Writers in the Storm

by Barbara Linn Probst

Before I became a writer, I taught students who were getting advanced degrees in clinical social work. One of the questions that always came up was whether a clinician could effectively counsel someone if she didn’t share their experience. Did a clinician have the ability—or the right—to presume that she could help someone struggling with issues that she couldn’t understand “from the inside,” such as domestic violence, anorexia, or racial discrimination?

There are arguments to support both answers to that question. On the one hand, there’s the addiction recovery model, which is based on the idea that “those who’ve been there” are in the best position to help. On the other hand, as I would point out to my students, did that mean that I—as a white, urban, female, baby boomer—had to limit my clinical practice to people exactly like me? That didn’t sound right. It implied a world of stereotypes and separation that contradicted everything I believed in.

The answer that I found most useful, over the years, was based on two complementary principles. First, acknowledge what you don’t understand. Ask and learn. “Tell me what it’s like for you.” Respect the client as the expert on her own life.

And second, excavate what you do understand, even if it’s not evident at first. As I told my students: “I might not know what it’s like to feel worthless and ashamed because my father is incarcerated. But I do know what it’s like to feel worthless and ashamed. Something in my life has made me feel that way. It doesn’t matter what it is, specifically, as long as I can dig down and connect with those feelings. They’re human feelings, and we all have them.”

It’s exactly the same with writing. But the principles require a bit of translation.

We’ve all heard the injunction to “write what you know.” That’s like the idea that a therapist will do her best work with people whose experience most closely resembles her own.

And we’ve all heard the counter-arguments. If we were limited to writing what we know, directly, then a female writer could have no male characters. There would be no fantasy or historical fiction. That’s obviously not what the injunction is meant to connote. Taking it that way is far too restrictive.

However, there’s another pitfall to the notion that we must turn to our own experience as source material for our writing. You might say that it’s not restrictive enough. That is, it requires a caveat or two.

“Write what you know” does not mean you should turn your own life into fiction—or, more subtly, use writing for personal catharsis. My first (terrible) manuscript did just that, although I didn’t realize it at the time. I was drawing on my own painful experiences, ostensibly because that was the material I could write about most authentically, but actually because I still needed to work through them.

In other words, I was writing about my experience, rather than writing from my experience—from the human truths I’d come to understand. Those truths can deepen a story. They can tell me, if I listen, what my characters might feel and do, even if I’ve never been part of their world.

We’ve all been swept into the world of a story, knowing that the author herself wasn’t a member of the French resistance or part of an orphan train. Certainly, the author did extensive research so the external details would be accurate. But no doubt she did “internal research” too, tapping into the human emotions that transcend time and place.

In short: My own experience can guide how I render the story. But it should not guide how I structure the plot.

Ask yourself: Are you writing about your experience or from your experience? How can you tell?  Here are some guidelines that can help.

• Can
  you imagine people you know asking if a character in your book is “really” you
  or “really” someone you both know? 
• Do
  you believe that no one else could truly tell this story?
• Visualize
  your novel as a memoir. Would it work equally well?
• Do
  you feel deeply connected with your protagonist’s struggle, despite the ways in
  which you differ?
• As
  you were writing, did you feel as if you knew, intuitively, what your
  protagonist would say or do—even though you’ve never been in her shoes? 
• Did
  the passages of interiority come more naturally to you, while you were writing,
  than the external events of the plot?

If you answered “yes” to the first three questions, you may be writing about your experience.

If you answered “yes” to the last three, you may be writing from your experience. It’s not always so clear-cut, of course—and there’s nothing inherently wrong with semi-autobiographical writing, as long as you do it purposefully and call it by its proper name. 

One of my writing teachers, the wise and generous Sandra Scofield, told me recently: “There’s no harvest so bountiful as one’s own pain.” The image of a harvest is a good one, I think. The pain—whatever struggle, loss, shame, rage, and despair one has experienced—can be fertile soil.  The crop doesn’t consist of quasi-autobiographical accounts of that pain. It’s whatever you, as a writer, can bring to life from the mysterious combination of soil, light, water, and air.

It’s a delicate, two-step process. First, we take what is personal, particular to us, and search for its universal essence. Then we take that universal essence and embed it in a new particular—a character, an event, a fictional world.

That’s the miracle of writing.

What about you? 

Is there something from your own life that has enriched a story you’ve written? Are there dangers, as well as benefits, of drawing on one’s own experience?

About Barbara

Barbara Linn Probst is a writer and researcher living on a historic dirt road in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her forthcoming novels (Queen of the Owls, April 2020, and The Sound of One Hand, October 2020) tell of the search for authenticity, wholeness, and connection. In both novels, art helps the protagonist to become more fully herself.  Queen of the Owls has been chosen as a 2020 Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection.

Author of the groundbreaking book on nurturing out-of-the-box children, When the Labels Don’t Fit (Random House, 2008), Barbara holds a PhD in clinical social work and is a frequent guest essayist on major online sites for fiction writers. To learn more about Barbara and her work, please see http://www.barbaralinnprobst.com/

Julie Glover

I'm a huge fan of the original Gilmore Girls. Or really, a huge fan of the scriptwriters on that show. While the lines were delivered perfectly by the wonderful actors, the writers were the ones who crafted the dialogue that set the show's tone, deepened the characters, and popped off the screen.

Whether you're a fan or not, settle in with your popcorn and let's pull some principles from scenes of Gilmore Girls to apply to our own novels—thus creating dialogue that keeps readers reading and coming back for more.

1. Represent, don't reproduce, real dialogue.

All too often, we writers think we need to speak like our characters would in real life. But think that through.

In real life, people stammer, interrupt themselves, interrupt each other, pause to recall someone's name or hunt for the word they want to use, repeat pet words over and over, default to cliches, and fill their dialogue with "verbal graffiti" (um, uh, like). That does not make for seamless or engaging reading.

Some have pointed out that no one in real life speaks as wittily and quickly as Lorelai Gilmore. To which I reply, "So what?" Her dialogue feels real enough—true to who she is and how she engages with the world—and keeps the viewer engaged. Take a look at this scene that happens the day after Rory Gilmore, a normally straight-laced college student, gets arrested.

https://youtu.be/brkTiPXHxUQ

How compelling or entertaining would that scene be if the mom stopped to think up her next witty line, added a bunch of ums or likes into the conversation, or just asked how her recently-arrested daughter was doing? Not very.

As Alfred Hitchcock said, "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out." So cut out the dull parts and represent rather than reproduce real conversation.

2. Have a purpose for dialogue.

It seems at times in the show that Lorelai and Rory were talking just to hear themselves talk. But the dialogue always, or almost always, achieved something.

Let's look at a seemingly pointless conversation, and then I'll address why this dialogue really matters in the episode.

https://youtu.be/arF5pRh0ing?start=36

In this episode, Lorelai goes out on a date with a man she met at an auction and it turns out to be a bust. As she explains to her daughter, the man went on and on about his car and the wine list until she was nearly bored to death. Plus, he had no sense of humor.

Yet in this opening scene, Luke goes on and on too. He rants about the young families in his diner, and his gruff attitude toward public nursing makes him seem far less desirable than the man Lorelai later meets. By seeing her amused and engaged by Luke, we get that this unlikely character is a better fit. This dialogue sets the story's tone, reveals their character, and foreshadows the main conflict to come. It's also somewhat entertaining.

Ask yourself why your characters say what they say. How does each line of dialogue matter to the overall plot or scene goal? What does the reader learn about the characters or the conflict? And if at all possible, get dialogue to pull double-duty, having it achieve more than one goal.

3. Tailor dialogue to character.

A common pitfall in writing dialogue is making your characters sound too similar. But how we speak arises from various factors, including geography, gender, age, race/ethnicity, culture, personality, and worldview.

Some of my favorite scenes from Gilmore Girls involve the community meetings conducted in the fictional town of Stars Hollow. Note how the individual voices vary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn1gv-01z5I

Even in this short clip, you can see the personalities of many who spoke, from the anal-retentive mayor to the grumpy, ball-capped diner owner, to the tenderhearted teenage girl (Rory), to the humor-loving, sarcastic mom (Lorelai). If you knew nothing else about this whole series, you'd still get a flavor of the characters from this snippet.

Likewise, use dialogue in your story to show the uniqueness of each character and deepen the reader's sense of who they are, as well as what matters to them.

4. Use subtlety to express feelings.

Sometimes the best way for your characters to communicate what they're feeling is to avoid saying it or say it such a subtle way that only someone who knows the character really understands what's beneath the surface.

Emily Gilmore, the main character's mother, is a take-charge, never-let-em-see-you-sweat woman who shows how much she loves her husband in this touching scene in the hospital following his heart attack.

https://youtu.be/g9Gy4e571HU

All that fuss about the bedding is her way of saying "I love you, Richard Gilmore." And in turn, he responds to her need for reassurance with the funny-yet-sweet line, "You may go first."

Look for original, indirect ways your characters can express what they're thinking and feeling. And, in line with the previous point, make their way specific to who they are.

5. Include subtext.

When it comes to subtext, novels are superior to shows. Unless a movie or TV show includes a narrator's voice, a character's unspoken thoughts must be implied through body language, facial expression, and words spoken aloud. Authors have the added benefit of internal dialogue on the page.

Still, we can see how important subtext is through this scene from Gilmore Girls. It's a turning point in the show when daughter Rory comes home after having accidentally stayed out all night.

https://youtu.be/wNTnaJdkfA4

Lorelai was a teenager when she got pregnant with Rory, and she brings all that past into the present. Since the writers showed us the first conversation between mother and daughter (Emily Gilmore with Lorelai), we can almost hear Lorelai's thoughts and emotions in the second conversation between mother and daughter (Lorelai to Rory). Giving every word spoken aloud that much more oomph.

What our characters say is important, but often in light of what they don't say aloud—that is, what they say to themselves about the conversation, visceral reactions they have, emotions and memories they experience. So consider carefully what you put between the quotation marks. Add subtext to give your dialogue more emphasis and power.

Make Conversation Count

You're probably not writing a Gilmore Girls type novel, but all of us will have dialogue in our stories. Make sure what you include isn't dull, distracting, or distant. Instead, make conversation count by:

• Representing (not reproducing) real dialogue;
• Having a purpose for dialogue;
• Tailoring dialogue to character;
• Using subtlety to express feelings; and
• Including subtext.

What have you learned about writing great dialogue from shows you've watched?

About Julie

Julie Glover writes cozy mysteries and young adult fiction. Her YA contemporary novel, SHARING HUNTER, finaled in the 2015 RWA® Golden Heart®. She is also co-author of the Muse Island supernatural suspense series, which begins with Mark of the Gods, under the pen name Jules Lynn.

When not writing, she collects boots, practices rampant sarcasm, and advocates for good grammar and the addition of the interrobang as a much-needed punctuation mark.

Julie is represented by Louise Fury of The Bent Agency. You can visit Julie’s website hereand also follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

by Gwen Hernandez

If you've ever dropped your laptop, spilled water on it, or had a hard drive fail—raising my hand to all of these—you probably understand the value of having your work backed up.

Scrivener does this automatically for you, every time you close a project, but it's a good idea to give it a little more thought. For example, if your working project and its backup copy are both on your hard drive, the backup won't help you if your laptop goes up in flames or down into the pool.

However you choose to protect your writing (and other files), here's how to set things up in Scrivener.

Saving vs. Backing Up

I've encountered a lot of confusion over the difference between saving and backing up a file. In case you're unclear on the concepts, here's my attempt to explain.

Think of your working project file (the one you write in every day) like a piece of paper that you're writing on with a pencil. You can erase words and add new words, but all of those changes are saved onto that same piece of paper. (Scrivener saves your changes every two seconds that you're not typing or moving your mouse.) Every day when you sit down to write, you pull out that piece of paper and get to work.

If you were worried about your piece of paper getting eaten by the dog, blowing into the burning fireplace, or flying out the window, you might want a backup copy, just in case. In the analog world, you could make a photocopy of your piece of paper at the end of each day, and mail it to a friend or put it in a fireproof safe. This is equivalent to your backup copy in Scrivener. You'll probably never need it; it's just there in case something happens to your original.

Deciding Where to Save Your Backup Files

Now that we understand what backup files are, let's talk about where to keep them. It's best to store your Scrivener backups on a different drive from your working projects so that if something happens to one drive, the other is still safe.

If your working project file is on your hard drive, backup options include thumb drives, external hard drives, Dropbox, or other online storage such as iCloud.

NOTE: Cloud services other than Dropbox are not recommended for your working project because they don't handle Scrivener's file structure well. If your Desktop or Documents folder is linked to iCloud, you might want to keep working projects elsewhere. Any online storage service is fine for your backups, as long as they are compressed/zipped.

Understanding the Backup Settings in Scrivener

To view or adjust the Scrivener backup settings (applies to all projects on the computer), go to Scrivener>Preferences>Backup (Mac) or Tools>Options>Backup (PC).

The the box next to "Turn on automatic backups" should be checked. If not, automatic backups won't happen.

Deciding When to Perform a Backup

Your options for when the backup is created include on open, close, manual save (i.e., File>Save, which you rarely need to do since Scrivener auto-saves, as mentioned earlier), and before syncing with mobile devices.

"Back up on project close" is the most important one. It'll trigger a backup anytime you close your project or Scrivener.

The other choices are optional depending on your workflow.

Compressing the Backup Files

I strongly suggest choosing "Compress automatic backups as zip files." Yes, it's a bit slower, but zipping the files makes for smoother Internet transfers, and helps protect the backup project from corruption.

Choosing To Date or Not to Date

I also recommend you turn on "Use date in backup file names." This will insert a date and time stamp into the file name. If you ever need to open a backup file, the date makes it easier to find the one you want.

Deciding How Many Backup Copies to Keep

Your choice of how many copies you retain depends on how frequently you're backing up and how much space you have on the backup location.

Five copies is usually plenty, but if you open and close Scrivener multiple times a day, you may want more so you have several days' worth of backups.

Changing the Backup Location

To change the backup location, open the Backup settings window (as in Step 1 above) and click Choose.

Select the location where you'd like backups for all of your Scrivener projects to be saved. This must be a drive accessible via your computer. If you want to designate a flash drive or other external drive, it must be plugged in.

IMPORTANT: To avoid cross-contamination between file versions, Scrivener backups and working projects should never be saved in the same folder. If you do this, you'll get an error when you open your project file in Scrivener.

Recovering a Project from a Backup Copy

If you lose a project file to corruption, natural disaster, or user error, you can recover most of your work from a backup. Here's how.

1. The easiest way to find the backup file you need is to go to Scrivener>Preferences>Backup (Mac) or Tools>Options>Backup (PC), and click Open Backup Folder. This will open a window directly to the folder where your backups are currently being stored.

2. Backup files are called FileName.bak#.zip (where # is the version number or the date/time stamp), and will include the date/time stamp if you chose that optio. NOTE: The version numbers rotate from 1-5, so 5 may not always be the most recent (which is why I recommend date stamps). The very first backup file for a project will not include a version number.

3. To avoid losing the original backup file, right-click the file and choose Duplicate (Mac) or Copy (PC). A new version of the file with the word "copy" inserted at the end of the file name appears.

4. Move the copy to the folder where you keep your writing files. This will ensure you don't accidentally start working in the backup folder, which can cause problems with the other backup files. If you're restoring the file because the original was damaged (or you had made changes you can't undo), rename the original to something like OLD_filename.scriv to avoid confusion. (Windows users, be sure to rename the .scriv folder, not just the .scrivx file inside it.)

5. Mac users can double-click the backup file to unzip it. Depending on the size of the file and the speed of your computer, this might take several minutes.

6. Windows users can right-click and choose Extract All. In the Extract window, click in the text box and remove "filename.bak#" from the folder to extract to. If you don't do this, File Explorer saves the file within another folder inside your writing folder. Click Extract. Depending on the size of the file and the speed of your computer, this might take several minutes.

7. Once the file finishes unzipping, you'll have the backup version (.zip or .bak.zip), and the unzipped version of the file under the original project name (.scriv).

8. Now you can open the .scriv file in Scrivener and get back to work. (Windows users: Do not remove the .scrivx file from the .scriv folder. You need everything in the .scriv folder to stay together or you'll end up with your project structure and no content.)

What backup or other Scrivener questions do you have?

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About Gwen

Gwen Hernandez is the author of Scrivener For Dummies and helps authors all over the world find the joy in Scrivener through her online courses, in-person workshops, and private training. She also writes romantic suspense (Men of Steele series).   In her spare time she likes to travel, read, jog, flail on a yoga mat, and explore southern California, where she currently lives with her husband and a lazy golden retriever. You can find more information about Gwen at http://gwenhernandez.com/.