David Mitchell and letters from your characters

yesterday, i said i was plotting my novel using a slightly altered Snowflake Method. i’ve replaced the character bibles/profiles/summaries with a trick i learned from one of my all-time favorite authors, David Mitchell.

“This might be a trade secret,” Mitchell jests, “but it works for me, and you can have it.”

he suggests writing letters to yourself in the voice of your characters about the things they care about, like money, work, politics, religion, sex, and the concerns/other people/world of the story.

i find this advice so helpful and reassuring and accessible, i have it Scotch-taped above my makeshift writing desk, right next to the Harmon story circle. and somewhere along the line, i’ve added the topic of ‘Family,” which rounds it out to a nice, uneven nine.

“When you get stuck, get systematic,” Mitchell says. “You’re usually stuck because you don’t know your characters well enough.”

listen to his full advice below—

creating complex characters

i’m currently plotting a novel using a (slightly altered) version of the Snowflake Method. so far, it’s been relatively hardship-free.

i’m about to switch from fleshing out the plot to fleshing out characters, however, so i returned to this video—another great one from Shaelin Bishop—on creating complex characters.

i’m particularly drawn to this concept of “the dark room,” which is basically a key aspect of the character that is never made explicit in the story, but a reader could infer what it is based on other elements present. now my homework is to find the Alice Munro essay where the term originated…

watch the whole video below!

another pair of eyes

i’ve been sitting on a first(-ish) draft of a short story for a few months now, knowing i needed to revise, but generally daunted by the task.

to light a fire under my ass, i set the goal of sending it to a friend for critique by the end of February. but since stubbornness is my s p e c i a l t y, i continued to resist revising.

even up to the point where i told my friend yesterday that i was just going to send him the unrevised rough draft, warts and all (and with a boatload of caveats, no doubt, to assuage my ego).

that did the trick. i ticked through my list of revisions today, clearing up plot inconsistencies and refining the prose.

i think just knowing another pair of eyes would be reading my work imminently was motivation enough.

taking Notes

i use the Notes app on my phone to keep lists.

‘to be read’ lists and ‘have already read’ lists. shopping lists and to-do lists, but also a list for quotes (my newest) and a list for potential cat names (my oldest).

i also keep Notes for each of the projects i’m working on. they serve as drop zones for any stray story impulses i might get throughout the day.

here’s an idea for a short story i had on my (morbid, i guess??) walk earlier:

i’m a pen-and-paper diehard. the plan for the remainder of my life is to slowly transform into a thirteenth-century monk.

but in the meantime, there’s pretty much always a phone in my pocket, for better or worse. so i might as well use it to keep Notes.

Mason Currey on post-project depression

in his latest advice column, writer and editor Mason Currey responds to a message from a writer with post-project depression, who describes it as:

“I sit around for much too long, worried I’ll never make anything again, fearful that there is nothing left in my creative brain, terrified I’m a failure.”

having just completed a big writing goal in December before swiftly falling into a confused, January-flavored fog, i’m all ears.

Currey curates a range of advice from painter Helen Frankenthaler to psychiatrist Carl Jung to actor Daniel Day-Lewis. which is so great because, arguably, the most reassuring advice you can give someone is: “you are not alone in this.”

(it’s also reminiscent of the work he does in his spectacular book Daily Rituals, which catalogues the routines of inspired minds throughout history, highlighting their idiosyncrasies and drawing out the universal themes.)

in the end, i love what Currey says about the impulse to label these fallow periods “self-indulgent angst:”

“That’s like telling someone who just finished a marathon, and who’s standing on the side of the road huddled in one of those reflective silver space blankets, sipping from a paper cup of water and eating a sad little banana, ‘Hey, bud, stop slacking off and get started on your next race already, will ya?!?!’”

read past advice columns or sign up for Mason Currey’s newsletter!

colorful boxes

i’m tweaking the outline for One Way today and deciding what dusky red font color best matches the pale yellow highlighter.

so much of writing for me is making color-coded tables in google docs. in a moment of celebratory accomplishment last year, i snapped a picture of a completed first draft progress bar and texted it to a friend.

i figure: if the writing is hard, and i’m trying to coax myself through a years-long drafting process (or even a twenty-minute session), there are worse distractions than making colorful boxes.