Formulas

[Garren Jacobsen]

Formulas aren't bad. In fact I would argue that they are more like a food recipe. They give you the ingredients, the proportions, and a step by step on how to mix these ingredients and in what order. That's all well and good and can be very helpful. Following the recipe point for point can make a satisfying yet ultimately forgettable meal. But recipes can also be changed and manipulated and the meal can be made memorable with combinations of other flavors outside the recipe that complement and enhance that basic formula.

I heard an analogy used by Brandon Sanderson that compared writers to chefs and cooks. The cooks are the people that follow formulas without understanding the components of the formula and the chefs understand the basic components of the various formulas and can combine them in such ways so that their work can be more memorable. The goal of the writer is to be the chef. To recognize the formulas, manipulate and add to them, and ultimately make the work be more than the formula. By so doing the base recipe becomes changed, we put out stamp on the writing world, and more importantly it is a familiar yet enjoyable experience for our readers.



Thoughts?

 

[Heliotrope]

I'm just thanking you because I agree but have nothing else to add...

 

[CupofJoe]

If you want a satisfying and adequate meal then a recipe might be okay to improvise from. Really great chefs look at the ingredients in a whole new way to create something to be remembered.
Formulas, Recipes, Plans and the like will always produce the average result and then get lucky with a fluke or two [and the same number of duds - but they tend to be forgotten].
For me, like all writing advice, they can be a guide but shouldn't be more

 

[MineOwnKing]

I haven't commented in a while. I'm pretty burned out from writing my zombie novella.

I've read some other posts similar to this. Everybody is looking for the secret ingredient.

I find that my life experiences give me the edge I need to authenticate author voice. This is the component of my writing that ties everything together. A writer can learn all the skills they need to create a perfect manuscript but that will only get you part way to that happy place we all desire.

The happy place is elusive and cannot be reached through praise or success. The recognition must come from within.

If a writer that is good and smart tries to write well without having experienced life, that lack of experience will shine through.

The good news is that, if you stick with it, your writing will get better as you age.

Have faith in yourself and take what you hear, from those with success, with a grain of salt.

 

[Penpilot]

I think the analogy holds.

For example, there's the generic recipe for sponge cake. Following it will get you a perfectly edible sponge cake. Being able to take that generic recipe and spice it up in interesting and creative ways and yet have it still be a sponge cake is the skill.

 

[Velka]

I also think it's important to find the formula that works best for your style, thought process, and imagination.

As an example:
The other day I was working on addition strategies with my students. I gave them the problem 61 + 28 and asked them to solve it, then explain how they solved it. One simple addition problem was solved by a multitude of strategies:

- Add 60 and 20, then add 1 and 8
- Round 28 to 30, add 61 and 30, subtract 2
- Start at 61 and count up 28 times
- Add 61 and 8, then add 20
There were a few others that barely made sense to me, but once explained I could see how they worked, and at the same time got an eyebrow raising view into the complexities of a 7 year old's mind.

All these formulas brought the children to the same answer, but for each of them their way made the most sense for how they interpret numbers.

I would argue the same for writers. It's good to understand the different nuts and bolts of different formulas, as they increase your understanding of the craft as a whole, but it is equally important to find one that works best for how your thought process operates. It is then you can take it to the next step and discover ways to manipulate, tweak, and subvert it. I would argue that until a chef has a good handle on the basic formula of a recipe, they will not be successful in adding their own personal flair to it.

I love to bake bread, but it wasn't until I totally understood the ins and outs of how to bake simple white or whole grain bread (and the science behind gluten, moisture, leavening, different flour types, etc) that I could successfully up my bread game and add things like cheddar and jalapeno.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yes, I agree with Velka.

I'm also slightly more coherent this morning… it was wine wednesday last night…

So my WIP is a lesson for me in formula's and structure. I had written a few long stories just 'winging it' and that was not working out for me. For the past six months I've been studying story structure and decided to write this novel as a practice in structure. I'm following a 3AS formula with bits of Blake Snyder's Beat sheet thrown in. I spoke personally with K.M. Weiland (yep, I emailed her about her planning process) and she informed me that she takes at least 3 months to plan her novels before writing them, so I did the same. Again, the entire point was to step out of what I was doing before, because it wasn't working for me, and try something new. A new strategy.

I developed a story board for my novel, and wrote detailed chapter outlines for about half of it, following the beat sheet points for each chapter. I purposely chose a Middle Grades story idea so that I could keep the entire novel around 70,000 wds and around 20 chapters so that I could focus on really practicing structure and story telling instead of world building etc.

I started writing about three weeks ago and I have noticed a few things:

- Using formulas/structure is highly organic. What I had outlined did not work when it was actually written out. My first outlined chapter ended up having to be broken into two chapters. A lot of the exposition I feel is necessary, so that means that I had to work out a better hook than I had initially planned and weave it through the chapters in order to keep the reader reading through the exposition.

- Using formula's keeps me focussed. I don't like staring at a blank page. For me not knowing where I'm going can be very debilitating. Having a structure to follow is helpful for me because it keeps me focussed on a goal.

- Don't be married to the plan. As I'm writing with my plan I keep it in the back of my mind but I can't stay married to it. As I write I realize that there needs to be more tension, or something I didn't plan for might be better for the story, so it has to change as I move along. However, the basic structure remains.

 

[Heliotrope]

This might be controversial, but I found this to be true for me:

"Of course, "building" a faulty novel won't endanger anyone's life (we hope), but in can sure be a lesson in frustration and aggravation, and a very big waste of time. That's not to say practicing writing is a waste of time; it's not.

But, well, it can be if there is no ends to the means.

If you write randomly and learn nothing, does it really benefit you? Sure, exercises in participating in NaNoWriMo teach you admirable things like discipline, perseverance, and stick-to-itiveness (yep, that really is a word!). But those qualities alone with not improve your writing skills or turn you into a novelist.

To use a different analogy, I could spend three hours pouring random ingredients into a big bowl and stirring, stirring, stirring. That doesn't guarantee that when I pour it into a pan and bake it, a delicious and beautiful cake with emerge from my oven.

Most novels I critique are a lot like that bowl of random elements. I don't mean to be harsh or insensitive, I know what' it's like to write for months, thinking I was churning out a masterpiece - only to learn years later how utterly off track I was. Meaning, how uninformed I was about novel structure. Oh how I wish someone had taught me what I needed to know thirty year ago….

It's really hard to take a finished product like that yucky baked cake and turn it into something palatable, let alone delicious. If only writers took the time to find a solid, time tested recipe and followed that. A recipe is like… a blueprint."

- The 12 Key Pillars of Novel Construction by C.S Lakin

It sounds so harsh, and for many people it is totally untrue, but for me it was true. I could write and write and write, but I've learned that for me putting together pretty sentences is very different then crafting a compelling story.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I've always found structure to be relatively intuitive, even something such as the hero's journey... to this extent. Any time I've come at structure with a fleshed out story idea, it tends to "fit". Now, when I've got an idea that doesn't seem to have the juice to be complete? That's when I break out structure/formula thinking most.

I tend to use it as a double check for novels and even screenplays. Screenplays are far more hard structure in general, such a tight form. But only with my first screenplay idea did I ever start out thinking structure/formula.

It's a tool.

As for the original analogy, eh. If you must speak in analogy, it's okay. it's writerly kinda thinkin', we like analogies, but not particularly accurate if you overthink things... like I do, LOL. A bad habit really.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

So my tired brain (what a friggin day) likes the novel as a multi-course meal (a three act dinner perhaps, heh heh).

Dang, I should get some sleep.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I just wrote this email to a friend who has been on this journey with me for a year. He's seen my recent struggles, but never knew me before I began my "editing phase":

I've spent the last 3-4 years learning how to self-edit, and I think I've gone too far. I was so concerned with technical "rightness" that I eliminated all the quirky things and "weakness" that makes a writer something other than a cardboard cutout of every other vanilla-sounding, drab writer out there. That thread about voice has really opened my eyes to exactly why I wasn't feeling successful with all my hard work. I now realize I've taken it too far. While it's great to tone down all those little weaknesses and promote technical correctness in writing, it makes for a slog through a word sea if you don't have a voice that snags a reader's attention. I admitted my best work is mildly edited, and that the reason I liked those mildly edited things so much is because they all feel uniquely ME. And my novels are dry and lifeless, and I now finally see that all that cutting I did to try to please every reader wasn't effective because I sometimes have a polarizing voice. When I wrote Clichea, I didn't care whether anyone else liked it, because I did. And when i wrote the other shorts for challenges, The Villainous Princess, The Diablarist, and many more, I had a vision for a character, I used their voice as the target, and I let the bullseye be merely my own drive to fulfill my vision of the character. But with novels, I get so bogged down in plot, I tone down my voice so it doesn't detract from the plot, the characters' voices, hell, maybe even from the story itself. And that was a HUGE mistake. One I've been making for YEARS, because it's the first thing I did back in 2010, when I first decided I wanted to query SS, and I "edited" it initially by cutting all the sex and violence. :s Yeah. Dumb, I know. Like that was the book's problem...


I'm back to being me again, and saying **** IT!! in the deepest chamber of my heart. I might not have an amazing story-telling voice, but the thing I've realized (right about the time you loved Vincenzo's fight scene) was that my very best scenes I've ever written were the ones in which I broke the rules but kept myself honest to what I wanted, what I envisioned, and what felt right to me. Without hearing anyone else's opinions on craft or technique, or even what ought to be, or what my story ought to sound like.


I know some plot things are still problematic in some of these stories, but I need to stop tampering with every little sentence, and simply address the issues and WRITE it the way I see it. And then if it gets horrible reviews, at least i'm being judged on ME. Be yourself! At least then, if people hate you work, you can say, "Well, I'm sure sorry you didn't love it, but I do, and I'm okay with it not meaning as much to everyone else as it does to me."


Yeah, I just needed to stop reining myself in so tight. Like my dog. When he was a puppy, (well, I got him at about a year old and 57 pounds, so he was never really a puppy to me), I'd lead him on the leash down to the end of the block (and he'd nearly pull my arm out of socket and break my knees and ankles, pulling so hard), where we would go off the leash and into the swamp behind the elementary school.

I'd walk about three miles, down through the field and swamp, and up to the railroad tracks, and he'd run about ten miles, doing circles around me. I wouldn't see him for 5-10 minutes at a time, and when it had been "too long" I'd give a sharp whistle, and his head would pop up in some brush or cattails, and I'd say, "Okay, go on," and he's disappear again, bounding through mud and weeds, and be lost until next time I bid him check in. My belabored point is that he never learned to walk on a leash. Till the day that great furry ass died, he NEVER stopped pulling my arm out of socket, so I never used the leash. I mean, he was "good enough" to take places off the leash, so I never worried about him. I just hated trying to train him to be reined in, so I quit time and again, and just felt like he was better off free and easy. I think I'm in that same boat now.

I need to find a way to strip away and shed all the short leashes, bridles, bits, and collars I've adorned myself with as a "learning" writer. I need to break away from the idea of "containing" myself to prevent mistakes, and acknowledge that I've learned enough to be set free. Or at least "freer" because I KNOW what to do, but I was painting myself into corners by trying too hard to achieve that "perfection" I thought I might find.


So what if I make mistakes? So what if my voice rubs some people the wrong way (as I fully expected Clichea would)? I expected to hear mostly negative feedback. I mean, how many people could really enjoy or even LIKE a story about a haughty sea dragon who simply wants to eat people? But I don't think anyone had anything negative to say about it. Some folks were indifferent, but some had really positive comments for me. I was flattered and very surprised. And THAT'S why I need to shed my tack. I'm not a pit pony, tamed beyond having any use other than slavery. I'm a Fjord pony meant to run wild. Part of the world, not part of someone else's plan. I can't be like everyone wants me to be, and who ever thought to ask the Icelandic ponies why they are what they are, why they don't work in a mill or haul goods? Because it's silly and stupid! They're beautiful and free, and that's how writers ought to be. As long as they know a little about how to actually tell a compelling story, that is. I just need to get off my OWN back a little, and stop worrying about negative feedback I've gotten (not disregard it, just learn from it and not worry about it all the time) and follow my own heart and vision, applying all the skills I've learned and polishing the rust off all those tools the writer of that article said a writer ought to utilize from their tool box.


I spent years putting tools in the box. FPOV, 3rd Limited POV, prologues, chapter breaks, balancing the microscope and telescope to create a level of understanding of what's important and what's not, how to "see" an object that has symbolic meaning to the story, how to create an intimate understanding of a character in a few seemingly unrelated setting details (learned from short stories with strict word counts), creating unique character perspectives, character background details inserted strategically, foreshadowing, revealing secrets (which I used to love to rapid-fire at readers), describing things in my own voice but with character lens actively bridging the gap, using words I loved to convey exactly what I meant, spinning little details into important moments that speak loudly about the character and her inner being, connecting theme to action so characters continuously discovered things in line with my overall message, and so on. So many things. I've stopped using some of the important tools because I was overly concerned about boring a reader with my "me-ness". I'm realizing the only thing an agent (and probably a reader) wants, is to know the writer. To read THEIR story, not the bland, vanilla telling of some clever series of events. They want to feel the writer's hand all over each page, to know the writer as a friend. To hear the nuances of an individual writer's voice, not be wowed by technical correctness. After all, are our dear friends and loved ones perfection on a stick? NO! And neither are we. We (as readers) are looking for an emotional connection to a character. We want to feel our hearts pound when we're in danger, and to feel the thrill of a clever escape from near-death. And for so long, I was too concerned with simply "showing" the near-death and then writing it technically as good as possible. And I think in having that singular goal, I stripped all the real tension and rawness from my work, because my aim was less about reader experience, and more defining perfection and trying to make it my one aim.


Yeah. I'm not sure whether any of this is right, but I can tell you without a doubt, it sure FEELS right. Today, I had an excellent writing day, in my voice, rewriting a little, but mostly just slowing everything down and being "me" in the parts I felt I needed to poke my head in the door and say, "I'm still here." Like Ri-ri when I whistled. My voice isn't Hemingway's, or Tolkein's, or GRRM's, but it's mine, and the only way I'll ever be able to finish anything is if I go back to using my own voice, because though I don't think it's flawless, it's comfortable for me, and I can at least own it. I was having a very hard time owning the way I felt I "was supposed" to write.

maybe one day, I'll really feel like a chef! As long as I stop trying to follow recipes to the letter. I mean, I don't do it in my kitchen, why am I doing it in my books?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Something I think generates a good bit of "serious writer" syndrome is a lack of contractions. I tend to write without them on first passes, and have been working on getting those in where they are natural. I also think people stick in a few unnecessary words that people think sound "more correct" or official or emphasizing... such as "that" I just stuck in front of people.

 

[HellionHeloise]

I really like this cooking/chef analogy Brian Scott Allen. I think it makes sense & has helped me avoid a bit of a personal crisis. Heliotrope you really fleshed out the analogy for me, so thank you.

I just began the prewriting phase of my first fantasy book (first book in general) three weeks ago. I started writing because I noticed a few things that bother me (1) there are many fantasy books that have poorly developed female characters or books with multiple female characters that all seem to have the same tone and voice (2) some of the fantasy I was reading had obvious plot holes and used magic as a crutch (3) there is a formula to most fantasy books & that is both the beauty and the downfall of the genre. When I considered those things, I decided that I wanted to write a story that follows a formula but does not fall prey to those common flaws. I realize I very well might fall into those common problems, but I am going to attempt to create a fantasy book with a traditional story arch that doesn't come off as a total cliche.

So, this chef analogy really spoke to me because for a while I was wondering if I was some soulless automaton who was just obsessed with the tropes & traditions of the fantasy formula, but you really can get creative once you master the structure and I think I needed to hear that from someone else.

As my old art professor used to say, "You have to get tight before you can get loose." I think that is true for most art. Technique and composition are key, but once you have those down you get to experiment!

 

[AndrewLowe]

As a cook (day job) and a writer (other day job) and an aspiring novelist (what I do when I don't want to murder kittens at the end of my workday), I completely agree with this analogy...