Character Arcs, Plot Lines, and the Synopsis, oh my

Jul3

My synopsis workshop finished up this past April for RWA’s Outreach International Chapter, and I’ve also been judging in some contests–boy do folks need to figure out their story arc and plot lines (and character arcs, too). This is one place where a synopsis can help you because it highlights every flaw in your story–all the weaknesses come out. Which is why I think editors really ask for these things.

So what are the THREE big flaws that I’m seeing (on a regular basis)?

1) The big one is that there is no plot line or story arc. In other words, the story rambles along and stuff happens.

This usually can be traced back to the main character (your protagonist) not having a strong, clear goal that’s well motivated and which kicks off the main plot line, or the main character’s arc in a more character-driven story. This goal can be as simple as survive a night in a haunted house in order to win a million dollars (motivated by the need for that money to save mom, who is about to lose the family farm), or it can be to win a contest to win her own self respect, or it can be as big as saving the universe. But there’s a couple of important things about this:

A) The main character’s goal must matter to that character–there has to be something personal at stake.

B) There have to be consequences for failure–ones that would shatter than character.

Once these are in place, the character has been set on a path. Now you’ve started a story arc. The stuff that happens now tries to push the character off that path (this is your plot). Worse and worse stuff happens until the character gets faced with a crisis–and this crisis had better be one that pits the character against wants and needs, so that the character has to make very tough choices. This is where the character gets stripped down to their core–to what makes that person tick. (And if you don’t know this, you need to get to know your characters better.)

Now stuff does happen still but it’s all related to the character’s struggles to get what that person wants. And you make it worse for the character by layering  in what a character needs. As in if you’ve stuffed your character into a haunted house for a night, what your character may need is sanity and a sane world, and that haunted house may strip both away from her. Now your character has internal conflict–stay for the money (external want) or leave to be safe (internal need). And now you can add in an antagonist with a conflicting goal.

This is going to complicate the pl0t–and give you more conflict.

Now your antagonist needs to be thought out–as in what does she want and need?

For example, what’s your ghost’s goal in driving everyone out? This is where you do not want to cop out and go for the cliche. In other words, don’t just go for “She’s insane” or “She’s angry because she was jilted.” Those are weak motivations.

Orson Scott Card in his book on Characters & Viewpoint notes that when you’re digging for your character’s motivations, the first three or four things that pop into mind will always be cliches. (If you don’t have this book, go buy it now, then come back to read the rest of this.) These great ideas are cliche because they are cliche–they’ve been used to death. Keep digging for better motivations. This is vital for any antagonist–write this person as if this character is the hero (we’re all heroes in our own stories).

Could be the ghost is trying to protect others from the damnation that caught her–except she’s driving them mad in the process. Or maybe the ghost has a secret she’s trying to hide. Or maybe the ghost is trying to find a body she can inhabit so she can live again. (And see how those cliches creep in as you’re batting ideas around–that’s why you keep writing down ideas.)

Find out what your bad guy wants as a goal. Find out what your bad guy needs, too. We all need love, right? Well, we all need our own internal rationalization systems, too. Even someone who is mad will have their own reasons for doing what they do.

2) The other biggie I see is that in what’s supposed to be a romance, but the romance is put in like an afterthought. The action overshadows the romance, so the story doesn’t seem as if it’s really about two people struggling to build a relationship. This one is tough.

In a romance, the romance is the main plot line. It’s the main story arc. So you have to have thought about both your hero and your heroine. What does each person want from a relationship? What does each one need? This can be different from the action plot line. It could be your heroine needs to save the world from a plague of vampires–that’s the action sub-plot in a paranormal romance. The plot needs to put her in conflict with a hero (and possible love interest). It makes sense that in this case the hero is the head of the vampires–that’ll give you great conflict in both the romantic plot and the action plot. But now you have to figure out what does each person need and want on a personal level–and how are these going to conflict?

Does the heroine need a steady guy? (And what’s her reason for that–did she grow up in an unstable home?) If she needs stable, you want to either pair her up with Mr. Seems-Like-A-Bad-Risk, or with Mr. Stable-But-Boring. And then you add in what she wants. Could be your vampire fighting heroine needs a partner to watch her back–and she gets Mr. Unstable. Or could be she needs a vampire to come over to her side–so she’s got to seduce one into helping her. The trick here is to keep looking for what adds more conflict and more complexity. Pair up the compulsive clean freak with the slob (The Odd Couple is really a great romance disguised by the fact that it has two guys). Layer in reasons for your romantic pair to be attracted to each other–and layer in plenty of personality issues to drive them apart. Make the relationship the focus of the plot.

Then go back to your action sub-plot. Just remember if the main plot line or story arc is all about action, then you’ve got something other than a romance on your hands. In a romance, the relationship is at the center of the story.

3) The third big thing is that every character’s motivations needs to be clear–that means this info must make it onto the page. This is one where I often feel, as I’m reading, as if the writer knows this stuff, but it hasn’t gotten to the page.

There is the story in your head. There is the story on the page. There is the story in the reader’s head. Ideally, all these match. If one is off, the story flops. This is where you want to ask–“Did I put in WHY my character acts this way or feels this way?” In a synopsis, you simply tell the reader–“He hates cats because he was once locked in a closet with ten of them.” You want to make sure the reader understands WHY your character acts as she does.

The other part of this is make sure your reader understands the setup for the story–how the plot line or story arc kicks off. Get a friend you trust to tell the truth to read this, too, and make sure you are not fudging things. It’s too easy to think, “This is good enough.” You need outside eyes here and someone who’ll say, “This doesn’t make sense” or “I don’t believe this.” That is something to fix with stronger motivations. (You can have a character act out of character or do amazing things only if this is sufficiently motivated–if you have cake-making mom suddenly pull out a sword and behead someone there’s got to be something in her background that would explain why she can do this, or she’s doing this because her child is threatened and she’s got adrenaline making her into super-mom.)

Too often I’m reading something and all I think is “why”. Why did that happen? Why does she feel that way. The worst is when a synopsis just says: And they fall in love. Well…why? What’s different about this relationship and love story? What’s motivating the emotion. Again, this is where a friend who will write “why” all over your synopsis can help. Answer every why–or leave the reason for the question coming up out of the synopsis.

There’s other stuff you can do, but if you cover the big three, you’ll have a much stronger book (and a stronger synopsis).

Throwing the Reader into the Deep…

Jun26

SeaThere’s a recent trend in the contest I’ve been judging, and not a good one. And I think the confusion comes from the idea that you want to open fast and with action. This can be a good thing…or very, very bad.

First, let’s look at some wrong ways to open a book with a fast pace.

Action that’s just action for the sake of the characters doing something does not help your readers. The opening needs to set reader expectations about the tone of the book—so just action ends up giving the reader a mistaken idea about the book. Much better to open with your main character in a scene where something key about the character is show—and even better to have the action relate to the main plot.

Characters piled into the first few pages is another way to confuse readers and make it hard to get into the story. This is like walking into a party where you don’t know anyone—you tend to want to walk out again. Start with main characters and ease the reader into introductions.

Setting skipped past is yet another way to leave readers wondering about the story. This one is easy to if you’re busy with just a fast-paced happenings—but the reader has to known where and when the scene (and the book) starts. What’s the time of day, is the weather cold or hot, and the world like? The reader needs a little time to settle into the scene and the book. Every book needs this, but this is vital with historical, paranormal romances, or any book with an other-world setting.

Danger is often put into the first page and that can work, but only if the reader cares about what’s going on. A better way to think of this is that conflict and tension do not have to be instantly dialed up to ten—an opening scene with something as simple as a child’s lost shoe can involve the reader in the story if you first take the time to establish characters the reader can care about.

Dialogue can lead to a good or bad opening—this one can be tricky. You might have a great line—but if it feels stuffed into the opening, it’s not going to work. I’ve seen scenes that were obviously twisted to try and fit some clever dialogue into the opening. Instead, the scene came out stiff and as if it didn’t belong with the rest of the book.

Backstory, if laid in too heavy, is also going to kill your opening. The thing to remember here is that if you’re going back in time to put in stuff that happened in the past, you are not moving the present story forward. This is where you have to find the balance between weaving in enough information to keep everything clear and understandable, but not so much that you give the reader huge chunks of the past. Keep it to a sentence here and there. Not paragraphs. (Unless, of course, they are utterly brilliant paragraphs—and do not lie to yourself and tell yourself they are brilliant when they are not.)

Those are the main ways to do it wrong. How do you put in an opening that grabs the reader?

We all know these openings when we read them. Go out and read them. Take them apart and see how others do this. Dick Francis, the mystery writer, is a master of the fast opening that sets up the world and gives you an immediate likeable, sympathetic character. Nora Roberts is another writer who always starts her stories at the right place. When you find writers who give you great openings, don’t just read the rest of the book. Stop, take the writing apart. Look at the descriptions, the balance of narrative to scene (telling to showing), look at the viewpoint control, the words used, the sentence structures, the metaphors. Then look at your own work. Are you applying the same techniques? (Techniques, not same word—your writing will come across as stale if you try and put in sentences and phrases already used by others.)

Most of all, keep in mind the question—are you leading your reader by the hand into a nice swimming hole. Or are you pushing them into the deep end without so much as a lifeline? No one likes to be shoved into something, least of all a reader. Introduce your characters to your readers. Set the stage. Make the world come to life with just enough of the right descriptions (the ones that matter most to the story and the characters). Readers everywhere will thank you.

Stop. Look. Listen

Jun18

Summer comes early to where we live in New Mexico—and when the warm weather shows up you want to get out into it (meaning the time at the computer writing can suffer). But my goal is to get my pages done early—except when I can’t. Life happens, of course. And sometimes the story stalls out. But that’s not writer’s block. It means something’s wrong.

The phrase I was taught as a kid was that at road crossings: stop, look, listen. Well, when the story stops, I’ve found it’s wise to apply the look and listen. While I don’t believe in writer’s block, I do believe the subconscious is always at work—and sometimes it hits you upside the head to get your attention. The reasons for the stop?

1 – Wrong viewpoint. If you’re in the wrong character’s viewpoint you’re not getting the most emotional bang from a scene, that’s a great reason for the subconscious to rebel and stop the action. A viewpoint switch is the first fix I apply and most of the time that’s the fix needed to get the flow going again.

2 – No conflict (or I don’t really understand the conflict). These are scenes that ramble along until you want to put a bullet in them. The fix here is to ask if you really understand what each character wants in that scene—and what’s stopping each character from getting that want. (This one also impacts dialogue—as in you do not want characters speaking too much to the point, but if you don’t know what the point is, the dialogue is going to wander along with the scene.)

3 – Breaking at the wrong point. I try to stop every writing session in the middle of a scene and the middle of a sentence, right where I know what the next words are going to be. This means I’ve primed the start of the next writing session. Every time I break at the end of a sentence—or worse, the end of a chapter break—it’s hard to get back into the scene. Because I’m into a new scene. I’ve learned to use tricks to get my head back into the story and stopping when the writing is still hot is a good one.

4 – Introduction of a new character—and you’re not sure of the personality or voice. Some characters are gems—they show up knowing their lines, and walk onto the page ready to steal the story. Some characters are shy and it takes chapters before you hit on their voice and their core issues. I’ve learned that whenever a new character comes into a story, it’s a trip time for the writing. Knowing this means I’m ready to deal with it—tensing up and fighting the stop is a great way to keep it around for a long time.

When you hit one of these stop points, look at the pages. Are you in the wrong character’s head, do you know the conflict. And listen to your characters—are they telling you you’ve got the conflict wrong, do you have that character’s voice showing up in dialogue. Reade your work aloud and listen to it–that may show you what’s wrong.

If you stopped writing at a chapter end (or a sentence end), go back and edit a couple of pages to help you pick up the scene.

Listen, too, to what your writer instincts are telling you—the stop may be because a setup you have three chapters earlier isn’t going to work. Or maybe you forgot a key line and motivation in the opening of the story and if it’s not there, the scene you’re working on is dead.

A stop is not a stop if you turn it to your advantage. And take advantage of the summer days, too—sometimes a long walk is just what you need to get your subconscious to tell you why it stop the show.

This entry was posted on June 18, 2012, in Uncategorized. Leave a comment

Susan Squires Guest Blog: Set the Stage – Part II

Jun14

Do You Believe in Magic?Today Susan Squires Guest Blog Part II on Settings, with examples from her own work….

Susan Squires is New York Times bestselling author known for breaking the rules of romance writing. She has won multiple contests for published novels and reviewer’s choice awards. Publisher’s Weekly named Body Electric one of the most influential mass market books of 2003 and One with the Shadows, the fifth in her vampire Companion Series, a Best book of 2007. Her latest book is Do You Believe in Magic? which is available in print or as an ebook.

Susan has a Masters in English literature from UCLA and once toiled as an executive for a Fortune 500 company. Now she lives at the beach in Southern California with her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural thrillers, and three very active Belgian Sheepdogs, who like to help by putting their chins on the keyboarddddddddddddddddd.

And now let’s hear from Susan:

SET THE STAGE PART II

As an exercise, look at your current work in progress to be sure that every setting has at least some description. Then ask yourself, “Have I used the most telling details, ones that not only describe my setting, but my theme or my character?” Then continue with the question, “Do I need all this description for my reader to get the idea I’m trying to convey?” That’s a good place to start.

Now, I still struggle with this every day. Here are a couple of examples from my latest book, Do You Believe In Magic?, the first in my Children of Merlin series about the big and very successful Tremaine family who are descended from the wizard of Camelot. Each sibling will come into a magic power when they meet and fall in love with another who carries the Merlin gene. This first book is about Tris, the bad boy brother who doesn’t believe in his destiny. He certainly never suspects that he’s met his future in the middle of Nevada in the person of one Maggie O’Brian, a spitfire little rodeo rider.

First, a light description that introduces Maggie and Tris, in Maggie’s point of view, in the second scene of the book. We won’t be back to the diner, but her truck and Tris’s bike tell us a lot about them.

It was a hundred miles into Fallon. She’d been so anxious to get away, she hadn’t eaten breakfast. Since she was flush, at least for a minute, she decided to stoke up on some of Jake’s steak and eggs. Maggie O’Brian’s rig clattered into the dirt parking lot next to the diner. The four-horse trailer was one of those old iron slat jobs where the horses were tied in at an angle. It made a God-awful racket when it was empty. Truck wasn’t exactly new either. Ford F250, vintage 1970. But the big 390 diesel did the job. You couldn’t see much of the faded red paint under all the dust anyway, so the dings and dents didn’t matter.

She climbed out of the cab. A kick-ass black Harley with minimum chrome and scarred leather saddlebags leaned on its stand in front of the diner windows, no doubt so the owner could keep an eye on it. Covered with road grit and sporting a couple of dings itself, it wasn’t a Sunday afternoon ride for some rich Hell’s Angel wannabe. That bike had seen action. Maggie pulled open the ancient screen door, the smell of grease and fried pork product wafting over her.

The only people in the diner at this hour were usually locals. It was too early for tourists in the “living ghost town,” of Austin, Nevada. The counter was filled with single old guys, leaving only one empty seat next to a really broad-shouldered man. He was the youngest guy in the diner by probably forty years. She didn’t recognize him. He must be the owner of the cycle. His black leather jacket was slung over the low back of the barstool, leaving a faded blue work shirt, longish black hair, and some three-day stubble the only things she could see.

This, on the other hand, is a major description of the Maggie’s house as the Tris sees it for the first time. The house will be the setting for a climactic scene later in the book and it says something about Maggie, so I took some time with the description. The old rusted truck, the propane tank and the windmill will all be important to the story. Could I have cut it? As I read over it, I think maybe so. We all just keep trying to find the right balance.

A motel actually seemed like a safe haven. Tris couldn’t imagine spending the night under the same roof with Maggie and her father. Or rather he could. He could imagine what she’d wear to bed. Probably a tee shirt. And nothing else. He could imagine hearing her undressing in another room. He could see her slim, muscled rider’s legs and imagine them wrapped around his hips…. Shit. Apparently he’d gone from not giving a damn about women at all, straight to what probably amounted to addiction. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

Her father would kill him if he saw the hungry look in Tris’s eyes.

He chewed the inside of his lip as she turned the truck down an unpaved road, really just two tire tracks in the sandy dirt where the mountains flattened out into desert. The tracks wound through a dry streambed that would have to be forded in the rain. In the distance a clump of feathery gray-green Palo Verde trees clustered around a weathered house with a corrugated iron roof and a sagging front porch. The whole shack seemed about to disappear into the gray and brown colors around it. The roof barely supported a TV satellite dish. A white propane tank that looked like a Tylenol pill settled out a ways from the house and a windmill towered behind it, blades spinning lazily in the desert wind. That well must be their source of water way out here. A pickup, circa ’48, more rust than metal, sat on blocks next to a late ’70s station wagon with peeling white paint. No yard. But he could see a lean-to full of hay bales out back and some pipe corrals with horses milling around in them, peering over the rail toward the approaching truck. He recognized the mustangs he’d watched her gentle but there were others too, less rough looking. As they got closer, he realized the horses were much tidier than when he’d last seen them. The lean-to was freshly whitewashed and the water barrels in the corrals were painted a bright blue-green in contrast to their desert surroundings.

Someone took care of the horse part of the property—the house, not so much.

He caught himself wondering what his family would think of a girl who came from a house like this. Sere and hard. That’s what her life must be like.

Her mouth was set in a grim line as she pulled up behind the station wagon. She cut the engine. Staring straight ahead, she said, “Don’t pay attention to Elroy. You’re my guest here.”

“Okay.” He hoped that word wasn’t loaded with the dread he felt. He tried not to let in an ounce of judgment either. He had no right. But he saw why she wanted to be on the road.

To read more about Tris and Maggie, and learn about Susan, visit www.susansquires.com.

Susan Squires Guest Blog: Set the Stage, Part 1

Jun11

Bestselling author Susan Squires is guest blogging today on settings.

Susan SquiresIn addition to being a New York Times bestseller, Susan is known for breaking the rules of romance writing. She has won multiple contests for published novels and reviewer’s choice awards. Publisher’s Weekly named Body Electric one of the most influential mass market books of 2003 and One with the Shadows, the fifth in her vampire Companion Series, a Best book of 2007.

Susan has a Masters in English literature from UCLA and once toiled as an executive for a Fortune 500 company. Now she lives at the beach in Southern California with her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural thrillers, and three very active Belgian Sheepdogs, who like to help by putting their chins on the keyboarddddddddddddddddd.

And now over to Susan (and the Belgians)….

SET THE STAGE – PART I

Learning to write good settings for your stories can serve two purposes. Setting the scene of the novel helps draw the reader into the book immediately, giving them time and motivation to connect to the characters. Setting makes them feel as if they’ve “gone to another place.” Readers love to be carried away. And if you can connect the setting to the characters, you deepen the reader’s understanding of them, also increasing reader satisfaction. So–setting the scene well is a good thing, no matter what kind of books you write.

First, I admit that description is scary. How much do you describe? How do you know you have described your setting in a manner that will engage the reader? In the end, there are no single right answers to these questions. But I can share a few tricks of the trade I’ve learned along the way.

The concept of using “telling detail” has helped me immensely. First decide what the milieu of the scene will be. Is this midnight in a circle of standing stones? A sumptuous Italian palace in the early nineteenth century? The cubicle farm of a giant technology company? I’ve used all of those. Put yourself there in your imagination. Look around. Listen. Take a whiff. Feel the effect the setting has on your body. Take a moment to really understand what it would be like to stand there.

Okay, got it? Now comes the hard part. If you really described all that, the reader would be snoozing. So pick the important details. What’s important? Well, it’s what tells your reader most about the setting itself, the characters, and about what you want them to get from the story. Do you want the jungle in the Caribbean to be dangerous? Then make it night. The air is so heavy with heat and humidity that your characters can hardly breathe. A reptile of some kind always represents danger for me, or describe noises your protagonist can’t identify. What if you’re describing a small town main street in a contemporary setting? Well, what role will the town play? Is the town poor and your character is aching to get out? Is your town a symbol of the simpler times the characters never want to leave? Those decisions will tell you what details to include.

It goes without saying that you try to involve as many senses as you can. That draws your reader into the milieu whether they want to come or not! You don’t have to mechanically tick off inserting every sense into every description. Pick the senses that will most evoke your story and use them.

Now let’s talk about how settings are related to your characters. The description is either from a character’s point of view, or if you don’t specify, by default it’s from the author’s point of view. The author talking, (omniscient POV) makes the reader feel like she’s watching the scene, not living it. While this was common in novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it’s no longer enough to keep readers reading. Hook your description to a particular character’s POV.

How do you do that? Well, you’ve experienced your setting in your own imagination. Now think about how your character would think about those details, based on who he is, his background and his most recent experiences. How does that change the description? Is the person in your Caribbean jungle a fearful young girl who knows nothing about nature? Is he an ex-military man trained in survival? These two characters would experience the setting differently, and HOW they experience it will tell us something about them. This can be an exciting way to introduce hints at a character’s background and personal characteristics, too.

New writers often make the mistake of piling on the descriptors, thinking it makes their settings more evocative. Nouns are not carefully chosen, every noun has an adjective (or two or three) and multiple clauses say basically the same thing in different ways. This just makes the prose heavy going for the reader. It’s much more effective to choose the right noun and add adjectives sparingly, so they stand out in the reader’s mind. Don’t worry about this in the first draft–just write. But when you go back and revise, cut out the excess. You’ll never believe what a difference it makes in your prose.

Not every setting needs the same detail either. A setting that’s important to your character, or one where much of the action occurs, should have a fair bit of description devoted to it. But if the setting is used only in a single scene and it’s not important to any of the characters, an evocative word or phrase will do.

Do you have to do the description of setting all at once in a big paragraph? Absolutely not. It’s better, in fact, to layer it in. But be sure to start with a little bit of description to ground the reader. I’ve read many contest entries that do a wonderful job with setting, but only get to it three-quarters of the way through the scene. Meanwhile the reader has been wondering, where are these people? Annoying, even if the annoyance is subconscious. You never want to produce a subconsciously annoyed reader.

In conclusion, descriptions don’t have to slow your story down. They can be satisfying in themselves. Choose only a few telling details. Describe the setting through a character’s eyes. And take the time to find the right nouns and a few right adjectives.

 

Check back Wednesday for Part II with some exercises and examples on better settings. To find more out about Susan, visit www.susansquires.com.

What You Feel

May29

There’s a lot of books about writing techniques–and this stuff is important. If craft stuff gets in your way, it ends up bending the story in ways that are not good. Tangled sentences and awkward paragraphs can kick a reader right out of the fiction. However, it’s not just about the craft. You have to have something that matters–to you.

This is where I think so many writers go wrong. A writer heads into vampire territory since vampires sell, or writes a historical without really having a deep passion for that era and a longing to dip a toe into living in that time, or gets caught up in what should be a cool idea. But the passion is missing. This is where you get the good book–the writing may work, but there’s just something off. It’s like eating a pizza where all the ingredients are there, but someone didn’t add the fire needed to take okay into amazing.

You can fake almost anything, but you cannot fake passion.

You also need this because at the end of a couple hundred pages even the hottest need to write has cooled so if you start out anything less than desperate to write a story odds are not good for getting the thing finished.

For me, this passion, the feeling that works to keep working comes from loving the work (and hating it sometimes, too), from needing to write the story, from not being able to stay out of that fictional world. It’s got to be there or you end up with words on a page. Which is not a bad place to start. But at some point you have to put more into it.

And that the scary part–you don’t always know when you’ve got that more.

Sometimes writing is worse than ditch digging (I’ve done both, and the digging breaks your back, but writing can break your soul by inches). Sometimes it feels bad but it’s actually really good stuff. You just don’t know. You lose perspective on it, and that’s what you want. You want to be so deep into it you have no idea. You have to throw everything to the winds and dive in and you just have to be willing to make a fool of yourself.

You have to be willing to write god awful stuff and write stuff that may just be tripe and you have to be willing to write stuff that others may hate, because that also may be your best stuff. To me, this is only fun if you’re taking chances. And what’s the worst of it? Someone slams the work (and, yes, that does irritate, but so what–the work is done and has that person ever written a book?), or someone slams you (not the work, which is even more irritating and these folks need to learn the artist is not the art–there are only glimpses of the artists at that moment in time in the art). But this is also where a cool thing happens.

If you’ve written something you really put yourself into, you don’t care as much about what folks say. Because you have the work in your hands. You’ve done your job and if you’ve given it your best there’s a satisfaction in that. You have something that matters to you–and that’s what you hang onto.

The other good news is that the more you do this, the more this becomes a habit. It never gets easier. But it becomes the default way to write.

Regency Travel: Cary’s New Itinerary

May21

The Post ChaiseWhen you’re writing about the past, too often our references come second, third, or even fourth-hand. We read diaries and letters that are often edited by children and grandchildren. We scan biographies–some brilliant and some shabby beyond belief. And we read books written about the Regency. But sometimes a novelist needs more.

When writing about characters who live in the Regency, we often need t o get into those character’s heads. We need to see how they lived. We need first-hand experience. I’ve been known to read by candlelight–truly an eye-straining experience–brandish a sword, and even try a quill and ink to see what it’s really like.

But there are some books that offer a first-hand experience. And one of my favorites is Cary’s New Itinerary.

At the end of the eighteenth century, John Cary was commissioned by the Postmaster-General to survey all the principal roads in England. He did this by walking these roads, pushing a wheel connected to a counter, which kept a tally of the number of rotations and then produced an accurate mileage.

Between 1787 and 1831, Cary put his knowledge to use and published, among other books, the New English Atlas, The Travellers’ Companion, the Universal Atlas of 1808, and Cary’s New Itinerary. The maps and surveys have some of the most accurate and valuable data about the structure of the Regency world. They also provide an insight into how people traveled in the Regency.

Published in 1815, the fifth edition of Cary’s  goes on to explain that it is, “an Accurate Delineation of the Great Roads, both direct and cross throughout, England and Whales, with many of the Principal Roads in Scotland, from an actual admeasurement by John Cary, made by command of his Majesty’s Postmaster General.”

There’s more detail provided at the front of the book in an “advertisement” that’s more of a preface.

The information alone on roads and distances, with fold-out maps provided, has helped me sort out the practical problems that face any Regency writer–such as, how far is it really between London and Bath? And what roads might one take? However, Cary’s offers much more.

Cary’s divides into neat, organized sections. The man was obviously methodical. The first section lists the direct roads to London–as in all roads lead to this metropolis. The next section gives a list of principal places–i.e., larger towns, that occur along the cross-roads. A cross-road is a road that crosses one of the direct roads into London. At this point, you begin to see how London-centric this world really was. As someone living outside of London, it would be your goal to get to a major town, and then you could get to London. Cary, living in London, wrote his book for outward-bound Londoners, and that is how the book is organized.

The next section is as important to a Regency writer as it would have been to someone traveling in the Regency–it is a list of coach and mail departures. This includes the name of the London inn from which the coaches departed, the towns each coach passed through, the mileage, the departure time, and the arrival time. It’s an utter godsend if you have to get your heroine to Bath at a certain hour on the coach. I can also picture Regency Londoners pouring over this information, planning short trips to the seaside, or to watering towns.

The next section lists all direct roads, as measured from key departure points in London, but this is not just a dry list of mileage. Descriptive notes are tucked into various columns to describe houses of note and distinctive sights. For example, if you’re going to Wells from London, then, “Between Bugley and Whitbourn, at about 2 m(iles) on l(eft) Longleat, Marquis of Bath; the house is a Picture of Grandure, and the Park and Pleasure Grounds are very beautiful.”  This was an era in which slower travel meant taking the time to look at surroundings.

The next section provides a similar treatment for cross-roads, and not to be overlooked, Packet Boat sailing days are listed for England’s various sea ports, just in case an intrepid traveler whishes to travel abroad.

Finally, Cary’s provides an index to Country Seats, or as Cary’s notes, “In this Index the Name of every resident Possessor of a Seat is given, as well as the Name of the Seat itself, wherever it has a distinctive Appellation.”  This is actually a list from the 1811 returns to Parliament, as noted in the book. In the Regency, this actually would have been a much used feature, for it would allow a traveler to look up and visit various great houses and country seats. It was a time, after all, when visitors expected the great houses to always be open for show, and to be gracious in their hospitality.

Overall, Cary’s is not a book that will give you insight into the politics of the Regency, nor into the social structure of that world.  However, between its worn covers lays the description of the Regency world that can put you back into that era, just as if you were traveling the roads of England.

POV — What Readers Don’t Notice (Unless it’s Wrong)

May16

Point of View is a phrase that writers use to death. It’s one of those things that a reader doesn’t notice until it’s done badly. But it’s also one of the most critical skills because it affects everything else in the story.

You don’t really think about until you have to figure out whose point of view gives you the best story.

Now, the “duh” moment here seems to be that well, of course any story uses the point of view of the main character. But sometimes that doesn’t work so well. Dr. Watson is the point of view character in Sherlock Holmes stories so Sherlock can seem smarter. (Watson’s no slouch, but by making him the POV character, the writer can hide clues that Sherlock will eventually use to make amazing deduction.)

My rule of thumb is to use the character with the most at risk in a scene–this gives the scene better conflict and drama. That risk also works better, too, if it’s emotional risk–a character who doesn’t care that a gun is pointed at him is not going to give you great drama if that character doesn’t care about dying. But this is a guideline, not a rule. Also, this doesn’t help with the whole story.

Should you write in third person, first person, multiple viewpoints, single?

This goes back to being a reader first.

What do you read? What do you like to read the most?

I’ll read just about anything, cereal boxes included. But while I like first person stories–when they’re good, they’re brilliant–I tend to read more third person. I’ve written first person stories, but I lean towards third person. But I’ve also learned over the years to control this so it’s a limited third person–I’m not dragging the reader into everybody’s heads.

There are also a few tricks to smooth viewpoint transition.

1 – Use proper names, not pronouns. He/she (or even worse, he/he) tends to put the reader deeper into his/her point of view. By moving out to a proper name, you’re moving the viewpoint out (like a camera would move out), which helps smooth the transition.

2 – Use action to hand off the POV switch. As in: Helen dropped the book. John caught it and handed it back. Notice how the action again moves the reader out of thought and into “seeing” a scene, so the action allows a change of POV by also helping move the POV out a little, into the room before dipping back into someone’s thoughts.

3 – Use clean sentence and paragraph structure to keep the transition cleaning. You can do anything, even change the point of view in the middle of a sentence. But why risk losing your reader by doing this? Instead, make your transitions clean and clear.

If you use POV right, no one will ever notice it. But oh, if you do it wrong, everyone knows.

Writing the Regency Novel

May14

I’m giving a workshop at the RWA National Conference this July (just got the times and it’s Friday at 4:30 – 5:30, so early enough to enjoy dinner Friday). And part of what I’ll cover is why set your fiction in the Regency era?

For all that it covers an amazingly short time span (1811 to 1820) the English Regency has a remarkable allure.  Mystery writers, including the great John Dixon Carr, have chosen this era for a setting, and the Napoleonic wars offer the setting for the popular Sharp series by Bernard Cornwell and the Aubrey/Maturin Series by Patrick O’Brian’s. In Romance writing, the Regency is perhaps the most popular historical time period, and has launched many now best selling authors. But why should such a short time span–nine years really, although the Regency influence extends over perhaps thirty years–prove so magnetic?

Answering that question could be the target of a scholarly book, but space is limited–and time fleeting–so perhaps the best course is to emulate the Regency in brevity, as well as in style, and carry things off with a high hand. Of all time periods, the allure of the Regency might well be that it was a time when style triumphed. The era sparkles with wit, gallantry and elegance in fashion, furnishings and frivolity. It was an era in which a man with no background–Beau Brummell–could become the leader of male society just because of his style and wit. At the same time, Turner was painting and shocking the world with his art, while Byron was writing and shocking society with his life. Charles Fox was being brilliant in politics, and shocking just about anyone who met him. And Sheridan was writing plays that still amuse with their wit.

It was a brilliant era. And an era of the extremes of rich and poor, and yet it was an era in which if you were good at something, you could gain fame and fortune. The prizefighter John Jackson (1769-1845) won fame with his fists, but went on make his real fortune by teaching boxing lessons to the cream of society. For a gentleman to say he got the chance to spare with Jackson was considered a social coup. The status given Jackson makes him perhaps a forerunner of the modern sports superstars. In fact, the Regency could be said to be a time when much of our modern sensibility of admiring skill–rather than inherited status–seemed to take hold.

A full answer to the appeal of the Regency era, however, must look at not just the actual time period itself, it must take into account the fiction and films which have so greatly shaped our impressions.

All this and some details of the history that you have to get right (and what can you fuss with or make up) will be covered in the workshop. But it’s worth noting that the Regency’s reflections to our era cannot be overlooked: change, uncertainty, but still the need for daily routine, and the relief of pleasure. The royal scandals filled newspapers with sympathy for the Princess of Wales, and this left the Prince unhappy about this. There were opportunities for those with vision, and at the same time great risk for those so unwise as to invest in the wrong future.  All of these qualities resonate with us. However, the Regency is blessedly in the past.  It is a world slipped into the past and therefore one with a safely known future.  Somehow these people who lived then found a way to happiness, to prosperity, to joy, to survival.  And what more comforting message can a reader find?

The Pitch, The Blurb, The Writer’s Headache

Apr30

It’s not enough to write a book–you have to figure out the pitch…the blurb…the exciting sentence that’ll make someone want to read a book. So you have to switch from a writing mind to a marketing mind, which is not always easy. But at the Desert Dreams conference this past weekend, I had a “duh” moment–this blurb is the external conflict for the main character.

This is a “duh” moment since it seems obvious, but I’d be struggling with fitting external/internal/more than I need into a short, catchy sentence. I know some folks like high concept–I’m more about interesting conflict.

Paths of DesireSo I’ve been applying this insight to the books, and came up with this for Paths of Desire:

NO MAN’S MISTRESS…

She wants a rich lord for a husband—she won’t end like her mother, abandoned and broken.

NO WOMAN’S FOOL…

He wants to prove to his friend she’s the wrong woman—he knows too well the pain of a bad marriage.

WHEN AN ACTRESS CROSSES PATHS WITH AN ADVENTURER IN 1813 LONDON…

The last thing either wants is to fall in love, but when desire leads to a passion that won’t be denied, how can the heart do anything but follow?

This is way shorter than what I had and I actually think (hope) it’s far more catchier. Can you match these others to my books? (Click on the phrase to see the book.)

Reformed rakes make the best husbands–or do they?

Will it take a Gypsy thief to steal the heart of a rake?

A girl who can tame any wild creature….

A Gypsy lord out to redeem his name…

Some of the lines came out as questions, some as core situations.  The situation ones obviously needed a bit more, but they are at the heart of the book.

So…better maybe? We’ll see in the sales.