Help me write longer stuff better.
September 12, 2010 9:08 PM Subscribe
How do I make my longer writing better?
It's not just length, it's the idea that I have to, as one friendly editor put it, "learn to air things out more. You have to let the story unspool." I think I know what she's talking about but when it comes to putting it into practice I don't know where to begin.
I write long-form journalism, which apparently can be a lot longer. It seems like when I go back to editing something and I find a space where I can stretch things out, or take some time with ideas, I instantly lose the thread of the narrative and seem to start down some other rabbit trail with no hope of getting back.
Writers, and readers: How do I learn to take my time with an idea, to stretch it out without stalling or adding filler, and without losing the story?
What am I asking of you? Either concrete advice or writing that exemplifies unspooling of a story in small pieces, or staying with an idea and examining it before moving on to the next plot point.
Or, are there writing blogs that delve into technique stuff like this?
Thanks.
It's not just length, it's the idea that I have to, as one friendly editor put it, "learn to air things out more. You have to let the story unspool." I think I know what she's talking about but when it comes to putting it into practice I don't know where to begin.
I write long-form journalism, which apparently can be a lot longer. It seems like when I go back to editing something and I find a space where I can stretch things out, or take some time with ideas, I instantly lose the thread of the narrative and seem to start down some other rabbit trail with no hope of getting back.
Writers, and readers: How do I learn to take my time with an idea, to stretch it out without stalling or adding filler, and without losing the story?
What am I asking of you? Either concrete advice or writing that exemplifies unspooling of a story in small pieces, or staying with an idea and examining it before moving on to the next plot point.
Or, are there writing blogs that delve into technique stuff like this?
Thanks.
The only advice I can give is that which school teachers receive about the teaching of writing:
Engage in genre study. Gather as many high quality examples of long-form journalism as possible and engage in what's called "reading like a writer." Read these articles as someone who is paying careful attention to the writing's style and organization. Look for patterns of how these writers develop their idea, how they structure paragraphs and groups of paragraphs, and how they transition back to the main thread of the story.
Your revision process is especially important. Keep examples of good writing next you as you work on pieces you've chosen for focused revision. Even after a story is "finished," keep coming back to it and work on revising it. As you revise. compare it to your "model" stories. What are the similarities? The differences? The more you revise and critically examine your work in comparison to others, the more you will begin to notice and integrate desirable patterns into your own writing process.
posted by GnomeChompsky at 10:16 PM on September 12, 2010
Engage in genre study. Gather as many high quality examples of long-form journalism as possible and engage in what's called "reading like a writer." Read these articles as someone who is paying careful attention to the writing's style and organization. Look for patterns of how these writers develop their idea, how they structure paragraphs and groups of paragraphs, and how they transition back to the main thread of the story.
Your revision process is especially important. Keep examples of good writing next you as you work on pieces you've chosen for focused revision. Even after a story is "finished," keep coming back to it and work on revising it. As you revise. compare it to your "model" stories. What are the similarities? The differences? The more you revise and critically examine your work in comparison to others, the more you will begin to notice and integrate desirable patterns into your own writing process.
posted by GnomeChompsky at 10:16 PM on September 12, 2010
I second GnomeChompsky. Also, have you tried mindmapping? If you'll sit down and create a map with all the various people, entitities, events, themes, and concepts you're working with, you can see more clearly the different ways you could choose to connect the elements . . . and you might become aware of some connections that weren't evident to you before.
posted by viscountslim at 11:35 PM on September 12, 2010
posted by viscountslim at 11:35 PM on September 12, 2010
Best answer: Don't know if this answer I gave to a previous question is any help? The other question was about travel writing but I've used the format for lots of different subjects (though only up to about 1,200 words).
Essentially - toggle between two separate but linked threads, one a narrative, describing in-the-moment events as related by an interviewee, the other looking at the wider issues/background. Returning repeatedly to the "real" story can help anchor your meta-ramblings and give a traditional "beginning, middle end" shape to the piece, and making sure the analysis sections follow logically on from one another stops you veering too wildly from the point.
posted by penguin pie at 2:56 AM on September 13, 2010
Essentially - toggle between two separate but linked threads, one a narrative, describing in-the-moment events as related by an interviewee, the other looking at the wider issues/background. Returning repeatedly to the "real" story can help anchor your meta-ramblings and give a traditional "beginning, middle end" shape to the piece, and making sure the analysis sections follow logically on from one another stops you veering too wildly from the point.
posted by penguin pie at 2:56 AM on September 13, 2010
Length, to me, is dependent on scope. Are you missing content, or are you trying to dwell on the same content for longer? During your edit, look at your work and ask yourself if there's anything that you haven't said, or anything that you've said that you can cut without losing meaning. If you've missed something, add it, but if you can cut something, cut it. If it's a word count you're going for, I'd recommend expanding your scope rather than reaching for filler. Expanding your scope gives you more to talk about without just dragging out a piece that could have been more concise. Hope that helps!
posted by Stagger Lee at 8:07 AM on September 13, 2010
posted by Stagger Lee at 8:07 AM on September 13, 2010
Another handy trick that I picked up in the editing process: Write an entire first draft, and edit it. Then, choose two sentences per page. Write them down separately, and set aside the first draft. Using only those sentences for notes, write a second draft off the cuff. Then later you can sit down with both drafts and start to synthesize them. I find that it helps a lot with the flow of your writing, and allows you to smooth out some of the difficulties you described. It's a lot of work, but editing is half the game of writing.
posted by Stagger Lee at 8:10 AM on September 13, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Stagger Lee at 8:10 AM on September 13, 2010 [1 favorite]
Much long-form journalism I read, if it has sub-plots, is based around cliffhangers. (This, of course, works well in fiction, too.) A cliffhanger is an explicit or implicit question: what's going to happen next? If it's an exciting enough question ("I MUST know what's going to happen next!"), it will become a sort of structure on its own. You can go into the subplot, knowing that the reader will be happy to jump back to main main plot when you're ready to take him there, because he's waiting for an answer to the question.
As an added bonus, with a cliffhanger, you can pretty much introduce the subplot as a non sequitur. The whole POINT is that it doesn't flow naturally from the main plot. It's SUPPOSED to be an interruption. (Of course, I don't mean that if the main plot is about coin collecting, the subplot can be about Microsoft Office. They should be thematically connected. I just mean a non sequitur in terms of sentence flow.)
Example:
In January of last year, a man got trapped in a cave. He was 200 feet under the Earth in pitch darkness, without a radio to call for help. His foot was pinned under a rock. He hadn't told any of his friends he was planning to go spelunking. They only knew he had "gone backpacking," and they weren't expecting to hear from him for three weeks. Now, checking his supplies, he realized he had enough food and water to last two days at most.
A few months earlier, a young woman in London was ironing her laundry when she noticed a small piece of paper on the floor. Stooping to pick it up, she realized it was a business card: "Ben Martin, Software Engineer" it said.
I can go on and on about the young woman and Ben Martin for pages, and the reader is still going to be keeping the man-trapped-in-a-cave thread alive in his head...
On their third date, Ben asked her to marry him. Yes, it was "too soon," but it also felt right. Only one problem: her mother. What would her mother say when she found out Ben was a Jew?
Several thousand miles and a few months away, the man in the cave was getting weaker. He had frequent dizzy spells and his throat was parched...
I can keep this up for as long as I want, as long as each thread moves forward when I get back to it, and as long as each thread ends with a cliffhanger when I leave it. And, of course, I MUST make good with my implied promise: I must, at some point, tie the threads together.
It was that night, after they'd come back from their honeymoon and were settling into their new apartment, that Ben mentioned his brother for the first time. "We haven't spoken in years," he said. "He's always running off to some remote place. The middle of the jungle. Pacific islands. Oh, and caves! He's obsessed with caves."
"Where is he now?"
posted by grumblebee at 9:17 AM on September 13, 2010 [3 favorites]
As an added bonus, with a cliffhanger, you can pretty much introduce the subplot as a non sequitur. The whole POINT is that it doesn't flow naturally from the main plot. It's SUPPOSED to be an interruption. (Of course, I don't mean that if the main plot is about coin collecting, the subplot can be about Microsoft Office. They should be thematically connected. I just mean a non sequitur in terms of sentence flow.)
Example:
In January of last year, a man got trapped in a cave. He was 200 feet under the Earth in pitch darkness, without a radio to call for help. His foot was pinned under a rock. He hadn't told any of his friends he was planning to go spelunking. They only knew he had "gone backpacking," and they weren't expecting to hear from him for three weeks. Now, checking his supplies, he realized he had enough food and water to last two days at most.
A few months earlier, a young woman in London was ironing her laundry when she noticed a small piece of paper on the floor. Stooping to pick it up, she realized it was a business card: "Ben Martin, Software Engineer" it said.
I can go on and on about the young woman and Ben Martin for pages, and the reader is still going to be keeping the man-trapped-in-a-cave thread alive in his head...
On their third date, Ben asked her to marry him. Yes, it was "too soon," but it also felt right. Only one problem: her mother. What would her mother say when she found out Ben was a Jew?
Several thousand miles and a few months away, the man in the cave was getting weaker. He had frequent dizzy spells and his throat was parched...
I can keep this up for as long as I want, as long as each thread moves forward when I get back to it, and as long as each thread ends with a cliffhanger when I leave it. And, of course, I MUST make good with my implied promise: I must, at some point, tie the threads together.
It was that night, after they'd come back from their honeymoon and were settling into their new apartment, that Ben mentioned his brother for the first time. "We haven't spoken in years," he said. "He's always running off to some remote place. The middle of the jungle. Pacific islands. Oh, and caves! He's obsessed with caves."
"Where is he now?"
posted by grumblebee at 9:17 AM on September 13, 2010 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: I hadn't thought about setting it up as a parallel narrative. I wonder how long I can sustain that with the material I currently have. Many good ideas, thanks.
posted by Buffaload at 5:32 PM on September 13, 2010
posted by Buffaload at 5:32 PM on September 13, 2010
Best answer: Not for narrative, but for longer philosophical essays, these are what I want a student to do if I put a note in the margin saying "elaborate on this":
-give me an example, or a different example than you've given, or go into more depth about relevant features of your example. connect the dots for me more, tell me what the example shows.
-give me an analogy (or a different one, or go more depth, connect the dots for me more, etc)
-consider a (strong) counterargument. What might your opponent say? How can you respond to that criticism?
Not sure if your work goes into ideas, or people-who-have-ideas, but those are three helpful, non-redundant ways to expand on an explanation of an idea.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:07 PM on September 13, 2010
-give me an example, or a different example than you've given, or go into more depth about relevant features of your example. connect the dots for me more, tell me what the example shows.
-give me an analogy (or a different one, or go more depth, connect the dots for me more, etc)
-consider a (strong) counterargument. What might your opponent say? How can you respond to that criticism?
Not sure if your work goes into ideas, or people-who-have-ideas, but those are three helpful, non-redundant ways to expand on an explanation of an idea.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:07 PM on September 13, 2010
Another thing: if you're claiming an idea/invention/discovery/etc is surprising, be sure to give me enough background on what the "received view"/conventional wisdom was in the field. Often I will see a writer say "it was revolutionary" but not explain what things were like before.
Completely made-up example:
Completely made-up example:
Bob's discovery would revolutionize the field of plumbing. He discovered that with the right surface inside the pipe, you can bring water up a 30% grade. If he was right, it could change the way our cities are designed, and the way your own house works.Compare to a version that gives the conventional wisdom:
Ever since Archimedes, plumbers had always thought you couldn't bring water up more than a 10% grade. In 350BC, Archimedes did a simple experiment with some tubes and a donkey: [blah blah blah]. He concluded that a 10% grade was the maximum slope for pipes of usable diameter.posted by LobsterMitten at 2:27 PM on September 14, 2010
For two thousand years plumbing systems had been designed to work within this constraint. If you look in your own house you'll see that the pipes never [blah blah]. This means a lot of extra pipe is used, and a lot of extra wall space.
Imagine how much more space is used in the basement of an apartment building, or a skyscraper with thousands of tenants. Imagine the city's sewers, and water supply pipes which can run hundreds of miles from reservoirs upstate. Millions of tons of piping material, untold miles of aging pipe needing maintenance or replacement, the cost of this all is staggering.
Bob's discovery would change all this: with the right surface inside the pipe, you can bring water up a 30% grade. If he was right, it could change the way our cities are designed, and the way your own house works.
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posted by toodleydoodley at 10:06 PM on September 12, 2010