  Short Stories
This week: Inspiration as an Exercise Edited by: Jay's debut novel is out now!  
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So, I am gearing up for 2012 to be a year of writing and submitting and (with any kind of luck) publishing. With that in mind, I'm trying to tackle my known problem areas as a writer one by one. It's possible the most egregious of my issues, at least within the writing itself, is setting. I feel like I'm great at getting down character and plot; I've really worked hard this past year at better developing these things.
Some of the things I'm finding out about my style are acceptable, but I'd like to be at the top of my stylistic A-Game, so I am exploring some of the different ways to pull more reality through the computer screen with me when I start writing.
I have a book written by James Gurney, one of the world's best renowned painters and well known for his ability to infer realism into fantasy and historical paintings. The book in question is called Imaginative Realism and while certainly he's addressing the artist community, I think some of his ideas apply to writing quite well. I'm rereading the book at the moment and some of the parallels with regard to written imagery stuck with me this week.
Certainly, these will not work for all stories or all settings, but I figure since I write a lot of fiction that doesn't even happen on this planet-- if these things are at all helpful for me, they should be helpful to you too! 
 in the section "Information and Atmosphere," Gurney writes about using visual information to convey details about the scene. Similarly, we might look for inspirations for a scene or setting's tone in nature or life, or a photograph if it takes place in a setting found half the world away from us, for example. Embellish with details-- using your reference material, what can you say about the appearance of things in this place? How does the environment affect its inhabitants? This can have an important bearing on setting but also on the nature of your characters.
Gurney uses models to pose for his paintings; not a new concept, but one I think we as writers forget about-- we've got 'model' characters walking all around us. Use the setting information to give them more definition. (This is something I, personally, often forget to do and when I *don't* forget to do this I'm often much happier with the result!)
"Start with the Familiar" and "Exaggerate"-- two more sections that give some suggestions on how to make disparate elements work well together and give a great way for any detail to stand out to the reader. Present the reader with a place or location they might know very well, but perhaps twisted beyond recognition or tilted slightly at an angle. (Metaphorically speaking!)
Gunrey suggests that even the fantasy and sci-fi illustrator should keep a "Scrap File" for imagery that might yet be relevant-- and I would say this is true for short story writers of all stripes. Your Scrap File might be anything from a rogue sentence that wouldn't let you go, to a photograph of a place or scene that inspires you. I have books of photos that I like to thumb through from time to time when I'm looking for a detail-- an image-- to grab my attention and inspire. I keep those sentences that stick in my head in an index card file, and sometimes just writing them down on paper lets me move on to the next thing.
"Sticking With It" is one of the section titles here, too, and I thought it was a relevant reminder. Sometimes a detail or an image doesn't come out the way we want it to right away-- that doesn't mean it can't be fixed or attempted again later. 
Right now I am already feeling inspired, pumped, and motivated-- I hope some of these ideas will do the same for you!
That's all for this month! See you next time.
Take care and Write on!
editor's note: the book in question, if you'd like to check it out for yourself, is:
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even if you're not a painter, if you enjoyed Gurney's Dinotopia or other stories this book has lots of info on his methods and techniques. |
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Last month's newsletter:"Showing, Telling, and You"
writetight writes:
Thanks for plugging "Preventive Medicine" , Jay.
Thank YOU for writing a great story to feature-- it's my pleasure.
Lorien  writes:
Excellent newsletter, J! I couldn't agree with you more -- flowery language has its place, but not in lieu of moving the story forward. I do enjoy reading literary fiction in general, but some of the recent trends in that genre have been away from action and toward extremely long passages of description and weird metaphors that seem only used for shock value rather than story cohesion. It's too bad. I love introspection in stories! But something else should probably happen, too.
Yeah, some of the things I've seen lately show such volumes of description... it's impossible to find the action. I am picking my way through a short story collection a friend wrote (...and self-published on Amazon...) and.... well, I can see why he had trouble selling the one story I was able to get through-- nothing HAPPENED, but he did describe a toilet in magnificent detail. It was as if I had seen it with my own eyes. 
tanya writes:
Hey Jay,
I enjoyed reading your newsletter this week.
A question popped to my mind, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it, if you don't mind:
You say that it's important "to never allow important story events to happen off-camera". I consider myself someone who eagerly uses dialogues in their writing, so I was wondering if your statement should also be applied to things happening before the story starts? Should one use dialogue in a retrospective rather than recounting the relevant things that happened earlier on and are not part of the story, but yet important? What do you think?
In a short story, off-camera events tend to work best at the beginning, where the reader is still settling into your world. They're something of a necessity in some regards-- 1,000 words does not a whole entire world and lifetime make, unless you write in hopelessly vague terms. It's best to keep story action-- things the move the story forward-- "on-camera." If the writer simply tells the reader what happened, without immersing them in what happened, what's the point for the reader to keep reading the story?
Bluesman writes:
Well put! I have so much trouble NOT saying what I mean. Too many words have always been my problem and rewriting my cross to bear. Great article.
Michael
Thanks, Michael! I still say it's better to have too many words and edit it down than to have not enough story to edit.
atwhatcost writes:
Very helpful NL. Thanks.
We have the same guilt! I do prefer to skip the elongated scenes and just tell, but then I have to go back and remember one of my mottos - "Go bold!" (Kin to your "cut down the hedges," which I might steal as a better motto. lol)
That said, I hope you can help me with a problem, even if it's a novel, not a short story. The POV is third-person from inside the protagonist's head. It works for the entire story, except one scene. Bullies pulled his best friend away, so the protagonist didn't see what happened. With that, I was stuck with dialog to explain what happened versus showing. (Dialog showed, too, but it's not the same.) Any ideas on how to cut down the hedges for such problems - whether short story or novel?
I would suggest the two have a conversation about what happened after the fact-- maybe the protagonist comes along afterward and finds his friend in bad shape? Though, I have to admit, if the protagonist is such a wimp he won't stand up for his buddy, he needs to have some compelling transformations as the story goes on to hold the reader's attention-- especially if you intend this for a novel length work instead.
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Short Stories: December 13, 2011 Issue [#4770]
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