One of my all time favorite Clint Eastwood lines is "A man's got to know his limitations." I think that applies to writers, too. The longer you write the more you see where your weaknesses lie. For some it's dialogue, others might have trouble with setting, for me, it's description. Knowing your limitations doesn't mean that you're limited though.
Once you've spotted your weakness, you can study to improve that flaw in your writing. What do you study? Not just textbooks, but writer's who excel at your limitation. For me, I've been reading science fiction and fantasy. Why? Because these stories require world building and it doesn't get any more descriptive than that. These writers need to build a world that doesn't exist yet, the reader must feel that it does. Pretty tricky business.
The next step is putting your butt in the chair and and writing. Only through the actual writing can you improve your craft. It's in the words that you can spot those places that need work. I've spent hours writing descriptive passages which made me realize that I really love purple prose, another flaw. So I keep practicing, seeking that place between nothing and over-kill. A writer has the option of stretching his limitations, of getting beyond that cramped box he's dropped himself into. I'll probably always have trouble with description, but at least I know what to look for, what will need work when I start editing and that's where the real writing takes place, doesn't it?
So, what are your writing limitations and how do you step beyond your limitations?
8 comments:
Mine is endings. I am seldom happy with them. Not so much that I want a trick or a spin, but that I don't see to the natural and right outcome sometime. If I held on to a story for a long time, it would probably have a better ending as I would come to know the characters better-but at my age...
I've been forcing myself to be more patient this year instead of just tossing everything out the door as soon as I've finished a draft or two. I've found that more I mull a story over the easier it gets to see the right ending, instead of forcing the ending I saw when I started writing. Not sure if that makes sense or not.
I would say that mine is getting from the beginning to the ending in a way that actually makes sense. I have quite a few stories (leftover or otherwise) that suffer from a lack of coherancy. Had that problem in school when I would write essays and would forget a key paragraph or two along the way.
Very frustrating.
I used to do that with non-fiction pieces I wrote. I had to train myself to stick to the subject instead of going off on side rants. It became a matter of going through the piece to see what didn't fit and deleting it.
Good practise for writing short stories that stick together is flash. Try writing a 100 word story and you learn to stay on topic really fast.
Yeah, endings are really hard. I suck at them.
I think that for me (and, honestly, for a lot of writers) plotting and pacing are extremely difficult. That particularly shows up with endings.
Also, ideas. If I write a story and the core isn't good enough--if it's just not as engaging as I thought it was or if just plain doesn't work--I'll walk away from it.
I do that a lot, Chris. But don't throw those starts away because down the line somewhere, you'll come up with an idea to finish that story. Even after you set a story aside your mind will go back to it and keep turning it over until something clicks. Sometimes years later!
Good point, Sandra. That piece I submitted last week (Kleptomaniac) was the first story I ever wrote. It was 5,000 words and much of it didn't work, but one day I just had the idea to pull out the first scene and make it into a flash piece. It's kind of cool when that happens.
Extremely cool, Chris! Wait until the first time you pull three or four flash stories together for that one perfect story that was hiding between the files. There's a real high for a writer when a story finally breaks free from the mass of words you've put on the page.
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