Be Your Own Editor

As the number of fabricated or semi-fabricated memoir scandals has continued to build post–James Frey, I have seen more and more articles, blog posts, comments, etc., work themselves into a frenzy making claims about the complete lack of fact-checking in the book business. Let the ignorance end here.

First, it might help to make some sort of distinction between fact-checking and story-checking. The reason, I think, that aforementioned ignorant essays have proliferated is, in part, is that the people writing them are used to the culture of magazines and newspapers, in which (especially in newspapers) no such distinction is made. In a news article, if you’ve got your facts straight, you’ve pretty much got your story straight.

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You may have heard of an endeavor called National Novel Writing Month, affectionately referred to by its creators and participants as NaNoWriMo (unless they want to avoid sounding really goofy, in which case they refer to it as National Novel Writing Month).

The project is gaining popularity and notoriety every year, and since my friend W. is participating this year (the month in question, by the way, is November), I thought I’d take a closer look and think about how such exercises can help the struggling novelist.

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I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus while working on some non-blog writing of my own—or trying to, anyway. Most of you know how tough it is to find the time to make progress on a manuscript while juggling a job, friends and family, and a fabulous jet-setting lifestyle. Okay, scratch that last one (for me, anyway).

No matter what your lifestyle and responsibilities, it’s hard to be energized and productive when you’re not lucky enough to be a full-time writer. The most common piece of advice I hear from successful authors is “Write every day” or “Keep your butt in the chair” or something along those lines—but that’s easy for successful authors to say. Here are a few ideas that might help make it easier for you:

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Contributed by Daniel Arenson
Every scene doesn’t need a monster, but even the more “literary” writers among you would do well to think about whether your scenes serve a narrative purpose.

How do we define a scene? The simplest, easiest definition would be “a chunk of writing that appears as a subunit within a story or chapter.” Such subunits are often separated by blank lines or five asterisks.

But is any such chunk of writing truly a “scene”? I often see writers (myself included, when I’m not careful) create “scenes” that are, in a sense, not scenes at all. Just because a bit of your story appears as an individual unit doesn’t necessarily make it a true “scene”—or at least not a very engaging scene.

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Contributed by Randall Ingermanson, who has an interesting take on the process . . .

What’s the dirtiest word in a writer’s lexicon? Think about that for a minute before you read on. What’s the worst thing you can call a fellow writer?

Here’s what many writers would say: “Unpublished.”

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Contributed by Jurgen Wolff

It’s a truism that dialogue is not the same as actual speech; we are too inarticulate for our speech to serve as an exact model for what fictional characters say. Nonetheless, it’s by listening to real people that we can develop an ear for dialogue.

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