Leo D.M.J. Aurini - Advice for a Prospective Novelist

00:00:00.000 In

00:00:29.980 This episode of Arini's Insight is brought to you by Brandon, who asks,

00:00:33.920 what would your advice be for an aspiring novelist?

00:00:37.100 And he actually goes on to break it down into more specific questions, which is excellent.

00:00:41.800 It makes sure I cover everything for him.

00:00:44.100 But we can just get to those as we go through the video.

00:00:48.920 Now, the very first topic, to be a good writer, you need to write about what you know.

00:00:57.140 So, if you're writing about stuff you don't know anything about, you're going to be basing

00:01:04.100 it upon movies and television.

00:01:07.240 And quite frankly, movies and television are very unrealistic.

00:01:11.800 The reality is with film is that even though we experience it as reality, to the point that

00:01:17.440 TV Tropes even has a page about how reality is unrealistic because guns don't sound like

00:01:23.360 they do on TV, cars don't squeal their tires constantly.

00:01:27.140 On TV, we expect things to be a certain way.

00:01:32.500 And the way that things are filmed has more to do with the realities of being on a set

00:01:38.680 and having cameras around and having to do stunts that look really good but aren't too

00:01:43.700 dangerous.

00:01:44.700 It has more to do with all of that than it has to do with realism.

00:01:48.420 A perfect example is fights on television.

00:01:51.860 Fights on television are utterly unrealistic.

00:01:55.780 You know, for one thing, there's the knockout blow.

00:01:58.660 In reality, if somebody gets permanently knocked out from a fist fight, they need to go to a

00:02:03.760 hospital.

00:02:04.320 They are in dire, dire need of medical attention.

00:02:07.600 And another one is simply how flashy and Jackie Chan the fights look.

00:02:15.700 A real world fight, and if you watch UFC, especially the old stuff, you'll notice this, in the real

00:02:21.340 world, fights don't look that interesting.

00:02:25.080 They don't look that exciting.

00:02:26.300 But if you're a writer, and you've done some sparring, you've done some wrestling in high

00:02:33.460 school, you can actually write the scene.

00:02:36.460 You can write the scene of the characters getting into this non-flashy, non-Jackie Chan fight,

00:02:44.460 and you can make it interesting because you know the experiences.

00:02:47.960 You know what it's like to be straining, to be feeling the pain of it all, that blinding

00:02:53.880 flash any time you get hit in the nose, for example.

00:02:58.720 Getting hit in the nose looks funny on TV.

00:03:02.160 If you're writing a book, however, and you write about that blinding flash, the white and

00:03:08.480 black sparks that you see when you get hit in the nose, that's not funny all of a sudden.

00:03:13.440 That's pretty serious.

00:03:15.320 It's exciting.

00:03:17.960 If you haven't experienced something, you just can't write about it all that well.

00:03:23.420 So, focus on what you know, which leads to the next point.

00:03:29.560 If you want to be a good writer, live an interesting life.

00:03:34.760 Now listen, all of those formulaic cop shows and all that other pablum that comes out of

00:03:41.360 Hollywood, this is...

00:03:43.800 Hollywood writers are the sort of writers that don't leave very interesting lives.

00:03:48.180 They don't know how any of this stuff works.

00:03:50.320 You know, they haven't done anything exciting.

00:03:52.800 So they just write the same tired, derivative stuff as the rest of Hollywood.

00:04:00.800 You don't want to be that.

00:04:01.840 You want to actually write passionately and descriptively.

00:04:06.460 You want to bring people into a world they haven't seen before.

00:04:09.980 So go do interesting stuff.

00:04:12.660 You know, learn to fight.

00:04:15.060 Learn to shoot a gun.

00:04:16.280 Go get a job in the oil patch.

00:04:17.900 Go rent a cabin on a transport ship and go visit Europe.

00:04:23.820 You know, learn to ride a horse.

00:04:26.040 Whatever it is.

00:04:27.360 Whatever it is you're interested in, go do that stuff.

00:04:30.400 If you want to be a good writer, you need to lead an interesting life.

00:04:34.900 So go out there and do all that.

00:04:37.380 And the third point with this...

00:04:42.200 Even...

00:04:43.400 Like, there's going to be scenes in your books where it's going to be something...

00:04:48.600 Inevitably, you're going to run into something you don't actually know anything about.

00:04:53.380 And just trying to get a real-world experience of that is unfeasible.

00:04:57.400 For example, imagine you have a scene in your book where there's some terrorists in a nuclear power plant.

00:05:06.220 And the good guys are chasing them.

00:05:07.780 Whatever.

00:05:09.100 How many of us have ever been in a nuclear power plant?

00:05:12.840 You know, like, maybe you could feasibly go and, you know, talk to somebody in a nuclear power plant.

00:05:18.020 Go on a tour of one.

00:05:19.980 Or you could go on Wikipedia.

00:05:21.700 Or you could go on the internet.

00:05:22.740 Start looking up pictures.

00:05:23.700 What do these actually look like?

00:05:25.240 You know, what do all the systems do?

00:05:28.680 You know, if there's a gunfight and that gets punctured, what would actually happen?

00:05:33.800 Go and do the research.

00:05:36.140 You know, you cannot write a novel without doing a lot of research into just all the little bits in the background.

00:05:44.760 The little stylistic elements. 1.00

00:05:48.360 Because if you have a reader that does know about that and you screw it up, it's going to make you look like an idiot. 0.98

00:05:53.700 Now, almost inevitably there is going to be somewhere that that happens, but you want to minimize that. 0.99

00:06:01.740 So, write about what you know.

00:06:06.280 Live an interesting life so you know a lot of stuff worth writing about.

00:06:09.960 And research the stuff that you're not familiar with.

00:06:13.960 Next question was about writing good dialogue.

00:06:21.400 I'm going to break this one down into three points, too.

00:06:24.060 The technical, the characters, and the dialogue itself.

00:06:28.180 So, the technical aspect.

00:06:30.400 When you're writing dialogue, the last thing you want to do is end every statement with,

00:06:36.480 Bill said, and then Joe said, and then Bill said all over again.

00:06:41.640 That's just absolutely terrible and clunky.

00:06:45.360 You don't want to be doing that.

00:06:47.720 So, one of the techniques I use, instead of saying, he said, or he shouted, or he screamed, or he whispered.

00:06:55.460 Because there's only so many variations of the word said.

00:07:00.460 Is, I'll have a character make a statement and follow it up with, Bill smoked his cigarette.

00:07:07.640 Or, Joe leaned back in his seat.

00:07:10.900 I'll do that to offer environmental description.

00:07:15.600 So, now it's doing two jobs.

00:07:16.940 It's identifying who said the sentence, who's speaking, so that the reader doesn't lose track.

00:07:24.840 And, second of all, it's giving you a mind's eye picture of what's going on.

00:07:30.940 Without you having to write a bunch of clunky expository dialogue explaining what they're doing.

00:07:37.540 If you put these subtle little cues throughout the dialogue,

00:07:41.360 you can absolutely skip having to have a paragraph of environmental description.

00:07:46.940 So, that's a technical thing.

00:07:49.220 And, also, with the technical thing, when you're reading,

00:07:53.960 and, of course, maybe this should have been the first point of advice.

00:07:57.060 If you want to be a writer, read.

00:07:59.940 Read a lot.

00:08:01.840 You need to understand how books work.

00:08:05.640 Don't worry about, you know, that it's going to ruin your idea.

00:08:08.920 You're actually going to steal an idea.

00:08:10.880 Don't. Just read.

00:08:12.180 Read as much as you possibly can.

00:08:13.620 But, while you're reading, look for clunky dialogue.

00:08:18.900 Look for sentences in your favorite author's book that kind of jump out at you.

00:08:23.820 That don't seem to fit properly.

00:08:28.880 And, think about how you would rewrite those to be a little bit smoother.

00:08:32.540 Because, I guarantee you, every book you are going to find bits that you could improve on.

00:08:37.440 So, pay attention for that.

00:08:39.680 So, that's the technical aspect.

00:08:42.220 The next aspect is that you need to have good characters.

00:08:46.560 Some of the bad writing I've seen has, it has dialogue that is purely in service to the plot.

00:08:53.640 But, it's almost utopian dialogue, where there's, in real life, when two people have a conversation,

00:09:01.000 they're both coming into it with different goals.

00:09:04.380 Even if you're just talking to your roommate in the morning, you both have different goals for the conversation.

00:09:10.220 Different things you want to bring up.

00:09:12.780 Now, as the author, you have a purpose for this dialogue.

00:09:16.040 You want it to lead to them becoming an adventuring party to go slay the dragon.

00:09:20.140 But, that's not how the characters are thinking.

00:09:23.400 The characters each have their own goals and motivations going into it.

00:09:27.200 And, the utopian dialogue that just perfectly serves the plot is the most boring, terrible, driest thing that you will ever read.

00:09:37.140 Because, dialogue, ultimately, stories are not about the plot.

00:09:41.660 Okay, plots are a dime a dozen.

00:09:43.280 Anybody can come up with a plot.

00:09:44.800 Plots are not hard to find.

00:09:46.360 What's hard to find is a writer that can write real characters.

00:09:52.460 That can really make them pop out of the words and sentences and become real.

00:09:58.320 And, that's why we read stories.

00:09:59.920 Is the characters not the plot?

00:10:03.720 Even science fiction.

00:10:05.460 You know, it's like, science fiction, we explicitly read for the ideas.

00:10:08.580 Even there, the good science fiction has characters that are larger than life.

00:10:12.000 That, that we can feel them breathing through the pages.

00:10:15.960 So, you need to understand people.

00:10:18.520 You need to understand basic psychology.

00:10:21.900 You need to understand, you know, like, look into Freud.

00:10:23.980 Look into the medieval humors. 0.80

00:10:26.880 Get a grasp of why people do what they do.

00:10:30.600 You know, what are the hidden motivations people have?

00:10:33.780 What, what are the, their secrets, their biases?

00:10:37.120 They're, are they grumpy right now, because it's early in the morning?

00:10:40.920 Are they extroverted?

00:10:42.840 Are they introverted?

00:10:44.820 You know, think about people in your own life, and how they would respond in these situations.

00:10:50.740 Don't ever have a character do something they wouldn't, just to serve the plot.

00:10:55.660 Have them be real characters.

00:10:57.840 And if that changes the plot, then so be it.

00:11:00.320 And the third point on this, once you have real characters, and once you're, you're writing

00:11:09.000 good, good dialogue, um, good, uh, technical dialogue, is realize that your characters are

00:11:18.780 going to be different in every situation, in every conversation.

00:11:23.720 And this is actually a good advice from Orson Scott Card, which is just brilliant.

00:11:30.080 Um, you are not the same person when you hang out with your parents, versus when you hang

00:11:35.400 out with your friends.

00:11:36.940 You are a slightly different person in both scenarios.

00:11:39.840 A, a dialogue is created by the two people, a meshing of both their personalities.

00:11:47.640 So, when you write this dialogue, make sure that it's unique to who they're speaking to.

00:11:53.720 And if you really nail this, uh, a reader, familiar with your characters, would be able

00:11:58.940 to figure out who was speaking, even without having to see the names.

00:12:04.680 So, yeah, so for characters, for writing dialogue, one, vary, vary the words that you use.

00:12:14.960 You know, make it interesting.

00:12:16.920 You know, try and avoid being clunky.

00:12:18.840 You want it to be smooth.

00:12:20.580 Uh, number two, you need to really know your characters.

00:12:23.240 You need to know facts about them that aren't even going to come up in the story.

00:12:27.480 Um, flesh them out.

00:12:29.100 Make them real people with their own goals, their own desires, fears, etc.

00:12:35.420 And three, make sure that they change somewhat depending on who they're talking to, the same

00:12:42.460 way people in the real world do.

00:12:44.440 All right, now the next question that he was asking is, how do you motivate yourself to finish

00:12:52.840 a book?

00:12:54.320 And, you know what, I'm going to address myself right now because I need to finish the sequel

00:12:58.080 to Broken Roads.

00:12:59.780 It's been lingering for way too long.

00:13:02.260 But I finally got myself into a stable situation again.

00:13:06.400 And honestly, what this boils down to, it's Stephen King's advice.

00:13:10.220 If you want to be a writer, you need to write.

00:13:13.780 So what you need to do is figure out where you like writing, where it is that you get

00:13:20.960 the best energy flowing, what allows you to produce truly good content, and dedicate yourself

00:13:28.680 to doing that.

00:13:30.300 You know, like for me, it's very late at night is when I'm at my most creative.

00:13:34.920 And so set up a schedule, dedicate yourself that at this portion of the day, I am writing.

00:13:43.280 And so sit yourself down in front of your computer, and if nothing comes to you, nothing

00:13:48.020 comes to you.

00:13:48.660 But you're still sitting there doing nothing.

00:13:52.860 Because if you sit there for long enough, you will eventually start writing.

00:13:57.100 And it doesn't matter. 0.95

00:13:57.820 If it's garbage, you can throw it out tomorrow. 0.96

00:14:00.620 But write. 0.96

00:14:02.480 You need to dedicate yourself for this.

00:14:05.360 Set up a calendar.

00:14:07.200 Set up a schedule.

00:14:08.680 Dedicate yourself that I am sitting here for an hour or two hours in front of the computer,

00:14:14.040 and I am writing whether I like it or not.

00:14:16.980 This is a job.

00:14:18.520 Because remember, if you don't finish your books, your characters, they just disappear

00:14:24.920 into the ether.

00:14:26.260 They deserve to live.

00:14:28.960 And the final question was, how do you improve as a writer?

00:14:34.680 How do you get better at it?

00:14:36.560 And it all boils down to finding somebody who's willing to critique you.

00:14:42.320 There's lots of different writing communities on the internet.

00:14:46.380 You know, lots of fanfic sites.

00:14:48.340 And if you go into them and say, like, listen, people, I want you to criticize my writing,

00:14:54.180 they will do it.

00:14:56.080 And you will want to cry.

00:14:57.600 When you finish a story, it is your baby.

00:15:03.560 It is precious.

00:15:04.540 And accepting critique as a writer, as any sort of artist, really, accepting critique is

00:15:09.600 one of the hardest things you have to do.

00:15:11.560 Because it all, like, it's such a personal thing when you put yourself out there and write

00:15:16.040 a story, that any sort of criticism just feels like a personal attack.

00:15:21.120 It hurts.

00:15:22.200 It hurts a lot.

00:15:23.420 But that is what makes you better.

00:15:26.740 You need to get a variety of opinions.

00:15:29.720 You know, sometimes you have to ignore certain opinions, but hear them out.

00:15:36.800 Figure out where they're coming from and why they're criticizing your work.

00:15:40.280 That's what it boils down to.

00:15:42.320 Being dedicated to actually writing and accepting criticism when it comes.

00:15:48.600 So, quick recap.

00:15:52.160 Write about what you know.

00:15:54.520 Live an interesting life so you know a lot of stuff worth writing about.

00:15:58.180 And research facts for anything you don't know about to make your story as realistic as possible.

00:16:07.140 Number two.

00:16:09.840 Don't write clunky exposition.

00:16:12.880 Don't write clunky he said, she said.

00:16:15.100 Make it interesting.

00:16:16.120 Make it flow.

00:16:16.780 Make it poetic.

00:16:17.440 Make sure you know your characters.

00:16:21.300 And make sure that their conversations are unique to them.

00:16:24.820 You're not just writing exposition.

00:16:26.620 These are not perfect people that say, hey, you want to go out tonight?

00:16:29.420 Yes, let's go out tonight.

00:16:30.560 Then we will slay it right now. 0.92

00:16:32.240 They are people. 0.97

00:16:33.560 They don't know where the conversation is going.

00:16:35.600 You do.

00:16:36.760 They don't.

00:16:37.980 Make it organic.

00:16:39.740 Make them real characters.

00:16:42.360 And finally, write.

00:16:44.600 If you want to be a writer, you need to write.

00:16:47.520 Sit down.

00:16:48.580 Force yourself to do it.

00:16:49.720 Reward yourself if you need to.

00:16:52.780 Pour yourself a glass of whiskey.

00:16:54.080 That always helps with writing.

00:16:55.780 And get it done.

00:16:57.940 And then seek out and accept criticism.

00:17:01.300 All right.

00:17:03.820 Well, we've got three more Arini's Insight videos on the docket.

00:17:08.140 And these ones are all very heavy philosophy.

00:17:12.900 But I think you guys are going to like them.

00:17:14.380 They're all pretty, very related to one another too, which is cool.

00:17:18.700 So those will be coming out over the weekend.

00:17:21.880 Stay tuned for them.

00:17:22.880 And Arini out. 0.59

00:17:25.880 Arini out.

Leo D.M.J. Aurini - March 13, 2015

Advice for a Prospective Novelist

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