Good Writing: Using The Senses

My last post, Dwight V Swain On How To Write A Novel, was an info dump. Sorry about that! Today I'm just focusing on one thing: Making our prose clearer and more powerful.

I loved the way Dwight V. Swain talks about writing and structuring stories. Sure, at its core it's nothing we haven't heard before, but the way he put things together made a light-bulb go off for me. What I want to do today is talk about--in Emeral Lagasse's words--kicking our writing up to the next level.

We're going to look at two things: First, how to use Motivation-Reaction Units to make our writing clearer. Second, we're going to discuss how to make your readers feel. This last point goes, I think, to the very heart of what it is to tell a story: we want to entertain.

The Flow Of Narrative: Motivation-Reaction Units

What do we mean by "motivation-reaction unit"? It's simple. We're talking about cause and effect, stimulus and response. Mr. Swain writes:

Where your character is concerned, when you stick a pin in him he yells, "Ouch!" He doesn't yell "Ouch!" and then you stick in the pin.

Simple, right? But there is something more subtle going on here. Look at this example:

The wind had an icy edge to it. Eddy shivered and dug his hands deeper into his pockets. The wind kept right on chilling his hands so, still shivering, Eddy turned his back to it and headed for the house. Even as he did so, the lights went out.

Eddy stopped short.

Let's unpack Mr. Swain's example.

Motivation: The wind had an icy edge to it.
Reaction: Eddy shivered and dug his hands deeper into his pockets.

Motivation: The wind kept right on chilling his hands ...
Reaction: ... so, still shivering, Eddy turned his back to it and headed for the house.

Motivation: Even as he did so, the lights went out.
Reaction: Eddy stopped short

When I read this it was like a light went off for me. THIS sort of thing is what makes a piece of writing easy to read and understand.

If you're scratching your head wondering what I'm going on about think of it this way. Would it have seemed excessively peculiar if Mr. Swain had written:

Eddy shivered and dug his hands deeper into his pockets. The wind had an icy edge to it.

That seems to work, but it doesn't work as well. Or at least that's how it seems to me.

Help Your Readers Feel

Everyone writes for different reasons, but one reason common to many writers is the wish to entertain. That doesn't mean we have to turn our readers into human-shaped tear factories but it does mean we need to engage their emotions.

The 64 thousand dollar question: How can a writer make his, or her, readers feel things?

Dwight Swain gives four practical tips.

1. Use Action Verbs

Action verbs show something happening. For instance:

He turned
He sat down
He jumped
He whistled

2. Pictorial Nouns

Pictorial nouns are specific. Dwight V. Swain uses this general rule of thumb: The more specific the noun, the better off you are.

For instance (this is based on Mr. Swain's example), if you wrote, "The female sat," you haven't given your reader a lot of information. The subject could be a young girl, a teenager, a middle-aged woman, and so on. 

If you wrote, "A woman sat," you've communicated more information to your reader but the image formed is still vague. However, if you wrote, "An elderly woman with a lined face sat," then you would have given your reader a much clearer idea of what the subject looked like.

The more specific the noun, the more pictorial, and the more it paints a picture in your readers mind.

When your readers have a clear picture of what's going on in the story it's easier to generate narrative drive.

3. Use Sensory Language

Mr. Swain urges us to write in terms of what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. For instance:

Sight: bleary, colorless, faded, dim, glance, hazy, indistinct, shadowy, smudged, tarnished.

Sound: Bellow, cackle, grumble, howl, jabber, murmur, rant, screech, squawk, thud.

Touch: Balmy, chilly, dusty, feathery, gooey, hot, icy, moist, oily, prickly.

Taste: Bitter, creamy, gingery, nauseating, piquant, peppery, ripe, rotten, salty, sharp, tangy.

Smell: Acrid, fetid, odor, pungent, putrid, redolent, sweet, musty, waft, moldy.

Here is a list of sensory words (it's a .pdf file).

4. Use An Emotional Clock

I hadn't heard the term "emotional clock" before, but it makes a lot of sense.

Subjective vs Objective Time

Objective time is clock time. It's the time on your watch. Every second is the same.

Subjective time has to do with how each of us perceives time. We live by subjective time, by the excitement and tension of the moment.

Here's Dwight Swain's example: Einstein once said time passes quickly when you're talking to a pretty girl and slowly when you're sitting on a hot stove.

Very true.

We need to write to an emotional clock

So, what does an emotional clock have to do with writing?

Here's the idea:  you measure the amount of copy you put down according to the tension and excitement of what's happening.

For instance, if you're writing about lunch at a greasy spoon you're not going to give that a lot of space. You could probably tell rather than show.

On the other hand, if you're writing about the villain holding a gun on you and his finger going white on the trigger and the knowledge you're going to be blown away in the next minute, you stretch that out. You make the character suffer. How? By writing in terms of motivation and reaction. When you do this you slow down the pace and show. 

(This post has been based on Dwight Swain's Master Writing Teacher CDs, especially the first two.)

Do you have any tips for how to kick one's writing up a notch? Any tips or tricks you'd like to share?

Other articles you might like:

- Dwight V Swain On How To Write A Novel
- Michael Hauge On How To Summarize Your Novel
- Six Things Writers Can Learn From Television

Photo credit: "Harry" by kevin dooley under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Dwight V Swain On How To Write A Novel

Time and again folks have recommended Dwight V. Swain's books on writing to me but I put off reading his work. I told myself I didn't have time. Well, the past week as I've waited impatiently for my arm to heal I've had the time!

Yep, that's called hunting for a silver lining. But I have to say: Wow! What a lining. I wish I had discovered Mr. Swain's work years ago. His advice (I listened to his Master Writing Teacher CDs) is specific and concrete; it's the sort of thing that I feel will give me an immediate payoff in my own writing.

Today I'll talk a bit about what Mr. Swain has to say about how to build a story (the first 2 CDs) and tomorrow, or another day, I'll discuss his views on character development.

Casting Your Novel

Alfred Hitchcock once wrote, "First you decide what the characters are going to do then you provide them with enough characteristics to make it seem plausible that they should do it".

Writers are like gods; we set up ourr characters, decide what they need to do, then rationalize their behavior.

Cast for contrast: TAGS and TRAITS

Assign each of your main characters tags and traits and see to it that these tags and traits are different, each from the other.

Tags

Here are examples of tags:
- blond hair,
- long finger nails painted red to look like talons dipped in blood,
- a peg leg, etc.

Do not have three gorgeous blonds in the same story.

Do not have two characters with peg legs unless you have a very good story driven reason.

Do not have all of your characters blue eyed or black eyed.

You get the idea.

Traits & Dominant Impressions

Dwight Swain suggests you give each of your characters different manners of dealing with the world so that the reader can tell one character from another. Specifically, give each character a different dominant impression.

Impressions

An impression is made up of a NOUN OF VOCATION and an ADJECTIVE OF MANNER.

Noun of Vocation

Most of us are known according to our role, our vocation. For instance, we expect a carpenter will behave differently from a lawyer. A stay-at-home mom will behave differently than a longshoreman.

Mr. Swain holds that you need to give each of your (main) characters a vocation, a role in life; for example, carpenter, lawyer, stay-at-home parent, writer, and so on.

Adjective of Manner

Each of us behaves in a distinctive way. Most of the time it isn't anything we think about, it is automatic, habitual.

Dwight Swain admonishes us not to be subtle. Assign characters manners in such a way that your readers will be able to recognize that character instantly whenever they appear in your story.

Mr. Swain uses this example: Let's say a character's noun of vocation is "waitress" and her adjective of manner is "sloppy". The dominant impression would be "sloppy waitress". Once you know this, you know how she is going to behave. You have a picture of her you can write to.

Dominant Attitude

Assign each character a dominant attitude. This is "a way of looking at life, a way of dealing with the world".

Here's an example of a dominant attitude: Don't make waves. No matter what happens a character with this dominant attitude will manage to fade into the background. Why? Because they don't want to conflict with anyone. They deal with life by being self-effacing.

Here's another example: Might makes right. This character feels they can get their way by pushing people around. This is his attitude toward the world, toward your other characters.

Character And Situation

Let's go back to the beginning for a moment. What is a story all about? What lies at its core? It's this:

A character wants to change his unacceptable situation, a situation he just can't stand.

What you need to do as a writer is figure out why, objectively, this character wants to make this change. It will help us if we first know what kinds of things people want.

Things People Want

a) Possession of something

They want a girl, they want an alley cat, they want one million dollars. They want something, it doesn't matter what.

b) Relief from something

They want relief from a boss the character doesn't like, from a wife the character can't stand, from a climate that gives your character the most hideous allergies.

c) Revenge for something

Someone has done something to your character and he wants to get back at them.

Your Character's Subjective Reasons For Acting

Dwight Swain feels that, often, the subjective reasons for action are more important than the objective ones (for instance, he wants to win back the heart of the one he loves or he wants to find treasure, and so on).

a) We need to know what the character needs to feel happy.

This is likely going to be a little different for everyone. Some people need to have an active lifestyle filled with extreme sports to be happy while for others happiness is a good book and a warm fire. Tell us what your character needs to be happy.

b) We need to have some insight into what the character is scared of.

For instance, is she scared of the villain? Of old age? That she will be convicted of a crime committed in the past? That she will lose someone she loves?

A character is always scared of something and you need to know what that is, even though it may never happen.

c) What is your characters lifestyle?

Mr. Swain observes that most of us are impulse buyers in the supermarket of life. Most of us drift rather than go in a straight line. We think something is a good idea so we do it.

The 4 Wishes/Motives

When we talk about lifestyle there are 4 wishes that drive people. Know which of these is dominant in your character, as well as how they combine with others.

a) Adventure
The desire for new experience.

b) Security
A woman grew up dog poor on a farm. Now she's rich. But that need for a feeling of security is so important that she lives like she was still on that dirt farm.

c) Recognition
The drive to fame. This is the drive that Mr. Swain feels makes groupies. They want to associate themselves with something bigger than they are.

d) Response
Some folks crave being surrounded by people who demonstrate they think highly of you, that you are important to them.

Each of your main characters are going to have each of these desires to a certain extent. You need to decide what the main thing is that drives them.

Why doesn't your character quit?

When the going gets tough why doesn't your character throw in the towel and walk away? Why doesn't she go home, crack open a tub of Rocky Road ice cream, climb into sweats, and watch her favorite TV programs?

Yes, there's going to be an external goal, something out there in the world she wants. For instance, winning over the one they love, gaining their freedom, finding a treasure, and so on. But perhaps the most important reason for not quitting are the subjective reasons. For instance, maintaining ones self image.

Self-Image

We all have a self-image, we all have an idea--or think we do--of what we'll do and what we won't do. Pride and shame shape this. We'll do things we're proud of and we will avoid doing things we are ashamed of.

What is the self-image of your main characters? What is that the that is so important they can't let go of it even though it makes no sense in terms of logic.

Alfred Hitchcock once wrote:

Audiences want to identify with a hero who wants to do something and eventually succeeds in doing it even though they don't necessarily, morally, endorse his actions.

Villain/Antagonist

The strength of your villain is the strength of your story.

The key characteristic of villainy is RUTHLESSNESS. A villain is someone who wants something so much that they are perfectly willing to push other people around in order to get it.

For instance, the guy who wants the corner office with all the windows. He's willing to hurt others to get this.

Building Your Novel & Writing Your Novel

Dwight Swain notes that building a novel is a bit different than structuring your novel. When we talked about structuring a novel we were discussing the broad, general, outlines of the story. When we talk about building a novel we are talking about putting in item after item to make the whole thing make sense.

The Beginning

A good opening raises questions in your reader's mind. It carries the implied premise that something interesting is going to happen. That the first paragraph and those that follow have exciting consequences.

Consequences

Whatever happens in a novel should have consequences. That's the way the world works, that's the way we work. Whatever you start your book with is what is going to have this ripple effect, is going to send cause-and-effect ripples throughout your book, so you need something interesting to start everything off.

Mr. Swain writes that there are many ways to begin, but that he has found these to be the most effective: hooks and springboards

The Hook

The book is a "striking, self-explanatory scene that plunges some character into danger in a manner that intrigues readers".

Ordinarily it raises the fear that something will or won't happen. For example, the shark in Jaws was a hook. It instantly established fear and tension.

The Springboard

In its simplest, bluntest, form it will open with "he" or "she" or the character's name, and then will follow with motivated action. That is, the character has a purpose, whether it's related to the overall story or not, as long as it puts the character in a position to be in danger. Not necessarily in danger, but in a position where he could be in danger.

For instance, you could have a character that was going to the post office to mail a package and something happens which puts him in a position to be in danger.

In other words we are allowed to build the character without a lot of melodrama in the beginning but the important thing is that, in the beginning, you either put your character in danger or you put your character in a position where he will be in danger.

The Middle

A strong beginning is important but tension and interest are things that you capture and recapture. You need to hold, and build, your readers interest throughout the novel.

You leapfrog from one exciting moment to the next. Remember: Drama is life with the boring bits left out.

"When in doubt, drop a corpse through the roof"

That pearl of wisdom is from Ray Palmer. And it doesn't just apply to horror stories, this is true for mainstream as well. Or, rather, the idea behind it.

In mainstream fiction you still have to hold your readers interest. Yes, you go about it in a different way--it's probably not going to be raining corpses--but the essential idea is the same.

Chapters, Scenes & Sequels

You build your novel a step at a time and you build it in segments called chapters. A chapter is made up of a succession of new developments, of changes, presented in an interlocking series of SCENES and SEQUELS.

A scene is a time unified unit of conflict, of confrontation, and is made up of three elements:

a. Goal
b. Conflict (between two opposing forces)
c. Disaster

We use sequels to link scenes together.

Sequels have three parts:

a. Reaction
b. Dilemma
c. Decision

The function of a sequel is to give your story some logic, some plausibility and to enable you to get from one clash to the next.

For instance, you have a fight between two people. The fight is over and it ends on a note of disaster. This unanticipated development throws your character off. What is their reaction?

a. Reaction: Shock
b. Dilemma: What do I do now?
c. Decision. Eventually your character will reach a decision about what to do. This decision provides him with a GOAL, the purpose, the what-shall-I-do of the next scene.

This is your single most useful tool in putting together a story.

A scene is the place where you build the movement of your story and a sequel is a unit of transition that links two scenes.

Further, the proportion of SCENE to SEQUEL is what determines the pacing of your novel.

A scene puts emphasis on the struggle between your two forces, it builds action and excitement and speeds up your story.

A sequel gives you the logic and the believability of your story.

You will find, if you analyse books, that they are built of scenes and sequels. That's how you build a story.

(See also: Making A Scene: Using Conflicts And Setbacks To Create Narrative Drive for a discussion of the idea of Yes but .../No and ...)

Endings

Each time you introduce a new development--a complication--your characters situation changes. No state of affairs--no scene, no chapter--should end the same way it began.

Big Moments

Dwight Swain advises that writers devise three or four big moments for their story. Some highly dramatic scene disaster. A disaster is any unanticipated development that changes the course of things.

Maybe your MC is broke and finds he inherits a million dollars. That's a disaster in the sense it changes his situation and forces him to look at things in a new light.

Plants

In order for a Big Moment to work out a writer will have to include a PLANT where a plant is something one includes in a story just so something else will work out.

The End

There are two parts to the end:

a) The climax
b) The resolution

The Climax

This is the showdown. The final clash between whatever threatens the main character's happiness and the main character.

You need a clash that will force your character into some kind of decision about what his immediate actions are going to be. You want something that will set your readers up and tell them how they should feel about your main character and whatever else is going on.

Here's Dwight V. Swain's advice on how to do this: Provide your character with an easy way out, but don't take it.

This easy 'solution' should provide the hero with a way to solve his problem--it will fix things--but it will be morally unacceptable.

For instance, Ken (the MC) has money problems, he just needs to steal from the till at work--and he has a good scheme for doing it--and that will solve his problem.

But it would make your readers mad. Readers want a happy ending, they want to see the character in.

The Resolution

This is the wrap up, the pay off. Now you'll reward or punish your central character according to how he, or she, has behaved.

Mr. Swain notes that writers should keep in mind that books with moderately happy endings tend to sell best. Generally readers don't like a tragedy, although you would be able to get away with more if you were writing a horror than if you were writing, say, a romance. Readers tend to like to see the main character make the 'right' decision and be rewarded. But you're the writer so you're the god of the story and can do whatever you want. That's the bottom line. This is your story.

In Conclusion

Wow! This has been a long post. There's more, but I think I'll break off for now. Tomorrow I'll pick up where I left off and talk about what Dwight V. Swain has to say about emotional clocks and testing your novel to make sure it's got all the right bits.

Other articles you might like:

- Michael Hauge On How To Summarize Your Novel
- How To Succeed As A Writer: The Value Of Failure
- Six Things Writers Can Learn From Television

Photo credit: "Ivy and Sweetiepie" by thejbird under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Gone Fishing: Back in a Week

Sorry folks, my arm is acting up.  I have to give it a complete rest, I think a week should do it. (cross fingers)

Good writing! See you in a week.

Michael Hauge On How To Summarize Your Novel

Michael Hauge's Story Mastery

As some of you know, my right arm is out of commission so all typing--except for this blog!--is out of the question. As a result, I've been taking care of tasks I normally put off.

Tasks such as filing papers.

I struck gold! I went through some of the handouts from conferences I've attended--I thought I might find something interesting for a blog post--and came across Michael Hauge's handouts, along with my notes from the workshop he taught at Write On!

Michael Hauge's Biography

For those who don't know, Michael Hauge is a story consultant, what some folks call a story doctor, as well as an author and lecturer. The following is from his bio:

[Michael Hauge] has coached writers, producers, stars and directors on projects for Will Smith, Julia Roberts, Robert Downey Jr and Morgan Freeman, as well as for every major studio and network.

Michael has been involved "in the development of I AM LEGEND, HANCOCK and THE KARATE KID".

I was riveted by Michael's talks. If you ever have a chance to attend one of his workshops I recommend it.

Novel Summary Template

The really cool thing about Michael Hauge's template is that it isn't just a 'plug in the description' kind of thing, he ties it into the underlying structure of the story.

I'll do this in two parts. First, we'll look at the template, then we'll look at how the template ties into the underlying story structure.

This is straight from Michael Hauge's handout:

When hero who empathy/setup, is opportunity, s/he decides to new situation/preliminary goal. But when change of plans s/he now must outer motivation/primary goal but hero's plan as well as second goal. [NOT a necessity, except in most Romantic Comedies] in spite of the fact that outer conflict.

Michael Hauge's Six Stage Plot Structure

Now let's take Michael's tempate and see how it lines up with a story's underlying structure (see Figure 1). In the next section I'll give an example and pull everything together.

Figure 1. Click to Enlarge

KM Fawcett has written an amazing article: Michael Hauge's Six-Stage Plot Structure. I encourage you all to read it, she gives the best summary of Michael's system I've seen, here is a sample:

A character arcs when he moves from his identity to essence.

Identity = emotional armor (facade) worn to protect himself from some wound.
Essence = who the character is when the emotional armor is stripped. True self.
 
What is your hero’s wound? From the wound grows a fear. This fear gives IDENTITY (emotional armor) to the character.

The character should have a physical goal, but that goal is primarily a symbol. It represents an emotional need (the true goal). The end reward must satisfy the character’s emotional need.
 
The only way the character can get to his longing (his emotional need) is to step out of his IDENTITY (emotional armor) and into his ESSENCE (true self).

Once you’ve established your hero’s WOUND, FEAR, IDENTITY, ESSENCE, EMOTIONAL NEED and PHYSICAL OUTER GOAL, we can move onto The Six Stage Plot Structure.

That is only the start of her analysis, to read the whole thing, click here: Michael Hauge’s Six-Stage Plot Structure.

Michael Hauge's Example: Shrek

Okay, so now we're going to bring everything together. We're putting Michael's structure for a summary together with his underlying plot structure and coming up with something you can use to wow editors as well as the next person who asks you: So, what's your story about?

Hero = Shrek
Role = lovable, courageous ogre
Setup = lives alone in his swamp because the townspeople reject him, has his home invaded by fairy tale creatures
New Situation = go tell the powerful Lord Farquaad to send them back home
Change of plans = Farquaad sends Shrek on a mission in return for his swamp
Outer motivation = rescue a princess and give her to Farquaad
Hero's plan = overcoming a fearsome dragon
Secondary goal = win the love of the princess for himself
Outer conflict = a) Farquaad will stop at nothing to get her, b) Shrek is afraid she'll reject him, and c) she's secretly cursed with turning into an ogre herself every night.

So here's how that reads:

When Shrek, a lovable, courageous ogre who lives alone in his swamp because the townspeople reject him, has his home invaded by fairy tale creatures, he decides to go tell the powerful Lord Farquaad to send them back home. But when Farquaad sends Shrek on a mission in return for his swamp, Shrek now must rescue a princess and give her to Farquaad by overcoming a fearsome dragon, as well as win the love of the princess for himself, in spite of the fact that Farquaad will stone at nothing to get her. Shrek is afraid she'll reject him, and she's secretly cursed with turning into an ogre herself every night.

An added bonus is that since the summary is drawn right out of the structure of your novel, it's tethered to it, so doing this exercise before you write the first draft could save you a TON of work later.

Try it out! What is the summary for your work-in-progress? 

Other articles you might like:

- Six Things Writers Can Learn From Television
- How To Succeed As A Writer: The Value Of Failure
- The Magic Of Stephen King: A Sympathetic Character Is Dealt A Crushing Blow They Eventually Overcome

Photo credit: "Metrò Paris" by superUbO under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Six Things Writers Can Learn From Television

Today I'm going to talk about 6 things fiction writers can learn from television, but before we get to that I'd like to talk about a fantastic site I just discovered.

Nerdist Writers Panel

I've always wondered what it would be like to be a TV writer so I was ecstatic to learn about the Nerdist Writers Panel podcast. TV writers for shows like Modern Family, Family Guy, The Office, Big Bang Theory talk about their experiences. It's fascinating. Many thanks to Matt Debenham for recommending the site.

6 Things Fiction Writers Can Learn From Television

1. 'You can’t just tell the story of Some Guy. You have to tell the story of THE Guy Who….'

TV is all about the characters, even premise-heavy shows like Burn Notice. Matt Debenham writes:

There have been a dozen shows that tried to replicate the mix of sci-fi and mystery that seemingly made LOST a hit, but the secret to LOST was this: People came for the crazy premise, they stayed for the characters. The writers took time to show us exactly who Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurley, Charlie, and Claire were. In fact, the flashback structure LOST used from the start was there explicitly to deepen the characters, which the creators knew would then keep us invested in the mystery. People watch because they love to become invested in characters. They love to know them, they love to worry about them, they love to be surprised by them. 6 Things Prose Writers Can Learn From Television)

2. Good Characters are Obsessed and Broken

Great characters are the most DRIVEN and the most DAMAGED. They are active.

An active character is one who:
- wants something
- does something related to those wants
- have what they do in (2) be bad for them.

Rule of thumb: Bad for the character? Great for everyone else!

Example: Walter White from Breaking Bad. Matt writes:

Walter is obsessed with becoming a bigger and bigger player in the meth business. Which is probably a fairly normal trait for someone in the meth business. But Walter is broken because his attachment to meth stems not from money, which was his original version of things (he was dying of cancer and wanted to leave his family with some security after he was gone), but from a desperate need for respect. Family doesn’t really enter into it. Walter White is driven by pride — to the degree that he continues on despite the bodies and ruined lives and broken relationships piling up around him. Walter’s obsession is what helps him, a former high-school chemistry teacher, quickly become the biggest meth player in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Walter’s brokenness is what keeps him from getting out despite the fact that his work constantly endangers his life and the lives of those he supposedly loves. (4 Steps (And a Bonus!) To Making Character Everything)

3. Be Entertaining To Others

Some folks write to please themselves and that's great, but if you want an audience, write for the audience.

4. Don't explain everything.

Leave key information up to the audience to figure out. Leave room for revelation.

5. Plot, Narrative Structure, Is Everything

Structure matters because without it there's no story. Structure isn't formula. Structure, plot, simply provides framework for content, it doesn't dictate content. For example, Michael Hague, from Story Mastery, talks about the five key turning points of all successful scripts.

6. You Have To Go On To The Next Project

In the movie Bossy Pants Tina Fey said, "The show doesn’t go on when it’s finished; it goes on because it’s 11:30" (Kris Rusch: The Value of Imperfection).  Nina Munteanu writes that

Robert J. Sawyer’s response to the question of “when do you stop revising?” was “When you’ve taken out all the boring bits.” That may seem on the face of it either too simple or too abstract. But, in fact, he is right on the mark. (When Do You Know Your Story Is Finished?)

How can you tell when the boring bits are out? Nina gives these tips:

1. Objectivity: Distance yourself

If you think your manuscript might be done set it aside for a few weeks, or as long as you can afford then read it again with fresh eyes.

2. Is each scene essential and well developed?

- Does your character have clearly defined goals in each scene?
- Is there conflict? Something keeping the character from achieving his or her goal?
- Is the point of view character's goal tied into the story goal?
 You need to know when to step back and pronounce your work done. If you don't have an editor and are making this call on your own it can be difficult.

What is your favorite TV character? Why?

Other articles you might like:

- How To Succeed As A Writer: The Value Of Failure
- The Magic Of Stephen King: A Sympathetic Character Is Dealt A Crushing Blow They Eventually Overcome
- Ray Bradbury On How To Keep And Feed A Muse

Photo credit: "bee zzzzzzz Sunday" by linh.ngan under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Writer's Life: Repetitive Strain Injury

A couple of days ago I typed four thousand words of fiction, a thousand words of non-fiction, went to bed, and woke up with a useless arm.

Of course it's not completely useless, it can still do essential things like helping me drink coffee, but I can't raise it out to my side. Not without excessive use of colorful language, that is.

So, today, I thought I would offer up my experience as a cautionary tale, one of those horrific stories after-school specials are made about, the ones that make young children afraid to look under their beds. (Or in closets. Beastly things, closets.)

What NOT To Do With Your Mouse

I'm renovating my office so I set up an oh-so-very temporary one in what is basically an oversized storage closet.

It's not as bad as it sounds.

The arrangement has its perks, when I spill my coffee I'm right next to the cleaning supplies! But there's one enormous downside: my desk is too shallow. Actually, my 'desk' is really a deep shelf. If there is a villain in this little morality tale it would be the shelf (cue dramatic music: dun dun dun).

Trust me, my monitor was not designed to sit on a shelf, it has a huge oval base that, while ensuring it would remain upright through a magnitude 8 earthquake, makes it a space-hog. I can't fit both my monitor and my keyboard on my desk-shelf at the same time.

(In terms of plot, this would be the complication. Deciding to move my office into the oversized closet would be me accepting the call to adventure. BAD call.)

My solution: slant my keyboard and monitor so they can both sit on the desk at the same time.

At the time I was proud of myself for making a difficult situation work, but that was the start of my problem because the angle of the keyboard forced me to mouse at an awkward angle.

(Kids, if something feels awkward don't do it!)

A couple of days later a strange stabby, shooting, pain came to live in my right shoulder. At that point I should have put two and two together and realized that my unnatural mousing posture was hurting me.

Ah, nope. I had no clue. I was obsessed with meeting my deadlines so I barely gave it a second thought.

The pain gradually increased until the day I told you about, the day I went on a typing marathon and woke to find my right shoulder on strike.

(You may wonder how I'm typing this, let's just say slings can be very versatile.)

If my tale were a proper after-school special it would have a resolution--my renovations would be finished and I'd have moved back into my office, in a little bit of pain but much wiser because of my brush with RSI.

Here's hoping!

Repetitive Strain Injury And You

You're probably much more savvy than I was about ways to avoid and treat repetitive strain injury, but I thought I'd include a few tips.

Tips for avoiding repetitive strain injury:

1. If it hurts when you do that, don't do that!

2. If you get a shooting pain in your shoulder don't ignore it and hope it'll go away. Figure out what might be causing the pain and fix things.

3. Hot and cold compresses. I had intended this to be a silly list but one thing that has helped me are hot and cold heating pads. Overnight, I have less pain and more mobility. (I'm not saying you should try this, for all I know it could make the injury worse long-term. No medical recommendations here!)

Here are a few articles/sites on RSI I've found helpful:
- Repetitive Strain Injury (Wikipedia)
- RSI Awareness
- Harvard RSI Action

Have you ever had a repetitive strain injury? How did you get it? What did you do to treat it?

Other articles you might like:

- How To Succeed As A Writer: The Value Of Failure
- The Magic Of Stephen King: A Sympathetic Character Is Dealt A Crushing Blow They Eventually Overcome
- Ray Bradbury On How To Keep And Feed A Muse

Photo credit: "Army Photography Contest - 2007 - FMWRC - Arts and Crafts - Son in the Tub" by MAJ Aaron Haney, posted by familymwr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Succeed As A Writer: The Value Of Failure

We've all failed. Seth Godin believes that failing is good but that failing big is even better. Why? Because unless you're failing you're not really trying. (NexGen Interviews - Seth Godin)

But how does this philosophy apply to writers? That's something I've been thinking about lately. This morning I came across How to Become a Writing Rockstar: A Simple Guide. In it Henri Junttila asks: What is the goal of writing?

When we know what the goal is, perhaps he can understand how failure can help us. So, here's what Henri thinks the goal of writing is: To write authentically, to write honestly. "When you stay true to your quirky self, you are already a rockstar."

That echoes something Seth Godin said:

We should blow up the expectations of writing and say something worth saying and say it in a way that’s personal. It turns out that the internet, for the first time in the history of mankind, says to everyone, ‘Here’s a microphone. If you want to talk, talk. If you want to write, write. If you want to make a difference, make a difference.’ How horrible it would be to refuse to take your turn at the mic. (Why We Are All Artists: Seth Godin in Conversation – Part 1)

You might say, "Oh, but what if people don't like me! What if I release my work on Amazon and I get a bunch of 1 star reviews?"

1. Failure Shows You How To Get Better

Here's why failure is so important: it shows you how to get better. Seth writes:

Bob Dylan was booed off the stage in 1967 when he went electric. He was booed off the stage in 1974 when he went Gospel. He’s been booed off the stage since then and yet he still fills theaters. The Monkeys, on the other hand, have never been booed off the stage and they’re just an oldies act. Being booed off the stage is a key part of being an artist. (Part 1)

So, congratulations! Sure, you failed, but you tried something. And, as a result, you learned something.

2. Failure Is Safer Than Not Failing

What you did is actually a very safe thing. Seth writes:

I want to use the words uncomfortable zone [rather than "danger zone"] because it is, in fact, a very safe place to be because it’s not fatal. No one ever died writing a blog post. What we’re saying here is that for a while anyway, the safest thing you can do is to be as uncomfortable as you can stand to be. (How to become a Successful Writer: Seth Godin in Conversation – Part 2)

Your writing career is not over because you wrote and published a story that people hated (and I'm pretty sure not everyone hated it). Remember: YOU didn't fail, your story did. 

The key: Don't take failure personally.

Seth Godin puts it this way:

Most people who are getting started in writing do not have the confidence of a best-selling author. They are not comfortable sharing their work far and wide. They’re not comfortable saying, ‘I don’t have a publisher. I’m going to publish myself. Here, I wrote this.’ They would rather have the safety that comes from saying, ‘Well, I didn’t decide this was good. Penguin decided this was good.’ ‘I didn’t decide this was worth reading. Simon and Schuster decided it was worth reading.’

My argument is that all the things that feel uncomfortable are actually the safest things you can do. To every novelist who is complaining or bitter about all the publishers who won’t publish them, I say: Take your novel, make it into a PDF. It’s free. E-mail it to fifty of your friends.

If your novel strikes a chord, they will e-mail it to their friends and the next thing you know, a million people will read your novel for free. If a million people read your novel for free, you’ll have no trouble whatsoever selling your next one.

On the other hand, if the fifty people you sent it to don’t share it with anyone, then you haven’t written a good enough novel, and you should start over. But either of those paths is better than sitting at home complaining about the fact that you can’t get published. (Part 1)

We’ve just eliminated scarcity. There used to be scarcity of shelf space, scarcity of publishers, and scarcity of paper. All that’s gone. There’s unlimited shelf space, unlimited digital paper, and an unlimited number of publishers. You can’t continue to blame scarcity for the fact that your writing isn’t in the world.

You have to accept that putting your writing out there is no longer difficult. What’s difficult is getting someone who encounters your writing to share it with someone else. That changes the kind of writing you should be doing. You shouldn’t ever again be writing to please an editor. (Part 2)

Seth admits to failing:

I don’t consider it a good day unless I fail. I’ve written thousands and thousands of blog posts. Most of them aren’t that great. I’ve written books that didn’t sell as well as the publisher wanted. I’ve launched internet projects that have fallen on their face. I’ve had negotiations where I completely misunderstood what the other person was looking for, or they misunderstood me, and we walked away from each other.

The Key To Success As A Writer

Don't write to please everyone. If you do that you'll please no one.

If you’ve accepted that the rules of the game are that you are not willing to write unless everyone likes what you write, then you’ve just announced that you’re an amateur, not a professional, and that you’re probably doomed. Whereas the professional writer says, ‘It is almost certain that most of what I write will not resonate with most people who read it, but over time, I will gain an audience who trusts me to, at the very least, be interesting.’ (Part 2)

The power of the internet, for writers, is that we can find a small group of people who are interested in the same things we are, the the things we write about. Seth writes:

I was in Iceland last week ... and one out of every six hundred people in the whole country came to see me speak. This would be the equivalent of fifty thousand people seeing me in the United States, which has never, ever happened.

Iceland teaches an important lesson. It’s such a tiny place, yet it’s possible to have a café that succeeds. The café succeeds not because everyone in Iceland goes there, but because enough people go. Whether you live in New Zealand, Malaysia or the United States, the internet connects you to four billion people.

All you need to make a living is for four thousand to adore you. And you need forty thousand to be a hit. That’s forty thousand out of four billion! Those are really good odds! (Part 2)

The Bottom Line

If failure is okay (but mistakes are not), then is there anything you shouldn't do? Seth Godin says there is one thing you should never be: boring. He writes:

Whether you’re a writer or the maker of widgets, you won’t be able to keep going if you’re boring. (Part 2)

Seth Godin's Advice To New Writers

Seth Godin was asked to give advice to new writers. What should a new writer do? His reply:

There are three steps: write, ship, share. When you write and ship and share and you see whether or not it resonates, you will get better at what you do.

The more you write and ship and share, the more people will come to depend on what you’re doing and the easier it’s going to be to spread your ideas. At some point, people will come to you and say, ‘I’m not getting enough of what you’re doing. Here’s some money’, or ‘I’m not getting enough of what you’re doing. Please come speak to my group’, or ‘I’m not getting enough of what you’re doing. Please coach me so I can do it too.’ But none of that happens until you write and ship and share. (Part 2)

My Question: Are you convinced? Do you think failure is necessary for success?

Other articles you might be interested in:

- The Magic Of Stephen King: A Sympathetic Character Is Dealt A Crushing Blow They Eventually Overcome
- Ray Bradbury On How To Keep And Feed A Muse
- Fleshing Out Your Protagonist: Creating An Awesome Character

Photo credit: "Stupid garbage compactor ..." by JD Hancock under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Magic Of Stephen King: A Sympathetic Character Is Dealt A Crushing Blow They Eventually Overcome

How To Write A Bestseller

If anyone knows, please do tell! Of course part of it is luck. Getting your content out in front of the right people at the right time.

Topic counts too. Writing about something--whether it be hobbits in Middle Earth, buried silos, or kids finding a body--that will grab the public's attention, something they will be intrigued by enough to both read and recommend.

So, other than that, what's the secret to writing a bestseller?

Of course I know there's no secret, not really, but I do think there may be rules of thumb.

When I read Stephen King's work--and I know I keep mentioning Mr. King--but he has had an enormously successful career and his work has been used as an example of how to write in many of the writing workshops I've taken as well as in many of the books on writing I've read.

Dig Deep And Go For The Emotional Jugular

When I read Stephen King's work what has struck me is this: the emotional connection.

Always, always, always I feel for the characters, there is a part of me that emotionally connects with them, their successes and their failings. It's not a thinking thing, this connection, it's an emotional thing. It's not a matter of the head but of the heart.

Right now I'm reading Dean Koontz's novella, What The Night Knows. His opening paragraphs paint a picture. It's a beautiful, compelling opening that does a good job of both drawing me into the story and creating an atmosphere, a feeling.

But it's a different feeling from that created by King. It is more about thinking and looking, about understanding the characters. I like the characters, I'm interested, I do care about them, but I'm not emotionally invested in them they way I get when I read a King novel. I feel protective of those characters the way I feel about my good friends.

Of course, I'm talking about my responses. You may have had different responses. In which case, I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

An Analysis Of Stephen King's Misery

I will talk about Misery but first I'd like to backtrack a bit.

I've previously written about It and The Dead Zone, two of my favorite books by Stephen King (It is one of my favorite books by any author). Another book King wrote, and that sold well, and that was said to be, by some, one of his best books, was Misery.

Misery begins differently than many of Stephen King's other books, with a man struggling to regain consciousness. But, in each case (The Dead Zone, It, Misery) there is a dilemma, almost a contest, that starts things off. Always, this dilemma/contest is intensely personal for the main character.

The Dead Zone

In The Dead Zone Johnny, a six year old boy, goes down to the local pond to ice skate. He's good at ice skating, better even than the other kids his age. The contest is between Johnny and the other children as well as between Johnny and himself.

Specifically, Johnny wants to do something he's never done before, something Timmy Benedix could do: Skate backward. King writes:

[Johnny] skated slowly around the outer edge of the clear patch, wishing he could go backward like Timmy Benedix, listening to the ice thud and crackle mysteriously under the snow cover farther out ... He was very glad to be alive on that cold, fair winter day. Nothing was wrong with him, nothing troubled his mind, he wanted nothing ... except to be able to skate backward, like Timmy Benedix.

.  .  .  .

"Timmy!" he shouted. "Watch this!"
He turned around and began to skate clumsily backward. Without realizing it, he was skating into the area of the hockey game.

.  .  .  .

[H]e was doing it! He was skating backward! He had caught the rhythm--all at once. It was in a kind of sway of the legs ...

Just then, in the midst of his six-year-old elation he receives the injury that will change the rest of his life.

The Dead Zone: Analysis

So, what do we have? A sympathetic character achieves a personal goal, does something, accomplishes something, that gives him a great deal of satisfaction and that readers can relate to (a lot of kids have strapped on ice skates and done a few laps around an ice rink).

Then the sympathetic character, through no fault of their own, receives a crushing blow that will transform the rest of their life. As a result of this blow they have a challenge: Give in or overcome.

Stephen King's It

The Dead Zone was published in 1979 while It wasn't released until 1986 (Stephen King Biography). But, still, these books open in remarkably similar ways.

At the beginning of It we meet George who is, like Johnny, age six. George is "a small boy in a yellow slicker and red galoshes" who runs along beside a boat made out of newspaper.

George is adorable.

The boat was made by his brother, Bill. Bill loves George and would have played with him but he was ill and confined to bed.

This is the 'through no fault of his own' part. Bill couldn't help being sick and not being able to help his brother. Yes, he made the newspaper boat for his brother, and yes George probably wouldn't have died that day, that way, if he hadn't been playing with the toy Bill made for him. But still it wasn't Bill's fault. Though, of course, we understand that Bill wouldn't feel that way about it.

When the newspaper boat goes off the side of a "deep ravine" George laughs aloud, "the sound of solitary, childish glee a bright runner in that gray afternoon".

George's "strange death" is the crushing blow life delivers to Bill the way falling on the ice, the injury he received, was Johnny's.

Openings

What I've talked about so far are openings, just openings, and that's all I'm going to do because, really, those first few paragraphs are the most important determiners of whether your book will sell, whether the person reading your work will buy it.

The rest of the book sells your next book, or perhaps one from your backlist. It's the first few paragraphs that sells the one a potential fan, a potential buyer, opens up and starts to read.

At least that's how I look at it.

Stephen King's Misery

So, let's look at Misery now. What's the setup here?

A man, Paul Sheldon, gets into a car accident while driving under the influence. He is rescued by Annie Wilkes and nursed back to life in her spare bedroom.

For the first few paragraphs Paul is fighting for consciousness. Here's King's first mention of Annie Wilkes:

His first really clear memory of this now, the now outside the storm-haze, was of stopping, of being suddenly aware he just couldn't pull another breath, and that was all right, that was good, that was in fact just peachy-keen; he could take a certain level of pain but enough was enough and he was glad to be getting out of the game.

Then there was a mouth clamped over his, a mouth which was unmistakably a woman's mouth in spite of its hard spitless lips, and the wind from this woman's mouth blew into his own mouth and down his throat, puffing his lungs, and when the lips were pulled back he smelled his warder for the first time, smelled her on the outrush of the breath she had forced into him the way a man might force a part of himself into an unwilling woman, a dreadful mixed stench of vanilla cookies and chocolate ice cream and chicken gravy and peanut-butter fudge.

He heard a voice screaming, "Breathe, goddammit! Breathe, Paul!"

The lips clamped down again. The breath blew down his throat again. Blew down it like the dank suck of wind which follows a fast subway train, pulling sheets of newspaper and candy-wrappers after it ...

There's a lot to say about that passage. Yesterday I wrote about Ray Bradbury and mentioned what he had said in Zen In The Art Of Writing about it being important for writers to read poetry. I'd wager that Stephen King reads his fair share of poetry! It's a beautiful example of poetic prose.

Anyway, that's not what we're discussing right now!

This passage seems to follow the previous pattern, though not as obviously. No, we don't have a six year old child, but we do have someone vulnerable. Helpless. Sympathetic.

The crushing blow is Annie Wilkes; Paul's car accident and being rescued by her--if one can call it a rescue!

The rest of Misery is about how Paul deals with the crushing blow. Does he let his situation get the better of him or does he fight like hell and overcome?

That, I think, is a common setup for King's books.

The Pattern

I'm not saying that Stephen King has a formula, not at all. I'm just saying I've noticed a certain pattern to a few of Mr. King's openings and the pattern goes something like this:

A sympathetic character under stress (they have either achieved something or had something important stripped away from them) receives a crushing blow that will transform the rest of their life. As a result of this blow they have a challenge: Give in or overcome.

This is the last installment of my series, The Magic Of Stephen King, but I want to write other articles that look at what makes certain stories--fictional or otherwise--work. What makes certain videos, certain news stories, go viral? What makes certain books bestsellers? But that's for another day!

What other stories--they could be Stephen King's but they don't have to be--fit this pattern? Have you written a story that fits this pattern?

Other articles you might like:

- Ray Bradbury On How To Keep And Feed A Muse
- Fleshing Out Your Protagonist: Creating An Awesome Character
- Dean Koontz And 5 Things Every Genre Story Needs

Photo credit: "Another day in paradise" by CptHUN under Creative Commons Copyright 2.0.

Ray Bradbury On How To Keep And Feed A Muse

"If science fiction is escapist, it's escape into reality," Isaac Asimov

 "... writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that," Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury's, Zen In The Art Of Writing, is soul food.

I love Ray Bradbury's writing. Something Wicked This Way Comes had a profound influence on me as a young writer--but for some reason, even though it was recommended again and again, I neglected to read Ray Bradbury's book on writing.

That, I realize now, was a mistake.

How To Keep And Feed A Muse

The chapter I'm reading at the moment is How to Keep and Feed a Muse. Mr. Bradbury gives some remarkably detailed advice.

What To Feed Your Muse

1. A lifetime of experiences.

We must feed ourselves on life.

It is my contention that in order to Keep a Muse, you must first offer food. How you can feed something that isn't yet there is a little hard to explain. But we live surrounded by paradoxes. One more shouldn't hurt us.

The fact is simple enough. Through a lifetime, by ingesting food and water, we build cells, we grow, we become larger and more substantial. ...

Similarly, in a lifetime, we stuff ourselves with sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and textures of people, animals, landscapes, events, large and small. We stuff ourselves with these impressions and  experiences and our reaction to them. Into our subconscious go not only factual data but reactive data, our movement toward or away from the sensed events.

These are the stuffs, the foods, on which The Muse grows.

2. Read poetry every day.

What kind of poetry? "Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don't force yourself too hard. Take it easy."

3. Books of essays.

You can never tell when you might want to know the finer points of being a pedestrian, keeping bees, carving headstones, or rolling hoops. Here is where you play the dilettante, and where it pays to do so. You are, in effect, dropping stones down a well. Every time you hear an echo from your Subconscious, you know yourself a little better. A small echo may start an idea. A big echo may result in a story.

.  .  .  .

Why all this insistence on the senses? Because in order to convince your reader that he is there, you must assault each of his senses, in turn, with color, sound, taste, and texture. If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won. The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events. He cannot refuse, then, to participate. The logic of events always gives way to the logic of the senses.

4. Read short stories and novels.

Read those authors who write the way you hope to write, those who think the way you would like to think. But also read those who do not think as you think or write as you want to write, and so be stimulated in directions you might not take for many years. Here again, don't let the snobbery of others prevent you from reading Kipling, say, while no one else is reading him.

How To Keep Your Muse

Ray Bradbury advises that not only should we write every day, but that we should write 1,000 words a day for 10 or 20 years!

Great advise. Truly excellent. Myself, though, I hope it doesn't take 20 years! Of course, if it does, it does. Writing is the kind of thing that, if one can be discouraged from it, one probably should be.

And while feeding, How to Keep Your Muse is our final problem.

The Muse must have shape. You will write a thousand words a day for ten or twenty years in order to try to give it shape, to learn enough about grammar and story construction so that these become part of the Subconscious, without restraining or distorting the Muse.

By living well, by observing as you live, by reading well and observing as you read, you have fed Your Most Original Self. By training yourself in writing, by repetitious exercise, imitation, good example, you have made a clean, well-lighted place to keep the Muse. You have given her, him, it, or whatever, room to turn around in. And through training, you have relaxed yourself enough not to stare discourteously when inspiration comes into the room.

You have learned to go immediately to the typewriter and preserve the inspiration for all time by putting it on paper.

Miscellaneous

Do not, for money, turn away from all the stuff you have collected in a lifetime.

Do not, for the vanity of intellectual publications, turn away from what you are—the material within you which makes you individual, and therefore indispensable to others.

.  .  .  .

Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven't friends. Go find some.

#   #   #

I haven't contributed a lot of commentary, above, because ... well, what could I add? One thing Mr. Bradbury said--I didn't include the quotation--was that he wrote 3,000,000 words before his first story was accepted at the age of 20.

Three million words!

Add to that, Mr. Bradbury wrote every day, every single day. He must have had a well fed, and very content, muse.

What is your favorite book on writing? What is the best writing advice you've received?

Other articles you might like:

- Fleshing Out Your Protagonist: Creating An Awesome Character
- Dean Koontz And 5 Things Every Genre Story Needs
- How Plotting Can Build A Better Story

Photo credit: "Dust" by Robb North under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Fleshing Out Your Protagonist: Creating An Awesome Character

I know I've said this before, but Elizabeth S. Craig has a great Twitter feed for writers (@elizabethscraig). Whenever I want to read a helpful article on the art and craft of writing I just browse Elizabeth's tweets. (Her mystery novels are great too!)

I wanted to remember to say that because I found the article I'm discussing today through Elizabeth's tweets: She's No Mary Sue: Creating Characters People Care About.

Chuck Wendig, Flash Fiction And A Horror Story

Yesterday I wrote my first horror story! I've been wanting to write one for ages but never had an idea that grabbed me, that made me think: that'd be a fun story to write.

The Power Of Writing Exercises

Honestly, I don't do a lot of writing exercises. I'd rather spend my time on my work-in-progress or developing a new story. But, as I say, I'd been wanting to write a horror story for some time but something was holding me back. It was difficult getting into the right head-space.

Recently I discovered Chuck Wendig's flash fiction challenges. I haven't completed one, but it's fun plugging Chuck's categories into a random number generator and seeing what kind of story idea would pop out. Chuck gives 10 different subgenres, 10 different settings and 10 different things your story mush feature, then you either choose one thing from each category on your own or use a random number generator to do it for you.

Here are some of the writing prompts I came up with:

 Flash Fiction Challenge: The Wheel, Part Two (Part one is here.)
[Subgenre] in [conflict] [featuring ...]
- Bad girls in prison need to hide a body featuring a vengeful god.
- Lovecraftian revenge and a suitcase full of money.
- Alien abduction, a character being hunted and a mysterious stranger.

And, last but certainly not least, Chuck Wendig's latest flash fiction challenge features photos of places that look impossible but are actual landmarks. The challenge: Write 1,000 words inspired by one of the photos.

I decided to combine Chuck's last two challenges and write a horror story involving an alien abduction, a character being hunted and a mysterious stranger. Further, I decided it would take place here: The Crystal Cave in Skaftafell Iceland.

I also decided that the story would take me two hours to write and come in at just under 1,000 words.

Are you laughing? You should be! It took me around four hours and I blew way past the 1,000 word mark--I ended up writing about 3,000 words!

But that's okay. I now have the first draft of a story I'd like to read. And, for me, that's what it's all about. Sure, selling one's work is nice--we all need to eat--but a big reason why I started to write was that I wanted to create (or discover) the kind of stories I loved to read.

But now I'm at the stage where I need to develop my protagonist.

Fleshing Out Your Characters

At the moment my protagonist has a few bones, a more-or-less complete skeleton, but very little skin (metaphorically speaking, of course!).

Today, before I start work on the second draft, I need to put some meat on her bones and I do that by asking questions. A great resource I use regularly is Donald Maass' The Breakout Novelist Workbook as well as my notes from his workshops (see here, here and here).

Recently, though, I came across the blog post, She's No Mary Sue: Creating Characters People Care About, by Susan J. Morris. Susan points out that all stories are about a character with a problem and how that character solves, or fails to solve, that problem.

Give your readers a glimpse, early on, of your hero's eventual greatness

Also, and I thought this was a brilliant way of looking at it, Susan points out that, at the end of your story, chances are your character (unless it's a tragedy) will become kinda awesome. And that's good because they'll need to be awesome to conquer the villain and achieve their goal.

But at the beginning of the story your character is a long way from being awesome. This is both good and bad. It's good because every character--especially your main character--needs an arc. It's bad because characters who aren't good at something tend to be boring; and that's VERY bad, especially at the beginning of a story when you're trying to convince people your story would be all kinds of interesting fun to read.

The solution: give your readers a glimpse, early on, of your protagonist's eventual greatness. Susan writes:

Your character is going to be awesome. Once they get to page 275. Heroes rarely start out heroes. But generally speaking, the unformed hero has about as much dynamicism as a lump of clay. Even if you are writing an origin story for your hero, you have to figure out what defines your character, what makes them awesome, and give us a glimpse of it early so that we’ll stick around to page 275.

That sounds great, doesn't it? There is a problem. At the beginning of your story you probably don't know exactly how the story is going to end and your grasp of those traits which make your character the heroine they were born to be is going to be limited at best.

The solution? Write a scene where your character is awesome, ignoring whether the scene would fit in your story. This is about discovering who your character is and what she can do. Susan writes:

One way to figure all that out is to write your character’s quintessential scene—the scene that defines them as a character. Don't worry about whether it even belongs in the book! Just writing the scene will help you work through their character. The first scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is quintessential Jones. You learn he’s an adventuresome archeologist who is afraid of snakes, that he has a mean arm with a whip and a near-constant smirk, neither of which help him against his constant antagonist, and that he always recovers his hat.

Character Questions

As I wrote earlier, I love using character questions to help me flesh out my protagonist. I don't have a cut-and-dried method, but I find if I know the answers to these sorts of questions before I begin editing my first draft that the writing, and re-writing, goes much quicker.

1. What does your character want more than anything and what is stopping them from getting it?

2. What is the one thing they wouldn’t do to get it?

3. What does your character fear more than anything, and what would make it even worse?

4. What unexpected thing are they really good at?

5. What assumptions do people make about them that always make them angry?

6. What event has changed the way they look at life and why?

7. What is hardest for them to forgive?

8. What are three positive and three negative adjectives you could use to describe them?

9. If your character had a facebook, what embarrassing secrets could we dig up on them?

10. When your character goes to a party, do they under-dress or over-dress? Do they come and leave on-time, early, or late? Are they a wallflower or the center of attention? Are they excited or filled with anxiety? (She's No Mary Sue: Creating Characters People Care About)

How do you put flesh on your character's bones? Do  you ask questions? Freewrite? Do a character interview? Something else?

Other articles you might like:

- Dean Koontz And 5 Things Every Genre Story Needs
- How Plotting Can Build A Better Story
- Building Character: The Importance Of Imperfection

Photo credit: "Army Photography Contest - 2007 - FMWRC - Arts and Crafts - I Can See You Now"by familymwr under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Dean Koontz And 5 Things Every Genre Story Needs

Did you know Dean Koontz wrote a book on how to write genre fiction?

Actually, he wrote two books. One, published in 1972, was called Writing Popular Fiction and one, published in 1981, was called How To Write Best Selling Fiction. Both are out of print but I was able to borrow a copy of Writing Popular Fiction from a friend.

Five Essential Elements Of Genre/Category Fiction

Dean Koontz holds that there are five essential differences between genre and mainstream fiction.

1. A Strong Plot

Here's the formula:

[T]he hero (or heroine) has a serious problem; he attempts to solve it but plunges deeper into danger; his stumbling blocks, growing logically from his efforts to find a solution, become increasingly monumental; at last, forced by the harsh circumstances to learn something about himself or the world around him, to learn a Truth of which he was previously unaware, he solves his problem—or loses magnificently.

 That more-or-less sums up the hero's journey.

I find it interesting that James Frey said more or less the same thing in his book, "How To Write A Damn Good Novel". He writes:

[A dramatic novel] focuses on a central character, the protagonist, who is faced with a dilemma; the dilemma develops into a crisis; the crisis builds through a series of complications to a climax; in the climax the crisis is resolved. Novels such as Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold . . . are all written in the dramatic form and are all damn good novels.

2. A Vivid Protagonist Readers Can Relate To

Dean Kootz stresses that readers of genre fiction want to escape their lives, for a few hours they want to trade their existence for one that is more exciting. They don't want to read about someone trying and failing.

James Frey agrees and writes that "readers wish to read about the exceptional rather than the mundane". Your characters need to be "more handsome or ugly, ruthless or noble, vengeful or forgiving, brave or cowardly, and so on, than real people are."

A protagonist in a genre novel has ...

... hotter passions and colder anger; he travels more, fights more, loves more, changes more, has more sex. Lots more sex. Homo fictus has more of everything. Even if he is plain, dull, and boring, he'll be more extraordinary in his plainness, dullness, and boringness than his real-life counterparts.

3. Both Protagonist And Antagonist Must Have Clear, Believable, Motivations

I've written quite a bit lately about this point so I won't belabor it here. Point of view (POV) characters need clear goals. And the stakes (what happens if the character achieves her goal or not) they are playing for have to be crystal clear as well.

But there's something else, there's the question of motivation. Why does your character care about those goals? Why does he care about those stakes? Here we are talking about inner motivations.

Dean Koontz believes that all character motivation can be made to fit one of the following 7 categories:

- Love
- Curiosity
- Self-preservation
- Greed
- Self-discovery
- Duty
- Revenge

(I think one could also add: ambition and fear. I would slot 'conscience' in with Duty, above.)

Dean Kootz writes that two or more of these motivations must be present in any character for the result to be believable. For instance, Gothic heroines are often motivated by curiosity, love, and self-preservation.

He also cautions that a character should not be motivated by anything at odds with his basic personality. For instance, it would be difficult to imagine any of Tom Hanks' characters being motivated by greed for power or greed for wealth.

4. Lots Of Action

Whenever I think about an action movie I think of Indiana Jones in one of the first three movies of that series. Indie did a lot of running from bad guys, a lot of chasing bad guys and a LOT of fighting bad guys--and it was great!--but, as Dean Koontz points out, that's not the only kind of action.

- Movement from place to place
- Confrontations between characters
- A conflict of inner motivations

Dean Koontz writes:

The hero and heroine must constantly be engaged in conquering some barrier that grows logically from their own actions in trying to solve their major predicament.

5. A Colorful Background

Even if your characters aren't romping around the Bahamas, it's important you create a "stage on which hotels, houses, streets, and people are uniquely painted". This also helps create suspension of disbelief.

That's it! I think that sometime soonish I want to talk about James Frey's book, How To Write A Damn Good Novel. It has a  lot of great advice in it.

How do you think genre novels differ from the mainstream? DO you think they differ? Ursula K. Le Guin doesn't feel there is a useful distinction to be made.

Other articles you might like:

- How Plotting Can Build A Better Story
- Building Character: The Importance Of Imperfection
- Ernest Hemingway And The Purpose Of Writing

Photo credit: "high 1" by monster 777 under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.