October 25, 2014

Revealing plot twists: TO HELL WITH SUSPENSE!

You are welcome to pull out that rusty ax from behind your shed, because what I'm about to tell you will certainly scratch that itch in your psyche, that nagging wish to hack me to pieces and watch me bleed and die. Because. Oh, my glorious hamsters! Because I will blasphemise (is that even a word?) your previous beliefs in stretching out the suspense for as long as possible, salivating over your keyboard in feverish anticipation of hooking your reader on the mystery of your story. Only. Surprise!

If you artificially stretch out the suspense in your book, your reader will forgive you for a few pages. Maybe. That is, if the reader is of the patient kind. For the next few pages or a chapter the reader will grow increasingly irritated. And at last, when the droning prose will sap all excitement from the reader, the reader will slam the book shut and hurl it out the window, where it will bludgeon a passing elderly lady, who will collapse and at the alert of the spying neighbor (there is always that one, peeking though the curtains at the shenanigans of the neighborhood) will be collected by police officers who will scan the area diligently to find the treacherous owner of said book, and upon sighting your scared pallid face in the...but I'm getting carried away.

September 20, 2014

What every story needs

by Ksenia Anske

I've been spontaneously writing short (or very short) stories lately. Dunno where they come from. I think it's time I start on my next book? Is that what my brain is telling me? Anyway. Rereading them reminded me of something I have heard for the first time at Chuck Palahniuk's reading several years ago. He read a couple of his short stories, and someone in the audience asked what every story needs. If there are any rules, any elements that make for a great short story. I was just beginning to write back then, awestruck by the brilliance of Fight Club. I leaned forward with bated breath, ready to record every precious word, heaving a sigh, chocking on my own impatience. This is what Chuck said.

EVERY STORY NEEDS:

A clock.
A birth.
A death.
3 elements that repeat (starting from page 1).
Make reader do 4 things: feel smarter than you, laugh, cry, be sick.

August 27, 2014

On writing rules and not giving a shit

by Ksenia Anske

Photo by Ana Luísa Pinto — Photo by Ana Luísa Pinto

How timely, to talk about this. It seems the topic is in the air, with the latest article on Haruki Murakami and how he doesn't give a shit, and the latest blog post by Chuck Wendig on how you'll never get anywhere if you compare yourself to others, and my own thoughts today and yesterday and the day before, after reading a book a day, literally, first THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS by John Boyne, then THE GIRL ON THE FRIDGE by Etgar Keret, and comparing writing styles and scratching my head. And, well, thinking. And what I'm thinking about is this. How none of the writing rules you learn help you write better. Yes, it's beneficial to know the basics of grammar and plotting and expositions and whatever other fancy names literary scholars employ describing all the smart parts of the writing process. Smart as in, things you usually have to look up to know what they mean. I'm the one guilty of this. I still don't know all the proper terms and labels and components. I only recently have learned the difference between a metaphor and a simile and I'm about to start writing my 3rd novel. Pathetic, right? I know. And yet. And yet I didn't feel the needed to know them all, and here is the thing I want to share with you.

Writing rules are there to be broken.

June 7, 2014

Why writing rules don't matter

by Ksenia Anske

Something happened today. Something amazing. It doesn't necessarily guarantee that my 3rd novel, IRKADURA, will somehow be touched by a stroke of genius, though, funny enough, in the moment when this epiphany struck me, it felt like it. To me. Hahaha. Right. Secret reprehensible hopes. Like that will ever happen. Maybe. I don't know. In the meantime. Let me keep being decorous and continue with our conversation.

Something struck me today. Wait. I'm lying. It struck me yesterday. Well, a bit today, too. Like an aftershock. Two things happened. One, I read this article about Irish writer Eimear McBride (beautiful name, right?) whose first novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 10 years after she finished it, published after 10 years of rejections. (10 years!) In this article Eimear said that after reading Ulysses she thought, "...everything I have written before is rubbish, and today is the beginning of something else." Naturally, I went to Amazon and started reading the preview of the book, you know, the opening, the first pages. And that. Was. It.