Making art and life with "The Bear"
There's a lot in TV's "The Bear" to relate to for fiction writers. We're looking at eleven lessons of creativity emerging from heat of the show's chaotic kitchen.
My entire household of creatives has been glued to the screen for Hulu’s The Bear for a very specific reason: its unflinching exploration of what it feels like to pursue a creative life. We watch not because of the drama or the food (although both are delicious) but because we recognize the path these characters are walking.
Join me in deepening our creativity as we practice The Writes of Fiction.
“The Bear” and making art (and making life)
The Bear isn’t a conventional series with hooks in each episode to get you to keep watching. It’s not about narrative resolution or satisfaction. It’s an immersion into a state of being, and an often painful state of being at that.
That state of being is best illustrated by the hectic madness of the kitchen. The kitchen operates as a metaphor for how we make art in the world, and how we live life while making art, and how the two things often don’t go together gracefully. Every character is a creator of some type, so the show has evolved into an exploration of how we answer the call to be creative in life.—Keep reading from Grant Faulkner at Intimations: A Writer’s Discourse.
More on the writer’s life: When a manuscript isn’t firing on all cylinders, there are so many ways to shift responsibility: Characters that run away with a life of their own. Plotting systems that strip nuance and meaning. Agents who press for writing to market.
It’s not my fault, writers think; the characters (or this dumb outline, or my annoying agent) made me do it. None of the story problems would have happened if the idea hadn’t been poisoned from without. The author didn’t create this mess; the story is the result of those other things.
But something interesting happens when writers take back the power to shape their stories, free from outside influences. As story development consultant Jeff Lyons explains, this empowerment comes from taking ownership of the creative responsibility, becoming a conscious writer who drives the story every step of the way.—Read more from Jeff Lyons at The Conscious Writer: Taking back your creative power.
10 things you need to know if you’re a debut author
You can get a book deal and yet sadly never see your book in a bookshop. Once you get signed and the book is finished, the sales team still have to sell it into bookshops and they won’t all say yes. Some of them won’t take it at all or it will be online only. This always comes as a shock to debuts who think the book deal is the golden ticket.—Keep reading from Julie Owen Moylan at FictionLand.
More on what new writers need to know: Read the genre you write. Reader tastes and expectations have changed since you were in school. The themes, pacing, point of view, and genre conventions that captured your imagination back then seem musty and outdated to readers today.
Books are an author’s business, and you better believe your market and literary knowledge should be expert level. The only path there: voracious, perpetual reading.—Read more at What every writer should know before writing a first novel.
5 common problems with endings
The whole point of an ending is to resolve the core conflict of a novel. But sometimes we forget what that point was supposed to be, and we end up solving a problem in the climax that doesn’t actually fix the problem posed at the beginning of the story—and the one the protagonist has been trying most of the book to solve.
Make sure the climax is solving the core conflict, and resolve the problem the plot set out to solve in the first place. You might need to go back to the beginning to remember what that was, especially if you have a complex or complicated plot.
—Keep reading from Janice Hardy at Fiction University.
And at the other end, openings: Transitions are a common tripping point. You can almost always do away with travel to the next location in the story (unless the journey itself is the point). Travel, arrivals, greetings, goodbyes—those are interstitial moments, not the story itself. None of that merits your precious word count.
Scenes dip in and out of the story at key points of conflict and tension, when things are popping that actually change what’s happening. Spend your time showing the characters doing things that affect the story line, not merely getting ready. It’s like a theatrical play—don’t show the stagehands changing the scenery, just raise the curtain on the next scene.—Read more at Strategies for smooth scene openings.
When you get the call—and it’s for an R&R
But take a step back, take a deep breath, and sleep on it for a couple days (or weeks). Because an R&R can mean so many different things, depending on the exact message. Here are three potential meanings behind an R&R:
1. I like this a lot. I’m 99% to a yes and just a tiny bit of help getting there.
2. This is not my cup of tea. But if you change it completely, it could be.
3. I see promise here but you need to develop as a writer before we can work together.—Keep reading from Lauren Kay.
More on querying: Agents don’t want to see the mess you scraped together on short notice because you spoke too soon. They don’t want to see the early chapters that you pantsed, your unfinished manuscript that peters out somewhere around the midpoint complication, your outline for an unwritten three-book series, or anything that tells them they’re going to have to invest a lot of time and work into you. Send your manuscript when it’s ready to sell itself—not a minute before.—Read more at How long should you query your manuscript?
NEW: More resources in Friday Craft threads
Yesterday, we tried out a brand new addition to The Writes of Fiction: A Friday Craft subscriber chat.
Writes of Fiction chats are an online conversation thread exclusively for paid subscribers, kind of like a group chat. On Fridays, look for the overflow links from resources and advice I’m preparing to share in the week’s Writes of Fiction newsletter—and you can jump into the discussion.
To upgrade your free subscription and join (only $8 a month—a monthly coffee date that gets you Friday Craft threads, full access to every newsletter and the archives, and monthly Office Hours coaching calls), follow these steps.
How to use the Substack app
Being a full-time book coach and editor, I’m usually at my desk during the day and use Substack primarily from my PC. But if you’re close buddies with your smartphone, the Substack app makes accessing features such as chat quick and easy.
Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.
Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.
That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.
Onward,
Lisa
This is The Writes of Fiction, a curated trove of old and new thinking about writing designed to help you get better at writing fiction.
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