Tag Archive | writing

Reading Like a Writer

Aug30

Another writer posted a question the other day to a loop I follow about chapter lengths.  It got me to thinking about how I’d learned where to break chapters from Elizabeth Daly, a fabulous mystery writer, who wrote back in the 40’s (you really have to love stories where everyone stops for civilized cocktails at five).  And that started me thinking about other writers I’ve learned from.

From Georgette Heyer and Catherine Coulter, they taught me about writing dialogue that has the same sharp sparkle as champagne (we’re talking the good stuff, not Cold Duck).

Jayne Ann Krentz and Nora Roberts taught me the importance of likeable main characters. Nora also taught me how to handle viewpoint transitions, and a dozen other things.

Dick Frances gave me great lessons in fast openings with strong hooks that pull you into empathy with the main character and a story that never lets up.

Dan Brown taught me about pacing–and that you really can make all that research into facinating stuff.

Loretta Chase taught me how great narrative can be, that if you work at your writing, you can hold the reader’s attention for anything.

From Susan Elizabeth Phillips I have great lessons on making even unlikeable characters into sympathetic characters–a very hard trick to pull off. And Jane Austen taught me that character flaws can make the entire story.

Connie Brockway taught me that funny is good, a lesson I keep forgetting until I go back to re-read her books.

From CJ Barry I learned about how good SF and Romance are when you mix them with a skilled hand and keep the tension going in both.

There’s lessons from Tate Hallaway and Libby Bray and Melissa Marr and Mary Stewart in how to mix magic and story and make it wonderful and not too complicated (or so crazy it makes no sense). And Jessica Davis Stein taught me in Coyote Dream how all the work to make a good book great is worth it (she wrote and rewrote that book six times from scratch and it shows in all the beautiful craft).

Fantasy writers Ray Bradbury taught me about lyrical prose, and Edgar Rice Burroughs taught how to keep a reader turning the page no matter what–and that writers improve as they write. While western writer Ernest Haycox taught me about strong characters and even stronger, clean, lean prose.

The list goes on and on and on–so does the bookshelves. I’ve learned from the books I don’t like as well–taking them apart has taught me to edit my own work, and it’s shown me mistakes I want to avoid.

Which all goes to show you need to be a reader to be a writer. And it all goes into the pot to influence your work.

All this means, too, that once you start writing, you start reading differently. You stop at great prose and take it apart. You find a passage and you ask, “How did she do that?” and so you study it and figure it out so you can use that trick, too. You become a critical reader, but the very best still make you stop reading and become part of the story so that you have to go back later and figure it out.

So who are you reading today who is giving you new lessons and ideas?

What’s My Motivation?

Aug2

No wonder most folks think they suck at plotting—they do. Lately, I’ve read implausible plots, overly melodramatic plots only missing the villain twirling a mustache, plots so tangled there’s no way you can get the synopsis to five pages and have it make sense, and complex plots where the romance (and the character) are lost in the action. How do you fix this? It all goes back to character.

To quote Robert Mckee “character is story and story is character.” A good story comes from good characters—folks with clear goals and motivations that make sense. The plot then is actually pretty easy—you throw things (events) at those characters that will hit on their weak points (take them off track from their goals) and hit their buttons for their internal issues. The plot tests the characters you’ve created.

If you haven’t done the homework of creating strong characters to start—that means well developed characters—those story people are going to be feel pushed through a contrived plot. This will give you implausible, melodramatic, tangled, and/or too complex plots. This is because you’ll be using action to make up for weak conflict due to weak characterization.

I’m going to be doing my Plotting from Character workshop again soon, and from what I’ve seen in contests lately, a lot of folks could use this. If you start with character, plotting gets a lot easier. And characters need a few things to work well in fiction:

Goals – everybody wants something. Even the character who wants for nothing will still have something that he or she wants and needs – a story is about a character whose life is pushed out of balance. And the goal for that character is to fix this imbalance—to get back to a happy place. Goals work best when they are a specific thing that represents achieving that goal—which is how you end up with things like the Maltese Falcon (it’s something tangible folks can be after—having it in your hands means goal achieved).

Negative goals (to avoid some event), aren’t so great unless you also have a clock running—as in stopping the bomb from blowing up becomes a positive due to that ticker. But something like avoiding marriage is a little harder—since it’s a negative, the reader doesn’t knows when the character has achieved this goal (Is he married now? Married now? How about now?) See—that’s not going to give you a tangible “he made it” goal.

Motivations – to go along with the goals, fictional character needs good reasons for their actions, for their goals. Fictional folks have to make a lot more sense than real people.  And motivations work best if deeply rooted in the characters psyche—the deeper, the better. As in, a motivation that comes from a key, formative event the character’s childhood is much stronger than a motivation that comes from a recent event. For example, a character that needs to find a new job because she’s been fired—that’s motivation, yes. It matters, but it hasn’t been made personal. A deeper motivation comes from that character having been raised poor. So what if she saw her mother crying over a broken down car when she was ten and vowed never to be that person. Now, she’s got strong motivation to get that new job. The motivation has been made personal. And notice how you also want to tie this motivation to a key moment in that character’s life so it will resonate—and you can use that scene then in the story.

Internal Needs – this relates to motivations, and also to goals. Stories work best with lots of conflict, so you want to develop characters with strong internal needs. And hopefully these are going to be in conflict with their goals. So the character who is out of work and needs that job—and has motivations from being poor in childhood—if she’s got the internal need for respect, and she’s offered a menial job with no respect, now her external goals and internal needs are in conflict. She wants the job (external), but she needs respect (and won’t get it from the job). So what does she give up? She’s in conflict, which is always good stuff for fiction. How the character then resolves this conflict becomes part of your plot—and reveals this character’s true colors.

Motivations – just as with goals, internal needs have to be motivated. (Remember, fictional folks have to make sense—much more so than real people.) So this character needs an event in his or her formative years that leaves him or her with deep reasons to have these internal needs. And, again, you want to tie this motivation to deep, core issues—could be the character is compensating for a handicap, and respect isn’t just about being respected.

Characters should have such strong goals and needs that the character (and the reader) should feel as if that character’s “self” will be destroyed by giving up either the goal or need.

And then you throw in the romance (if you’re writing a romance).

Once you create your main character, now you design the love interest, and all the other characters. The love interest is someone with a conflicting goal, conflicting internal needs, and motivations that are just as deep and strong. In other words, this is both the ideal person, and the totally wrong person. This is a soul mate (and I use the definition that soul mates are those people who push all your buttons—they make you grow).

You develop goals and motivations for all characters—in other words, you never have a bad guy who is bad just because he is bad. And you look to develop goals and motivations that go beyond clichés. (Trust me, your first few ideas for goals and motivations will be cliché—that’s why they pop up so readily. As Orson Scott Card advises in Characters & Viewpoint, dig deeper.)

And, very important, you want the story’s antagonist—the person up against the protagonist—to have conflicting goals. Only the protagonist or the antagonist should be able to win the day (and for more on this, study up on Bob Mayer’s talk on Conflict Lock – he’s bestselling author and he knows what he’s talking about).

Theme – this is what helps you with all this goals and motivations stuff, and with all the secondary characters you need. If your theme is about how love heals, you’re going to need hurt characters, and folks who’ve never been hurt by love. You’ll need folks who haven’t been heeled by love—and those who have. You need all sides of the theme. And the main character is going to be at the center of that theme.

Now, with characters and theme shaping up, you can plot. Meaning you look at your main character and you keep asking—What is the worst thing that could happen to this person? You ask this many, many times and jot down the answers. What could prevent this person from getting his or her goal? What would force this person to give up his or her goal? What would push this person to the extreme to get his or her goal or meet his or her needs? Keep pushing, keep making it worse. (Action movies are great to take apart for this sort of stuff—look at Indiana Jones, and how his life just gets harder and harder and harder.)

These ideas for obstacles that the main character must overcome can then be shaped into the main turning point actions—the plot that will test your character. It will also test the main character’s relationship—the romance. You put just as much strain there as you do for any action.

As you do this, you’re coming up with events to throw at your character, but this is not the time to decide yet how your character will act—that come from knowing your character and putting your character into these bad, bad situations. In other words, you set up the obstacle course—your characters decide how to run that course. The story comes out of the characters dealing with worst case scenarios.

Two things about this—first, you need to structure the action so that tension and conflict rises. In a good story, things go from bad to worse—not the other way around. Second, you’ll develop subplots around the main plot, but it’s the main action line—the main character’s driving goal, motivations for this, and obstacles (or turning points)—that should be the main focus. The main story arc must have the main character at its heart—the main character must resolve the story (or fail at this, which makes it a tragedy). And this should be the last set of story points to be resolved. (Subplots can start sooner than the main story, but should be all wrapped up before the main story is in order to create the most satisfying story.)

Notice how all this plotting now comes out of the characters that you set up. Your characters give you your theme, they start to suggest events you’ll need in the story to block them from their goals. For example, you know the woman who need a new job is going to start off applying for new positions—and maybe that’s not so exciting, so you start her where she’s just been turned down for the 100th time. But she starts off trying to do this the easy way—that’s so your story can build and get worse. You know you’re going to make things worse for her—she’s going to be face with choices. Maybe even asked to commit murder in order to make a million dollars. But she’s not going to be asked that right away—that’s going to come after she’s been tested, and tested, and tested more. That’s going to come when she’s more than desperate. That’s going to come when she has so few other choices this extreme one seems a viable option.

Once you get the ideas and characters down in writing, you’re going to check in with a writer friend. You’re going to look at this from all angles to see if it makes sense. If it’s plausible. If every character is well motivated with strong goals. You do this because it’s too easy to think you’ve got it all buttoned up when you don’t. And you’ll find you have stuff worked out in your head that doesn’t make it onto the page—you want to always make sure to get the story on the page as close to what’s in your head.

What this means it that you won’t be coming up with cliché conflict (the heroine is kidnapped and the hero saves her)—conflict will be very specific to the characters you’ve created because it will be deeply rooted in individual pasts. You won’t be stuck with how to escalate conflict and tension, because you’ve got goals and you’re going to take away all the easy ways for that character to reach his or her goals. You won’t be caught with a romance that relies on misunderstandings or mistaken assumptions to create problems in the relationship—problems will be built into your characters.

Just keep in mind—it’s all about the characters.

Titles — What’s in a Name?

Jun26

For some reason known only to the muse of impulses, I stuck up my hand to chair the Orange Rose contest for the Orange County Chapter of RWA when they were looking for such unwise fools as me. Well, it’s turned out to be quite interesting, and a ton of work. As a friend of mine used to say, an experience not to be missed or repeated.

Anyway, I’ve had a lot of titles to view and it’s occurred to me more than once that folks need some help here. A title sets the reader’s expectation. It’s like the first light of dawn–it sets the tone for the rest of the day. It needs to be easy to remember–marketing counts. And it needs to be something to spur the reader to either click on a link/cover or pick up the book off a shelf. (Yes, the cover will help, but the title is part of that cover.)

So it makes sense that you want a catchy title that also intrigues. It’s really nice, too, if the title fits into the theme of a book.

Now, you may say, oh, pish-tosh, the publisher will change the title anyway. Possibly. But a good title is still going to be a good hook into a book (I’ve gotten so I can just about tell from the title alone if a manuscript is going to be good and almost ready for publication, or is going to be one of those manuscript that needs a ton of work ). And if you’ve got a great title, you won’t need to change it.

So, what should be in a title? Here’s my receipe:

It has to evoke the genre. This is critical. For my Regency romances I kept almost all my original titles, such as: A Compromising Situation, and A Proper Mistress. I wanted titles that let the reader know at a glance what kind of book this was.

It has to carry some hint of the theme. Think of titles like Silence of the Lambs. Not only a good hook, but also works into the book when it’s talked about the silence of the lambs before they’re slaughtered.

It has to easy to remember. Mission critical, this one. I recently read a contest entry and I can’t even remember the entry name, except to say it was one I looked at and thought, “How do you even write this one down to remember it?” This is where you can get just too clever.

It needs to fit on a book cover. Yes, the hard fact is that there’s only so much space — in print, or even if you’re going to make a legible image for online. The shorter the title, the bigger a font you can use–hence, the numerous one-word titles around. (Such as Twilight.)

I also like it if I’m not overusing a title that’s been used. Let’s face it, if your book is one of a hundred titled, Passion, how will anyone know to buy your book? (Meaning, when looking for titles, go check Amazon and Google the titles you have in mind.)

Finally, I like a title that doesn’t get too clever with the spelling or the words–this, to me, is just shooting yourself in the foot. A lot of folks do find books on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or Google, or other websites. And if the reader can remember the title but the spelling or the words are too weird, a search may turn up nothing.

Which brings us to, does the title look good? Yes, there are attractive words, and words that just make you stumble. You want to look at your title in print and see if it’s balanced or not. If I were to change any titles I’ve done it would be A Much Compromised Lady. It’s a clunky title and never did look that good in print, but I was stuck on the idea of a series with compromise in the title, and I should have listened to wiser council there.

Finally, I just like a title that makes me want to settle down with just that type of book.  If I have a book titled, Space Monkeys from Planet Ten, I expect that book to be fun and silly, and not to be a tragic romance. Likewise, with a book titled, The Moorish Prince, I’m looking for some adventure in there. Because the title gives me that first taste of the story.

So give thought to your titles. Spent time with them. Ask your friends what they think–what kind of book would this set their teeth for? And keep in mind that even if you’re not yet published, you’re marketing your book. Editors and agents get their expectations set by titles, too.

Easy Stuff to Fix – Past Perfect and Dialogue Punctuation

Jun25

It’s contest judging season again — seems to come along every year with baseball and summer and picnics. And I’m seeing some of the same mistakes I always see. Now some stuff is tough to fix — as in you have a plot that’s not plausible, or wooden characters, or an idea that’s just too tired and cliche. That’s throw out the baby and the bathwater time. But some of this is easy to fix, and folks, you do need to fix the basics. What I’m seeing….

Tense issues. As in past tense, present tense, and past perfect tense (there are others, but these are the three you really need to nail).

Past tense works for most fiction. This is where you write: “He went to the store.” (Went being the past tense verb.)

Present tense is needed for a synopsis (it’s more dynamic), and you can also use it in a story. This is action happening now, as in: “He goes to the store.” (The verb become goes, or is going for present tense.)

Past perfect is where folks seem to really trip up. If you’re in the past tense and you want to write about the past (further in the past that is), you have to switch to past perfect.  As in: “He went to the store, and since he had been given a shopping list by his mother, he knew what to buy.”  Notice the switch to “had been” instead of “was” — that’s past perfect.

(And if you’re still confused, go and buy a copy of Strunk & White’s Element’s of Style. It’s a thin book, easily read in an hour and even easier to keep by your keyboard to sort out this stuff.)

The other thing that crops up a lot is weird uses of commas — commas put in where they are not needed or left out in other spots. That’s not too bad, but you do have to get this right around dialogue.

You use a comma to separate words spoken by a character from any action when (and only when) that action influences what is being said.

So these are all correct:

“You’re wrong,” she said.

“I can’t win,” he told her.

She cleared her throat, and said, “I love you.”

The action here is called an “action tag” by some and notice how these all form one sentence, and therefore use a comma.

The period is used when the action is NOT influencing what is said–when that is a separate thought and therefore should be a separate sentence. As in:

“You’re wrong.” She slammed her hand down on the table.

“I can’t win.” He let out a breath and shook his head.

She cleared her throat.  “I love you.”

Notice a couple of things. First, if you have action, you generally don’t need to attribute the dialogue (as in he said, she said). The reader knows who is speaking because there is action around the dialogue. Second, he said and she said are valid ways to attribute dialogue. It’s the mark of a beginning writer to go crazy with the adverbs and have folks chuckle, laugh, cry out and otherwise try to talk while they are doing something else.

In other words, rewrite when you put down stuff like:

“You’re wrong,” she yelled at him loudly. (If she’s yelling, then loudly is redundant, and the yelled is not letting the dialogue be strong.)

“I can’t win,” he chuckled sadly. (Try chuckling a word and see if you can do it — I dare you.)

She cleared her throat and breathed sexily, “I love you.”   (When in doubt read something aloud — if you cringe or someone laughs, you know you’ve hit melodrama. )

If you feel as if you need to add an adverb to any dialogue before you do this try rewriting the dialogue — dialogue that needs a crutch needs to be stronger so that it stands on its own.

And that’s my rant for the week. Or at least until the next contest I judge.

Sustainable…worlds, careers, businesses, lives, arts, etc.

Feb19

So, I’ve been thinking — a sometimes dangerous thing (yes, I once thought tuna and PB sandwiches would be a good thing — on a hike…I am surprised at times that I made it home from summer camp). But thoughts of late are of how do you keep things sustainable — worlds, careers, lives, etc, etc, etc.

The works usually applied to green living these days — a very cool, hip in-thing, and let us hope it stays cool and hip and in long enough to make a dent in changing excessive living habits. But even this seems difficult when you have folks wanting to gut the EPA which cleaned up the air, and BP trying to pretend all that oil has magically gone away. It can be difficult, too, to sustain your art…sustain a writing career…which is always a struggle, since need books must be thought of and marketing a book is as vital as writing it. And the current publishing model is not sustainable.

Fellow author Stephanie Laurens has come up with a blog Of Dinosaurs and Daffodils which speaks to this same point, with publishers taking the dino part of the analogy. And we all know what happened to them — some of them became birds. More of them wound up creatures no longer able to sustain themselves. This is very bad for writers whose work is attached to those bones.

And the main thing is, a writer used to be able to make enough from a few books to keep writing books, to keep improving craft. A writer could start out and work a career path. Publishers could and would work with writers, grow talent, help writers get past that occasional stumble. I’ve known writers who did this–heck I’ve watched Stephanie grow as a writer. But I don’t know anyone who has done this of late with a NY publisher. It seems more like authors hit, or the starve. And the middle ground is what’s fading into memory.

I know a lot of midlist author friends who can’t even think about writing for a living–and they are getting what’s considered a decent advances. But that’s all they get. The print runs are shrinking, and with Borders on the edge of dino-land, that’s going to get worse. There’s no real promotion for a book that’s expected to do okay. And with distributors ordering based on an author’s name and waht the last book did, good luck getting growth in that career.  It’s just about getting the next book out–oh, and keep them coming.

Now it’s true that not everyone can be a bestseller. There are factors that have nothing to do with talent–and sometimes nothing to do with the book. Sometimes things just hit. But the publishing business is starting to look like one that only wants the hits–and doesn’t want to spend money building its future (and future talent). This may well be due to the debt conglomerates carry–or it may be that the world is changing too fast for them. Adapt or die still holds true.

And one thing the Internet does really, really well is to satisfy niche markets. (Yes, there are horse shows for folks who customize model horses and take pictures of the outfits and settings and compete with these — something I find fascinating, and no way would this happen without the Internet since how else would you find a fellow horse model shower?) So, actually, the Internet does better with niche books — and it doesn’t do so badly with mass market either. This gives it an evolutionary edge.

There’s another big advantage to digital publishing — we’re coming back to the author being in full control of the publishing.

Back in the day…way, way, way back, before New York publishing became mega corporations, publishing started off a much more intimate affair. Someone put money on the line to print and publish books–that someone might be the author, or it might be the individual printing the books (the publisher), or it might even be fifty-fifty for them, and they’d split the money. I’m not advocating we go back to that model — I’m not even sure that’s possible. But it shows that change comes to every business. So what you have to look at is what’s sustainable and what’s not.

And what sustains your own self and craft.

I’m biased here. I think artists need to step out on edges, to be daring, and sometimes stupid (see earlier note re tuna and pb — which has since evolved to a much better, and more sustainable tuna curry). One thing that sustains art is trying new things — coming up with new things. That’s not something big corporations do very well, not unless they’ve structured and built themselves around the idea that their job is to innovate.

The next big thing to hit publishing already has hit — Kindle and Nook and they didn’t come from publishing houses or New York. The next ones after that aren’t going to either. Meaning time for authors to look at all options for what really does sustain a career, or a life, or your art.

What gets you going and keeps you going?

And what puts food on the table and a roof overhead and a computer, or pencil and paper, in your hands to give you time to keep writing?

Keeping it Light – Writing Humor

Dec23

Just finished the edits to get A Proper Mistress online, and it’s a delight to have a visit back with these characters. It’s a lighter romance, more what’s been called a Regency romp, though I don’t go for taking things too absurd. And that got me thinking about how touchy this sort of thing is to write, and my own guidelines for writing humor. My style is a blend of humor, a little drama, action, and I like to mix all of that up. I’ve tried to see how dark I can go, and I never can go all that dark–it almost always twists into black humor at some point. But, then, I like a little spice in almost everything. And, yes, you’re going to get a lot of cooking metaphors here–Molly Sweet, the heroine of A Proper Mistress is a delight and a cook and she always puts me into that frame of mind — which leads us to where we need to start, which is with characters.

A Proper Mistress

A Proper Mistress

Humor, in particular, needs characters who can carry the absurd. That’s harder than it sounds. I also think humor needs dialogue–great, snappy, fast dialogue. All the stuff that folks usually think needs to come out of their mouths and onto the page, and that’s going to keep the pace of any story moving and keep it fun. The other critical element is that I think the characters need to take their own situations seriously–its their lives. We may laugh, but if they do, it’s a bit like someone laughing at their own joke–kind of puts the pressure on that you should laugh, too, and that takes away the fun.

The other critical element is to know your character’s intelligence. I think writers often forget about this one, but it’s vital with humor. You need to know if a character is quick-witted, or a bit slow. You need to know how every character thinks. And you need to give them good reasons for why they are that way–there needs to be a reason why someone may be smart, but uneducated, or why someone else is smart in one fashion, but very stupid in other ways. This affects the story in major ways, and can be a great source of humor–with this, you don’t end up relying on ‘things’ being funny. Humor always works best when it comes from the characters, and the absurdity of life.

I also think you need to either build the absurd, or you need to start with it. Building the absurd is what the screwball comedies of the ’30’s do so well–they just keep stretching the absurd until its insanely silly. For a book, I like to go the other route and start with a situation that’s already heading off into crazy land.

For A Proper Mistress, I also wanted to start with twisting a cliché. This works great in any scene or story–take something that’s done to death and put a fresh spin on it.  The spin was that I’ve read way too many books in which the hero or heroine needs to get married in order to get an inheritance. This is such a worn old shoe that it squeaks. However, with the twist comes the need for motivation.

Good characters are method actors, always asking, “What’s my motivation?” Characters need reasons to do absurd things–these may be absurd reasons with faulty logic, but they should seem sensible to the characters. Which leads to the core question: what pushes a guy into trying to get disinherited?  Of course, the answer is what pushes us into most stupid things, and for me that’s a dysfunctional family.

The good part of being a writer is that all that junk in your own attic of live is useful. Creating a dysfunctional family isn’t hard for me since I had one, all my friends have one, and I actually have a hard time with normal. Everyone in A Proper Mistress is coping as well as they can, but they all have Issues–with that capital in there. The other thing about humor is that a little drama can help you ground it–it’s like having a string to a balloon.  Or to really mix the metaphors, a nice dense chocolate cake to go under the fluffy, sweet whip cream. Backstory for characters–the faulty motivations–is a great place for this grounding. And so is the character’s secret.

For me, characters start to come alive when they start keeping secrets–from others and from themselves. In A Proper Mistress, the hero both worships his older brother, but he’s also secretly a little resentful, and he doesn’t even realize it. The heroine has a secret wish to have a family (she’s an orphan). Theo’s dad has the biggest secret of all, one that’s impacted everyone’s lives, and all this is starting to sound a bit heavy. Which is where the last ingredient comes into play.

Balance in a story is as critical as the balance of spices and elements in a meal. And you want to push this balance off-center to get the emotion and effect you want. Go too far, however, and you end up with a hot mess. So with humor, you want to keep it light, fast-moving–the balance has to be more on what’s happening in the story, with only the lightest touches of heavy backstory. Molly was a godsend in A Proper Mistress. She could have ended a very tragic person–she’s had a tough life. But she’s resilient. She has no time to dwell, and is all about dealing with what’s happening now. She kept the story moving with her personality as much as anything else.

That brings us full circle and back to characters. Writing light, characters are everything. Their actions, their dialogue, their motivations, their flaws–which need to come out big time–provide all the elements for funny. Humor, for me, is about poking gently at all the flaws we carry with us–and pushing them a little bigger so those flaws stand out in the bright light of the absurd.  It’s about letting your characters go so they can surprise you and come up with their own twisted thinking. Give everyone a point of view and a plan, so that nothing ever goes right, or goes quite the way the characters think it will.

Above all else, humor needs two more things.  The first is a light hand–you need to edit, but you can also edit the funny right off the page. This means you have to treat the writing with a light touch–keep the prose clean and the plot even cleaner. If you get too fancy with technical stuff, it’s going to weigh the work down and dull the humor. The second is the courage to let your own quirks come out. Take your own flaws and put them on the page and into your characters. If you can laugh at yourself, it’ll be easier for readers to laugh at your characters and their absurd lives.

Edits and Revsions – When is Enough Enough?

Nov27

Proper ConductWhen I set out to bring my books into e-format, I’d first thought I wouldn’t edit them. Then I did the first book, and I did edit. With Proper Conduct done and coming on sale now in electronic format, I’ve gone a step beyond that. I’ve revised the ending.

Now, there’s a story about JRR Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings, that he was very late with delivering the manuscript for one of the books and someone finally showed up, boxed it up, took it from him, but as it was being carted off for publication, he called out the window that there was one more edit he needed to make. I don’t know if it’s a true story, but I suspect there’s truth in it in that we all want to correct our mistakes, and if you’ve grown up with that urge to perfectionism, you really want to go back and edit. The joy of electronic media is that we can now do so. It’s also the curse.

This doesn’t mean the book I’ve edited ends differently–the hero and heroine still get together, there still is a happy ending. However, when the book came out in print I had the restriction of paper, meaning a hard physical budget. My choices were a longer book and smaller type font, or keep it under 80,000 words, and I was already pushing that.  So I ended the book with the heroine and hero together, but I did read the reviews and I had to agree with a few of those who wanted a bit more.

Sometimes you just need that extra bit of afterglow, that emotional wrap-up that goes with the story to show that these two characters actually have done more than make that leap into love–they’re also going to be able to maintain the relationship. Sometimes you just need to show them getting along as they’re going to be getting along.

Now there are times I’m impatient with a book that drags on a bit much–none of us care for those guests who stay and stay and keep on until dawn. But there is such a thing as an end that comes too soon which leaves you wanting that extra bit more. I’m hoping I’ve erred on the side of enough without too much (or maybe it’s still not enough–it’s so hard to tell when you get that close to the work).  But there it is.  I’ve added edits, now, I’m revising myself.  And I’m already thinking about a couple of books where I wanted those extra scenes and just didn’t have the page count for it (or the time on the deadline).

But I do see the danger here, where one can revise and revise and never get to anything new. So I’m going to have to learn to balance this. For now, Proper Conduct is out on Smashwords with a fine new cover by Albert Slark, who also did the original cover, but I love the new cover.  It should also be showing up soon as well on Amazon.com for Kindle and BN.com for Nook.

I’m bringing out A Proper Mistress next, and while I don’t anticipate changes there, as I convert the book for electronic formatting, I wonder if I’ll find that I need a new scene, or an extra bit somewhere in the book.  It’s actually more fun to go back to these characters than I’d thought it would be, and now I can see why folks return to their old schools and go back to hang out at the old playground. The really interesting thing will be to find out if I have made the work better–or if I’ve just made it different.

It’s Not Just a Point of View

Nov18

Let’s start with a disclaimer—I am not a POV purist. I’m probably going to sound like one, but really I’m fine with viewpoint shifts in a story, so long as they work. But I think most folks use the “I’m not a purist” line as an excuse not to master POV technique. And a lot of folks just don’t know why they need strong POV control in a story.

Back before my first book sold, I was lucky enough to get Jo Beverley as a judge in a contest (she writes historical romance and if you have not read her work, go and buy her books—she’s good). She stressed one comment—master your POV and you’ll sell. She was right. Back then, I had something I see a lot from journeyman writers—floating POV.

Floating POV is when the viewpoint is sort of third person and sort of omniscient. It’s sort of in one character, but sort of not. This can show up in first person, too, where it’s sort of first person, but sort of omniscient, so don’t think you’re immune there. However, it is less likely to show up in first person, which is one of the big advantages to using it. The big problem with floating POV is that it leaves the reader floating above and out of the story, too—the reader ends up emotionally detached. It’s weak writing.

Deep POV, the opposite of floating POV, is about reader immersion. And by deep, I mean viewpoint that is locked within a character. This means locked right behind that character’s eyes and within that character’s head and emotions. Deep POV can be locked in first person or third person, but it is locked tight. When you lock POV like this, it’s very tough to shift—both because you as the author start rolling along with the character, and each shift is a place to lose the reader. With deep POV you naturally tend to want to put viewpoint shifts at chapter breaks or major scene shifts instead of putting these viewpoint changes within a scene.

All transitions in a story are slippery places—chapter shifts, scene shifts and viewpoint shifts are the places where a reader can pause, slip out of the story and put the book down. Put enough of shifts into a scene, or too many fast shifting scenes before the reader is deep in a story, and you can see how POV purists end up having a good point—you’re better off being a purist than someone who changes POV so much that it pushes the reader out of the story.

Like any other writing technique, POV control is about mastering the technique. That’s an advantage a POV purist has because that person has nailed this part of the craft. And if you don’t practice a discipline, if you’re always loose with your POV, you won’t learn how to control your story (or the reader’s attention).

Coming from a background where I’ve dabbled in the other arts—music, painting, dance—I’m a believer in solid technique as a foundation. The stronger your technical skills, the more you can let them run on auto-pilot and focus on the fun stuff. When I played violin, every practice started with a half hour of scales. Only then could I dive into the music and have it come out sweet. Scales both limbered up my skills and improved my technique. A writer doesn’t really have the equivalent of musical scales, but we can still practice technique.

To improve my control of POV and my technical skills, I set myself the following disciplines.

First book I sold, I kept to one character’s viewpoint per chapter. This became the technical exercise in the book. If I needed to cover another character’s emotions in a scene, the following chapter could go back a bit in time to do that scene from that character. But I was a POV Nazi for myself and kept to one character’s POV in each chapter. This deepened my characterization and the emotion in the scenes. It gave me the control I needed—but I still have to go back to this practice at times (yes, those skills you don’t practice get rusty).

Next thing was to write more in first person. I still do this. While I like third person for the flexibility it gives of putting the viewpoints of a lot of characters into a story, I’ll still use first person to write a scene. After the scene is written, if the story is all in third person I’ll shift the first person scene into third person. First person helps me get into my characters and also works a lot like those musical scales to keep my technical skills sharp. It also gives me more emotional bang in my scene, and keeps me honest about my viewpoint control (it’s so easy to think you’re doing this well when you’re not—I always say there’s the story in your head, the story on the page, and the story in the reader’s head, and these don’t always match).

The last discipline is to always ask—do I need to shift viewpoint? (Hint: “Because I feel like it” is never a good enough answer.) Viewpoint shifts need to be treated like any other part of the story—they need a lot of good reasons to be in the story, or they need to be left out. That which does not improve a story will detract. If I have three good reasons to need a viewpoint shift—including the best one, which is that another person in the scene now has more emotionally at stake in the scene—only then will I look at crafting a shift.

Granted, sometimes the instinct to shift viewpoints is one you need to listen to. Writer instincts need to be developed and used. But sometimes this is also justification for a lazy habit that you need to pound out of your writing. This is where you have to be able to look at your writing and know that the scene works—it’s giving you the emotion you need, so don’t touch it. Or you have to apply the discipline to rewrite it and keep the reader within the viewpoint of the key character in that scene so the reader gets every ounce of emotion from that scene.

When you have to make a viewpoint transition, you want to use some technique to smooth this (it’s like a baton hand-off in a relay race, and if you fumble this, the reader can trip right out of your story). But that’s the subject for another day, and for the POV workshop that I teach (shameless plug there, but if you don’t take this workshop, at least pick up Orson Scott Card’s book, Characters & Viewpoint to grab some good tips).

I won’t tell you, “Master POV and you’ll sell.” You may have other writing or story issues to address. But I will say that mastering immersive POV—the ability to put your reader into the story and keep the reader there, the ability to control viewpoint so well that it the craft is transparent to the reader—is key to becoming a great storyteller.

At least, that’s my point of view.

 

(First published as a guest blog at the FFnP RWA Blogspot.)

Writing Resources

Oct31

I’ve been doing a workshop on research, which led to my digging out some old notes on useful writing books.  This is the short list of the books that have taught me so very much about writing–these are the books I still have on my shelf, the ones I go back to for a refresher course. These books may speak to you, or may not, but if you find one good piece of advice and some entertainment, these will have served you well, too.

Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott — some instructions on writing and life, the perfect inspiration book

The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron — a workshop on how to unblock any blocks

The Courage to Write, Ralph Keys — one of the best books ever written on writing

A Manual Of Writer’s Tricks, David L. Carroll — a great idea generator

Characters & Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card — How to invent, construct and animate vivid, credible characters and choose the best eyes through which to view the events of your short story or novel

Creating Characters, Dwight Swain — great advice for beginners and for experienced writers

Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight Swain — teaches the bones of story structure

Story, Rober McKee — get the CD, or take his workshop, the book is so dense it’s very heavy going, but there’s a tone of great story structure basics here

Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life, Elizabeth George — Fabulous book, but will be more useful for an experienced writer to take her writing to the next step

On Writing, Stephen King — simple clear advice on keeping writing simple, clear and powerful

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Renni Browne & Dave King–a book I still keep right beside by desk and these days every writer needs to learn how to edit her work.

How to Write Romances, Phyllis Taylor Pianka — the basics of the genre

The Art of Fiction, John Gardener — wonderful writing about writing

Just Beachy

Oct9

Guest blogging over at http://www.ninc.com/blog/index.php/archives/just-beachy

The sand is as dazzling white as promised, the ocean as blue, and while there is much discussion of futures and publishing and brave new digital worlds, the refrain I hear echoed time and again is, “Write a good book.”  That is the one unchanging mantra from both traditional publishers and ‘digital first’ (a new buzz word and way more sexy than e-published, which is a mouthful, but does that imply ‘print last’?). 

Write a good book.  Easy words.  Hard task.

Which, of course, is why all of us are sitting here, trying to figure out how good is good?  And what do you do next these days?  The paths are many to get a good book out there and into a reader’s hands.

Print’s still around, of course, and going to be here for a bit, and it still has more allure, despite the cool new moniker of ‘digital first’ (and I do like the name ‘the Big Six’ for the NY publishing house, but the concensus is that that number’s going to be all over the map very soon).  Anyway, print is still a way to go if you don’t want to fuss with your own covers and you do have an idea that could kick into high gear with the right marketing machine.  And it’s got that lottery ticket allure that maybe you’ll hit the best seller list.

Then we have the ‘digital first’ publishers, our modern small publishers, who still have good things to offer, and Kindle is kicking these folks into high gear and Nook looks to do more, and this will be the Christmas for e-readers.

Beyond that is the world of self-publishing, which has good points (as in pocketing the money direct), but it also has its hard work — editing and covers and cover copy are all now in the author’s hands, a double-edged sword if ever, since it’s all your fault, too, if done badly.  But there are possibilities, and the stigma, while still there, is probably going to go away as more really good books actually come out of this area.

Which brings us back to the mantra–“Write a good book.”

Self-pub, digital first, print–they all demand the same thing.  A strong story, compelling characters, writing with a certain flow and flair.  You need a story worth telling, a tale that captures the imagination, something, as Kurt Vonnegut once put it, that doesn’t waste the reader’s time.  Oh, and a fair price point doesn’t hurt, either.

It’s comforting that some things never change–like the desire to have a good story.  And it reminds me what’s really important–which is to get the words on the page, and to keep working on improving my skills at doing so.  Conferences are always fun, but not as much fun as getting the words right on the page.