mbgwriting

[mbgwriting]

Sorry but the notion that being against using a plagiarism machine is classist and ableist…is absurd.

This blog is always going to be anti-Generative AI.

Popping in from the void to spread the news that the nonprofit National Novel Writing in a Month has declared that not supporting genAI has "classist and ableist undertones".

Also popping in to say that the main technology NaNo uses to track wordcount is wildly available for free, meaning either on your own or with friends you can practice the useful part of the experience on your own at virtually any time. Without people aggressively hounding you for donations or pushing the support of exploitative software and writing scams. Or like exploiting kids? They've done so much bullshit at this point I've lost track.

What the fuck is going on? At this point I think NaNo is actively trying to push it's primary audience away until it's just Derrick, the tech guy who is thrilled to generate 30 novels in 30 days. He's not donating shit to this Good Person Nonprofit, but he's super happy to self-publish all of his new manuscripts with stolen art work, reveling in the fact that he is not only a Real Writer, but now also a disabled rights activist somehow. Cool!

That is all.

No it isn't. Here, for those who might want their next read to come from a new or painfully familiar place.

Now that is all.

[mbgwriting]

What if I waste a story idea I really love on my first book—which everyone knows is destined to be garbage?

First of all, I’m not going to give you the platitudes. I know that you know in a practical sense that you’re never going to get better at writing unless, you know…you actually do it.

But let me tell you about my writing journey.

Book 1. Let me tell you, I loved it. I thought it was the best thing ever written. It…was not. Um, at all.

I spent over a year trying to revise it and make it work. (Hint: I couldn’t.) I gave up on it. And that’s when inspiration hit me.

I wrote Book 3. It was the same characters as Book 1, and some of the same basic ideas, but drastically changed. Not at all the re-write I was attempting.

It’s immensely better than Book 1. It’s actually the story these characters deserve. And it’s not the story I ever thought I would tell.

My point being…yes. Your first book will probably be bad. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be a waste. It might turn out to be better than you ever thought possible. Write it. Write it.

[mbgwriting]

Describing Setting with Intent

Recently, I saw a post expressing the sentiment somewhere along the lines of I’m a good writer until I have to describe a room and then forget about it. And my first thought was…so don’t describe the room. Just don’t.

I know what you’re thinking. But my reader won’t know what’s in my mind if I don’t describe it! It’s lush and atmospheric! (Or possibly, It’s my story and I want to!)

Listen. Writer to writer. I know. But if your reader is too bored with your description of the setting to get through the page, they’re not going to see your vision at all because they’re not going to finish your story. 

That doesn’t mean that you can’t give them an idea of what they’re looking at, and that doesn’t mean you can’t ever describe the setting! Let’s talk about it. 

-If you’re bored, your reader is bored. First and foremost. This is just something to remember all the time when writing. If you don’t want to write it, if it’s not working, if you think it’s not interesting–that is your writer’s instinct telling you something! Find a way around it instead of slogging through because you think you have to. 

-Sprinkle in your scene imagery. Think of yourself as the salt bae of descriptive information. Instead of info-dumping, only give tidbits of information as they become relevant to your POV character. Your character notices the breeze as it blows their hair into their face. They notice the uneven ground as they stumble on it. And look, on your first draft, maybe you do info-dump! It’s okay! You have the words on the page, that’s what the first draft is for. When I catch myself doing this, it’s as simple as asking where you can flesh out (and spread out) those details in a more interesting way. 

-Remember what your POV character would actually notice. This example isn’t a room description, but the concept applies. I read The Silent Patient this year. The first chapter begins as a journal entry, and it includes a detailed description of the journal…which we are meant to believe the POV character is currently writing in. When was the last time you wrote in your diary and said “yeah this is my pink Hello Kitty notebook and she’s eating an apple on the cover”? Never. You’ve never done that. You know what the notebook you’re writing in looks like. And guess what? As a reader, that information was not essential to me. I know what a journal looks like. So your main character shouldn’t be describing a familiar setting to your reader like they’ve never seen it before. That isn’t to say you can’t get away with a throwaway detail here and there. It means that it should be just that—a throwaway, so small that it’s barely noticeable, but adds to the visual experience. 

-Go beyond the visual. This goes hand-in-hand with imagery. What does your setting sound like? Smell like? What is the lighting like? Is it warm or cold? Does it feel damp? This is especially useful because even in a familiar place, you might overlook visuals but still pick up on other sensory input–like when you walk into your house and notice if it smells like dinner is cooking or if someone forgot to take the garbage out. 

-Use character action to give texture to the room. What the heck does that mean? It’s a really obnoxious way to say the same thing you’ve heard a thousand times. Show, don’t tell. This can be as simple as mentioning that a chair feels rickety as your character sits down, or giving your characters something to do as they have their conversation. Even if they are simply chatting over the dinner table, you can describe the clink of the cutlery during an awkward silence, the way a character watches the condensation trickle down their glass in order to avoid eye contact, the way another character is distracted by the background noise.

-When you do describe a room, do it with intent. There are times when you can actually describe the room. But people don’t need to know the wall color or that the curtains are made from your MC’s grandmother’s favorite dress unless that’s important to the story. The details you give need to hold weight. For example: in my most recent novel, I spent 2-3 sentences describing the meticulous neatness of my character’s bedroom, but only so that his father could come in a page later and find something to criticize about it. At another point I described a room in a different character's house. This time I used a lot of detail, turning the description into a deluge of information—because I was describing a room in a hoarder’s house. I wanted the reader to feel just as overwhelmed by the room as my character did. 

-The setting description should always do double duty. You’ll notice that all of the examples I gave came down to one simple point: if you’re describing something, there needs to be a reason. It needs to tie into characterization, or theme, or plot, or tone. It needs to add value to the overall story. Otherwise, endless setting descriptions are just…a little bit boring.

[mbgwriting]

There’s pantsing and there’s plotting and then there is the secret third option which is obsessively plotting out your entire story using the 7-point structure, getting 40K words in and going no that’s not working at all, time to change everything.

(I am the secret third option btw)

[mbgwriting]

I’m back after a summer-long hiatus! I’ve spent the past couple of months writing little snippets of my comfort characters, querying, and plotting out something new.

It’s so hard to for me to keep my writer-brain going in summer (kids arguing, more to do at home). I either fall into that obsessive groove where it’s all I think about or I have trouble getting much done at all.

[mbgwriting]

[mbgwriting]

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

- Anne Lamott

[mbgwriting]

Me, when someone interrupts my writing:

[mbgwriting]

Hi! Okay, I’m finally dedicating a page just to writing, so here’s my official intro:

• You can call me Morgan. I don’t really care about pronouns either way. (For me—I care about yours.)

• I’m currently in the process of querying a LGBTQ YA romance. It has some mystery elements and darker themes going on, and is set in a very (very) small town.

• I don’t know if I would call them my favorite themes, but the things I find myself writing about most often are dysfunctional families, main characters who are a little bit unlikeable, and environments that make the reader guess as to what’s real and what’s not.

• I’d rather read a book that is a little bit unsettling, or has beautiful prose, or an ending that really punches you in the gut than a book that just tells a story from A to B.

• Probably the weirdest thing about me is that I love all things spooky and creepy and dark, but I also have a strong affinity for Hello Kitty (it’s the ‘00’s emo kid in me).

• I kind of hate doing stuff like this (autism strikes again!) but I’m trying to make myself do it anyways. I’m mostly pretty chill, I’m just awkward, so if you are too…cool, let’s be awkward writers together 🙂