How to Write Great Fiction, with Barlow Adams

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now here's your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. Episode 23. Today, we explore the elements of good writing with Barlow Adams, a prolific and versatile writer well-known for both his microfiction as well as his longer projects like the novella Appalachian Alchemy. Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Brad Reed and I am so excited that you're here today.

Thank you so much for being a listener and as always, a special thanks to the members of the Patreon team that keep us fired up and dedicated to producing great content for you here every week. If you're interested in becoming part of our Patreon team, head on over to patreon. com slash bradreedwrites to check out some of the great rewards that you have access to there as a team member. We've got several dozen videos now in our real-time revision series where you get to watch me in real time as I use the techniques and strategies that we explore in this podcast on my own work in progress. It's a great companion piece to the podcast and I hope you'll check that out. Again, that's patreon.

com slash bradreedwrites so you can find that link at our main website bradreedwrites. com. But let's go ahead and get to today's guest. He's a popular fiction writer who is perhaps most well-known for his microfiction, but he's also a poet, an accomplished novelist, and he's a great source of what it means to write great fiction. Barlow Adams is a writer living in the Cincinnati area. He's managed bars, guarded cemeteries, written airplane manuals, and delivered diamonds cross-country.

He's a former journalist and author of two novellas and an upcoming novel. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online journals. You can be sure to check out his pieces this month in former Cactus, Delphinium, Ghost Parachute, and Five on the Fifth. You can also follow him over on Facebook at facebook. com slash barlowjadams or on Twitter at Barlow Adams. I just finished reading his novella, Appalachian Alchemy, and I'm thrilled to have him on the show today.

Introduction to Barlow Adams

Welcome, Barlow Adams. Thank you, Brad. Thank you very much. I'm thrilled to be on the show. Well, we're thrilled to have you here.

So before we get too far in, I need a little pronunciation lesson from you. So I said Appalachian Alchemy. I've heard that word pronounced Appalachian, Appalachian, all sorts of ways.

So tell me if I was right or wrong with my pronunciation. Well, I mean, a lot of people will tell you that, you know, that there's no right or wrong unless you ask somebody from Appalachia and they will tell you that it is Appalachia. Oh, so I think I got it right. A lot of people from the region, you know, will use that. You know, you can tell a lot of times if someone is from the region that that is the preferred pronunciation. Oh, okay.

So my research paid off. So I'm good with Appalachian then. So why don't we start off by having you tell us just a little bit about yourself, what led you to become a writer, and what kind of writing are you passionate about, either that you like to read or that you like to write yourself? Sure. You know, I think like a lot of writers, it's something I gravitated toward early. I was a big reader, you know, and that led to wanting to emulate stories.

Stories have always been a very important part of my life. Growing up as a kid, as a teenager, you know, I was a ravenous reader. When I went to college for creative writing, but initially I was a journalist and a technical writer because those were the fields I got into. And I always figured I would get around to creative writing, which was my passion.

But in the interest of paying bills and things like that, I went the more reliable writing route, I suppose. As far as what I'm passionate about, I love a lot of different kinds of writing. I think that's something that, I won't say it's unusual about me, but I have very few limits on what I write, what I read. I love, you know, genre. I love pulp. I love literary fiction, poetry, all of it.

Exploring Microfiction and VSS365

I don't know, I think it all has something very different to offer, you know, all a different kind of connection to the creative source. Sure, yeah. So I first discovered you through Twitter, the Twitter hashtag VSS365. Can you tell us a little bit about VSS365, what it is, what it's all about, and what you enjoy about it? Yeah, absolutely. It's sort of a funny thing.

It's something I think I've, you know, become fairly well-known from. People contact me about it. And it's absolutely a byproduct of my time on Twitter, which I resisted for a long time. A publisher actually had to prod me onto it pretty aggressively because, like a lot of people, I think that I didn't think Twitter had the value that it's had personally for me. You know, I thought it was more of a, you know, with the word limit and the character limit and things like that. I thought it was mostly, you know, a place to talk about what you had for dinner.

And it is, you know, there's many great posts about what people had for dinner, but it's also a great community for writers, it turns out. And the very short story 365 is probably my personal favorite community. And it's basically microfiction. It's put on by the Flash Dogs, which is a group of writers. They've been doing it for quite some time, but it involves microfiction. Every day there's a different prompt, which is given by a rotating member of the Flash Dogs.

And then you have basically a tweet-long story to write. And it's a lot of fun. It's been a great spark for my writing. And there are some incredibly talented people who take part in it. And the community has got much larger, and it's just a terrific place to write, to, you know, sort of, I think of it as, you know, the spark that ignites my writing every day. You know, I try to do it first thing in the morning, or if I'm up late at night, I will sometimes do it when the prompt initially comes out.

But it's a great experience for that. So you say that there are some very talented writers on there doing these, and I would count you among one of those very talented writers. I'm amazed at your ability to evoke complex characters in such a short amount of time. In fact, if you don't mind, I'd like to read one or two of my favorites, and then maybe you could just talk a little bit about how you go about kind of crafting these pieces of short fiction. Well, thank you for the compliment. Yeah, go ahead.

Sure. So here's one of my favorites. In fact, it might have been one of the first ones that I read from you on Twitter.

So doctor said it'd take years for all the glass from the wreck to worm its way out of her head. Preacher told her guilt took time, too. In the shower, she'd work a sliver free from her scalp, find it with her bare foot, and press down, send a bit of both down the drain.

So if you can call back, I know you write one of these just about every day, if not every day. So these may drift into memory a little bit. But can you walk us through a little bit of your thought process as you were putting this short story together? Yeah, absolutely. Every day, whenever I do one of the prompts, you know, I try to go against, I think that all writers will have an initial impulse, and that impulse will usually be incorrect. Because your initial reaction is to do something predictable.

And I'm not saying that everything has to be strange or a reach, but I try to find a different way, you know, to talk about every prompt. This one, I don't tell a lot of true stories. I'm not a big creative nonfiction writer. I'm getting more into that.

But I tell a lot of stories that have a sort of parallel truth that contain bits of truth. And this one is actually one of those. I dated a girl who was in a pretty bad car wreck. And she was lucky to live. She got in a wreck on the highway and just a mangle of metal and steel. And I was with this girl for a long time.

And one of the results of this car wreck is when the windshield shattered, it embedded glass into her head. And so sometimes when we would be together, you know, I would run my fingers through her hair and I would actually cut my finger on the glass that had wormed her way. And it was not something you notice or anything like that.

But it was just, you know, this small, dangerous indelicacy about her. And sometimes they would come out in the shower. And I thought of that image, you know, as soon as the prompt came up and also how we carry the things with us that we do. You know that we that everything in life is a wreck of some sort, that the memories that we gather from it, the pain and especially the guilt. I'm a big guilt guy as far as stories as far as stories go. And to me, that was just a great image and a great representation for it and the way that we sometimes punish ourselves for things that are our fault and things that are not our fault, too.

Crafting Short Stories

So, yeah, that's beautiful. So I'd like to read one more here and then I want to talk a little bit about the tension that you managed to get within these small little pieces of writing. So here's one. I think this dates is a little bit and accomplish with those first few sentences, even of a novel-length work, is that you want to immediately find that character and find that tension. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Without a doubt. And some of my pieces grow, you know, I wish that I could grow them all to a larger length. I mean, some of them I might be satisfied at that, you know, small razor of a story, but a lot of them I have expanded on, and there are many more I wish I could expand on. And that's another interesting thing, is, you know, every micro is the seed that you plant, and some of them, you know, grow in your mind into this, you know, writhing story, and others, you know, just stay there as that little tiny initial thought.

So I suffer from what I call shiny object syndrome, where I'll be writing a story, and as soon as it gets tough, or I really start slogging through a revision, undoubtedly some new shiny wonderful story idea will pop into my mind and say, oh, this is a better story, right? Forget the one you were working on and run to this new idea. Do you sense some of that with this short little pieces of writing every day? Do they sometimes tempt you kind of off the bigger plan that you're working on? They do, and sometimes they collide, you know, an interesting thing. You know, I wrote, I had a story published by the Molotov Cocktail recently, and it's a combination of a couple of my short fictions, you know, and when I originally wrote them, I didn't mean for that to be the case, but you know, eventually I started writing the story and I took, you know, the framework of one piece and sort of feathered it with, you know, some of the ideas from another.

So yeah, I definitely think we can distract you, but I also think that, you know, every story is a new opportunity, and I don't always think of them as separate gardens, you know, separate boxes. You know, some of my best stories contain, you know, sketches or body parts that I've stolen from other stories. And it's always painful because, you know, it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like sneaking up on one of your favorite stories and, you know, chloroforming it and taking its kidney and leaving it in the bathtub.

So kind of the Frankenstein's monsters form of writing. Yeah, but it works. It really does, because, you know, you have to learn, and it's something I'm still learning, but, you know, I think one of the most important skills of a writer is to try to recognize when you are writing well. I think that that's one of the most difficult things for all writers, at least for me.

But, you know, I try to recognize when I have a paragraph or a sentence or, you know, thank goodness, a page that works, you know, and maybe transpose that somewhere else and, you know, add it to something else and see what happens. And sometimes the results are some of my best work. That's great.

The Impact of Family on Writing

So I want to talk a little bit about your novella, Appalachian Alchemy. And I actually want to start with what was maybe the first page, and it was actually your dedication. Because in there, you say, and for my mother who would have hated this book, but loved that it was about Kentucky. And I think that gets at a often understated aspect of writing, which is kind of having the reaction of parents or friends or family in our minds as we write. I mean, here I am almost 50 years old, and still as I write, I notice that at times my parents are in my head, and I'm picturing not what my ultimate reader might react to, but what my parents or my loved ones might react to. And I think that can really limit our writing at times.

How do you get past that feeling, or do you get past that feeling? Oh, man, that's a rough one. I mean, I absolutely, I think this is a deal. Both of my parents are gone, so that helps a little bit. And I sometimes wonder, you know, if I would write the way I do, if my mother in particular were still alive. You know, I love, no one has ever supported me, you know, more than my mother.

But without a doubt, she has hated, you know, some of the things. I remember when I was in high school, I won this national writing competition. It was probably my first real writing success. And I was so excited, and I was a junior in high school, and I came home, and I showed my mom the story, you know, I was so proud. And she read it, and it had the F-word in the story. And that is the only thing she saw, you know what I mean?

And that was the first time where, and it's such a difficult thing, you know, and of course, you know, she was proud of me for doing, you know, what I did for succeeding. But I had succeeded on my terms and not hers. And I think that that really, you know, that, it can be a difficult thing because writing is a solitary pursuit sometimes, you know, both emotionally and mentally. And when it comes to your family or your loved ones, sometimes it's, they can be your harshest critics because they don't always get it, or it might not be their bag, as it were.

So I guess the way that I try to get past it is, I believe that the best writing has to resonate with you first. I mean, you can't fake, you know, writing at its center. It has some part of it has to scare you or please you or make you laugh. You know, it's the reason we all don't, you know, I remember a professor in college once asked me, you know, he put a book by a popular writer who, you know, their technical skills probably weren't that high. And he said, you know, why aren't we all writing this? You know, why don't we all go home today and write this book, you know, and track the film?

And the truth is we can't because even if you, you know, might be technically more proficient than another writer or whatever, you can't fake their honesty. You know, they have that story to tell. You know, when you hear, you know, that resonates with them. And no matter how good you are, you can't fake that. I don't know anyone who can fake that. You know, the most powerful writers I know cannot fake, you know, the authenticity that comes through in real writing.

Writing Process and Planning

Sure, sure. Well, speaking of authenticity in writing, I want to move on to talk about Appalachian Alchemy in a little more detail, mostly about, uh, just tell us a little bit about the book itself and kind of the process of writing that book. Well, I mean, it's an interesting, this process will make you laugh, but Alchemy was a story, you know, I never really intended to write and I certainly didn't intend to publish. I had a friend who was from the region and she was living elsewhere and she was homesick and she wrote these Appalachian horror stories that I just loved. You know, they were dark, strange, you know, stories and I just loved them. I thought they were so clever.

And so I sort of, but she was homesick, you know, she, you know, was sort of lamenting that, you know, she hadn't read any, uh, anything, you know, any fiction about the region recently that she enjoyed. And so I sort of wrote this story for her. You know, a lot of times I, I, I find that around creative people, I sort of, I don't know, I call it running with them, but you know, they'll write something, you know, sort of gear me up and I'll write something toward them. And, um, it's just this process, you know, this iron on iron sort of, sort of deal that, you know, really gets my engine revving. And this story is one of those cases.

So I wrote it, um, it sort of got out of hand, you know, I intended it to be a short story at first and it kept going, but I wrote it for, you know, for her pretty much for a, an enjoyment. And then after I, I had it done, I figured I should do something with it. And that's what happened.

So would you consider yourself a planner or a pantser when it comes to writing longer pieces of work? Somewhere in the middle. I would say that I know almost every story I write, I know how it begins and I know how it ends. The middle, I don't, I don't always know. The middle is sometimes a surprise, but I know where I'm starting from and I know where I'm going. You know, if you take alchemy, I knew that first scene and I knew that last scene, you know, I may have had tent pole scenes in the middle where I thought this is going to happen.

And some I discovered along the way. But for me personally, I like to know what my destination is. For sure.

Striking a Balance in Storytelling

So one of the things I find most challenging about writing is striking that balance between telling the audience too little and telling the audience too much. I think readers need what I think of as little mysteries to keep them engaged and turning the pages. But we also don't want them frustrated and lost if we tell them too little.

So how do you go about striking this kind of balance in your writing? Because I think it's actually something you do really well, even in your, in your really short, your micro fiction, there's always some element that you leave for the reader to kind of But she definitely is a straight shooter and I rely on her because the problem with beta readers is if you have a bunch of them, I think they're fantastic. Like if you have a hundred beta readers, I think they're fantastic.

But, you know, we've all, you know, if you've gone to a writing workshop, we've all gone to a writing workshop and given our story to 10 people and had, you know, 10 people say 10 completely different contradictory things. Absolutely. So, and that's one of the frustrating things about, and I think as a workshop participant, you know, you're expected to find something you don't like with the story.

So, you know, you're looking, you know, so yeah, I think that that can, can sort of be an issue, but I think, you know, um, if you have two or three people who you trust, you know, you trust them, you believe in them as readers or writers or whatever. I think that those people are worth their weight in gold. And especially, you know, if they're honest, I mean, honest, honest people who are invested in your work and aren't afraid to tell you when they love something and when they hate something, I think are a writer's best friend. I think there is no substitute for those people. If you have them, buy them presents. I don't know, hug them.

So find wonderfully abrasive people in your life is what I'm hearing. Yes. Yes. And not everybody works that way. I mean, you know, I know some people, you know, don't like that, but I, I have a lot of trouble telling when my own writing is good. You know, that like I can tell, and sometimes the better it is, the, you know, it dangles on that, you know, precipice of being, you know, exactly right or, you know, just over that edge into catastrophe.

The Power of Concision

And, um, and it's hard to know that about yourself, at least for me. So before I let you go today, I want to talk to you a little bit about concision and good writing. I know that's something that you're passionate about. Um, one of my favorite pieces of writing advice come from, comes from a book called On Writing Well by William Zinser. And he recommends that writers try to reduce their rough draft by half when they're revising, which seems like a mountain of editing to do and intimidates a lot of people, but it's something that I actually shoot for and encourage a lot of my students to shoot for. What is your take on the power of concision in writing and how does that kind of, what does that look like in your own revision process?

I mean, I'm, I'm an enormous fan of, of concise writing. It's something, you know, if I had to pick the, the length of story that I'm most comfortable with, it would be the novella. Um, and I have so much respect for, uh, you know, books like, uh, The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies, just because of what I think is the sweet spot of length where they are everything and there's not, you can go through those books and, you know, you're looking for a wasted paragraph and you cannot find it. Right. And to me, that, I don't know, it's the apex of, uh, of, you know, writing for me. It's sort of fallen out of fashion, you know, longer books and, and enormous series have, have, have, you know, sort of taken over the day as it were, because, um, I think it's easier for people to continue to read the thing they like, you know, they want more of the thing they, they like, but I, I'm a, I'm a big believer in concision.

And I think, I think that the number one sin of most beginning writers is overwriting because writing is, is, you know, the most interesting of skills because everyone can do it basically. It's not something that, you know, you need to go to school for eight years to do, you know, anyone could write everyone listening. It's like speaking. We can all do it.

And so the first thing that separates writers as they begin to be, you know, professionals or, or talented amateurs is the ability to describe the ability to paint a picture. Um, that's, that's the skill they develop first. And that's the thing they can do that sets them apart from, from normal people, quote unquote normal writers.

And so a lot of times they embrace this, you know, we embrace this and we, you know, go about throwing about our, you know, the most expensive words we can gather and the most elaborate descriptions that, that we can offer. But at the end of the day, that's not what writing is about. And I think the better you get, the more you save your gold, you know, you save your pearls to scatter them, you know, sparingly because the heart of writing is the story is the emotional connection. Um, you know, the tension that you spoke of, you know, you, someone may write beautifully or be incredibly clever, but most books that I remember that, that have an impact on me have had that impact because they have affected me emotionally because they touch me because in, you know, some moment, I think back to them and they're, they reflect on something that I honestly and truly feel. And I think that's what you're going for. And you know, that is, that is, you do that by consistently progressing a story in a way that affects people, not, not by impressing them or, or literary fireworks or anything like that.

Advice for Aspiring Writers

Absolutely. Yeah. So I want to close with a question that I ask all of the writers that join us here on the podcast. Um, if you could go back in time to when you first started writing or before you first finished or published your first piece of writing, what piece of advice would you give yourself? Wow. I mean, I, I guess, you know, David Foster Wallace, you know, he has a quote and I'm, I'm paraphrasing here, but you know, it basically says that, you know, he said that I used to think I was special and that idea almost killed me.

And I think that that is the thing that hurts a lot of writers because we believe we don't understand writing. We don't understand the process. We don't understand that it's a journey. You know, we believe that, you know, we know we're talented because people have told us that and we think, you know, we fully expect to, you know, scribble out a story and have somebody hand us $10 million, you know, or a book deal, you know, and we, we want to be flying around the country, jet setting and all that. And I guess the thing I would tell my beginning self is that it's not that you're special that will help you. It's not the ways that you are different from other people that will make you a successful writer.

It's the ways in which you are the same. And that's what, you know, I strive for in my work is, is that connection, you know, to, to be for a second, you know, a hand held up that somebody touches through my writing and, you know, we experience that anger or that loss or that hope together. And, you know, you do that, you know, not by being brilliant. You know, I think brilliance is, is overrated as, as, as a writer. You do it by being, um, accessible, approachable, and real. And those are the things that I, you know, value most about my writing and, um, that I, that I try to instill in every piece I write.

I would also tell myself, you're going to fail. That's another one too. You're going to fail. You're going to fail a lot. Learn to love the failure. You're going to learn to, to love that process.

Sure. So Barlow, I used to go to a lot of live local music performances and every once in a while I'd find or I'd hear a band that I was just dumbfounded, hadn't been discovered and offered a huge record deal yet. And your writing kind of reminds me of that kind of experience, but with writing instead. I really think people need to hear your writing, uh, whether that's in the short bursts like the VSS365 or in longer, more traditional forms. And I'm so grateful that you've given us the opportunity to help more people discover your writing today, uh, by being a guest here on the show.

So I just want to thank you so, so much for that. Yeah, thank you. That's an enormous compliment. I'm, you know, I'm honored. Absolutely. Thanks.

It's been a lot of fun. I love talking about writing and, uh, it's been a blast. Well, I think we're going to have to do it again one of these days. Sure. I'm up for it whenever you say.

All right. Thanks, Barlow. Thank you. Today's wise word comes from writer Bernard Malamud. He was a fellow Oregon state alum, so I'm celebrating for him for that, but we're also celebrating Oregon state's recent win as the national championships in baseball.

So go beavers. So anyway, uh, Bernard Malamud, um, he offers some great insight on how he approached drafting and revising his work. And here's what he said. I would write a book or a short story at least three times once to understand it the second time to improve the prose and the third to compel it to say what it still must say. Somewhere I put it this way. First drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say.

Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.