Season 2, Episode 27: Viva Las Vegas Conference
IN THIS EPISODE
Mel and Abby review their time at Donald Maass’ workshop (“The Emotional Craft of Fiction”) in Vegas. Sometimes you just need to learn with other writers! And spend a weekend in Vegas with your friends, even if you’re moms with an early bedtime. Shoutout to @donmaass - we had a great time!
It was also a great networking opportunity and a great way to meet fellow writers. Even Mel, who haaaaaates meeting new people, found the group small enough to feel comfortable introducing herself and talking about her work.
It always helps to go to things like this with your writer friends, too, if taking a workshop by yourself is intimidating. Turn it into a vacation!
Mel’s lesson for today: How Much Adverbs Suck and Why You Shouldn’t Use Them. Kemlo’s caveat for this is that you shouldn’t use them in place of a real emotion. Don’t stuff complex emotion into an adverb when you don’t have to. Sometimes even a stronger verb can solve this problem, i.e. “he was walking quickly” < “he strode” or “he stomped.”
“Adverbs are a placeholder for more coherent thoughts.”
If there’s not enough on the page to justify the use of your adverb or even your strong verb, the situation needs more work. If you’ve got a super early draft, it’s all right to use these adverbs sometimes, as long as you remember to go back and expound on/replace this emotion during revision.
When Kemlo asks for a flashback or backstory during revision, she’s asking the author to show that the character is using something they’ve already experienced, or know, in order to figure out something else in the story and move it forward. It doesn’t have to be a long drawn out thing, either—a few words or a sentence is enough to make the story richer.
“When people find themselves in various situations, they don’t think linearly – their thoughts are bouncing all over the place. ‘This reminds me of xyz, or when we did this one thing, or this makes me think of a certain person’—that’s how people think. It’s a useful way to do callbacks to previous chapters or scenes.”
