Robyn Bradley's Blog: Missed My Stop!

Writers write. Right?

Yes.

But!

The smart writers know when to shelve a work-in-progress.

Case in point: I recently finished 11/22/63 by Stephen King.

It’s a time travel story that centers on this question: what would happen if JFK had lived? I CRUSHED ON THIS BOOK SO HARD. Here’s the thing about King: he is so versatile, and he has evolved so much as a writer. So if you tried him in the past, meaning decades ago, and he wasn’t your cup o’ tea, consider trying him again. Consider this book!

I digress. Back to my point. In the afterword, King says this: “I originally tried to write this book in 1972. I dropped the project because the research it would involve seemed far too daunting for a man who was ...
Read More

I’ve been bitching to my writer friends (and anyone who’ll listen) that I can’t seem to write a goddamn story without some weird time warp timeline. WHY CAN’T I WRITE FORWARD? Meaning I start at point A and move to point B and then C and then D until I get to the end. FLASHBACKS SHOULDN’T BE MY ENEMY.

But the other day, after coming off revision #5968657475457 for book #3 and returning to book #4 (the one giving me hives because of the timeline), I took a step back and asked myself, Well, why CAN’T I write this forward? What’s stopping me but me?

HELLO LIBERATION.

Yes, it sounds so simple. It IS so simple. But my brain and heart had to meet up, apparently, and be ...
Read More

I recently finished binge watching Orange is the New Black (OITNB). I definitely enjoyed this series. I wouldn’t use the word “love,” but I definitely liked it, and I’ll be watching season 4 when it comes out in June.

What I DID love was the way the writers presented character backstory. 

Three takeaways…

1. ALL characters have backstories. Even minor characters. It’s easy to allow secondary or third-tier characters to wallow in the land of one or two dimensions. OITNB does a fabulous job of revealing character backstories through flashbacks. Now, I’m not sure this would work in a network show where you have to wait week to week for the story to unfold. But for a Netflix series where you can binge 13 episodes in a short amount ...
Read More

I haven’t read Liane Moriarty yet. Everyone keeps telling me this is a good one. I love taking a deeper dive into my genre of psychological suspense.

Some writers worry about reading novels as they’re drafting, especially if the novel is in the same genre. I used to feel this way, but less so now. If it feels too close, I’ll stop.

For #TBT, I’m digging into the radio archives. When I was a pup and still finding my voice, I worked for a Boston radio station as the producer of a morning show. This picture is from 1995-ish. I’m in the green. Next to me: morning show host Gary Dickson, the incredibly talented Moneen Daley Harte, and, yes, Tony Randall (google him, kids).

One of my many tasks included editing down long interviews (think 10 to 15 minutes) to 90 seconds. This was the best instruction a future writer could ever get on the subject of revision. My boss, Don Kelley, would remind me whenever I was whining that I couldn’t possibly cut out one more thing (because it was SO IMPORTANT) that only I would know what ...
Read More

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I’ve tried explaining this before, but I wasn’t sure if I was alone in my feelings. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon this quote from Le Guin that I realized she feels it and, no doubt, other creative types do as well.

A story isn’t complete until people experience it. I’ll take Le Guin’s quote further and say it’s not just written stories, but also stage plays, screenplays, poems, paintings.

This is why it’s so important to me to share my writing with the world. It’s not about chasing money or fame or awards or anything like ...
Read More

I watched Breaking Bad for the first time last fall and wrote a detailed blog post on character motivation, or the lack thereof for Walter White, the show’s main character. You can read it here.

Here’s the gist: While I enjoyed Breaking Bad overall, the lacking backstories for the show’s main characters sometimes left me questioning their decisions.

For me, character motivation is everything, especially in fiction (and more so in books than TV; I can be more forgiving of TV, like I was with Breaking Bad; more as to why I feel this way in a second).

Character motivation can make or break a story. If the character does something that doesn’t make sense to that character based on what we, as the reader, have come to know ...
Read More

Check out the reviews on almost any book, and you’ll quickly see a pattern emerge: all the 5-star reviews read eerily similar. Ditto for the 1-star reviews. The 5-star reviews will often have lines like “I couldn’t put it down” or “I was pleasantly surprised” or “I loved this book.”

One-star reviews are famous for saying things like “Don’t waste your time and money” and “I won’t be reading anything by this writer again” and “I don’t understand all the glowing 5-star reviews.” (To see what I mean, check out two books that have over 38,000 reviews each: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and The Girl on The Train by Paula Hawkins.)

The most revealing reviews tend to fall in the middle: those well-written, thoughtful 2- and ...
Read More

It’s no secret that many creative types talk about walking inspiration — the magic that occurs during daily jaunts.

I love going for walks (it’s my main form of exercise). For some time, I’d trek around my huge apartment complex (four loops is just shy of two miles). I’d always find interesting things on my walk and post these these daily finds to Facebook. See the image below of CDs seemingly scattered in the wind.

Here’s another shot of a table sitting in a small wooded area dividing the parking lot and main thoroughfare.

This past summer, I took my morning constitutionals around Callahan State Park, a lovely area about ten minutes away from me. Here’s a shot.

And here’s another:

Since the fall, however, I’ve taken to walking this ...
Read More

I was reviewing some notes I scribbled on various legal pads (and envelopes and receipts and business cards) for the book I just finished writing.

One stream of consciousness went like this: Is this a story about depression? Does this character have a child? WTF am I doing????

Made me laugh.

Writers constantly struggle between two extremes: feeling they are ON, every word they write brilliant, and wondering WTF they’re doing. It’s normal. And probably healthy. Because if you spend too much time on either side, you’ll eventually nosedive.

The middle ground is where I’m at most days. Except for the day I wrote that line, apparently.