A Sense of Doubt blog post #1995 - Top 13 Writing Tips From Neil Gaiman
Just a share on writing today to go with the one from last week that focused on Margaret Atwood:
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1989 - Margaret Atwood's Top 13 Writing Tips
I am trying to get caught up, and the extra YEAR IN NUMBER feature slows me down, even though I like it.
Here's Neil Himself (which is his Twitter handle):
https://writingcooperative.com/neil-gaimans-top-13-writing-tips-d78848fd85f0
Neil Gaiman’s Top 13 Writing Tips
Storytelling and writing advice from his MasterClass
Jun 8 ·
Neil Gaiman is arguably one of the most creative minds of our generation.
From writing comics and children’s books to television scripts and mythological fiction, Gaiman has traversed a wide landscape of literary fiction. His award-winning books include American Gods, The Sandman, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, and Stardust.
In 2019, Gaiman pulled back the curtains on his writing process and recorded a MasterClass on storytelling. (MasterClass is a subscription program where for $180/year, you can watch high-quality courses from experts in various fields.)
Here are the top 13 lessons I learned from his MasterClass:
1. Use lies to communicate truths
“Fiction stories are one of the most interesting phenomena that human beings have…Stories are part of us, and we convey truth with stories, which is fundamentally the most gloriously giant contradiction that you can ever imagine. What we’re saying is, we are using lies, we’re using memorable lies, we are taking people who do not exist and things that did not happen to those people in places that aren’t, and we are using those things to communicate true things to kids and to each other.” -Neil Gaiman
Gaiman says he writes not only because he enjoys telling stories but because he uses them to articulate things he believes about the world.
For example, he wrote the novel Neverwhere to discuss homelessness and explore the stories of people who fall through the cracks in society. He essentially used the novel as his Trojan horse to communicate the concept.
“If I sat down and said I’m writing a big book on homelessness, the only people who would pick it up and read it would be people interested in a book about homelessness,” says Gaiman. “What I want to do here is write a book about living in a big city. I want to write an adventure, but I want to write an adventure which when people finish reading that story…they’re going to look at the people sleeping in the shop doorways, they’re going to look at these people and they aren’t gonna pretend they’re invisible.”
Sometimes the best way to expose uncomfortable truth is to package it into a novel.
2. Acknowledge your growth areas
“The hardest time for me was starting out as a very, very young writer. I wrote short stories and sent them out to places that could conceivably publish them, and they all came back. And I looked at the stories which went out and came back and went out and came back, and I thought, ‘Okay, well one of two things is true here. Either I’m not good enough or I don’t understand the world, there’s stuff I don’t get, there’s stuff I need to know.’” -Neil Gaiman
Just like every other writer, Gaiman experienced a lot of rejection early in his career. He used that rejection to learn how he needed to improve.
Gaiman learned how to write stronger conflict into his stories, how to create characters that were more vulnerable and authentic, and how to craft stories that made readers keep turning the page.
Everyone has skills gaps. You must learn your gaps before you can fill them, and rejection is a great (albeit painful) way to identify those gaps.
3. Start a compost heap
“I think it’s really important for a writer to have a compost heap. Everything you read, things that you write, things that you listen to, people you encounter — they can all go on the compost heap, and they will rot down, and out of them grow beautiful stories.” -Neil Gaiman
Every successful author, musician, and artist has received questions like “What are your biggest influences?” and “Where do you find inspiration?”
Gaiman says that much of his creative inspiration has come from outside the world of writing. He credits musicians Lou Reed and David Bowie as two of the biggest influences upon his work, and he says that anything can be used as inspiration for writing.
Everything you encounter in life has the potential to influence your work: overheard dialogue in a coffee shop, that song on the radio you can’t get out of your head, the television scene that perfectly depicts the sexual tension of a first date. Don’t limit yourself to only the influences in your genre. Drink from a wide-brimmed glass of creative inspiration.
4. Reveal a little too much of yourself
“I wasn’t really prepared to say anything true about who I was. I didn’t want to be judged. I didn’t want people reading any of my stories to know who I was or what I thought or to get in too close. And I realized that if you’re going to write…you had to be willing to do the equivalent of walking down a street naked. You had to be able to show too much of yourself. You had to be just a little bit more honest than you were comfortable with.” -Neil Gaiman
If you’ve never read Neil Gaiman before, many of his books could be described as…weird. His book American Gods pits old-world mythological gods like Odin and Loki against new-world “gods” like technology and television. Anansi Boys tells the story of a man finding out his dead father was an incarnation of the spider god Anansi.
When he started out as a young writer, Gaiman worried that the types of stories he wanted to tell would give strangers too much of a view into his soul. Then he realized that’s exactly what readers wanted to see: they wanted him to spill his authentic self onto the page. Once he began doing that, he gained more readers.
Every story contains a snapshot of its creator. Are you refusing to pose for that picture? Give your readers what they want: a story with personality and authenticity.
5. Pay attention to the strangeness of humanity
“People are so much more interesting and strange and more unlikely than anything you could make up.” -Neil Gaiman
When I watch MasterClasses, I take copious notes. As I was writing the above quote while watching Gaiman’s MasterClass, I looked out the window and watched a teenager in a fluorescent yellow jacket ride past on a black unicycle. (I swear to God, I did.)
Gaiman says, “Every little detail that you can steal from the world and smuggle with you into your fiction is something that makes your world more real for your reader.”
Strange people and stories are all around you. You just need to take the time to look for them. Great characters and stories are borne from true characters and true stories.
6. Don’t tell readers how to feel
“I would much rather not tell you how to feel about something. I would rather you just felt it. I will tell you what happens, and if I leave you crying because I just killed a unicorn, I’m not gonna tell you how sad the death of the unicorn was. I’m gonna kill that unicorn, and I’m gonna break your heart.” -Neil Gaiman
Many professional authors preach “Show, don’t tell.” Even though that advice is commonplace, Gaiman’s unique spin on that advice is more memorable than most.
Create emotion in the scene without dictating emotion. Give readers a reason to care about the characters and the events they read, and their emotions will follow.
7. Get the bad stories out of your pen
“I think as a writer, and especially as a young writer, your job is to get the bad words out, the bad sentences out, the stories that aren’t any good yet. And you don’t ever get them out going, ‘I’m gonna write a really bad story now. I just have to get this out.’ You think it’s a great story, you think it’s a great idea, you think it’s good at least — and it may be — but the most important thing is just you got it out.” -Neil Gaiman
Writing requires a little bit of ego. Hitting “publish” is a writer’s implicit way of saying they believe their words are worth someone’s time to read.
But as Gaiman reminds us, we often learn as we go that we aren’t as good as we think we are. And that’s okay. Writing is about growth — not perfection.
Leverage your self-confidence. It will give you the gumption to publish your work. But then surrender your ego to the reality that your writing still has a long way to go.
It is only through the continual act of hitting publish that you can develop, learn, and grow. Get out the bad stories. Listen to reader feedback to learn how you missed the mark. Then tweak and publish your next story.
8. Stumble upon your voice
“After you’ve written 10,000 words, 30,000 words, 60,000 words, 150,000 words, a million words, you will have your voice, because your voice is the stuff you can’t help doing.” -Neil Gaiman
Every new writer wants to find his or her unique voice. Gaiman believes that developing a personal voice is a natural outcome of writing, so there’s no need to worry about finding your voice. Just write.
Gaiman recently went back to read the first story he ever wrote. Most of it sounded like other writers, but he said there was a page and a half toward the end that sounded like his current voice: “Yeah, 22-year-old Neil, actually the voice was there. I just had to do a whole lot more writing.”
Release yourself from the perfectionistic obligation to create your own voice right now. Just write. Experiment. Write as much as you can. You’ll eventually learn what YOU sound like.
9. Create mutually exclusive desires
“Everything is driven by want. Everything is driven by need. And everything is driven by characters wanting different things, and those different things colliding. And every moment that one character wants something and another character wants something mutually exclusive and they collide, every time that happens, you have a story.” -Neil Gaiman
Gaiman says inexperienced writers often struggle to create conflict and tension in their stories. In life, conflict is a negative thing that people try to avoid or quickly resolve, so it’s difficult to convince your pen to spill conflict onto the page when you sit down to write. But conflict is necessary to create a compelling story.
Put your characters at odds with each other. Create a zero-sum game. Few good stories end with everyone smiling at the final curtain. Someone needs to win and someone needs to lose.
10. Give your characters “funny hats”
“When you have a lot of characters wandering around, you need to help your reader…And one of the ways that I’ve always liked to do that is what I call ‘funny hats’…You give your character something that makes that character different from every other character in the book.” -Neil Gaiman
My wife and I have been watching the Showtime series Billions. Partway through Season 3 of the show, we realized that we had been confusing two characters with each other. Then we realized that not only did the two actors look similar but their characters had similar names: Ira Schirmer and Ari Spyros. The names Ira and Ari are even mirror images of each other. No wonder we were confused!
Gaiman recommends writers to “make sure that when somebody comes on, they don’t look like anyone else, they don’t sound like anyone else.”
Choose a defining characteristic for each person in your story. Differentiate through visual cues, speech patterns, or memorable character traits. Paint vivid descriptions to ensure your readers are never confused.
11. Ask yourself, “What is this story about?”
“The process of doing your second draft is a process of making it look like you knew what you were doing all along.” -Neil Gaiman
Gaiman says he always begins with a broad idea in mind for his story, but he often doesn’t know what the story is truly about until after he’s finished the first draft. At that point, he reads what he has written and asks himself, “What is this story about?”
“The question, ‘What is this about?’ is what gets you from the first draft to the second draft because what you’re then doing is you’re going, ‘Okay, in which case what I have to do now is buttress what the story is about and eliminate those places where I’m writing stuff that isn’t what the story is about,’” says Gaiman. “And it gives you just a wonderful, easy yardstick for what stays in and what goes out.”
12. Separate feedback from advice
“You always have to remember when people tell you that something doesn’t work for them, that they’re right. It doesn’t work for them, and that is incredibly important information. You also have to remember that when people tell you what they think is wrong and how you should fix it, that they’re almost always wrong. If you try and fix things their way, you’ll be writing their story, and you have to write yours.” -Neil Gaiman
It’s easy to confuse feedback and advice, but the two are very different. Feedback is telling someone what they did poorly. Advice is telling them how you think they should fix it. Although he doesn’t use those same words, Gaiman distinguishes between the two and recognizes that others’ advice is often not as helpful as they may think.
You know the story you want to write. If someone tells you that one of your characters is behaving in a manner inconsistent with that character’s personality, education, or upbringing, pay close attention and try to fix that mistake. But don’t fall into the trap of rewriting chunks of your story just to appease someone’s idea of what your story should be.
13. Do just enough research
“It’s like you’re a smash-and-grab robber. You are gonna put that brick through the window, then you’re gonna reach in and grab everything that you need and run away and use it, because honestly, you don’t want to spend ten years researching manners and morays in British public schools of the 1870s in order to get your story perfect.” -Neil Gaiman
This advice flies in the face of other authors like Margaret Atwood who pride themselves on their deep research. Gaiman advises writers to not get “trapped in a vortex of research” because it can pull you away from your writing.
Determine the right amount of research for the type of story you’re writing. If you’re writing a biography on Eleanor Roosevelt, you will need to err on the side of over-researching your work. But if you want one of your historical fiction characters to meet Eleanor Roosevelt in one scene, then a “smash-and-grab” approach probably works for your research about the former First Lady.
You’re the expert on your project. You determine what level of research will give you an accurate and representative perspective on your topic.
Neil Gaiman is a wordsmith who deserves emulation. If you can follow his advice above, you’ll become a stronger writer and storyteller.
Happy writing!
8 Lessons from Neil Gaiman’s ‘Make Good Art’ Speech
6. “Do things you are uncertain about”
On May 17, 2012, Neil Gaiman rose to speak at the commencement ceremony for The University of the Arts. His recorded speech has inspired artists beyond that graduating class. The transcript has been published as a book and the YouTube video has garnered millions of views.
I was handed the transcript by a friend, back when I didn’t know who Neil Gaiman was. I read it, and then I reread it. I took out a highlighter and read it again. At that moment, I decided to pursue writing, a passion I’ve had ever since I was a child. As that journey began, I found myself reading or watching the speech whenever I needed inspiration. When I convinced my parents that writing was worth pursuing, I reached for my copy of the transcript, covered in highlights and underlines, and read it to them.
At this point, I know the speech almost by heart, and whenever I need advice, these words return to me. The entire speech is golden, but these quotes are the ones I reach for the most.
8 Lessons from Neil Gaiman that have helped my writing career
1. “You have no idea what you are doing”
When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing.This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.If you don’t know it’s impossible it’s easier to do. And because nobody’s done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.
This was a relief for me to hear. Starting a career in the arts is like entering adulthood. You have no idea what you’re doing, and it’s a relief to hear someone consider that a good thing. That’s the beauty of being young or being an artist; we’re brimming with optimism and ideas and there are no rules to tell us no.
2. “Keep walking toward the mountain”
Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be — an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words — was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.
Whenever I was at the crossroads, I remembered this quote and decided which direction would take me closer to my end goal.
As newly emerging artists, we may have limited options and resources when it comes to choosing jobs, but we could make other decisions that affect our end goals, such as our routines, habits, hobbies, even our social circles. And when we choose our ‘main hustle’ (since making art full-time is luxury for already-established artists) we determine how that would affect our time and energy for our art.
3. “Put out ‘messages in bottles’”
A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.
This has helped me get through rejections, and worse, no responses at all.
My friend gave me advice for my wedding day, “Expect ten things to go wrong, so when something does, it’s just another check off the list.” Imagining that there’s a quota of submissions I have to send before I receive an acceptance helps me overcome each no. It’s not a slap in the face; it’s just another rejection to tick.
And every time there is appreciation or money sent back to me, it’s even more rewarding since all of those other responses have finally paid off.
4. “Do work that you’re proud of”
…I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. I don’t know that it’s an issue for anybody but me, but it’s true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.
I think of this quote whenever I’m tempted to “follow the market” or jump on trends I’m not particularly fond of. I’d write a story I’m proud of than one I‘m not.
I recently wanted to submit a short story to a fairy tale retelling anthology. I chose Alice in Wonderland, and as I wrote, I thought of my best friend, who is fond of Wonderland retellings. When I finished, I sent the story to the anthology and my friend. I didn’t get accepted into the anthology, but my friend loved it, and that made the effort worth it for me.
5. “Art is the ultimate lifesaver”
And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that’s unique. You have the ability to make art.And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that’s been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.
Inspiration is everywhere, but artists have the ability to take it and turn it into something special. Sometimes we forget how amazing that is and bash ourselves for not creating fast enough or good enough. At times, we need to take the focus away from the end product and just create as only we can.
6. “Do things you are uncertain about”
The things I’ve done that worked the best were the things I was the least certain about, the stories where I was sure they would either work, or more likely be the kinds of embarrassing failures people would gather together and talk about until the end of time. They always had that in common: looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes. While I was doing them, I had no idea.I still don’t. And where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?
This is incredibly encouraging on days when I’m certain that my writing should be demolished from this world. Artists are too close to their work to be objective, so it’s hard to tell what is good and what’s not. There are also so many factors out of our control, like audiences, trends, current affairs, and luck, that determines if a project would be a success or not. But don’t stress. Just enjoy the ride, wherever it leads.
7. “Two out of three is fine”
People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today’s world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They’ll forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as the others if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.
I turn to this advice more than any other. On days when my work feels subpar, I focus on what I can control: being pleasant and being on time. If I’ve got those, I’ll probably be okay, I tell myself.. (More often than not, the work isn’t as terrible as I feared either.)
8. “Pretend to be someone who could”
Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought was going to be difficult, in this case recording an audiobook, and I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it. Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could. She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall, and she said it helped.So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.
This quote is another favorite. The advice is simple, yet so effective. Slipping into the shoes of someone I respect can motivate me to do what I originally thought was impossible. Once I begin, I often realize the task wasn’t as hard as I thought it was.
If you’re interested in reading the full speech, click here. If you want to see the video, click here. If you’re an artist of any kind, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Print out the transcript or buy the book (not an affiliate link.) See which quotes speak to you the most. This speech might change your life, as it has mine and countless others.
In the words of Neil Gaiman:
And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.
THE YEAR IN NUMBER: 1995
1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1995th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 995th year of the 2nd millennium, the 95th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1990s decade.
This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government no longer providing public funding.[1][2] America Online and Prodigy offered access to the World Wide Web system for the first time this year, releasing browsers that made it easily accessible to the general public.[3]
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1995.html
1995 A Car Bomb devastates Oklahoma City Federal Building on 19th April , after a NATO bombing campaign against Serb artillery the Balkans War comes to an end and a cease fire is agreed. In technology Javascript is seen and used for the first time ( only 10 years later very few web sites do not have some form of Javascript running ).
Cost Of Living 1995How Much things cost in 1995Yearly Inflation Rate USA 2.81% Year End Close Dow Jones Industrial Average 5117 Interest Rates Year End Federal Reserve 8.50% Average Cost of new house $113,150.00 Average Income per year $35,900.00 Average Monthly Rent $550.00 Cost of a gallon of Gas $1.09 US Postage Stamp 32 cents Average cost of new car $15,500.00 Loaf of Bread $2.02 Ground Coffee per IB$4.07 Loaf of Bread $1.15 Dozen Eggs 87 cents Below are some Prices for UK guides in Pounds Sterling Average House Price 68,183 Gallon of Petrol 2.70 Yearly Inflation Rate UK 3.5% Interest Rates Year End Bank of England 6.38% FTSE 100 Average 3350 |
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| https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/08/twenty-years-ago-this-week-a-look-back-at-1995/402412/ |
Looking back, 1995 seems like a pivotal year for me. After finishing the Trek book and trying to sell it, an effort which sadly failed, I started a new book, which soon became a series in my mind. It's tentatively called CYBERSPELL and is a sword-sorcery, cyberpunk mash-up, epic fantasy that I am still trying to complete now, today, twenty-five years later. Though I am not currently working on it.
I returned to teaching English at WMU in the fall of 1995, which I consider a boon and an important milestone. It had been five years since I taught my last WMU English class as a graduate assistant.
In relationship life, the semi-serious relationship that started in 1994 is the one I sabotaged by the spring of 1995, having ghosted a young woman who did not deserve this treatment. Clearly, I still carry a lot of guilt for that. By summer time, I tracked down a woman who I had seen either earlier in the year (April 1995) who had been engaged but when I ran into her at a Cranberries concert, she was no longer engaged. I used my secret powers of well-intentioned stalking to track her down and we had our first date in August. Right after, she joined me at the Neahtawanta for my vacation. And so, the relationship that would define the next three years of my life began. The relationship itself would only last about a year, as we broke up in July or August of 1996. But then I would spend the next year trying to win her back, only giving up around June of 1997 and moving on. We tried to stay in touch, but her new partner did not appreciate her being in touch with me, and eventually we ceased being in contact. I have not seen her or communicated with her since either late 1997 or early 1998.
But this woman would be one of the most significant relationships of my life. I was very much in love with her. All part of my journey that brings me to where I am now. I do not regret that this relationship ended.
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| from Laura's wedding - October 1995 - possibly my favorite picture of my MOM |
Brian Eno composed the Windows 95 start up sound.
The odd story of how Brian Eno composed the Windows 95 startup sound
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2008.04 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1859 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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