"How to Write" For Dummies

Get your shit together

Let's make an hypothesis. You 've learned grammar, spelling and such things. You 've learned the rules. You can tell a poem from a non fiction story. You 've read at least some of the classics and you are past your adolescence years when you used to write poems that hopefully make someone shead a couple of tears and now put you to shame. Writing is like a child it has its own diseases like the flue, the chicken pots etc You can't escape them. You are going to write every cliche possible and hopefully one day you will recover from it. 

What's a cliche? A stereotype so old fashinoned that could mask it as vintage and ask for sympathy. You get to live to surpass your cliches. Your first love won't be a prince, won't drive a motorcycle probably, it won't be like the movies yet you will go on after a heartbreak. More or less what happens with your writing process. You will fall in love with each one of your story, you will believe this is the one till you fall in love with the next one. 

Every great writer that I got to meet in person despite every cliche that we adore to repeat wasn't some type of a mythic creature. They looked funny in their pjs, often they were big assholes just because they could complete a chaptert, they had their flaws, they were humans even if they were writing about dragons and magic worlds. Above everything they were the biggests sluts anyone can think of. Some of them were cheaters because if you know how to do it, it's writing a spell and they know how to put a spell to anyone they wish. Nevertheless each one of them was a compulsive cheates of every relationship of his/hers with his own stories.  The most erotic characters were created from their authos' lust. That's what readers sense between the lines and it has nothing to do with the kind of description or the storyline. 

So how do you get to write such characters. If you are writing about a murdered should you kill someone? Of course not but you have to do your reasearch. You can search for a murderer's interviews. You may think that you get it but in your own mind and experience since you have never killed someone, you don't have a clue what make someone's mind snap and decide to take a life. It's a bit like an actor doing research for his role. Yet you have to do your research for every character. So if you are goodlooking you can always become an actor. Less work, bigger profit. 

Once upon a time people used to write huge descriptions. Their payment was depended on the word count so more words, more money. Now people know how the world looks like, more of them have traveled to the places so describe so do not describe real places that you have never visited. If a description isn't valid neither your story is. Let's get to magic worlds. Tell me what's different from ours don't bore me to death with hidious details. If you tell me that your female protagonist fell in love with a man would you ever tell me that the man had 2 eyes, 2 ears, a nose and a mouth? Tell me if he had one eye, a scar whatever makes him different than every other man I see daily what intrigued the protagonist. I don't give a shit if it's a good think or bad. That's for you to decide, but make him fucking interesting or I would take on social media and most likely I won't come back for your story. 

Bad boy meets good girl. He beats the main antagonist, gets over his major strugle decides to become a good boy, they get married and they live happily ever after. My eyeballs bleed each time I come across this type of story. It's ok if you are 15 years old but if you are an adult, stop writing, get a life and then come back. Evolution happened since then. Dare to challenge this cliche? Do you have to write LGBT stories to be trendy? Of course not just keep in mind that nowadays we can talk about more genders than we used to identify, more sexual orientations, more relogions or lack of, whatever you may think of. Stories challenge the "happy ending" or "ending" itself.  Poems used to rhyme, have a strict form like haiku, today poems can be performed and their inner rythm is intercepted only by the poet's pauses. 

You don't have to be a trailblazer. Even if you try hard to become one believe me, someone at some place of the world has already done it and probably more succesfully than you. You can do your research and discover the form that you enjoy. People used to write manifests upon their art. We have surpassed that as well. Art doesn't need us. Art will go on without us. It's us who need art. 

The mot difficult part for everyone is to get rif of everything unnecessary. We tend to use a bunch of descriptions, sub plots whatever to cover up the core truth that we want to tell. It's like taking out to dinner for an excellent dessert but I feed you with so many plates before that when I present you my superb dessert I have to shovel it down to your throat so that you can eat it. 

At the theatre we had an exercise called improvisation. Someone got on stage and had come up with a story within seconds and engage the audience to keep up with it. Each one failer at first regardless of their talent. They started mumbling stupidies and cliches because they felt exposed and they tried to hide behind all that. The inner need to be liked prevented them from creating an interesting story. They prefered to be indiferent than rejected. Then one from the audience who knew that exercise well started describing them with every flaw. It was absolute terror when they realised that despite the nonsense they couldn't hide when they decided to go under the lights of the stage. It's not some  kind of magic. If someone can see can easily tell who has known love and who hasn't, who has been heartbroked, who has body issues, who has addiction issues whatever you can think of. The first time if a real shock for everyone to realize that he/she 's actually naked. Then there were 2 choices. Either you got down from stage and chose something else to do or you became fearless. You owned your story. It didn't own you anymore. And stories started to emerge. It wasn't confessions, this wasn't a church, nothing was concidered as a sin to be purified or a psychotherapy to talk about your mama issues. It was art, transforming the most powerfull experiences into physical force capable of getting you out of your own body and captivate the viewer. All the best improvisions left the actors and the viewers emotional wrecks yet once they took a deep breath, they always asked the same question "when can we repeat it? I want to taste that freedom again!"

Of course you don't have to listen to everything from the above. Thousands of people all over the world have made a living writing cliches, stories to read to fall asleep, to travel whatever.

So we get back to previous chapter.

Who you are?

What's you story?

Who told you that you can read a book from a previous chapter to another?