How To Write, With Victor Hugo

[melannen]

Occasionally in lesmiseres chat I encourage people to turn their fanfic into epic historical digressions or side stories about minor characters and say I'm learning how to write good by studying the Brick.

I think they think I'm kidding. But actually I greatly admire the Victorian writing style where nobody ever shoved "show don't tell" in authors' faces, and not everything was about focusing claustrophobically down on "the meat of the story". And they can't have had it all wrong - they were the ones who turned the novel into the linchpin of popular culture, after all.

So here, for your delectation, are the first two weeks' worth of writing exercises in a program I've been working up for myself. ^_^ I'm seriously thinking of setting up some kind of community for working through these... (If anyone wants the blank Scrivener file with this set up in it, I can upload that too...)

ETA: I should note for people coming in without context that these are just chapter-by-chapter summaries of the novel Les Miserables - I didn't put a lot of effort into carefully crafting them!

1     1.1.1

Tell a character's entire life story (1500 words or less)

2     1.1.2

Show a character's personality by describing their household and household budgets (2000 words or less)

3     1.1.3

Describe a character doing their job well (800 words or less)

4     1.1.4

Demonstrate what a character does by telling us things they have said (2500 words or less)

5     1.1.5

Give a typical day in the life of a character, hour by hour (1000 words or less)

6     1.1.6

Describe a character by writing about their house and its contents, room by room (2500 words or less.)

7     1.1.7

Give an anecdote about a time a character did something that everybody advised them against that turned out well anyway. (1500 words or less.)

8     1.1.8

Two acquaintances with fundamental disagreements discuss them (1500 words or less.)

9     1.1.9

Someone who loves a character describes them to someone else (1500 words or less.)

10     1.1.10

A character has a deathbed conversation with a stranger (5000 words or less.)

11     1.1.11

Describe how a character's political views have affected their daily life (2000 words or less.)

12     1.1.12

Describe a character's career ambitions (or lack thereof.) (1500 words or less.)

13     1.1.13

Tell what a character believes in as articles of faith (religious or otherwise.) (1500 words or less.)

14     1.1.14

Tell how a character thinks, how much they value learning and philosophy. (1000 words or less.)

Comments

[verity]

Ooooooooh (I would happily take that scrivener file!)

[lettered]

ahhhhhh. I have so many thoughts about this. Mainly related to serial fiction and how fanfic is also serial fiction and so you do see all of this stuff so much more in fanfic than in profic and media. I mean, you can't make a movie about superheroes brushing their teeth and walking their dogs, but you can write fanfic about it. However, you could write a book that's both about superheroes kicking ass and brushing their teeth, but an editor will tell you to take out the teeth-brushing because that's no the way we "do" books these days.

I have noticed this especially with one of my favorite fanfic authors that went pro--I loved her fanfic because she had the characters sit around having long long conversations, and that wasn't in her novels. And she has said that she wrote the long long conversations, and editors made her ax them. But maybe part of the reason we got long long conversations and teeth brushing in Vic lit is because of serial format?

And another thing, I find the "show vs tell" thing interesting, because 19th c authors managed to show a whole lot by telling. The problem with telling and not showing is if you tell the reader who the character is and then proceed to show them the exact same things. But in Vic lit, I always felt like I was told a whole bunch and that what I was shown was additional information that supplemented rather than repeated.

I also think it's interesting because when you show everything and don't tell anything you actually get pieces that feel more Victorian, because you're getting all the teeth brushing and the dog washing. My problem is showing far too much and being afraid to just say the things it would be very simple to say because I want the reader to figure them out. I wish people would stop harping on the show vs tell for this reason--it's a balance, not either/or.

Last, it frustrates me so much when people talk about "rules of writing" and they're not talking about SPAG. Things like "adverbs are a no-no"--people act like you just shouldn't use them; they're always bad, and I just--dude, you're saying over an entire century of lit is just awful. That's stupid. It even irks me when people encourage breakage of these "rules" by saying, "Know the rules before you break them." It should be, know the current convention and popular style, so you can decide when to use it and understand that you'll throw readers out when you don't.

OMG anyway so many feelings.

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

There is no one true way. Thank you for posting exercises to this effect.

[perfectworry]

So here, for your delectation, are the first two weeks' worth of writing exercises in a program I've been working up for myself. ^_^ I'm seriously thinking of setting up some kind of community for working through these...
I'd definitely be interested in a community like that. These look great.

(ysabetwordsmith posted a link to this, if you're wondering who I am (Frances J., pleased to meet you) and where I came from.)

[bessemerprocess]

This looks both fun and intriguing, especially as I now have time to write again.

[ellen_fremedon]

I love how these are all things Hugo does just with the Bishop alone, before Valjean is even introduced.

[redsixwing]

Hi, I linked in from ysabetwordsmith's blog.
These exercises are excellent and I'd like to use them for a daily-writing meme. Is that all right with you?

[firebirdschild]

Here by way of Ysabetwordsmith....

This is a really good set of open ended questions to work from. Thanks for posting it where the rest of us can see. I think I'll snag a copy to go try working with.

And hey, I was just thinking recently about seeing if I could get a bunch of writers together to form a small group who could encourage each other and toss exercises back and forth etc. I do want to find a group of people though who are willing to be open-minded because myself and other people I know like writing fanfiction and want to be able to share that as part of a writing group as well as original fiction. And it turns out that finding a writing group for that is pretty hard. Let me know if you happen to find anything of that ilk please? For that matter, let me know if you might be interested in joining a group of that sort if I decided to start one myself because I can't find one!

[carmarthen]

Haha, no, I assumed you were dead serious. Good stuff to think about, and I like the idea of turning Les Miz into a writing exercise.

I do kind of feel like a lot of things that work in a brick or in fanfiction that has the weight of canon behind it might not in standalone original fiction, though, which is one of the hurdles of the fan-pro transition (they might work in original novels, if editors would permit).

[lannamichaels]

Ooh, this is really tempting. If I'd had this, I might actually finish NaNoWriMo again *and* come out of it with something presentable.

[sixbeforelunch]

(Here via random clicking.)

This looks really interesting. I may use this format to get into the head or one of more of my OCs. Thanks very much for the idea. :)

[zlabya]

Your writing exercises are marvelous, and so wonderfully tempting.