Injecting humor into your writing

I've been indulging lately in humorizing ROSEHEAD in its 3rd draft to the point of my boyfriend reading it to me aloud and me laughing to tears. I mean, that's me laughing at my own writing. That's crazy, right? It's supposed to be a good thing though, correct? I think it is. I've also realized something else. No matter what your genre is or what kind of a book you're writing, one of the things you have to do is make your reader laugh. Chuck Palahniuk said it at one of his readings. He also said that there are other things you have to do: make your reader cry, make your reader sick, and make your reader smarter than you. That's a whole another topic, of course, so let's stay with laughter for now. Laughter, humor, sarcasm, satire, they should always be present, because even in the most tear-jerking and sobbing end-of-the-world and we're-all-gonna-die story the reader needs a breather, a smile, to feel good. That's exactly what humor does. I didn't see I've been doing it until my boyfriend pointed it out to me. On the other note, I read a lot, and I've been picking up humor here and there in all kinds of books, be it horror or romance or fantasy. I'm not an expert by any measure, but I was dying to share this with you, how I do it, to hopefully inspire you to inject more humor into your writing too. After all, if you make your reader feel good, they will come back to you for more of your writing, and that's what you want, right?

Have your characters say funny things with straight faces. I find dialogue is the best place where you can inject humor. Have your characters say outrageous things with a straight face and have others not get it right away. The thing is, your readers will get it first and they will laugh their asses off. Break up your dialogue with a remark from a character that has absolutely nothing to do with what's discussed at the moment. Or have them discuss something obvious with fervor, with seriousness reserved only for very serious topics. Monty Python folks do it the best. Watch them, read them. Or pick an idea and turn it on its head. Have characters talk about inanimate objects as if they are alive, and vice versa. Have your characters obsessed with some unimportant details that are hysterical, like their facial hair, or their toes, or the color of their shoes, or whatever strikes your fancy. Have every character possess some kind of quirk and have them discuss it or insert it in conversations when most inappropriate. My most recent example, from reading not anything but the genius amazing awesome THE HOBBIT, is Bilbo and his pocket kerchief. Remember how he stops the entire party of dwarves and seriously tells them that they can't go any further because he forgot his pocket kerchief and they have to turn around and get it? It's hysterical, right? Here you go, a hobbit obsessed with his little comfort things, his hobbit hole, his style of life, to the point of absurd. 

Make your descriptions interact with the story. Every story happens somewhere, in some place, some city, some town. Make those things interact with the story like they're part of it. In my story, in ROSEHEAD, I constantly do things like: "Lilith grinned at the room. The room grinned back, and then winked, for an added effect. Lilith blinked and took a step back." All right, I don't have these exact lines in my book, I just made them up, but they're very similar. Here is another one, from a much more reputable source, THE HOBBIT again. When the adventurers waded into Mirkwood, there is a mention of the trees listening in on their conversations. It's not the description of the trees being fantastical beings, no, it's one of those instances where Tolkien injects humor, because the conversation was so intense that even the trees listened! You can do this with couches sighing under your characters, and TV's hissing at them, and shadows jumping from freight, and socks being lazy and unwilling to be stretched over feet, or the sun being mean and blinding people's eyes on purpose. There is a ton of dead objects that you can inject with life and make them funny. It will give an extra character to the whole story. My favorite thing to do lately, love it. Blame Terry Pratchett. I read too much DISCWORLD, that I did.

Make references to sex, cursing and profanities in a very obscure manner. Since we're talking about Pratchett, he is the master of that. I mean, in every book there is something somehow related to either the topic of sex or at least some mutual attraction between characters, unless it's a children's book and you're writing about kitties and puppies and such, although even there could be awkward moments of holding paws. Um. Yeah, let's not go that route. Back to the topic. There are also many moments that could make you want to use words like FUCK and SHIT and DAMMIT and BITCH and ASSHOLE and BASTARD and, well, I'm not American originally, so I don't know the full extent of the glorious profanities used here. There must be worse ones I'm missing. So, instead of proudly spelling them as they are, cross them out and make obscure references to them, the more obscure, the better. It will actually add more spice to your writing as opposed to using straight FUCK word. I like describing the things around the scene itself, or funny details, like, his ears went pink, or her eyes went round. I have a bit of chemistry and innocent love going on between a 12 year old Lilith Bloom and 14 year old Ed Vogel in ROSEHEAD. They kiss a few times and stare at each other longingly, but I always try to find a reference to what's around them that points to the awkwardness of the moment, and that makes it funny. Also, there is not a single curse word in the whole book, but Panther, the talking whippet, on occasion likes to swear, so I describe it as "he uttered a string of such profanities from which Lilith's ear typically shriveled and fell off", or something like that. And, well, read Terry Pratchett.

I kinda just now got that I'm delving into a very dangerous topic here I know nothing about, namely, comedy, and I better stop. I don't know how to write it, although I would love to, one day. I'm sure there are more glorious techniques out there. These three things are simply things I have been doing lately, and they have made me a very happy and laughing writer, and so I wanted to share them with you, of course. MWAH!

Complex non-perfect characters vs perfect stereotypes

I'm chipping away at the long list of blog topics people asked me to write about, and this is one that I'm afraid to write about, as I don't think I have written enough to chime in on it. But when I voiced my doubt, my readers shouted at me that, yes, I can, I've written great characters. Well then, you guys know better, I suppose, as we writers are always too hard on ourselves. Let me spill here what I think, and you tell me what you think or if this was helpful to you. Deal?

Stereotypes are familiar yet forgettable. It's easy to use a stereotypical character as a crutch. Everyone loves a certain type of a character and is familiar with it. We all have grown up with them, both in life and in fiction. Heroes. Villains. Father figures. Mother figures. These are the big ones. There are also the typical sulky teenager, the dull librarian, the sexy chick, the nerdy boy or the macho guy. See, this is why I was afraid to write this, as I'm not 100% familiar with American-specific stereotypes in fiction, sort of am translating in my head right now. Anyway. Back to the point. You can plan out your novel with great character types and gloriously set out to writing it. Here is the problem, though. Unless you know what it's like being one of those stereotypes, you will most likely fail. Number one, readers will feel the characters are fake and flat, and they'll be bored because they have read books with characters like that over and over again. Result: they will likely forget your character as soon as they're done with the book. Number two, you will get bored yourself writing it, because you get satisfaction from writing something you know, something that rings true to you, something that you've been carrying inside and are dying to share. And if you're bored writing it, your reader will be bored reading it. Unless you've lived a lot of life and know how to spice up a stereotypical character with flaws and imperfections, I would steer clear of it. Which leads me to the next point.

Non-perfect characters are hard to write yet unforgettable. Why exactly are they hard to write? Because usually they're very close to who you are as a writer. The best stuff you write is always based on your deepest truest self. If you've been through a lot of shit and a lot of life and a lot of love and joy and grief and every possible emotion there is, you will be capable of showing this array of emotions in your characters. We're all non-perfect. That's why we relate best to imperfection. Even the most glorious hero must have a fear of darkness or secretly carry a blanket from his childhood to soothe himself in the moments of dire need. Even the most powerful mother figure must have weaknesses in order for us to believe in her, to believe she is real, she can exist in this world. Because we're building a fake world in our novels in such a way so as to make people think it's real. That's what carries them away, what makes them forget their daily struggles and disappear into a good story. And it's these flaws in the characters that we remember most. Take Humbert Humbert from LOLITA. Can you be any more flawed than that? And what about Scarlett O'Hara? Or Peter Pan? Or Harry Potter? They all have huge flaws, and we love them for it.

Write from people you know. There is this thing that somebody said and everybody always repeats everywhere, write what you know. I think it applies here. Don't worry about your characters being stereotypical or not stereotypical, perfect of imperfect, or whatever. Write what you feel, what you know, what you've seen and experienced. Write characters that ring true to you, no matter how crazy they might seem to others, or even to you. Deep in your gut you know that people like this exist. For example, I'm a little scared to start writing IRKADURA because I have seen so many weird strange personalities in my life, growing up in Soviet Union, that when I tell stories to my American friends, they always raise eyebrows, or exclaim, Wow, there are really people like that? You're not making this up? And I'm like, Nope, I'm not making this up, it's real. But see, it's because I know it's real, because I feel it's real when writing it, whoever will read it will feel that those people are real, not just fictional characters, and that's my goal as a writer, to make you believe in my stories. Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention. Somebody asked me recently how I write characters of the opposite gender and if I have any tips on that. Well, that's my tip. Write from people you know, it will always ring true.

Can I stress one more point here, the one that I've been stressing many times and you're probably sick of hearing? Well, hate me all you want, but I will repeat it once more. Please, please, PLEASE, don't worry about characters being written properly, or your novel structure being correct, or the length of your chapters, or any of that smart shit. Forget it. JUST WRITE. Just write your story the way you would tell it to a friend, or to whomever you want to tell it. As long as you stay true to storytelling, as in, every sentence should push it forward, like this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened, you'll do fine. The more you write, the better you will feel all these smart things people like to talk about, character types and novel types and genres and structures and whatever else. The lesson I learned, you can read as much about writing as you want, it will not teach you how to write. Only writing will teach you how to write. Even my blog - I keep writing it, attempting to answer your questions, but my main goal is to hold your hand, to make you feel like it's okay to just write, despite the fact that you're scared and think you don't know how to do it. I'm scared too, I don't know how to do it too, but I'm still doing it. Do it with me. Let's keep writing.

On balancing dialogue, descriptions, action and the rest

I have blogged before on balancing pairs of these wonderful things, like descriptions versus commentary and transitions from dialogue to descriptions and back. I even blogged about the danger of long descriptions, but I haven't yet written on the subject of all three, or however many elements there are. And now that I think about it, there really are only three things. People talk shit - dialogue. People look like shit (or not like shit, if you're writing romance) - descriptions. People do shit - action. There are other fancy names for fancy things like exposition (still don't really understand what that means), backstory, flashbacks, theme, bla-bla-bla (I've been actually Googling these terms to refresh my memory). I don't think about any of that when I write, I just write the story. And so far 3 elements have been plenty. Like Kurt Vonnegut said, "Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action."  You can look at it in many different ways, it's still the same. This happened. This dude said this. This gal said this. This happened. That happened. Oh, and it happened in this town looking like this, and they looked like this. You get the drill. So, for the sake of this blog post, we shall cover three things.

Dialogue is never perfect. There are books with excessive dialogue, and there are books with almost no dialogue at all. What exactly does this mean and how should you take it on, especially if you're a beginning writer like me? You don't. Don't copy anyone, just because they're a famous writer, or your favorite writer, be yourself. If you talk a lot, write a lot of dialogue. If you don't talk a lot, don't write a lot of dialogue. Write what naturally comes to you. But once you do start writing, in case of dialogue specifically, break it up. As in, when people talk, they start talking from the middle of the thought, and they get interrupted a lot. Remember the movie Up, "Squirrel!" Yeah, like that. Also, people interrupt people. People leave half of a sentence hanging, without finishing it. It's all very fluid and not perfect. When writing, it's easy to slide into this perfection of writing dialogue in complete sentences. Hey, that's what teachers taught us in school, write complete sentences, with fucking structure and whatnot! Well, they were wrong. Throw it out the window and forget about structure. When people talk, they have no structure, they have feelings, emotions. They try to structure them, yes, but they always fail horribly. And we read for those nuggets of failure, trying to guess what this or that characters feels inside. That's the fun of reading.  Now, I will get at the bottom of this post on how to balance all three things, dialogue, descriptions, and action, so don't despair.

Descriptions only begin on the page, but end in a reader's mind. Yeah, right, I wish I was the one who said it. I didn't, I only paraphrased it. Stephen King was the one who said it, here is the quote: " Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” With this in mind, all you have to do is paint one or two sentences and get on the way with telling the story. I had to learn it the hard way, over-describing practically everything in SIREN SUICIDES. I did learn my lesson, and I moved on. I'm very sparse with descriptions in ROSEHEAD now, only giving enough to paint the picture, and embellishing only the important elements. And here is where the balance comes from. You have to describe things for the reader to see the story, to orient herself or himself, but that's all you gotta do. Now, because your story is about something very important, those important parts you can embellish more than usual, to draw reader's attention to them. Also, one more thing I do. Somebody said it, can't remember who, but it goes like this. Everything that the reader already saw, describe briefly. For example, "It was a hot summer afternoon." We all know what a hot summer afternoon looks like, we all have our own idea about it, but it's basically the same. So say that one sentence and move on to the action or the dialogue. But if you're describing a new alien weapon that the reader has never seen before, indulge in description, make it real. I primarily use allegories to not get carried away, like "his gun looked like two cucumbers glued together by intergalactic saliva" or some shit like that. In general, don't do more than 3 sentences, otherwise it can get boring pretty fast.

Action is where the story happens. This is the most important element of any story. Basically, you have to answer the reader's question: WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENS? She ran to the Moon. He caught her with a fish hook. They fell into the bog of misery. Twenty tentacles of a mutant giant cockroach sucked them into another dimension. A kangaroo shrieked, because a herd of flying giraffes opened fire on... well, I'm getting carried away here. But this is it, really. Noun, verb. Verb, noun. Use adjectives sporadically, refrain from using adverbs, and do not use exclamations marks!!!!! Yeah, I'm so guilty of that. Anyway. Action should really dominate your pages, with a few lines of description here and there, and occasional blocks or lines of dialogue. But, again, remember, this is all up to you, up to what kind of storyteller you are. There is no golden rule for everybody. Everybody is different. You might be able to tell your story through dialogue, by writing something like this: "Get that green thing away from me!" "Trying! That fucking kangaroo got my gun!" "Watch out! I think that's a--" "--it's a bomb!" BAM! "Is that you? Are you breathing?" "No, you are mistaken, maiden. I am a panda overlord, ruling the entire universe." Demonic laughter. Okay, this is totally off the wall and very bad, but I just wanted to throw something out there to show how you can do action through dialogue. You can also do dialogue through action, as in: "They talked about the weather. She mentioned that fact that it wasn't sunny today, studying her nails. He said that it looks like it's going to rain, his hand accidentally brushing hers. They both looked up at the sky at the same time, wondering exactly when it's going to rain.  He breathed into her ear that it might start raining any minute, and they better..." All right, I'll stop right here, before I get too carried away.

Balance your writing they way it feels natural. This is the closing thingy, about all three things, dialogue, descriptions, and action. And whatever else it is you want to balance. The basic thing is, trust your gut. If your gut gleefully enjoys you writing page after page of dialogue, excellent. Keep writing it. If your gut cringes at the thought of writing dialogue, don't. In fact, read Nabokov's LOLITA. Do you see any dialogue there? Yeah, very very little. You can think of the three things this way. There is dialogue, and there is description, but they are both like these transparent layers over action, which is really the meat of the story. As much as you can, try for every sentence to move your story forward. Even if you're describing something, try to make it so that it moves the story forward. Remember, you have to make the reader turn the page. Every page the reader has to be glued to your story. Because at any moment the reader can be interrupted by life, and if your reader happens to be interrupted on the page of a long long description, guess what will happen? The reader might not get back to your story, abandoning your book. The only way to not let that happen is to keep the action moving the story forward. This is how books end up on the best-seller lists. People can't stop reading them (says she who hasn't made it to any best-selling lists, so feel free to scoff at me, I'm still learning!). 

There. I think this should do. Let's try something new here. How about you tell me in the comments what you want me to blog about next? I was thinking about the topic of beginning and ending chapters. Yes? No? Any other ideas? Let me know. Happy writing! 

Writing IS therapy

I'm writing this blog post on the go, while riding Moscow metro, while sitting with my mom in her hospital room, while camping out on a windowsill in some government building from where I haven't been kicked out yet (I marched in as if I belong here, smiling, and am sitting on this windowsill because it is directly over the heating element and it keeps my butt warm). I'm also writing this while an elderly lady is trying to tell me her problems, her bladder problems, of all things. I'm writing while people are staring at me, because this is not something they typically see in Moscow, people sitting in weird places, writing on their laptops. The main thing for me right now is, to keep writing. I've been suppressing a good deal of emotions over the past week, and I have realized the terrible and incredible truth. Writing is therapy. I mean, I did realize it before, of course, I even blogged about Why write? For therapy. But it wasn't as sharp and as clear as I'm experiencing it now. While writing Siren Suicides I was depressed and was writing about my suicidal tendencies. Back then I had to revisit my old pain, pull it free and air it out, to get rid of it. Right now it's different because things are happening NOW. I'm alone in Moscow, without my love, my boyfriend, who provides me daily support (really, he's like a battery when my energy is low). And writing is the one thing that keeps me afloat when I have no other source of support. It lets me spill my emotions AS THEY OCCUR. Therefore, I don't need to suppress anything, there is no stress. I got spoiled lately, feeling always good, precisely because I was writing every day. More then ever I feel it now, and more then ever I want to communicate this to you, especially to those of you who still hesitate to either quit your job to write full time, or to commit to writing a novel in the evenings or on the weekends, or hesitate because of your young age, thinking you have nothing to say. Don't. Don't hesitate. WRITE. It's the best therapy there is, seriously, and it will take your stress away and make you happy.

While writing we enact the things that bother us and let go. The biggest benefit you get from writing is being able to say things you can't typically say, not to the face of the other person who has either done something unpleasant to you, or has yelled at you, or in any way has done something that has somehow traumatized you, even if it's only temporary, even if it's just an argument with your spouse or friend. There are a million reasons why we can't vocalize what bothers us, and writing is one outlet for it. It's a form of therapy that allows us to enact that incident, and say what we really wanted to say, through the characters. Better. You can exaggerate and blast it in the face of that person with the ferocity of an upset tiger, or whatever animal you want to imagine. Once you do it, you instantly feel better. More than that. You can use foul words, you can be obscene, you can indulge in profanities the likes of which you would never dare to utter to anyone, and if you happen to hear them, your ears will literally shrivel and fall off. The best thing about this is, you can go crazy. Look at it like this. The goal is to spill. Just like with the first draft of a novel, the goal is to dump it. You can always rewrite it. You will cool off, come back, reread it, throw the trash away, and keep the story. But the thing would be done, the therapy part. You would feel better, you wouldn't suppress things, and you would move on, to other things, to happy things, to living life.

When there is nobody to listen to you, there is always paper. This is another benefit to writing. Let's say, your life is currently fucked up, fucked up to the point where there is nobody, not a single person, who can listen to you and provide support or sympathize with you. Nada. Not a soul. Okay. What do you do? You turn to your writing. You can write in a diary by hand, and then hug it, if you want. Or you can write on your laptop. Whatever your means, it's always there. It doesn't judge you, it simply listens, forever. It's patient. It lets you weave your story. If you're not done spilling your pain and have been interrupted or simply have to stop, it will wait. It will wait forever and never complain. And when you're ready, you can come back and pick up your story exactly where you left it off. This is an amazing thing, if you think about it. This is like having a remote control on your life and pushing a pause button. You can't do this with real people. You can't simply be in a middle of family drama, pull out a remote control and freeze everyone. It doesn't work this way. But if you know you have your outlet in your writing, you can live through anything, knowing that paper is waiting for you, waiting for you to spill everything that happened, waiting to listen, without judgement, waiting to take everything in.

Doesn't matter how broken you are, paper will mend you. Right now, right this very moment, as I'm writing this, I'm in a very dark place, due to things I had to deal with while in Moscow, looking after my mom. I'm in a lot of pain. I feel like I'm broken and not whole, like I have no footing underneath me, and writing is the only thing that gives me this feeling of wholeness. I can hold on to it, and feel like I'm complete. It is my anchor in the times when everything else is uncertain. Because it's always there, it's certain, it's a column of sanity in the middle of chaos. And the best part? You can drop pieces of unrelated stuff onto paper. These broken bits of yourself. Something amazing starts happening when you do. One piece draws on another, draws on another, and pretty soon, without you intending it, your broken pieces make up something whole. You look into it and realize that you're not broken at all. 

This is what writing does to me. Therapy. The cheapest and the most amazing therapy that is available to me in my life right now. And to you too. All you need is pen and paper, or some computer and some program, some old Word, that's it. 

Writing through emotional highs and lows

This is a very timely topic, as I'm finishing 2nd draft of ROSEHEAD, my 2nd novel, next week, and while writing it I've been through emotional highs and lows, and very high highs, and very low lows. I even had to break in the middle and go get my son from Russia (long story short, Russian authorities wouldn't let him on the plane because of some documents being in English, so I flew out to get him) which caused me a very low LOW. You can read about it here. Warning. It wasn't pretty. Anyway, I kept writing. I even wrote at airports and on the plane, until my laptop battery gave out. I'm not a masterful guru of writing while traveling by any measure, but what I'm really good at is getting really mad at myself and making myself do things when I don't really want to, especially if those things are my dream, like writing, yet even then my inner whiny self would invent all kinds of reasons on why I should wait until conditions are perfect. You know what the truth is? The truth is, life is not perfect, so there won't be any perfect time to write. You gotta write through anything life throws at you, then you're truly a writer. I got a few tricks up my sleeve. So here you go. 

Whenever that voice in my head says that my writing is shit, I tell it, I know, I don't care, I will write anyway. This is perhaps the biggest thing I've learned, the fact that no writing is ever perfect, no book is ever perfect, just as we are not perfect, nor are our stories. Perfect stories would be boring and predictable, it's the creative chaos that keeps it interesting. Therefore, your writing by definition should suck, to you. You know why? Because it means that you have excellent taste and will keep striving to improve. But it doesn't mean that your writing actually sucks. You see, it's not up to you to decide, it's up to your readers. The second you put your thoughts on paper, they're not your thoughts anymore, they belong to those who will read them. Therefore, you can think all you want that your writing is shit. The point here is to keep writing anyway, to keep writing pages and pages of shit, but still KEEP WRITING. I apply a simple rule. Every day I either write for 4 hours, or I write at least 2,000 words. I don't let myself off the hook until I hit one or the other mark, even if what I'm writing is an absolute and total nonsense. The thing is, once I get into a rhythm, some sense starts poking through the nonsense, and I catch it by the tail, and, BAM, the story flows.  

When I decide that my writing is good and get too full of myself, I read something genius and want to write harder. Just like there are the "my writing is shit" moments, there are also "oh, look, my writing is actually good" moments. Both are dangerous, the latter actually worse, because it causes me to slacken, to slow down, to forget the story and dwell on the laurels of being good. Which is total bullshit, because it erodes my striving to get better. it doesn't happen as often as "my writing sucks", but it does happen. I found that reading something utterly genius makes me cry, not because the story is sad or something, no, I cry because of the beauty of language, like the sickly twisted charm of Chuck Palahniuk, or the opalescent sensual prose of Vladimir Nabokov, or the witty rich storytelling of J.K. Rowling, or the dark bloodcurdling horror of Stephen King. Immediately I find myself on ground zero, ready to eat dirt, to pull myself forward by the hair if that's what it takes, to keep writing, to if not as good as my favorite authors, then at least close. And that is a very powerful motivator.

When somebody tells me that my writing sucks, or I get a bad review, I listen, nod, thank, and continue writing my way. The important part about listening to criticism is to realize that it's what it is, criticism. It's meant to critique, so the definition of the word itself is negative. On the other hand, a review is supposed to be neutral, but by the way we designed it, it can be terrible too, like a 1 star write-up about how your book is just a pile of cow dung. You gotta separate yourself from those, because those opinions are not about you, they're about your writing. It's like a product, and you're a producer. Let's say you make soap that smells like cheese. Now, some people love the smell of cheese and would sniff it every minute. Other people will tell you that you're out of your mind to produce soap that smells like cheese. They will be like, what? Are you crazy? Who does that? Make it smell like honey, like strawberries, heck, make it smell like fake ocean, but, please, no cheese. The thing is, YOU like the smell of cheese, and YOU happen to like the soap that smells like cheese. So what do you tell those people? You tell them, thank you very much for your observation, but I will continue making the soap I want to make, because I like it. And this is key. You're writing for yourself. You will only grow as a writer if you discover who you are, and that will take time and a lot of bad writing. But if you will keep swaying left and right because of the opinions of others, it will take you that much longer to discover who you are as a writer.

These are my major rules. I also find that blogging helps me process my highs and lows. Literally, writing these posts about writing makes me get the fact that it's okay, I will be okay, my writing will be okay, the world will be okay, life will be okay. I will keep writing, because it makes me happy. It makes happier when I'm already happy, and it helps me shed my pain when I'm unhappy. That's it. The rest doesn't matter. 

P.S.: I totally forgot to say this. Winter is coming, so don't forget to wear fuzzy socks while writing. It will reduce your lows to a minimum, will make you feel warm and comfortable, and inspire you to write fuzzy stories.