I recently attended a local writer's conference.
Despite the small town setting and relatively small number
of attendees, we had some big names running the
workshops--multi-pubbed, best-selling authors, well-known and
respected agents, university instructors.
Friday night I took a course on character development.
If you've read my other articles, you probably know that I've been
steeped in character development since my agent made the
vague comment on Cassie, Rio and Saul in
Safe In Enemy Arms:
"They're not...3-D enough."
That was about six months ago.
In accordance with my compulsive nature, I went on a quest
for those "real" qualities. I analyzed my manuscript,
outlined each character's GMC, history, quirks. I literally
spent months and months researching the hell out of the
all-important character development. I read books and
articles by the best of the best, took courses, discussed it
via e-mail with best-selling authors.
So, when I took this course at the conference, I wasn't
really expecting to learn anything earth shattering, but
rather seeking that mysterious element of understanding,
grasping at that elusive skill that continued to hide in the
shadows, just out of my reach.
I enjoyed the lecture and the instructor. There was no ah-ha
moment. There was no identification of the missing link. The
majority of his points were things I'd heard or read
somewhere else. He echoed quite a bit of knowledge I already
had rattling around in my brain.
I could have written it off as just that--nothing knew. But
on the drive home, my mind drifted back over the lecture,
reanalyzed his examples. There I found several concepts I
hadn't considered in quite the way he'd presented them,
hadn't taken notice of their importance in my writting to
the degree I should have.
(If/when I get my head around
any of them sufficiently, you'll be the first to know.)
The more I thought about it, the more I saw. The more I saw,
the more I learned.
And, the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know.
Many of you, or rather, those of you with an open mind, are
probably familiar with that phenomenon.
The next day I was lounging on the steps of an outdoor
sitting area with the other conference attendees, doing what
all good writers should always be doing: eavesdropping.
Several of the people in a group nearby had been at the same
course on character development the night before and were
discussing the quality of the lecture and its content.
I
heard things like:
"Nothing I haven't heard before."
"He went off on too many tangents, not a very good
lecturer."
"Have you read his work? It's not very interesting."
And, my favorite, which several of the group's members
echoed: "I got about fifteen minutes of good information out
of it."
It was a ninety-minute lecture. The speaker had written
eleven novels, sold nine of them. He'd taught writing
courses at a Los Angeles university for over twenty years.
He ran his own editing business on the side.
And they got fifteen minutes of good information? They
didn't hear anything they didn't already know? He's not a
good lecturer? His work isn't interesting?
I had the biggest revelation of the conference right then:
The reason so many writers write for years and don't
improve, the reason so many writers write but never get
published, is because their egos are too damned big.
As Ashley Grayson said in his lecture
How to Write a Book
Worthy of a Second Printing: A writer has to be a master of
the craft.
The first step toward mastering the craft: check
your ego at the door.
