I was invited by Elizabeth White to be a guest on her writer's blog and here's the post. Hope you enjoy the read!
What We Say Ain’t
Always What We Mean… By Les Edgerton
It’s an honor to welcome Les Edgerton back to the site. There
are a lot of people out there writing noir, but Les is the real deal. His life
experiences give his writing a verisimilitude you can’t learn from a book or
earn via an MFA (though he has one of those). Over the years, Les has shared
with readers anecdotes from his fascinating life. Now, in large part as a
journey of introspection and the desire to figure out how he arrived at this
point in his life, Les has finally put pen to paper and memorialized his
amazing life story, Adrenaline Junkie (Down & Out Books), for
posterity. Despite having lived a life packed with more action than most
ever dream of, Les is here today to explain that, at least in the world of
writing, “action” doesn’t necessarily mean what you might think it does.
A MAJOR
FLAW IN TEACHING CREATIVE WRITING (FICTION) EFFECTIVELY LIES IN OUR
TERMINOLOGY: What we say ain’t always what we mean…
I read a lot of blogs from other writers, agents, editors and
other professionals in the writing game, and I read a lot of letters from
writers responding to those posts. Alas, again and again, I see some general
misconceptions about writing techniques and story structure that I’d like to
address.
I see the same misconceptions from my students in my online
classes and from clients I work with.
The misconceptions seem to arrive from misunderstanding the
definitions of the terms we employ in describing fiction writing and fiction
techniques.
I’ve come to believe that much of the misunderstandings writers
have stem from the fact that many of our terms are lay terms, and while the
definitions assigned certain terms have their root in “lay” or “dictionary”
definitions, there are significant differences when applied to writing, and it
is these differences that cause a certain amount of confusion.
That sounds like a lot of goobly-gook, doesn’t it? Sorry! I’ll
try to explain better.
A good example of what I’m talking about that I’ve seen a lot
written about lately refers to the term “action” in fiction. A nonwriter
usually thinks of action in reference to drama—books, movies,
plays, and television—as some kind of physical activity. Many times, the word
evokes images of melodrama—bombings, kidnappings, shootings, stabbings,
beatings, rapes… violent physical action, in other words. Lots of noise,
screams, smoke, and fury. Writers need to think differently and understand that
action in fiction means something much more than in real life.
I just read a letter on another blog from a beginning writer who
complained that she began her novel with action—in her case, an armed robbery
involving her protagonist—and then couldn’t figure out why this didn’t hook the
agent she’d sent it to. She said he turned her manuscript down because while
the robbery hooked him in the very beginning, it turned out to be mostly
unrelated to the story that followed. This poor writer had done what a lot of
writers seem to do. She thought that when teachers, agents and editors said
they wanted to be “hooked” immediately on the first page, they were looking for
something along the lines of that lay definition of action. A gun going off or
whatever.
Not.
The term “action” when applied to fiction means something vastly
broader and more encompassing of other activities than the stuff listed above.
While it can include those kinds of activities, literary
action also encompasses many other things. Dialog is action, for instance. A
character driving down the road and seeing a dead plover is also action. A
character reading a newspaper on the subway is action. Anything a character
is doing is action.
This one misunderstood term is to blame for many of the mistakes
made in creating a manuscript, especially when trying to follow the advice of
the pros.
For the rest of this article, go to here
Blue skies,
Les
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