Jeff Haws

Independent author

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Archives for January 2016

Earn Your Plot: Be Shyamalan, not Shyamalan

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Plot twist

I wrote recently about the worst thing you can say about my fiction writing, which would be that I’m letting what I want to happen in the story drive my characters’ actions, rather than my characters’ wants, desires and personality driving what happens in the story. There’s little that frustrates me more in a story than when the author appears to be forcing her characters to behave in a way that seems unnatural in order to move the story forward, and the author doesn’t earn his own plot development. [Read more…] about Earn Your Plot: Be Shyamalan, not Shyamalan

5 Lessons from Writing Half a Book

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Lessons

I went into this book with the assumption that it’ll end up being between 80,000 and 100,000 words, which is pretty standard for a novel. In fact, 80,000-90,000 is even more in the sweet spot. Of course, I have no idea if things will work out like I planned, but it’s a pretty decent bet that’ll be my range.

As such, I’m halfway-ish there. On Monday night, I hit 40,000 words on my 25th day of writing, then 50,000 on the 28th day. Looking at what I’ve written and thinking about what’s left, I could see this being about a halfway point. But the characters could surprise the hell out of me and decide to do something I’m totally not anticipating. And, while that’d be kind of fun, I might have to take one of them aside and have a little conversation if they try to lead me too far astray at this point.

This is easily the furthest into a story I’ve ever been, and I’ve learned a lot during the process — particularly since I went into this not knowing hardly a damn thing. Here’s the 5 biggest lessons I’ve gotten so far: [Read more…] about 5 Lessons from Writing Half a Book

Stories about Stories — Even Losing Ones

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Losing

Last week, Creative Loafing published the winning stories from its fiction contest. I’d encourage you to go read them. The three winners did an excellent job, and I can definitely learn from what they did with the theme, which was “Space.” Each had a different approach, but I think they were all effective.

Of course, I was hoping I might be included in the issue. I submitted my own story to the contest back in November. Now, I wasn’t expecting in the slightest to win. I mean, that was the first piece of fiction I’d written in about 17 years, so it would have been a pretty big shock to win a damn thing for it. And, honestly, I don’t think winning one of these sorts of contests is even a coherent goal. All you know is, there are three judges who you don’t know, and you don’t know what their criteria are. All you can do is meet the guidelines, submit on time, and see what happens. [Read more…] about Stories about Stories — Even Losing Ones

The Worst Thing You Could Say About My Story

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Thumb

I’m used to getting bad reviews and hate mail. Close to 20 years in journalism will do that for you. It won’t make you rich, but it’ll certainly help harden you to criticism of your writing. I’ve had my byline published thousands of times, above stories both long and short, dull and exciting, fact and opinion. I’ve written stories I was very proud of (See my Writing section for a few examples), and ones I never wanted to see again after hitting the “Send” button. And, regardless of how I felt about them, there was always a chance I’d receive email or comment from a reader, telling me why whatever I wrote was garbage, and I should crawl into a hole and die. [Read more…] about The Worst Thing You Could Say About My Story