studying yourself in the mirror is something we all do.
• It’s easy to get in the descriptive details.

Next, ask yourself why this cliché has to be used:

• What about looking in that mirror is critical to the story?
• Why can’t you describe the character in another way?
• What does looking in the mirror gain you that nothing else can accomplish?

Now, let’s look at my “ways to twist a cliche” list and see what we can come up with:

Can you do the opposite of what’s expected?

You expect to see the person, so what if they have no reflection? What if they remember what they can no longer see? What if they go out of their way to avoid looking into mirrors? What if it’s someone else looking at them as they look into the mirror?

Can you make it positive if it’s a negative?

What if they have something they didn’t have before? Their appearance changed in a way that’s intriguing.

Negative if it’s a positive?

What if they see something they don’t want to see? What if they’re always looking into mirrors because they need to constantly watch behind them? What if they’re waiting for something bad to show up in their reflection?

Naturally, the story will dictate which direction you go with this, but you can already see how a little brainstorming has opened up several ideas.

Unsure if what you’re doing is a cliché or not?

Wander through TV Tropes, one of the most comprehensive cliché databases I’ve ever seen. It covers all the common plots, tricks, and clichés and gives you plenty of examples. It covers books, TV, comics, and movies, so don’t let the name fool you.

Clichés come with expectations. Defy those expectations, and your cliché can become more than cultural short hand.

What clichés do you struggle with? Does your WIP use any? Are they working or not working?

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

Today, I want to tell you to get over yourself.

I am in a lot of writers’ groups online and off, with literally tens of thousands of writers in various stages of their journeys. I regularly attend several writers’ conferences, am in a couple of critique groups, I had a weekly stream talking about the business of creativity, I both formally and informally mentor or help writers, you get the idea. I see a lot of writers, especially the statistically more common Beginning Writer variant. And the common issue I see many face is hesitation.

This is not going to be an inspirational post about having the courage to pitch your work. Nope, we’re going way back before that, to the very start. You can’t pitch what you haven’t written.

(Well, you can, actually, and that’s what a book proposal is. But book proposals are primarily for non-fiction and very, very well-established fiction authors. Neil Gaiman can propose an unwritten book; I can’t. So we won’t talk about proposals.)

This hesitation comes out in various ways and sometimes looks quite different, but we’re often just seeing different pips on the same die:

• “I’m getting to the actual writing, I just need to go over my outline once more first”
• “I spent three hours writing and got a few hundred words”
• “NaNoWriMo [or other goal-oriented event] is only for people who don’t actually care about their writing”

Reluctance

What this all boils down to is a reluctance—often unconscious, in my observation—to actually get the story down in real prose.

Before we talk about the several reasons for this, let me deal with the hands which have already shot into the air. This is usually where someone takes a deep breath and launches, “Well, actually, Laura, not everyone works in the same way, and it’s unrealistic and rude to expect them to.” Great point, but irrelevant, and your attempt to deflect and defend won’t work here. I didn’t say anything about everyone needing to work in the same way, I said quite a lot of writers, especially but not limited to novice writers, have trouble getting their story down on a page. So, let’s get back to that.

As I was saying, there are multiple reasons offered for this hesitation—I don’t know how to get started, I don’t like the words that come out, I need to fix the words I’ve already written, and a host more—but these again reduce to a single root cause: fear that my draft will not be good enough.

WELL OF COURSE IT WON’T BE GOOD ENOUGH, FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD, AND WHY WOULD IT? But we’ll get back to that.

There are several popular meme variations on a common “joke” (ha ha ha sob) about a first draft not matching up to the idea or concept. It’s funny because it’s true. When we have an idea, it’s necessarily more vague as a premise than as a 75,000 word manuscript, and it can be glorious in its imprecision. Everything that is blurry is assumed perfect. When we write it down, we have to suddenly get all those details right, and of course it’s not going to be finished to perfection in its first iteration.

Of Course

But a lot of writers miss that “of course.”

When there is a gap (or occasionally a chasm) between expectation and actualization, we get frustrated and disappointed. A lot of writers deal with that frustration and disappointment by just…avoiding it. “If I haven’t written the thing yet, I haven’t yet messed up the thing.” Which is true, as far as it goes, but also what an inefficient (and sad) way to write (and to live).

Now, just pulling that into view is sometimes enough to challenge it. As I said, this is often an unconscious sabotage, and realizing what we’re doing may be enough to disrupt it. But there are also several facts—yes, facts—we can consider to ourselves help get past this.

The other day a friend expressed reluctance to do something with a potentially scary outcome, and I told her that emotions are totally valid, but she should just also ask them to justify their influence. We did the math, and it turned out statistically she had a better chance of being struck by lightning than of the scary outcome. Not saying you can’t ever feel fear, but just ask it to explain itself, okay? So let’s look at this draft reluctance in clear light and rationally.

Mistakes

Let’s start with the silly one: Mistakes, inconsistencies, and ugly sentences in first drafts are not fatal. They’re not even serious problems. They’re barely non-serious problems.

Now I said this was silly, and it is. Most people will roll their eyes and say that of course they know errors in first drafts aren’t fatal, and what a stupid thing to even bring up. But if it’s so silly and so easy to reject, why do so many people let it deny their goals and dreams? Why are they still just 12k into that novel on its third year? Because **it feels fatal.**

Not nailing that concept-to-prose landing, not sticking that transition from glorious idea to compelling story, feels like failure. And as we all know from our character studies, “death” comes in several flavors, including failure, and also including perceptions of self. It’s why we can have a climax with a secret agent trying to keep a chemical from the water supply to save tens of thousands of lives, but also a climax with a middle schooler trying to push a special note to a classmate. We know this in fiction; it’s true for real life, too.

So we let the idea of mistakes become “failure”—even in a first draft. Which is indeed silly. Don’t let fear psych you out of doing what you want to do.

Expectations

And here’s the second fact. First drafts are not just allowed to be bad, they are expected to be bad. That is why they are called FIRST drafts, with the inherent assumption that there will be more to follow.

When you write your first draft—full of errors and continuity problems and hard right turns in characterization because I only just now realized she’s motivated by guilt over accidentally killing her sister or that he has a latex allergy and all that glorious first draft mess—you immediately want to assess your work. And you naturally assess against your reading standards, which are universally NOT first drafts, but are the published books you love. And so you compare your fresh baby draft, barely into the world, to a professional’s fifteenth draft which has additionally undergone one or several professional edits. And then, when they don’t match—AND WHY WOULD THEY?—you feel frustration and disappointment.

So I’m here to say, get over yourself. 😊 Stop asking your first draft to match someone else’s fifteenth draft with a couple rounds of pro editing. You’re not that good—and no one is. I have here two suggested reminders, depending on your personal preferences for self-talk:

1. I guarantee you Brandon Sanderson’s first draft does not look like the finished book you hold in your hands, either. It’s gonna be okay. First drafts exist just to make revision possible.
2. Stop pretending you’re too good for the creative process and your first drafts should of course just naturally be better than everyone else’s fourth drafts, and join the rest of the writing community in hard work.

Progress

Now, here’s one more fact to remember: A first draft is much, much closer to a novel than an idea is. It is far, far easier to revise a first draft into that shiny finished product than it is to turn an idea into a finished product. Even though it may feel like your concept has been battered and destroyed by putting it into an imperfect first draft, it has to get worse before it gets better (kind of like cleaning out that one closet), and the ugly draft is actually so much closer to your goal.

Just. Write. The Thing.

And one more, though I won’t call it a fact because this is just personal experience, though I strongly suspect it could be a more universal experience: The more I consciously allow my first drafts to be awful, the better they are. If I get out of my own way, not micro-managing early attempts, I let the part of my brain with the ideas have better access to the keyboard. I can cite specific incidents where under deadline I said, “I’m just gonna vomit onto this page and I’ll salvage what I can later,” and then what came out was not just better than expected, but better overall. (A couple of those stories is are award winners.)

I know several writers who generally write fairly clean first drafts and need fewer drafts overall. All of them write fairly quickly. That’s a small and highly informal sample, but I don’t think it’s wholly coincidental. It’s not about the technical speed (words per hour), it’s about just getting it down without getting in your own way.

Again, because it’s important: it's not about technical speed, hitting 2500 words an hour or whatever. It's about getting the story down so there's something to revise. You can't edit a blank page.

I’m not saying not to plan or outline. I’m definitely not saying that quality of the finished product doesn’t matter. I’m saying that you’re probably better than you’re allowing yourself to be, and you can choose to approach it differently.

Now go write the thing!

Discussion: Have you found yourself hesitant to write because it wasn’t going as well as you hoped? Do you have any favorite techniques to get around your inner critic?

About Laura

Laura VanArendonk Baugh writes fantasy of many flavors as well as non-fiction. She has summited extinct, dormant, and active volcanoes, but none has yet accepted her sacrifice. She lives in Indiana where she enjoys Dobermans, travel, fair-trade chocolate, and making her imaginary friends fight one another for her own amusement. Find her award-winning work at http://LauraVAB.com.

By Diana Clark 

My passion to write about Latin American protest music started innocently enough. A long and deep interest in Hispano-American history and culture led to an interest in using fiction to write about the interesting events and characters I’d studied for years. 

To make the process of writing a novel more authentic and enjoyable, I purchased a CD I found in a second-hand Flagstaff, Arizona, bookstore. I selected it because the back cover informed me it had been recorded in Chile’s National Stadium, a place featured prominently in my manuscript. The military used it as a concentration camp for political prisoners in the early days and weeks of the coup.  

The Beginning of a Journey

The musician on the CD, a singer and guitarist named Silvio Rodriguez, was a well-known Cuban, who’d been banned by General Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1990 to celebrate the country’s re-embracing of democracy. I discovered his music in 2011. During my research for the novel, I discovered the important role Chilean protest music played in the years before it was banned by the junta—its musicians exiled, jailed, or killed. 

I knew all about protest music, or so I thought. I’d grown up in the prime years of American folk rock. Joan Baez, however, was as far south as my knowledge went. I’d never heard of Nueva Cancion, or Nueva Trova, or Nuevo Canto. Have you? 

Yearning to Know More

I think I must have played that CD a thousand times. Then, using Pandora, I begin to explore other Cuban artists like Pablo Milanes, Noel Nicola, and Carlos Puebla before moving on to singer/songwriters in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, and beyond. By the time I’d finished the novel, I wanted to know more about these musicians and their lives. One contact I made in my faulty Spanish led to an interview in Cuba and introductions to other artists all over the Latin world. 

Interviews, Stories, and Friendship

One of countries I visited was Spain. I was there to do follow-up on the natural and cultural UNESCO sites I wrote about in another novel. While, I was there, I wanted to interview Spanish singer/songwriters I’d researched and listened to. One interview in Madrid led to another, longer one in Mexico City with the same artist and the beginning of a friendship I treasure. 

Over the next three years, I met and interviewed over a dozen men (oddly, they were all men) in nearly as many countries. All of them were in the waning years of their careers. Some no longer performed—but the stories! Some were tragic—describing years of exile and fear, friends lost or jailed, voices silenced. Others were heartwarming, even funny. 

From Researching to Writing

The journey from researching to beginning to write went slowly. There were so many possibilities. My first task was to decide what tied so many different sounds, instruments, and rhythms together. It took me a while to realize it was the words, not the music, that defined Latin American protest music.  

Playing with Fire would be a collaboration, I decided with a little help from my Spanish friend. It would be an introduction to the movement in words with music provided by a YouTube website we’d create. It would focus on the most important artists and on the impact this New Song had in the larger world. 

An Abrupt Stop

I stopped working on the book when my friend became ill, seeing the halt as temporary. Then, he died, and I needed time to grieve and reflect. The material was all there—the research notes, the interviews, the emails back and forth discussing different approaches. I just couldn’t get myself to write the book without my friend’s input. 

Instead, I wrote several novels about this world, this moment in time. One focused on Cuba, another, Argentina. I did my best to capture the angst and determination of some of the most exceptional humans I’ve encountered. 

The project sits there, haunting me—the box containing all those files. It is waiting, none to patiently, for me to bring it to life. In the meantime, we’ve lost several more of these wonderful and talented men. I listen to their music, watch pieces of their concerts on YouTube, and promise my friends I will begin soon. 

The Unexpected and Extraordinary

Sometimes, research doesn’t take you where you think you’re headed or where you want to go. Whether I write this particular piece of work or not, I’m certain that my time and that of the musicians I interviewed wasn’t wasted. I’ve learned about music’s extraordinary power to unite and persuade and the kinds of challenges artists of all kinds face when governments seek to control even the thoughts of their victims. What I’ve learned and experienced now influences what I write. In time, I will tell these men’s stories. I can only hope I tell them properly. 

What unexpected and extraordinary places has your research taken you?

About Diana

A late bloomer as a fiction writer, Diana Clark is a much-published former editor and historian who lives and works in Mazatlán, Mexico. It was her love of history, specifically Latin American history, that led to her Points South series, which examines the turbulent 1970s and 1980s in Chile, Argentina, and Central America through novels. Some titles include Stolen, Tapestries, Song of Despair, and, most recently, The Long Game.

She admits to another longtime love, Latin American and Spanish protest music of the 60s and 70s. This interest has taken her to Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Cuba, and Mexico, where she’s interviewed cantautores (singers/songwriters), whose songs are still performed today.

Image Credits:

Top image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay

Second image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay