#write every day

One of the most common questions that comes up around diversity is the issue of “Who can write what”—whether an author of one race can create a character of another, whether that character is then authentic, who gets to decide all this. When I’ve considered these situations as an editor, my judgment almost always starts with how much that writer is willing and able to radically decenter himself and his own privileges and biases in favor of those of his fictional character and culture, rendered in all its lights and shades … which also presupposes the writer has done enough research or gained enough experience with that culture to render the lights and shades authentically.

As an example, let’s suppose I just finished reading a manuscript written by a white woman but told from a Mexican-American teenage boy’s perspective, and overall, I liked the manuscript: I found the characters involving and multi-dimensional, the plot was fresh and smart and kept me turning the pages, the themes were woven deeply into the story and thought-provoking — and all of that would incline me toward acquiring it. But as a person who thinks a lot about diversity issues, I would at that point pause a moment and ask myself: Did the voice sound believable to me as that of a Mexican-American teenager, given the character and the world the author created around him? (Here I have to acknowledge that I myself am a white woman, and keep an eye on my own privileges, biases, and knowledge/lack thereof.)

How is Mexican-American culture as a whole portrayed within the book, and how are other cultures portrayed in contrast? Is any set of people all cartoonishly bad or uniformly good? (Sentimentality about a culture, and particularly about America’s or white people’s ability to help a “lesser” culture, can be just as offensive as ignorance of it.) Who drives the action and makes real change in the story? Is everyone portrayed with some complexity? (I should further specify that this concerns me most when a writer is writing about a protagonist or setting the book as a whole in a culture different from his/her own; multicultural secondary characters need to be believable and authentic too, but if we’re not so much seeing the whole world around them, the standards are a bit different.)

Supposing the book passed those tests, I’d then ask if I could have a phone conversation with the author. This is a standard part of my acquisitions process before I sign up a book, but it’s especially important when I’m talking with someone who’s writing cross-culturally. In that case, I say outright: “This is a tricky and sensitive subject. What led you to write this story, or to write the story from this perspective? What do you know about this culture? What’s the basis of your authority? What sort of research or interviews or experience have you accumulated? Has anyone from within the culture read it, and what sort of feedback did you receive?”

In the author’s responses, I’d listen for:

• Humility in the face of the above issues
  
• Thoughtfulness about them
  
• An openness to critique
  
• Not just by me, but by any vetters we might employ
• A willingness to work
  
• To go as far as she can in learning more about the culture and to revise to correct any missteps
• An openness to dialogue
  
• Being able to talk about these questions with me and with others as they come up

If these things are present, then I might go on and share the book with my colleagues here at Scholastic, and we’d figure out the next steps from there.

-Cheryl Klein

“The summer sun was not meant for girls like me. Girls like me belonged to the rain.” 

-promptuarium

Go through your current WIP. What’s the word you use the most often? Disregard words like “the” and “and”- what is it? Once you figure it out, try and write something without using that word at all. If the word you use most often is “said” then try using other dialogue tags or none at all (not saying that this is a great idea in real writing, but it’s a good exercise nonetheless). The purpose of this challenge is to really make you think about each word that you add to your narrative.

“This isn’t justice- it’s a massacre.” 

-promptuarium

Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone

A friend, Colin Mulhern, who writes gritty contemporary YA fiction, posted in a Facebook group of writers: “I’ve got one idea that’s been bouncing around for a while, but it’s just a bit… predictable. I read a novel right out of my comfort zone while I was away, and loved it.” What did we all think about writing outside one’s comfort zone? A Good thing, or a Bad one?

Some would say Good as a point of principle. Those who have to pay the rent with their writing would say Bad, since the risk is you’ll produce something you can’t sell. Since it’s riskier, a publisher would also say Bad: both might follow with But Maybe Good, when they’ve remembered that, actually, the most successful books do tend to be the ones which no one was sure would work (so too are the most unsuccessful ones, of course). Can you afford to take that risk with your writing time, if not your income? Can you afford not to, if your creative self is going to stay alive? What’s a writer to do?

It can be astonishingly fruitful to force yourself outside your defaults: it leads to you writing things you’d never have written and it asks you to practice skills you’ve never worked with before. But what if your first tries are wonky ducks? Rent has to be paid, and writing time is in short supply for most of us. You need to think about where the Un-Comfort Zone is which you’re thinking of travelling to.

A subject/setting/topic which you’re not comfortable with: “uncomfortable” in that it’s unfamiliar and you can’t draw on detailed knowledge and experience. It’s not “writing what you know” in the fundamental sense, and that means a leap of imagination.

Or are the actual places and events potentially distressing? There are obvious ones that most of us have to take a deep breath for - war, abused children, cruelty. (And I don’t know about you, but some writers do seem to reach too easily for these, as lazy way of making a story matter) But we all, also, have our own particular triggers, both emotional and material. I do think that it’s very hard to write a story which will really affect readers if you don’t work with material which is potent for you, but that doesn’t mean that you’re morally obliged to work with your phobias. Something which is so much your nightmare that you’ll keep pulling back and not letting your imagination go all the way: unconsciously you’ll keep slipping into Fortunately-Unfortunately-But-Solved, because you need to dilute it. That’s not going to work as well as something which you do feel brave enough to imagine fully.

A genre which you don’t read. This can be very exciting, if you’re tackling it because it excites you, not from sheer cynicism because it will sell. Some of the best crime-writers of recent years - Kate Atkinson, Susan Hill - have come from non-crime, for example. And I recently wrote my first-ever horror story, for Dreams of Shadow and Smoke, a collection to celebrate the bicentenary of J S LeFanu which is published in August. I don’t often read that kind of thing, and I had to read LeFanu with a very sharp eye to find a way my voice and with my writerly sensibility could be used to work with that kind of story.

A form or structure which you haven’t worked with. Form so often follows function, and your new idea turns out to be taking a shape which you haven’t made before. That’s great, and of course it would be a mistake to force it back into something more familiar. But what if you can’t handle it? Looking for others who’ve done it before should help you to think, but don’t force yours into their structure: find the solution that’s right for your story.

A technical thing you haven’t done before. Again, each project makes new technical demands, and if you’re away from your usual ground, that’s going to be even more often the case. Some are relatively small, and just take a bit of practice, like running in the engine of a car. But what if you want to use an external narrator, with a moving point of view, when you’ve always written in a character’s voice? All sorts of changes will flow from that big decision.

A process you haven’t used before. If you’re doing a writing course maybe you can’t write the whole shitty first draft, because it’s daft not to do some basic editing before you submit your work? Are you a polish-as-you-go writer, but you’ve only got till the baby’s born to get this first draft finished, come what may? Writing out-of-order because you can’t do the main chunk of research till next year? All of these changes may have surprising effects on how the draft comes out.

The obvious answer is not to land yourself in doing too many things you haven’t done before, all at once. If you’re working with too many new things it’s horribly easy to lose your bearings and then your judgement about what’s working and what isn’t. But one new anti-default may lead to the other: decisions about topic lead to decisions about structure, tackling horrors needing a different kind of narrator. I don’t have a simple answer. But here are a some thoughts:

• Embrace the opportunity to learn to write what you don’t know as if you do know it. As long as you’re willing to put in the work on the imagining, the research, and the writing, so that you can make us believe you know it, this is one of the best and most fundamental ways of becoming a better writer.
  
• Remember that stepping outside your comfort zone isn’t a moral obligation, nor meritorious in itself. It’s only worth doing if the story or your writerly growth, or your sales, will be the better for it.
  
• If you think you need a new technique, step away from the draft and set yourself a little challenge of a separate short story, purely to practice it. Make your wonky ducks there, then come back to the book.
  
• If you think you need a new form, read in and around successful books which do the kind of thing you’re contemplating. Think about if and how they work. Then put them away, forget them, and work out your own way.
  
• If you want to try a new genre, get to grips with the opportunities, boundaries and conventions of the genre by reading strategically, exploring the range of possibilities. What is it that makes travel writing work or not, or a detective story satisfy, or a literary novel transcend expectations?
  
• If you’re using a new process, stay alert to the ways in which it affects what you do. Can you exploit the good effects, and minimise the bad?
  
• Finally, forgive yourself if the story comes out differently from how you suspect it would have on your old ground. If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. And you never know: the very fact that you’re coming to this new, from outside, might mean it comes out better.
  

-Emma Darwin

“Remove your hand or I will rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.” 

-NCIS

What gender is your main character in your WIP? What is the gender of the main character in most of your works? Try broadening your horizons.

This could mean that if you’re used to writing men, then you should write women, and vice versa, but I want you to go broader than that. Gender means a lot of different things to different people. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, well, you have your research cut out for you. 

Write about someone who is a different gender, different sexual orientation, etc. than your norm. Only you can know what your norm is, so only you can know what would be a challenge for you. But I do encourage you to challenge yourself. You might just learn a little something along the way.

It’s the 5th of the month, which means Dictionary Day!

Flip to a random page in a dictionary and pick a word you don’t know, OR go to dictionary.com and use the word of the day. Include it in your writing. Make it as fun and ridiculous as possible!!

Four Ways to Write Outside Your Perspective

Too often, as a writer, it’s easy to throw in the towel and say: “I can’t write about that, it’s not my experience.”

Neither is slaying dragons, living in Victorian England, or surviving a pandemic. It would appear that experience is not necessary for an engaging narrative. In fact, we seem to want to read about people unlike us as often as people like us.

Writers are amongst the most creative professionals around, but for many writing a different sexual orientation, race, or gender seems daunting. Pulitzer prize winning author Junot Diaz once said that: “If you’re a boy writer, it’s a simple rule: You’ve gotta get used to the fact that you suck at writing women.”

I disagree with Diaz, but I concede the point that it’s difficult to write from a perspective you haven’t considered, yet men wrote many of my favorite female characters, and women have written some of my favorite male characters. Writing outside of your experience is a challenge, but one with rewards.

Unless you want a book filled with clones of yourself (you don’t) you’re going to need to write a cast.  A cast of characters with differences creates a dynamic and exciting read with dialogue that pops and wants and needs that are often at odds. A clone army often sounds like the flock of seagulls from Finding Nemo.  Seriously, that should not be what your cast looks like.  No one wants to read this book.

So, what are some steps you can take to writing outside of your own perspective?

1. Start with a Beating Heart
You need to have a link to the inside of all of your characters. This is a place of commonality that allows you to understand what they’re thinking or feeling. It can be as simple as loving the same types of movies, or understanding what first love is like.  Take honest emotions and use them to write your character.

Real people make the worst characters, but every character should have a touch of real in them. People that have changed your world are a great place to start.

A lot of discussion has been given recently to The Fault In Our Stars, so I won’t belabor this point, but the character of Hazel was inspired by a real girl.  Esther Grace Earl was an early Nerdfighter who befriended author John Green. Like Hazel, Ester suffered from thyroid cancer. Green said that he was inspired by “Esther’s unusual mix of teenagerness and empathy: She was a very outwardly focused person, very conscious of and attentive to her friends and family. But she was also silly and funny and totally normal.”

Writing a book about a girl who has cancer but who isn’t defined by it, who is still a whole person, is the element that has been dubbed the most subversive to the legacy of cancer fiction that precedes it. Though John Green created a story that was wholly his own, he used real details from his friendship with Esther and also from his time working as a student chaplain at a children’s hospital.

2. Bring Your Sparkle
One of my instructors at the New School gave our class some amazing advice that has changed my writing immeasurably. At surface level, it seems obvious. She told us to bring our ‘sparkle’ or the things that made us different and that made our narrative journey unique.
As writers, our urge is to connect and unite. Writers are great at building commonality. But as a result, we often shy away from exposing the things about us that we think people won’t find appealing. Our uncertainty, our struggles, or our upbringing are some of the things that made us, but they’re also the things that we’re the most eager to hide.

And we shouldn’t.

When Allie Brosh, author of the webcomic series Hyperbole and a Half, did a series of comics on depression, her readership exploded. As a reader of Hyperbole and a Half, it was astounding.  Brosh’s comics were always amazing, but the episodes about her struggle with depression quickly became among her most popular. The Bloggess likewise has generously shared her experiences with anxiety, and has found an eager audience.

Think about it this way, are you more likely to make friends with: the person who says they like pizza or the person who loves the same strange cult classic movie as you?

People bond over unique experiences and shared weirdness, so let your sparkle show.

3. Get Out of Your Mind
“The most toxic formulas in our cultures are not passed down in political practice, they’re passed down in the most mundane narratives. It’s our fiction where the toxic virus of sexism, racism, homophobia passes from one generation to the next.” – Junot Diaz

Too often writers build characters based on stereotypes and characters that they’ve found in popular media. This is like building your house on a foundation of sand. Not only is it unbearably difficult, but one wrong move and the entire thing is going to crumble. Instead, do two of the things that authors are amazing at. Research and lose your mind.

Research what the life of your character would be like. Read books, read blogs, read novels outside of your usual repertoire. Then get out of your mind and into the mind of this character. Explore them the way you would any new character, figuring out their deepest wants, fears, and formative experiences. Once they feel real to you, start writing.

4. Avoid Tokenism
This might seem like the exact opposite of the rest of this advice, but don’t include diverse characters just because you don’t want to be accused of having a white heteronormative cast; do it because that’s the way our world actually is.

Look around next time you’re in the grocery store or taking public transit, (that fount of writer inspiration) and tell me that the world you see looks anything like the world portrayed in books or in movies.

So, don’t be afraid to write outside of your experience, but like all things in writing, do it well.  These four tips should help you write realistic characters that fill out your cast of characters.

-Meghan Drummond

What writing genre are you most comfortable with? Historic fiction? Sci-Fi? Fantasy? Drama? Crime? These are all really broad (and not even close to a complete list), but I want you to think really hard about your writing and figure out what you’re most comfortable with.

Got it? Good. Now pick a different one. A very, very different one. Are you comfortable writing sci-fi? Try out some historical fiction. Used to fantasy? Try out a crime story.

You get the idea. I want you to try and stray as far as possible away from your comfort zone. Try out a few different genres all over the spectrum. People could argue that you could have a sci-fi historical novel, or a crime story based in a fantasy world, but that’s not what I want. Maybe this exercise will give you an idea for a story like that, which is awesome. But for now, I want you to completely step away from your comfort genre.

Sound good? Go and give it a try.

Hey ya’ll,

Sorry I’ve been absent for so long, I had a lot on my plate and I’m only just now getting caught up with life. Despite not being on for a while, I have been thinking about this page a lot, and I think I’m going to implement a small change for this month. I’m going to alternate days between writing tips and writing challenges. I think a big part of writing outside your norm is being challenged to do so, and I think this is the best way (at least for me) to follow through on broadening my horizons. Look out for some good stuff as I catch this page up to where it should be!

Happy writing!