Avatar photoSteven Savage

Writing As A Living Thing

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

“The story falls apart,” the writer laments. I’ve heard that from many writers, and I’ve said it myself. Sometimes the tales we create turn into a pile of junk with alarming regularity, even if this happens in our heads. That’s because stories only work in motion – just like a living thing.

A story is a lot like a body, constantly in motion, and only in motion is it alive. Scenes connect, actions flowing like blood between theme. An event in one part of the story flies across the tale to create events later, a shocking nerve signal of continuity. Strong world ideas hold it together, the bones and muscles that give the tale solidity.

But if it stops moving, flowing, living, it slows. It stills. It may even die.

The problem is, we often harm our living stories.

We strangle them, trying to force them down certain paths. A story is a living thing, and its going to surprise us – the more we force it, the more it slows, the more danger we kill it.

We try to force them to move faster, as if we’re drugging them for performance. As we force them, they wear, continuity and characters malfunctioning, and if we’re not careful, they sicken and die.

We focus on tiny issues of stories, ignoring larger issues of health. Distracted, we don’t address the important parts of our story, and the story staggers and stumbles.

We become lost in huge abstract issues of our tales, ignoring important smaller ones of our tales. Focusing on giant overarching issues, we miss tiny flaws in our stories, and like our health, tiny issues grow to larger ones. We can be surprised at what we lost.

We go for crank ideas and trendy suggestions, following today’s latest trend or writing advice. Just like crank medicine and diet fads, these arent good for us, but we get caught up in the moment and the hype. It is only later that we have to figure out how we harmed our stories and fix the damage we inflicted.

Take care of your story just like you would a living thing. It’s a good metaphor – and if nothing else, can give us a bit of writer hypochondria to keep us on alert.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Update 10/6/2019

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

This update is a bit chaotic – lots of people I know going through stuff, from surgeries to family challenges. So I’m not quite where I wanted to be.

But first, I am in a TON of giveaways. Check them out for some free books and samples:

So what have I done since last time?

  • Way With Worlds: I didn’t outline the next book yet, as I was selecting subject – and folks on my newsletter gave me some feedback. Right now it’s probably going to be either Gods and Deities or Economics.
  • Chance’s Muse: I didn’t get a chance to edit this for obvious reasons.
  • A School Of Many Futures: Had a few bumpy spots, and I realized I’d “over outlined” it – on top of trying to write while busy. I’m rewriting the first two chapters to get a feel. So the book is probably out September next year instead of August.
  • Seventh Sanctum: Started looking into the Python prototypes again, and I’m tackling the most difficult generator.

What’s next?

  • Way With Worlds: Ok, NOW I plan to outline the next one and start it. Really.
  • Chance’s Muse: I’m going to try to sit down and edit in one giant go. I want it done end of October so I can publish it.
  • A School Of Many Futures: Finish my chapter rewrite then tear into it.
  • Seventh Sanctum: Keep going! Gods, this has been interrupted so much.
  • General: Recover from all the chaos of course.

Steven Savage

Writer’s Lean Coffee

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

At one of my writer’s groups I tried something out you may want to try – a Lean Coffee. Here’s a quick rundown and what happens. You can read up on it above, but I’ll sum up my experiences here.

At its heart, Lean Coffees are self-organizing ways for teams of people to pool knowledge, get advice, and discuss important subjects. It comes from lean business practices, but you can re-purpose it for just about anything.

First, how you run a Lean Coffee (for writers, but you can do it for all sorts of things)

  1. Get a group of people interested in the same subject.
  2. Give them notecards or some other equivalent (or even an online spreadsheet). Have them write down 1-3 things they want to discuss.
  3. Once the questions to discuss are done, everyone gets three votes and votes on what they want to discuss. In my experience, people don’t vote for just their questions, because people bring up topics they hadn’t thought of.
  4. Rank the subjects in order of votes and pick the top one. If there’s more than one top subject by votes, pick one randomly.
  5. Discuss the subject as a group for five minutes. At the end, vote if people want to go on another five minutes. I usually go by majority vote unless it’s close.
  6. Take the next subject by vote count and continue.

Encourage people to take notes or have a designated note-taker if the group is part of a larger team.

I’ve run this a number of times for Agile groups, and it’s always been successful – though sometimes you have to do it two or three times in a row for a team to gel. So how did it go for a random group of writers?

Really good.

First, we had a number of good subjects of discussion. I think that’s because the group had a history of good discussions, often focused on specific subjects-of-the-month. We were primed for this.

Secondly, because we had a diverse group of people, the discussions covered a lot of ground. Different viewpoints created more valuable results – and more valuable questions.

Third, it really got people talking. The Lean Coffee encourages people to talk, and the “bite-sized” discussions made it easy to prompt people who might go silent, and if someone had nothing to say one subject they may the next.

Fourth, the Lean Coffee method encourages solid discussions. People bring up things that matter to them, then vote as a team on what’s important to everyone, and discussion follows. Real quickly you focus on high-value issues, while having a bit of surprise to shake you up and keep you from getting into a rut.

Fifth, it created real team bonding. We shared our concerns and our insights, we got to know each other, we figured solutions to shared problems. I felt like we all left as more of a team.

I am going to repeat this with my writers group, probably every few moths, and may try it in other groups. I also wonder if it’ll work at conventions . . .

So give it a try, and let me know what you find!

Steven Savage