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Week One: writing a clear narrative

This week’s prompts are at the very end of this post. Please welcome our first guest editor Saalon Muyo who tweets as @saalon and blogs at Saalon Muyo. If you have any questions or need any clarification on today’s topic or prompts, please feel free to begin a discussion in comments.

If you’re here just to hang out, click here for the yeah write #64 hangout grid.

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Cut it all out

I’m wordy. So wordy that keeping to 500-ish words on these summer series posts was a bigger battle than figuring out what to write. So wordy that I can’t seem to write anything less than 1,000 words on any topic. Speaking of which, I’ve recommended the International Bureau of Weights and Measures define the Standard Eric to be equal to 1,000 words. I’d appreciate your support. I digress. (See what I mean? I burnt almost 100 words on that joke.)

What I’m saying here is that I sympathize. Brevity is hard. The Yeah Write challenge grid’s 500 word limit gives me panic attacks every time, and having to write three posts of that length for the summer series drove me to drink this lovely, tasty rosé sparkling wine sitting beside me. It’s so much easier to just let the words flow, to fill space talking about all the details and tangents and little funny asides that come to mind.

Writing a lot teaches you a hard lesson: You need way less Stuff than you think you do. Strewn throughout  your first draft are sentences and paragraphs of you figuring things out as you write. You started with a good – but not great – idea of what you wanted to say, so it’s only natural that you ended up with stretches where you’re explaining things to yourself, or rattling off things you thought were needed for context, or just filling space because you really wanted to keep writing but didn’t know what to say. Don’t be ashamed. Everyone does it. It’s what first drafts are for.

You found an idea. You discovered yourself in it and told a story that’s you, so completely you that people just have to connect to your honesty. You want to be done, but you’re not. It’s time to do what you least want to do: cut most of what you wrote out. Maybe not most. A lot. Worse, you’ve got to cut a lot of really good stuff. Jokes you slaved over. Side stories that brought a smile to your face or a tear to your eye. Stephen King says, “Kill your darlings,” and this is what he means. After you’ve gone through the total hell of writing your awesome, wonderful, meaningful story, you’ve got to take the hatchet to it and amputate like a Civil War era surgeon.

(They used hatchets because they didn’t have scalpels yet, right?)

The final(ish) step in telling a really fantastic story is cutting as much of it out as possible. That’s why I suggested finding the Reason you’re writing and finding out how that Reason is all about You: it won’t just help you write a great personal narrative. It’ll make it Oh So Obvious what needs to go. Anything that doesn’t lead readers to and through that Reason? Gone! Something that’s funny but doesn’t connect You to the Story? Removed! Even the good stuff. Especially the good stuff. If you’re willing to cut something you like for the good of the story, you won’t miss the stuff that you don’t like.

You’ll like what you end up with more after the cuts. I promise. Your readers will, too. Promise that as well. In fact, once you get really, truly brutal with your writing, you’ll start to know when a tangent is just right, and when what you really need to do…

…is stop.

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On top of taking up your time this week with all this unasked for advice, I had the honor of picking this week’s jury prize. That’s the prize that goes out to the post your honorable and discerning jury chooses as their favorite post of the week. My first choice had already been chosen by one of the other guest editors, so I had to get creative. By “get creative” I mean I chose a book I haven’t actually read.

Here’s the thing: Ursula K. LeGuin is one of my absolute favorite authors. Her novel The Dispossessed is one of the best Science Fiction novels ever written, and everything else of hers that I’ve read is basically just as good. When I went searching for a prize, I learned that LeGuin had written a book on writing. Steering the Craft. LeGuin? Writing about writing? My brain exploded. I bought a copy for myself immediately, and it’s sitting on my desk as I write. Any book I’d buy on the spot like that is a book I’m proud to give out as a prize. LeGuin is that good. To whomever receives it: I hope it helps.

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less really is more, you know

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• Read the summer FAQ page for other details
• Let the prompt lead you, but do not include the prompt in any way in your post, not even at the end as a footnote
• If the prompt takes you from thunderstorms to watching TV at your grandma’s house to how much you love Pat Sajak to the oldest person you’ve ever kissed, we want that story the furthest away in your imagination from the original prompt. Let your imagination loose
• Keep your writing style! Do you tell stories with humor? Prose? Verse? Photos? Illustrations? Keep doing that. We’ll read Shakespearean drama on our own time
• Cut away at everything unnecessary to your story
• Remember: publish no more than 500 words
• The grid closes today at noon EDT [-4GMT]
• Don’t forget to badge your post
• Have fun!

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[divider_header_h3] This week’s prompts [/divider_header_h3]

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• Write about your greatest fear
• Describe a time in your life when everything turned out fine despite the odds
• If you could start your life over from birth, what is the one thing you would change about yourself?

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Yeah write #64 summer grid closes at noon EDT [-4 GMT] today. Jury prize announced in Friday’s post.