Robert Sawyer Says: Don't Worry About What's Popular, Write What You Love

SiWC & A Joke

What's the difference between a large pepperoni pizza and a professional writer? The pizza can feed a family of four.

That was the joke Robert Sawyer told at the the opening of his keynote address for the Surrey International Writers' Conference (SiWC) this last October.

His point wasn't that we should stop trying, it was that we shouldn't try to figure out what's 'hot'. You know, vampires, angels, zombies in love, and so on.

What Do You Love?

In the beginning, when we first discovered we wanted to write, we had something to say. We had things that inspired us. Robert Sawyer's message was: Don't lose that! Hang onto that spark.

All the sacrifices you make for your writing--for instance, staying home to write when your friends go out to watch a movie, taking a less than ideal day-job because it gives you time to write--are because of one thing: so you can speak to the world about what YOU care about.

What Is Your Mission Statement?

What is your mission statement? What is important to you? If you make yourself happy, if you write the kind of stories that excite you, that make you want to sit down at your keyboard and get lost in a land of imagination, if you write the stories that make you happy, you'll make your readers happy.

If you write the stories you're passionate about, that passion will spill onto the page, will infuse your words, your ideas. It will transform your characters into living, breathing people. It will make your fictional words come alive.

What Is Important To You?

This is the most important question of all: What is important to you?

Find out and write about it. Write the stories you love to read.

Fine your niche. Be the favorite author of a very narrow segment of the population.

The key to success: Don't write anything except what you want to write.

Other articles you might like:

- Writing A Story? Make Sure You Have A Concept Not Just An Idea
- 19 Ways To Grow Your Twitter Following
- Does Amazon KDP Select Drive Away True Fans?

Photo credit: "Poetic" by seyed mostafa zamani under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Donald Maass Talks About How To Make Your Readers CARE About Your Characters On The First Page

I was mulling over what to write about for this post when I realized I haven't told you about the workshop I took from Donald Maass on creating standout characters.

Donald Maass is head of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York which sells more than 150 novels per year to major publishers in the U.S. and overseas. His latest book is Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling in Modern Fiction. Much of the material Donald Maass talked about in his workshop was taken from Writing 21st Century Fiction.

By the way, if something I've written looks wrong it's my mistake, not Donnald Maass'.

How To Make Your Characters Pop Off The Page

What makes a character 'pop' off the page? How can you construct a character your reader will immediately care about? That's our goal.

As head of a New York literary agency, Donald Maass reads many manuscripts. He said there is something missing from almost every protagonist. One thing.

But let's step back for a moment. Before we talk about what's missing, let's go over the three basic types of protagonists:

1) Everyman/Everywoman

This kind of protagonist is like you and me. They are ordinary, at least to begin with.

Write down your favorite thing about your protagonist. Why do you love them?

Now, ask yourself: How can readers immediately experience this quality I love?

2) Hero

This kind of protagonist is already strong. Brave. Important.

Perhaps their job puts them in danger. They are responsible.

If your protagonist is a hero type, write down one way in which they are human, ordinary and regular, just like everyone else. Perhaps they are superstitious. Perhaps they have self-depreciating humor. Perhaps their car won't start.

3) Dark protagonist. Anti-hero

This protagonist has self-loathing. Many paranormal characters fall into this category. Perhaps they are a werewolf, a shapeshifter or a vampire.

If your protagonist is like this, write down one way your character want to change. One way they wish to be less tormented. What would that look like? What could the end of suffering look like for this character? How can they be more human?

Let your reader feel, let them see, your character yearning for change.

The one thing that's missing

Let's go back to what DM said, above, about one thing being missing from practically every manuscript he reads. It's this: he didn't care about the protagonists after reading the first page.

You NEED to find a way to make your readers care about your protagonist ON THE VERY FIRST PAGE.

DM suggests that if there's no way you can make your reader care about your protagonist in the first page that you might want to rethink your opening.

Our goal: to create a sympathetic character

The goal is to create a sympathetic character your readers care about. Some people say you want to create a protagonist readers can IDENTIFY with but not necessarily CARE for. DM disagrees. The reader needs to care about your protagonist, not simply identify with them. (See also: How To Get Your Readers To Identify With Your Main Character.)

So, how do you get your readers to care about your characters?

What makes you care about people?

Probably a number of things. We like people who are strong, who are good, who are principled and who are brave.

Readers want something to cheer for.

So, how do you accomplish this?

Creating a sympathetic HEROIC character: what DOESN'T work

Here's what NOT to do: use an action opening that makes your protagonist seem perfect. DM says that action openings leave readers ice cold. They don't care. The protagonist is too perfect.

Your reader needs to see your protagonist as a real person. They need to see they're human. Your protagonist, especially if they're a hero type, needs an ordinary thing (for instance, a car that won't start, a superstition, and so on).

Creating a sympathetic DARK character: what doesn't work

These protagonists are sexy, haunted, alluring, they look great in leather. They're tormented, depressed, miserable. Who wants to be around that?

Your readers back away from suffering. What we don't back away from is HOPE.

How to get readers to care about your character:

You need to find a way to make your character STRONG, REAL and give them HOPE.

As you write your characters ask yourself: What engages your heart? What makes you feel connected? Drawn in?

After the opening

So far we've talked about how to get your readers to care about your protagonist on the first page, certainly in the first couple of pages. Now let's talk about how to KEEP your readers caring about them.

Give your main character a FOUNDATIONAL ATTRIBUTE

Even ordinary characters (type one, above) have one thing they are exceptional at. Something they know a lot about in which they're an expert.

- Are they analytical?
- Are they faithful?
- Are they curious?
- Are they determined?

Now give your protagonist a habit or tick that suggests they're the opposite of whatever foundational attribute you've given them.

For instance, let's say your protagonist is highly focused, that's his foundational attribute. Have a scene where he's in an ice cream parlor. He's so highly focused he can't do a simple thing like decide what kind of ice cream to get.

Your character needs weaknesses as well as strengths. Make sure that in at least three places in your manuscript you show your character's weakness, his quirk.

I want to stress that DM thought we needed to be specific when we show how our character's foundational attribute benefits them as well as how it hurts them.

Ask yourself, what can your main character DO that no one else can? Now write a scene where this ability is a benefit and another where it's a hindrance.

Your Character & Self-Awareness

What does your character know about herself that is true?

There is something about them that is even MORE true, but they don't know it yet. What is it?

When and through which character are you going to clobber your protagonist with a recognition about him or herself? When would be a good time to do this?

What is one thing your protagonist knows about people that no one else does?

Why does he know this? Is it because of who he is?

In your story include a character on whom your protagonist cannot get a read.

Who does your protagonist love the best? What is one thing that is bad or unflattering about this character? What is one thing they do wrong, something that the protagonist sees through? The protagonist knows this character well enough to see something negative about them.

Pick any small thing in your story, something trivial, a little piece of friction between two characters. Make this illustrative of a larger principle at work in the world. Here is where you can give your protagonist an exposition. they can feel some anger, some sense of injustice, about what happened even though it is small.

What is the most selfless thing your protagonist does? confession, humility, forgiveness. Something they do for someone else. They sacrifice themselves.

Pick another of your characters. How will this character be changed by the selfless act of your protagonist? SHOW how they are changed by what your protagonist has done.

What makes a character interesting

Quirks are interesting, it's probably why we have so many quirky detectives.

Characters that are special, gifted, are interesting. Characters who see more, who care more than WE DO are interesting.

Did you ever have a slog day? Sure you have, we all have. Those days we just want to go back to bed. We've also had days when we're alive, our brains are on fire. We feel in command of ourselves and our world. Those days we want to be alive. THESE ARE THE KIND OF CHARACTERS READERS CARE ABOUT.

Make your characters real.

Your protagonist can, in a way, always be ON.

Antagonist

In a romance, the hero is often the heroines antagonist and vice versa. The hero and heroine need to be together but something is keeping them apart. What does the heroine want? Love? Security? Respect? The hero is getting in her way, he is slowing her down.

What does your antagonist believe in? What is their ONE TRUTH?

In what way is the antagonist's one truth actually right and true? What do they think is wrong with the world? What is REALLY wrong with the world?

Write a scene about the moment when your protagonist understands and accepts that the antagonist is right (perhaps not globally, but about some one thing), that their one truth is really true. Do they humble themselves and say, "You're right. I see it"?

What is the moment when your protagonist realizes that the antagonist is right? It's sometimes said that those who hate us know us the best. In a sense, your protagonist and antagonist will know each other very well.

What does your antagonist most want to bring about? What is their perfect world?

What is the WORST thing your antagonist does?

There is a thing your antagonist has sworn never to do, they think it's wrong. They say to themselves, "I'll do anything, anything at all, but never THAT" What is the thing they've sworn never to do?

At some point your antagonist will do the thing they've sworn never to do. Why do they do it? They do it even though they abhor it, they do it reluctantly and against their principles. For what good purpose was it done?

Remember: the antagonist is the hero of their own story.

Secondary Characters

Pick a secondary character, a friend of the protagonist. What is the single biggest way these characters are different?

Find one way to use what you've just written down in a scene. At what point in your story does this secondary character most understand and love your protagonist? At what point do they hate the protagonist?

What is their most important piece of shared history? What have they done together? What can this secondary character trust your protagonist for? What will the protagonist always do for them? Bail them out at 3 in the morning? Change their tire in the middle of a snowstorm?

Find a moment in your story where trust is broken, when the protagonist doesn't do what the secondary character trusted them to do.

What does the secondary character know about your protagonist that your protagonist denies? Is there a moment in your story when the secondary character calls your protagonist out?

What is the greatest gift the secondary character can give to the protagonist? The protagonist may not know they need this gift even though they do.

Underutilized secondary characters weaken a story.

That's it! If you ever have an opportunity to take a workshop from Donald Maass, do it! I've never met anyone who was disappointed.

Do you have any advice to add? Any questions you ask about your characters that helps them come alive?

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NaNoWriMo update: Alas, I didn't get my 2,000 words done last night! I did 1,000 though, so I'm up to 25,081. Hopefully I'll be able to do 2,000 words tonight which will bring me up to 27,000.

Other articles you might like:
- 8 Do's And Don'ts Of Writing Fiction From Neil Gaiman
- Using Technology To Sell Books: Quick Response Codes (QR codes)
- Is Serial Fiction Profitable? Hugh Howey Says: Yes! Even With Absolutely No Promotion

Photo credit: "Black & White Flower Pattern" by VinothChandar under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Mary Robinette Kowal and The Mysteries of Outlining

This post is a continuation of Orson Scott Card & The MICE Quotient: How To Structure Your Story where I explain what Orson Scott Card's MICE Quotient is and go through the various structures: Milieu, Idea, Character and Event.

My goal today is to show how MICE can be used when outlining but to get there we first need to be initiated into the mysteries.

How To Create An Outline

This material is based on Mary Robinette Kowal's workshop The Mysteries of Outlining I attended at SiWC this last weekend. Mary has a great website (love the black cat!) and an incredible selection of articles on how to read aloud.

I was going to use a different example from the one Mary used in class--Sleeping Beauty rather than Rapunzel--but she knows what she's talking about and I'm still learning, so I hope Mary won't mind if I use her example.

Please keep in mind I scribbled this in my notebook, there was no handout, so any mistakes are mine, not Mary's.

1) Write down all the events of the story

This is easier for us since we're working from a story, Rapunzel, that's already written. When you're outlining a story being created you'll write down all the events you know take place.

Mary stressed that outlines are fluid and meant to help you as a writer, not to lock you in, so just because something is in your outline doesn't mean you're committed. Mary compared an outline to a roadmap. If you have a roadmap you can see where you're going; it helps you stay on track and to reach your destination without unnecessary detours.

But perhaps you want to detour.

When you're on a roadtrip to Los Angeles from Seattle you can decide to take a detour and see the grand canyon, but it'll cost you. If you think the detour is worth it, then go for it! In fact, you may decide that instead of going to LA you'd much rather go to Vegas. You can do that too, but that's a very different road trip and there will be a cost. Your outline helps you see what that cost will be and evaluate whether it's worth it to you.

To sum up, an outline is a tool to help you reach your goal of finishing your book. It helps you keep track of both where you are and where you want to go. It can also help to reveal plot holes and help you get around them.

List of actions:
1. Parents steal a Rapunzel plant
2. Baby born
3. Witch takes baby
4. Grows hair
5. Prince out hunting
6. Prince climbs tower
7. Witch discovers prince
8. Loss
9. Blindness
10. True love

2) Look for plot holes and fill them in

Look at what you have so far and figure out where the plot holes are, then fill them in.

We need to insert "locked in tower" between (3) and (4) and between (5) and (6) should say something about Rapunzel seeing the prince and trying to attract his attention.

3) Look for duplication

Are any scenes serving the same function? Can you roll them into one?

For instance, we might show Rapunzel is lonely by writing a scene where the girl watches a nest of birds and tearfully waves goodbye to the chicks as they fly away. We could use this scene to show how lonely Rapunzel is, now isolated she feels. We wouldn't then also need a scene where Rapunzel brushes her hair and thinks how lonely it is in the tower. We've done that.

4) Flesh out the scenes

For each event--these will becomes scenes--write down:

a) What happens.
b) When it happens.
c) Where it is.
d) The character arc.
e) The time of day.
f) Who is the main character of the scene.

Outlining: Multiple Points of View

In part (1), above, we wrote down a list of actions. These actions are going to get us from the first event: the parents stealing the witch's plant to the last one, true love. (Mary did a great impression of The Impressive Clergyman in The Princess Bride. If you ever have a chance to take one of her workshops, do! It's a lot of fun. Moving on .... )

Balancing point of view (POV) scenes
For each scene decide which character has the most at stake, that's the POV of the scene. Now look at which characters have POVs and if you need to balance them. To balance things you may need to change what's at stake for a character within a scene.

For instance, lets look at the scene where the prince climbs the tower for the first time. It seems reasonable to write that scene from the prince's point of view because he seems to have the most at stake. He could fall, the witch/enchantress probably would do something nasty to him if she came back and caught him, and so on.

But if we needed for Rapunzel to have the point of view we could talk about how much it hurt to have someone climb your hair and how much she would be in trouble with the witch were the prince discovered.

When NOT to give a character a POV scene
One thing Mary stressed was that if a character has nothing at stake then you don't write a scene from their point of view.

POV and your main character
Keep in mind that, all things being equal, the character you start with will be the character your audience most identifies with and so that is the character you need to end with. For instance, if your first scene is told from Rapunzel's POV then you need to end with a scene from Rapunzel's POV.

Outlining and the MICE Quotient

Wow! This post is a lot longer than I thought it would be.

Although this section was what I had intended to get to, it's what I've been working up to, I think I'm going to leave off and come back tomorrow. My post yesterday was lengthy and contained a lot of information so I don't want to overload anyone.

Please do come back tomorrow and I'll (finally!) talk about how to use the MICE quotient with your outline to create a killer story. :-)

Cheers!


Here are all the articles in this series:
- Orson Scott Card & The MICE Quotient: How To Structure Your Story
- Mary Robinette Kowal And The Mysteries Of Outlining
- The Mysteries Of Outlining And Nesting MICE: Creating Killer Stories
- Making A Scene: Using Conflicts And Setbacks To Create Narrative Drive

Other articles you might like:

- Book Review Blogs That Accept Self-Published Work
- What to do if your book isn't selling: Tips from Johanna Penn

Photo credit: Barnaby Kerr Photography

Donald Maass: Your Writing Matters, Dig Deep And Change The World

Donald Maass gave the final keynote address at this year's Surrey International Writers' Conference. His theme: Your writing matters, dig deep and change the world!

It was the perfect way to end the conference and unleash all 800 of us upon an unsuspecting populace. (grin)

I'm exhausted, but I enjoyed myself immensely. I learnt a ton and had the thrill of recognizing many faces among the crowd and renewing those friendships as well as creating new ones.

I have SO MUCH to tell you! I took notes till my hand ached, but I'll start with that tomorrow.  Right now I'll just say that one of my posts will be about Orson Scott Card's MICE method. Mary Robinette Kowal talked about this in her class on The Mysteries of Outlining.

Let me just say: wow! MICE is going to change the way I write. Ever had trouble deciding how a story will begin? Where it will end? That's always been tricky for me. Often there are several points that could serve as an opening. I've also had trouble with endings. What kind of an ending should it be? WHERE should it be? I have the tendency to start a short story and finish a novel because it just kept going.

I have to stop writing now because I want to publish this before 5 pm pacific time. Talk to you tomorrow.

Cheers! :-)

Other articles you might like:
- Book Review Blogs That Accept Self-Published Work
- Surrey International Writers' Conference 2012
- What to do if your book isn't selling: Tips from Johanna Penn

Surrey International Writers' Conference 2012

I'm attending my third Surrey International Writers' Conference (#SiWC2012) today but will be back Monday. I'll still post articles Saturday and Sunday. They're already written and the system should (cross fingers) send them out automatically.

I'll try to send updates from the conference, but we'll have to see how that goes.

I haven't decided which workshops to attend, there are so many wonderful choices! Here's Friday's schedule.

Diana Gabaldon

To give you a sense of the conference, here's a link to one of my posts from last year based on Robert J. Wiersema's workshop, Don't Flinch: SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Two: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema.

Here is my account of two other workshops I attended last year:
- SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Three: The Psychology of Plotting, Michael Slade
- SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Four: The Inner Journey, Donald Maass

If you have the opportunity to attend a writing conference in your area I highly recommend it. It's wonderful to connect and learn from other writers.

Other articles you might be interested in:
- How To Design A Great Looking Book Cover
- The Best Way To Build A Writer's Platform Is To Write
- What Is Writing? Telepathy, Of Course!

SiWC 2011: Character and POV: The Voice of Your Story, by Bob Mayer

I love Bob Mayer's writing! I've read his (excellent!) blog, Write It Forward, for the past year or so and was eagerly looking forward to taking this workshop. I was not disappointed.

I should apologize in advance; my notes are sketchy in places because sometimes I put down my pen and just listened.

As always, any mistakes and distortions in the following are completely my fault, not Bob Mayer's.

"I'm convinced fear is at the root of most bad writing."
Stephen King

How do you get great reviews? Great blurbs for the front of your book? You network. Networking is very important.

Also, character is everything.
- What is your character's core need?
- What is their pathological maneuver?

Emotion is more important than logic.

Your characters must want something concrete. This concrete thing, though, can in turn illustrate an abstract need/want.

Motivation
- Every character thinks the story is about them.
- Everyone has a core motivation. Motivation can be anything.

Peel away what the character wants and then find out what they need.

The protagonist goes up Maslow's hierarchy while the antagonist goes down.

Both your antagonist and protagonist need blind spots. Needs produce blind spots.

Do not name a character unless the character is important.

What if your protagonist fails? The answer will tell you what is at stake in your book.

Your protagonist has to overcome their fear even though their fear is their primary motivator.

(Book recommendation: How To Write The Breakout Novel, by Don Maass. KW: This book was recommended at almost every workshop at the conference.)

Character Description:
- Keep it brief and distinctive
- You're not writing a personal advertisement
- Don't have your character look in a mirror when it comes time to describe what they look like! One thing you can do is use other points of view to describe other characters.

The stages of change:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
=> Have your character go through these stages, don't have them suffer a loss and, the next moment, be okay with it.
=> How do we know when someone, say a friend, has changed? We see it.
=> At the end of the story we need to see our protagonist do something emotional they weren't able to do at the beginning of the story. This will show that they've changed.

Point Of View
1st person: I am sad.
2nd person: You are sad.
3rd person: She was sad.

The 2nd person destroys the 4th wall.

One advantage of 3rd person limited is that you can't info-dump.

What voice should you write in? The voice you enjoy reading.

What should you write about? Write about the thing you're most afraid of. Put it on the page and out there for people to see.

When should you break the 'rules of writing'?
1. Know the rule.
2. Know when you're breaking the rule.
3. Take responsibility for breaking the rule.

That's it! Hope you found something useful. :)

These are my notes from other workshops I attended at the SiWC this year:

- Don't Flinch, Robert Wiersema
- The Psychology of Plotting, Michael Slade
- The Inner Journey, Donald Maass
- Getting Started and Heading in the 'write' direction, by Robert Dugoni
- SiWC 2011: Writing for the Web, Rebecca Bollwitt

SiWC 2011: Getting started and Heading in the 'write' direction, by Robert Dugoni

Here are more of my SiWC notes, these are from day two, Saturday. I've mentioned Robert Dugoni before, but I don't think I've been able to communicate ... well, how inspirational his workshops (and keynotes!) are. Every time I walk away from a talk he's given I feel: Yes, I can do this!. If any of you ever have the opportunity to hear him talk, I recommend it.

My apologies in advance for the fractured nature of these notes. I repeat certain tips and the notes themselves are less organized than I'd like. My instinct is to tuck this post away until I have time to do it properly, but I know that's not going to happen, especially not during NaNo! So here my notes are, in all their imperfection.

What is the primary purpose of the novel? It is to entertain.

Your CHARACTERS entertain, NOT the author. If author tries to entertain then the story stops.

1. Backstory
Sometimes there is the temptation for the author to say, yes, we'll get to the story, but let me tell you about this first. You need to weave the backstory into the story.

2. Too much description
Sometimes there is the temptation to stop the story and describe a character. You don't have to describe a character unless it is important to the story.

AN EXCEPTION: If something is a marker, then you need to describe it. For example, if your character is wearing a Channel dress, that's a marker. If your character pulls up in a hummer rather than a VW, that's a marker. If it isn't a marker, then you don't need it. Most readers don't care. If it isn't really important don't stop the story to describe it. Also could sprinkle description throughout the book. Give us the description as it becomes important to character.

Have character moving and talking as you give the description.

RESEARCH: It is important if its important to the characters.

Be careful about giving your characters your personal opinions. Guard against your own attitudes and beliefs bleeding through to the character where it isn't appropriate.

Ask yourself: Are the characters entertaining or am I intruding into the story? The best authors are internal to the story.

Journeys
Your story is really the journey of your characters. The physical journey they take is the plot.

Emotional journey. Emotions get people, and your characters, to do things. Emotions give motivation. Basic human needs. Love, greed, protection.

Most books are about basic things.
- To win (a game) ( a contest) (the love of another)
- To stop (the world ending) (the abuse)
- To escape (a bad situation)
- To retrieve something (think Indiana Jones)
- To destroy something (Lord of the Rings)
- To save something or someone

Right now, write down the physical journey your character is on. What is their motivation for doing it?

Good. Now write down the emotional journey your character is on. What is his or her motivation for doing it.

Raising the stakes
Don Maass' books are great. Read them.
- How would you raise the stakes? You have a victim, how are you going to raise the stakes? How about revealing that the victim is the hero's brother? That's one way of doing it.

The hero has to care. What happens if the hero fails in reaching the goal? Raising the stakes means making the hero lose more, makes the loss more painful and less likely that the hero can recover. Make the goal more personal to the hero, that's how you raise the stakes.

Your goal is to establish the TONE of the book early. Each kind of book is going to have a different tone that will cure the reader that the books is, for example, a mystery, or a thriller, or a romance, etc.

Early on, introduce who the story is about, your readers need to meet the protagonist.

Also, you need to introduce the story problem early on. For instance, in the Lord of the Rings, the story problem is that the hero needs to take this ring a destroy it. Give your readers the story problem at the beginning of your story.

Hooking the reader
Classic openings in literature:
a. Everyday hero. Their everyday life. If your hero is a housewife, you see her going about her day, if your hero is a trial lawyer, you see them arguing a case, etc.
b. Action scene. The hero in action.
c. Emotional scene. Outside action opening. Da Vinci Code. Don't start with the hero. Start with the killing.
d. Prologue. Start in a time or place different from the rest of the book.
e. Flashback opening. Water for elephants. Take scene from the book and put it at the beginning. Like a scene out of sequence.

Warning: Readers don't like prologues. If you absolutely must have a prologue, call it chapter one.

Remember to write scenes where you use all your senses.

Some people say never start a book with your hero on a plane, train or in a car. Why? Because it's a static environment. It is difficult to have action or dialogue. You will be tempted to have your character thinking and thinking and thinking. That's not very interesting.

Goal
Your hero must have a goal. For instance, let's say that your hero can't be late or she'll be fired, but she also HAS to have her morning coffee. She peers into the coffee shop, there's no line up! She rushes inside and an elderly lady steps in front of her and she takes forever to order. The elderly lady is an obstacle that creates suspense.

Okay, so now your hero is late for work. She goes to the office. Her boss isn't there. She looks down the hall, but her boss isn't there either. Perhaps she'll be able to make it to her office and her boss will never know she was late! Her hero walks into her office and there's her boss, standing in her office.

How, should the boss say, "You're fired!"? No, at least, not until the next chapter. You need to keep the story moving forward.

Chapter Breaks
One thing you should ask yourself is: Does this chapter have a better question for the next chapter (a question the next chapter has to answer) if I take out the last paragraph? Often an author will summarize the chapter in the last paragraph, this is bad because it's boring. Your job is to get the reader to turn the next page. How do you do this? By raising story questions.

The first word of every scene
Use the first word of every scene to hook the reader. Raise a question. Readers are curious people by nature. If you raise a question in the first sentence they will want to answer it.

Flirt don't tease. Don't go 35 pages without answering a question you've raised.

Make the first sentence of every chapter great. Don't throw away the first or the last sentence of any scene.

Give the reader something interesting right away, as soon as your story begins. An interesting character should appear right away. Like going to a cocktail party or a book-signing. Unusual people, even people you might think are a bit crazy, are very interesting. The worst judgement you can make about someone is that they are boring.

Settings: Third element
Your settings help you tell the story. For instance, in a scene lets say you have a few tarantulas in a terrarium in an elementary school classroom. The teacher is putting some papers into her briefcase and her principal walks in. The teacher glances at the terrarium. The spiders are gone.

Opening scenes: Don't over-populate your first scene.

If a scene doesn't advance the story then cut it.

Here is a link to Robert Dugoni's home page.

My notes from other workshops I attended:
- SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Two: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema
- SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Three: The Psychology of Plotting, Michael Slade
- SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Four: The Inner Journey, Donald Maass

SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Three: The Psychology of Plotting, Michael Slade

From my notes:

What is the worst thing that ever happened to you and how are you using that to power your fiction? You don't have to use this event in your plot, but this has such a high emotional sentiment that it can supercharge your writing.

When you draw from a traumatic event in your life you are INSIDE your characters psychology, not trying to figure it out. This will show in your writing.

You've heard that you need to draw on universal themes in your story. What do people want? What do people fear? These things are universal, but for your story to be interesting it has to be unique. How can you do this? How can you write about universal themes and yet make your story unique? Here's the secret: Infusing your story with your experience will make it unique and it will lend it verisimilitude.

After you've exhausted your own material, phone up a police crime lab, they will tell you all sorts of grizzly stories. Don't be shy about contacting folks and asking them to talk to you about their experience.

Remember, rule number one is: Write what you know.

Well, that was a lot shorter! I guess I was exhausted after all my note taking from Robert Wiersema's workshop.

Hmmm, should I continue on and post my notes from Don Maass's workshop, "The Inner Journey"? I'm turning the pages of my notebook -- I had left my notebook in my luggage but by this time I'd retrieved it -- and I think there's too much material here to post right now so I'll save it for Wednesday. (I'm writing this at 11:30 pm Tuesday. I'll set this post to be automatically published early Wednesday.)

Till then. :)

Earlier posts in this series:
SiWC 2011 Day One, Part One: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema
SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Two: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema

SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Two: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema

Sorry for the fractured nature of this post (you can read part one here). I don't work for a few hours, so let's do this!

The first workshop I attended was Don't Flinch and was taught by Robert Wiersema.

Now, when a writer goes to a workshop it's a good idea, a really good idea, to have something to write on. But in the confusion of registering I had left my notebook in my luggage and of course I'd checked that in at the hotel!

A little thing like not having anything proper to write on never stopped a writer. During registration I'd been given a folder containing sheets printed on only one side.

(For those of you interested in what folks were given, here's a list: a detailed itinerary of workshops (one for each day), the etiquette of conferences, information about the silent action, information about the blue pencil sessions and editor appointments, an advertisement for a writers' retreat, a double-sided two page sheet with short bios of all the editors, agents and presenters. The rules of the silly writing contest, an article welcoming us to the convention and last--but certainly not least--a map.)

Armed with my unconventional writing material I took notes, and more notes, and still more, until I'd gone through all the backs of the handouts and, in desperation, began to write on the back of my folder! This was fine, but for the rest of the conference I felt a bit like the killer in Seven, carrying around a manilla folder covered with close scribbling.

Okay, the class. Here's what Robert Wiersema said was the key to building suspense: You take a bunch of characters, make your readers care about them, set monsters loose on them and then don't flinch. You need to let horrible things happen to them.

(Important disclaimer: These are my notes so I could be mistaken about what Robert Wiersema said, so don't blame him if you read something startling or something that makes no sense, that's me. :)

You want a gun in the first act, this creates an implicit promise. This creates questions. When will the gun go off? Why will it go off? Who will pull the trigger? Where will it go off? This is true for any kind of genre. If you're writing a romance then the question is: When will they get together? Why will they get together? Where will they get together, etc. The techniques of building suspense, of building elevated tension, are the same.

What does "not flinching" mean?
1) HOOK. You have, at most, two pages to grab a reader. You have to grab them in the first scene, in the first sentence. How do you do this? You create a question in the readers mind. The reader must answer the question to understand the sentence. This is like foreshadowing, but it is less blunt/obvious. A hook is implicit foreshadowing.

2) PLOT. How does the plot build suspense? Imagine you're driving down the road and you see a car in the ditch. What is going to happen? That's right, everyone will slow down to look at the car and they'll wonder: What happened? It is part of our nature.

3) CONFLICT & CHARACTER = SUSPENSE
- frustrate your character. Which newspaper headline would arrest/grab your attention: "Man on the run" or "Man captured"?
- Have reversals. Character should be frustrated at most turns. Here's the trick: the plot should be inevitable but not predictable. The plot should not be the same thing you and your readers have seen dozens of times. How do you avoid this?
- THE KEY: The reader should always know slightly more than the character. Let the reader know an event is coming before the character does.
- In order to create suspense, the readers' expectations must be both met and undermined. What we are talking about here is shameless manipulation. You are telling people lies in order to get the response you want. This is blatant audience manipulation.

Writers who are great at audience manipulation: Nicholas Sparks and Dan Brown. These writers are good storytellers and their pacing is good. They have good pacing within each sentence, within each paragraph, within each chapter of their stories.

How can you affect the pacing of your writing?
- Short fast sentences increase tension.
- Description, long words, long sentences, lower tension.
Your story is like a pot of soup, you don't want it to boil and you don't want it cold. You have to keep adjusting the temperature to get it just right. This means introducing stretches of increasing, and then decreasing, tension.

Elmore Leonard was the writer he said: Leave out the stuff people don't read. Leave out the boring bits.

CUE YOUR READERS
- The rhythm of your story is dictated by what you need your story to do. Use the pace to cue readers as to what their reaction should be. Don't treat your readers dishonorably. Cue the reader, tell them what you want them to feel. For instance, if you want them to feel heightened tension then use short sentences and raise the tension.
- The sorts of things that increase tension: Showing as opposed to telling and dialogues.
- The sorts of things that lower tension: Telling as opposed to showing, description, long sentences, etc.

If you're going to focus on something, focus on it for a reason. Use it. You must only focus on what is important to the story.

CHARACTERIZATION
- The stereotype is that thrillers are plot machines. Story arises naturally out of characters. Plot is artificial. Everything: the story, the tension, etc., should come out of the characters. In order for this to happen your characters needs flaws and scars. For instance a classic flaw was pride. Pride is a great flaw to fuel tension and suspense.

Examples:
- Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. Kimble was arrogant. He was a surgeon. When he was falsely accused of his wife's murder that was the first situation in his life he wouldn't control. He doesn't plot his escape, it happens to him. Kimble needs to become innocent to reclaim his place in society. Throughout the movie he works to get back what he has lost.
- Hitchcock: Hitchcock was a master at using a person's flaws against them to drive a plot. He used suspense to drive a plot. Vertigo is an excellent example of this. Right from the beginning you know that the Jimmy Steward character is scared of heights and that he'll struggle with this fear at the end. You know this, but knowing it doesn't make the movie less interesting, it builds suspense. It increases tension. Rear Window was like this as well.

Protagonists and Antagonists
The reader must be swept along through the story because of their kinship with the protagonist. The antagonist must be as strong as the protagonist. The antagonist is the hero of their story.

Example: Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal Lector is the antagonist not Buffalo Bill, even though Buffalo Bill (aka Captain Stottlemeyer to all you Monk fans) is the murderer. (The instructor asked the class to name the murderer in Silence of the Lambs but it took a minute or two for any of us to come up with the answer.) We remember the Lector character because that character is well developed. We have questions. Hannibal was the protagonist in Hannibal. So, what I'm saying is: Make all your antagonists the heroes of their own story. The antagonist is the physicalization of the negative force.

Load up on your archetypes
People are afraid of the same things. They fear disease, the dark, public shame, loss of a child, death, injury, maiming. These are only a few of the things that make every single one of us shake in our boots. These are the things, the events, that populate our nightmares. Dr. Kimble in The Fugitive was being pursued. That's the fear. The fear of being caught, the fear of footsteps in the dark.

STUPID MISTAKES
- Unbelievability. Tension needs to be believable within the world you create. A good example of BELIEVABILITY is the universe Jim Butcher created for his series, the Dresden Files. This is a universe filled with wizards and vampires and witches and all manner of fantasy characters, but it reads like a matter-of-fact account of the day-to-day happenings of Chicago. How is this achieved?

a. Don't have characters do what you have established they wouldn't do. For instance, if the character is scared of crowds then when they escape through a crowd at the end of your book show that this isn't an easy thing for them to do, don't have them do it blithely.
b. Continuity and logic problems make a story unbelievable.
c. Don't treat your character or reader as stupid. Your questions, your situations, shouldn't have an easy answer that the character doesn't think of. That's the sort of plotting that makes a book airborne -- readers will hurl it against the wall and stop reading.

Example: In Hitchcock's Psycho there's a beautiful young girl who comes to a creepy hotel and, instead of taking one look at it and the macabre Norman Bates and making a run for it, she checks in and takes a shower! Would you do this? No! What makes it believable that she would? Well, she's just stolen some money and is on the run. This cuts her off from any help society could provide. Also, she is to meet her boyfriend at the hotel and they didn't have cell phones in those days, so she has to stay put.

d. Don't resolve the central question of your story too soon.
e. Don't cheat the reader. You want them to read your next book. If you cheat them -- for example if a chance meeting at the end of the book resolves the tension -- then your readers will loose interest.

Not making stupid mistakes, creating the right pace, etc., all these things are skills, we learn them by going through the process of creating and writing stories. Everything that I've said today about what makes a story good, you know this already.

Here's what I want you to do. If you've found a book that has kept you reading far past your bedtime then read it again. As I said before Dan Brown is great at this. Read and watch movies (movie soundtracks are shamelessly manipulative).

Another thing you can do to improve your writing is, when you give your story to readers, ask them to put a mark in the margin where they began to lose interest.

Point Of View
You can have more than one first person POV character, you can even have POV characters that have different points of view (e.g., first and third). Do what works for your story.

Stakes
Suspense is always a matter of stakes. You want to let the reader know, early on, what the stakes are. Kill or maim someone adorable early on. For example, The Firm with Tom Cruise. What are the stakes for Cruise? If he stays with the firm and the feds show it's connected to the mob then Cruise looses everything: his money, his job, his freedom. On the other hand, if he cooperates with the feds then he won't go to jail, but sooner or later the mob will catch up with him and he'll be dead. Nice choice!
- You can know the outcome and still create suspense. There was a movie where the story was told by a drowned person. You know the narrator dies at the end, but the stakes were still raised.

Summing Up
Stakes, consequences. You've created a situation with potentially tragic results. There will come a time when you will want to save your character, to protect them. Don't. Don't flinch.

This moment is terrifying. If we were decent people we would protect our characters. You want a happy ending, but you can't cheat to get it.

You've created characters with flaws and turned the monsters loose on them. You have to be brave and unflinching. You have to do horrible things to nice people.

You don't need to beat your reader over the head with gore and lots of ugly details. You can leave these implicit. Readers have great imaginations, they will fill in the details.

If you do it right then it will hurt. It hurts us to hurt our characters, it hurts us to manipulate the reader. One thing you must realize: We also manipulate ourselves. Ultimately, we do all this manipulation because we are building truth.

We must have courage and strength and you must realize that, yes, you are cruel but here's the real truth: truth hurts and it is crucial that you don't flinch.

So, those are my notes! I had no idea this post would be so long. Yikes! I must be able to scribble pretty quickly.

I guess I'm not going to be able to get to the other Friday workshops today, "The Psychology of Plotting" by Michale Slade and "The Inner Journey" by Donald Maass.

Stay tuned!

SiWC 2011 Day One, Part One: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema

I've decided to go through my experience at the writers' conference day by day, beginning on the first day, Friday.

Of course I was excited to be at the Surrey International Writers' Conference. This was my second time at the SiWC. The first time was last year and Robert Dugoni (see pic, above) sent us all off into the world with his rousing adaptation of Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate entitled: Today we WRITE!

Best. Speech. Ever.

Usually writers aren't the most demonstrative folks but we didn't just give him a standing ovation, we stamped our feet, we hooted and cheered. The speech was amazing. It was so good, in fact, it was so inspiring, that the organizers took Dugoni's speech as the theme for this year's conference.

Anyhow, that was last year, but it gives the background of our collective expectations, out thoughts. The mood of the conference.

For my first workshop I was going to attend, "The Military for Writers" by Bob Mayer but a friend mentioned "Don't Flinch" so I read the handout:

"Robert Wiersema, whose Bedtime Story is described as an exquisitely plotted blend of supernatural thriller and domestic drama, guides you though building suspense and raising the states when ANYTHING can happen."

I ask you, after reading a description like that, how could I not go?

I just looked at the time, ack! The rest of this post will have to wait till I get back from work. I want to write about the workshop and what Wiersema had to say about not flinching and tell you something about the other two courses I attended that day. Stay tuned!

The Surrey International Writers' Conference

The conference has ended and I've just settled down in front of a computer. I have one word for you: Wow! To call the conference awesome would be to slight it. It was amazing and stupendous!

This year friends and I reserved rooms at the Sheraton hotel so we could stay for late night events such as Michael Slade's Shock Theatre (the photo, above, is of Michael Slade, but it wasn't taken at the conference. I have a GREAT video for you from the conference, stay tuned ;). Saturday night we went to our rooms early, opened a bottle of wine, and talked about writing.

I want to tell you all about the great workshops I took, all the wonderful things I've leaned, but I need to unpack, do laundry, and catch up on my email. My deepest apologizes to the folks who emailed me and I haven't gotten back to you yet. I want to and I will sometime in the next couple of days.

The conference was great, but it's good to be back. :)