Wordplay

Since I'm on the road at the moment and since everyone enjoyed the last few sneeze pages (themed collections of previously published posts), I took the opportunity to put together another one, this time focusing on the all-important topic of conflict. As the old saying goes, “No conflict, no story.” Below you’ll find tips on ramping up conflict, using conflict to strengthen every element of your story, and just generally frustrating the tar out of your characters. Enjoy!


The Necessity of Conflict










What Characters Want: The Art of Frustration




















Antagonists Don't Have to Be Evil
















Never Give Your Characters What They Want










External and Internal Conflict: The Killer Combination

This week’s video sheds light on the tricky subject of voice by using Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises to explain the differences between an author’s voice and his character’s voice.




Video Transcription: This whole idea of “voice” is something many authors struggle with, in part because they’re not always sure what “voice” means. Is voice something that remains the same in every one of an author’s projects, or is it something that changes from story to story? This is a question that causes a lot of confusion. Thankfully, however, we can find the answer in the writing of many authors who have gone before us.


One of those authors is Ernest Hemingway, who is famous (and sometimes infamous) for his definitive style. Hemingway’s terse authorial voice is so distinct that it’s one of the easiest to recognize. But that hardly means every one of his character narrators shared his authorial voice. In his early novel The Sun Also Rises, the first-person narrator Jake Barnes has a voice of his own—a voice that rings true to Hemingway’s own style, while still offering a completely unique sound.


How is this possible? How can an author convey both his own voice and that of his character? Sometimes an authorial voice is something we consciously produce, but usually it’s just a natural manifestation of our inner voices. Everything we write—whether we’re crafting a text message or trying to mimic a foreign dialect—naturally occurs in our own unique voice. Character voice, on the other hand, is something we craft with the needs of each specific character in mind, and so it varies a little—or sometimes a lot—from story to story. Understanding the differences between authorial and character voices goes a long way toward demystifying the general aura of voice.

Tell me your opinion: Do your characters' voices sound different from yours?


Related Posts: Bring Your POV Characters to Life


How to Find Your "Voice"


Make Your Character Steal the Show

One of the key benefits of written fiction is also one of the most difficult techniques to master: the inner narrative of the characters. This difficulty makes complete sense, of course, when we think about it (no pun intended), since the inner narrative of the characters—their thoughts put on paper—is the essence of fiction. Mastery of that essence equals mastery, in large part, of the art form. No wonder it’s hard! And no wonder it’s important. How can we create powerful thoughts for our characters? And how can we frame them on the page to make them as effective as possible?


1. Let your characters think. Too many inexperienced authors approach inner narrative tentatively (or not at all) because they fear readers will be bored and will want to return to the action as quickly as possible. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Interesting internal narrative, when appropriately balanced with action and dialogue, is the life’s blood of any story. Readers don’t just want to see what’s happening to your character; they want to know what he thinks about what is happening to him.


2. Show personality through word choice. Your character’s narrative voice is his literary fingerprint. How much different does Stephanie Plum’s voice sound from Mattie Ross’s? Authors should be so in tune with the nuances of their character’s personality that the character’s voice on the page offers an inherently unique ring. Novelist Jewell Parker Rhodes (in an interview with Jessica McCann, The Writer, March 2011) made the point that she “can’t write the story until I get the voice of the main character in my head.”


3. Show personality through how the character views the world. Telling readers about your setting is one thing; bringing it to life by using it as a unique tool to further characterize your narrator by allowing him to show the reader the setting as he sees it makes all the difference. In my short story “Light in the Shadows,” the 19th-century London setting takes on a sinister edge thanks to the narrator’s frenzied mindset:

Up ahead, the flame of a streetlight hung in the midst of the London fog like some kind of giant spirit. She hated the lights at night; they were too much like eyes watching her. Always watching. She broke out of the crooked skipping pace in which she had been running and shot a glance around the street for something to throw at the light.

4. Illustrate character arc. Instead of just showing your character’s eventual transformation over the course of the story, give your readers a backstage pass, so that they can experience character arc from the inside out. Internal narrative is a key tool in helping readers understand motive and growth. Can you imagine Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic Crime and Punishment without the protagonist’s hysterical justifications for his crime of murder?


5. Choose the best way to punctuate thoughts. Authors italicize direct thoughts, put them in quotes, preface them with an em dash, or sometimes just change the tense. However, doing so pulls your reader out of the narrative. Technically, in a deep POV, the entire story is the character’s thoughts. As a result, the most seamless way to share a character’s direct thoughts is to simply incorporate them into the narrative itself. Instead of writing, “Jack shot the bad guy, then stopped and thought, I can’t believe I just did that,” write, “Jack shot the bad guy, then stopped. Had he really just done that?”


Mastering your character’s thoughts—both by making certain he has thoughts worthy of sharing and by discovering the most powerful way to convey those thoughts—makes all the difference in the tone, scope, and immersive quality of your story. If readers are willing to give more than a penny for your characters’ thoughts, you know you’ve created a story that rings true from beginning to end.

Tell me your opinion: How are you making your character's thoughts unique and interesting?


Related Posts: The Do's and Don'ts of Internal Monologue


Are You Using Setting to Deepen Your Characters?


Why Narrative Isn't a Bad Thing


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This week’s video cites a passive verb-stuffed paragraph from a literary novel to demonstrate why the active voice is usually preferable.




Video Transcription: Most of us learn pretty early in our writing lives that active verbs are preferable to passive verbs. This is so for the simple reason that the active voice offers more options for bringing a sentence to life and infusing it with… well, action. This isn’t to say that passive verbs don’t have their place, but it’s good to remind ourselves from time to time of how much more power we find in active constructions.


A literary novel I read recently offered just such a reminder—by way of prose that was absolutely stuffed with passive verbs. Midway through the book’s first chapter, I stumbled upon an especially egregious paragraph, which contained eight passive sentences, one after the other, with nary an active verb in sight. Although not inherently problematic, this slew of passivity robbed this particular paragraph of any chance of energy and motion. The characters and their actions lie flat on the page, like a stuffy room just waiting for someone to open the window and let in a breeze.


Don’t let this happen to your paragraphs. Keep them moving forward with a judicious mix of verbs—preferably more active than passive. But don’t grab the first action verb that comes along. Dig a little deeper under the surface of your prose, until you find words that convey just the right meaning and, when appropriate, those that are original enough to help a reader see an old action in a new way.

Tell me your opinion: Do you consider the balance of the active and passive voices as you write?


Related Posts: Active vs. Passive Voice


Are Your Verbs Showing or Telling?


10 Ways to Write Skinny Sentences

Today, I’m honored to be hosted by Larry Brooks on his fabulous site Storyfix. Be sure to stop by his site to read my guest post "The 3 Integral Components of a Story's Beginning." Below is a sneak peek:

Beginnings are tough for a number of reasons, not least among them the fact that we’re wading blind into unknown territory, trembling with the knowledge that if we fail to be brilliant, readers won’t get past the first chapter. How do we grip readers with can’t-look-away action, while still taking the time to establish character? How do we decide upon the perfect moment to open the scene? How do we balance just the right amount of information to keep from confusing readers, while at same time raising the kind of intriguing questions that make them want to read on?

I’ll admit to you that the beginning chapters of my books are inevitably rewritten more than any other part of the story. They’re tough to get right because they must offer so many elements in a seamless presentation that effortlessly entices and guides readers into the meat of the story. Look as we might, we won’t find any surefire method for making certain every beginning chapter of every book turns out just right every time. Writing is too organic an art form to be confined by checklists. I can’t give you the “10 guaranteed steps to a winning first chapter.” What I can do is highlight the three integral components found in almost every successful opening. 

Laziness and fear—a writer’s two great nemeses—do their best to keep us stuck in the writing rut. Usually, it’s a very comfortable rut. All our characters are down there with us, keeping us company, cooking up tea, playing chess, and just generally having a happy ol’ time. Life isn’t very difficult, since we never have to force ourselves to reach higher or stretch farther. We get to sit in our comfy swivel chairs and watch our stories replay themselves, with slight variations, over and over again, like TV Land marathons.


Actually, you say, that doesn’t sound so bad. What’s the big problem here?


Well, I’ll tell you. The problem, in a word, is: stagnation. And where stagnation lives, art dies. As Writer’s Digest editor Jessica Strawser pointed out in her February 2011 Editor’s Letter:

…the best writers are the ones who never stop trying to get better—the ones who set their egos aside, no matter how successful they are, and challenge themselves to push the limits of what they can achieve.

Whether they consciously realize it or not, most writers have one particular story they’re meant to tell, and they tell it over and over again all their lives. For example, Charles Dickens’s body of work represents a deep concern for the poor and indebted, and my own fiction often carries a theme of redemption through self-sacrifice. It’s important to recognize and understand this inevitable repetition—but it’s also important to understand that these repeating themes are no excuse not to be forever pushing the boundaries of our craft. Novelist Joe Meno, in an interview with Mart Castle, explained the difference:

The thing I love about [Dave Eggers and Denis Johnson] is their willingness to try and reinvent themselves from book to book, especially Johnson, who’s written crime/noir books, science-fiction-inspired books, books about drug experiences, spy-influenced material. I’d hate it if someone read one of my books and thought, this is exactly like the last thing he wrote. … It’s a goal I have, writing books with very different styles and tones.

Thanks to laziness and fear—and often oblivion—it’s much too easy to fall into comfortable patterns that eventually descend into blatant repetition. So how do we know when we’re teetering on the edge of a rut? Following are some signs:

1. 1. You find yourself reusing familiar phrases.
2. 
   
3. 2. You write stories that fit only into one particular niche.
4. 
   
5. 3. Your stories return to the same thematic arc over and over.
6. 
   
7. 4. Your writing is no longer challenging.
8. 
   
9. 5. You never experiment with POV, tense, or style.
10. 
    
11. 6. Your characters are all the same person (except maybe they have different hair colors).
12. 
    
13. 7. Your stories all begin and end in basically the same way.
14. 
    
15. 8. You’ve stopped studying the craft.
16. 
    

One or two of these symptoms aren’t necessarily indicative of a problem. But if you find yourself nodding your head at three or more, it may be time to take action and evaluate how you can push yourself out of your comfort zone and make your next story an exciting new adventure—for both you and your readers.

Tell me your opinion: Have you ever been in a writing rut?


Related posts: Why You Should Be Writing Scared


Why You Should Write More Than One Genre


How to Bust Writer's Block With Variation
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Today, fellow Top 10 Blogs for Writers Award-winner Joanna Penn and I are having fun exchanging video interviews. On Joanna's blog, I discuss inspiration, balancing writing and marketing, and why video is a fabulous opportunity for authors. Below, Joanna talks about her writing process and why she believes an established Internet platform is so important for writers.






In this video, you will learn:


What inspired Joanna to write Pentecost, a thriller novel. Joanna used to think she had to write literary fiction but then realized that she loved thrillers, action movies, fast-paced heroines and adventures. She also has a Masters degree in Theology and loves psychology as well as travel so she wanted to combine all those things into a thriller.


How long did it take Joanna to write Pentecost? She spent a lot of time learning as well as writing. Joanna started the first draft in NaNoWriMo 2009 and came up with more ideas in Venice that Christmas. It took just over a year to write. The first draft took six months but the editing took another six months. Joanna is one of those people who writes multiple drafts so the book changed over that time. The book is fast-paced and James Patterson length.


How did Joanna’s platform help her with Pentecost? She actually started writing a blog to market her non-fiction books but then found it was incredibly rewarding in itself. Joanna has blogged her journey in writing her first novel so some of the audience is ready to buy the book after following its progress over the last year. Joanna also blogged some of the important aspects. For example, the book cover was decided on by her blog audience. There were hundreds of votes and comments and the resulting book cover was based on that feedback, not on what she originally wanted. Joanna did the same with the back cover blurb where readers also helped. The blog is clearly a platform for marketing the novel now but it does take time to grow so be patient if you’re just starting.


What was the greatest challenge in writing Pentecost? Moving from non-fiction to fiction was initially difficult, but after Joanna overcame that block she learned a lot about fiction writing and changed her writing style. Every time she learned something she would blog about it. Learning whilst writing meant balancing time with the day job, writing, blogging and real life. Joanna also found dialogue difficult as her writing style is succinct and spent a lot of time on that in order to improve. She really loved writing Pentecost though and will be able to write faster next time. Joanna also realized she needed a professional editor. Writers need someone else’s eyes as they can’t see their own mistakes. All of that feedback helped make the book a professional finished product.


What’s next? Joanna is writing Prophecy, which is the next in the series. There will be scenes in Jerusalem and the Paris catacombs because great location is important for Joanna’s books. She is also launching Pentecost and will also report back on that process to help other authors with launches. She’s really looking forward to writing fiction again after all the guest posting. The “composting” process starts now, the fun part of fiction which is idea gathering and making stuff up.

About Joanna: Joanna is the author of the thriller Pentecost. She blogs at The Creative Penn: Adventures in Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing.You can connect with her on Twitter.

This week’s video uses examples from Patrick O’Brian’s The Reverse of the Medal to highlight three scenes in which it’s better to summarize than dramatize.




Video Transcription: In the midst of all the demands for authors to show, instead of tell, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that telling is a vital part of any story, and that there are moments in which summarizing is a decidedly better choice than dramatizing. The Reverse of the Medal, the brilliant eleventh installment in Patrick O’Brian’s esteemed Aubrey/Maturin series, gives us several examples of how to utilize telling to keep our stories moving so quickly that readers are never in danger of boredom.


O’Brian’s books are brimming with lengthy descriptions of naval etiquette and period customs, but thanks to his knack for understanding exactly when such information grows tedious, he never tries his readers’ patience. In The Reverse of the Medal he chooses to tell, instead of show, to great advantage in three noticeably different types of scenes.


Scene #1 neatly summarizes information to which the reader is already privy. The relaying of these facts from one character to another is vital to the story, but O’Brian knew his readers had no need of hearing it twice—so he summarized.


Scene #2 spares readers the potentially tedious and non-vital scene of a ship auction by skipping directly to what’s important: the outcome of the sale.


Scene #3 involves excluding unnecessary and often boring “filler” material as the characters travel from one location to another.


By choosing to tell, instead of show, at certain crucial junctures of his plot, O’Brian was able to skim over unimportant scenes and keep the readers focused only on the information that was important and interesting. In so doing, he neatly sidestepped any tedium that might have caused his book to be set aside at any number of potential danger points, and the result is win-win for both writer and reader.

Tell me your opinion: When was the last time you utilized telling to speed a story?


Related Posts: Skip the Boring Parts


Keep Your Story Moving With a Cohesive Narrative


Why Narrative Isn't a Bad Thing

This is the third post in the Most Common Mistakes Series, inspired by the prevalent slip-ups I run across in editing other people’s work. Don’t worry: I don’t use any names or specific examples from my clients’ stories. I hope the series will prove helpful to you in nabbing these mistakes in your own work—before an agent or editor nabs them for you.

Cora opened the window to yell at her son. He stood next to the fire hydrant across the street, even though she’d told him about a million times to stay in the yard.

At the beginning of this paragraph, the reader has no idea why Cora is yelling. They don’t know her son is across the road, anymore than they know Cora had instructed him to stay in the yard. Here’s an even more subtle example of transposition:

Cora jumped and whirled around when the fire hydrant exploded.

The reader sees Cora jump, but he has no idea why she jumped. At first glance, this may seem like a niggling problem. After all, the reader has only to read to the end of the sentence to discover why Cora reacted as she did. But by transposing events, even momentarily, you’re blocking the reader’s view of the story. In his article “3 Secrets to Great Storytelling” (Writer’s Digest, January 2011), bestselling thriller author Steven James explains:

As a fiction writer, you want your reader to always be emotionally present in the story. But when readers are forced to guess why something happened (or didn’t happen), even for just a split second, it causes them to intellectually disengage and distances them from the story. Rather than remaining present alongside the characters, they’ll begin to analyze or question the progression of the plot. And you definitely don’t want that.

Often, writers show the effect before the cause out of simple negligence. Because we know what’s happened, the lapse in linearity doesn’t present any confusion for us. However, some authors purposely transpose cause and effect in a mistaken attempt to create suspense:

Elliot stared in shock. This couldn’t be happening. If only he’d known, he might have prevented it. Heart pounding, he sank to the curb. In front of him, police cars surrounded his brother’s crumpled Camry.

This is a technique that works only in a rare handful of instances (chapter beginnings occasionally being one of them). But, more often the not, the result is reader frustration over your refusal to share the information the character is receiving as he receives it. If you can strengthen the narrative of your story by showing a logical progression of cause and effect, you’ll end up with leaner prose, more honest character reactions, and more involved readers.

Tell me your opinion: Do you show the cause before the effect most of the time in your writing?


Related Posts: Most Common Mistakes Series #1: Are Your Verbs Showing or Telling?


Most Common Mistakes Series #2: Are You Using "There" As a Crutch?


Keep Your Story Moving With a Cohesive Narrative
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Over the next couple of weeks, I'm pleased to be able to share with you the wisdom of some of the best fiction-writing bloggers on the Web. Today, I'm privileged to offer a wonderful article by freelance editor A. Victoria Mixon.




Wouldn’t it be great if nobody ever needed an editor? If all of our stories and novels appeared in readers’ minds just as beautifully and vividly and succinctly they do in our own?


Wouldn’t it be great if the story we think we’ve told were, in fact, the story we’ve told?


There are more aspiring writers producing more manuscripts now than ever before history, and the writing-advice industry is keeping stride with totally conflicting instructions.


The result: everybody’s doing it, but nobody knows what the heck is going on.


I’d like to simplify that a little for you. Before you rush your beloved manuscript off to an editor, here are the four most common mistakes fiction editors see:


1. Unfocused structure


This is the biggest reason manuscripts get rejected. You’re telling a wonderful, powerful, gripping, complex story... but you’re the only person who actually knows that. Everyone else sees a long, rambling, uneven tale of various events happening to various characters. Why? What makes these things happen? And, most important to your reader, why are you telling us this?


Every novel needs a focus. What’s your point? What is it that you want the reader to know? That focus is your Climax, the one part your story simply could not do without. “I died of romanticism.” “I almost got et by a whale.” “I pretty nearly wrecked my life being a selfish grinch.”


At the same time, every novel needs a really good reason for the reader to care. That’s your Hook. The reader may have picked your book up for its snazzy cover, but you desperately need them not to put it down.


And every novel needs a series of intriguing, hair-raising, addictive events carrying the reader from the Hook to the Climax. You could just tell us the Climax. “The butler did it.” But long fiction is all about the wonderful, rollicking adventure building upon why that matters.


The hardest thing for aspiring writers to believe is that all this is holographic: what’s essential for the novel is also essential for the chapter, episode, even scene. Every single one of them needs a Climax, Hook, and some type of events leading from one to the other.


Read that again. Every single one.


2. Misplaced backstory


We live in a chronological world, so it makes sense to assume whatever happens first to your characters should appear first in your novel.


Unfortunately, we don’t read in a chronological world. We read for excitement. We read for the thrill of our blood pressure being inflated, soothed, then inflated again. We read for the rollercoaster ride.


All fiction starts with a Hook—the gripping thing that first sends these particular characters careening toward that particular doom. Yes, the backstory that influences and directs the rollercoaster matters, but the reader’s willing to wait until Chapter Two or even Three to learn about it.


They’re hopping aboard not because they understand exactly what’s going on, but because they simply care too much about Chapter One to put it down.


3. Underdeveloped character


This point can be difficult for the aspiring writer to grasp, because it just involves so darn much time. You know these characters! They’ve been coming to you in your dreams for years! Everything they do and say on the page makes perfect sense. How could it not be obvious?


I’m sorry. It’s not.


The craft of fiction is the craft of telepathy, of projecting the characters who are so much a part of your life and heart into the lives and hearts of total strangers. In order to do that, you need to spend an extraordinary amount of time getting to know them—not just their statistical data (although that’s a good start), but deep, complicated, intangible, detailed knowledge of them as living, breathing, suffering, contrasting individuals. You need to know their mannerisms, gestures, and expressions. You need to know their foibles, misconceptions, paradoxical needs. And, most of all, you need to know what they’re hiding from themselves.


Because how that comes to light is your story.


4. Unpolished prose


You simply have to learn how to write clearly. I know—no one can line edit their own work. This is true, and it sucks. But everyone can learn to write more clearly than they do.


Simple syntax: subject-verb. Simple rhythms: subtle variations on a few short sentences and a long, or a few longs and a short. Building and falling tension. Proper grammar and punctuation. Details that matter, both big to encompass atmosphere and tiny to create three-dimensional images.


Classic language is simple language. The reader’s pleasure lies not in the effort you put into a trumpeting voice, but in how invisible you make the words, just how close you can get to telepathy.


It lies in how your story rises up through all that clarity—a treasure surfacing from deep water.

About the Author: A. Victoria Mixon is a professional writer and independent editor with over thirty years’ experience in both fiction and nonfiction. She is the coauthor of Children and the Internet: A Zen Guide for Parents and Educators and author of The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual. She can be reached through her blog, her editorial services, and Twitter.

This week’s video explains, with a little help from William Faulkner’s Flags in the Dust, why pacing in a story is like the soundtrack in a movie.


Video Transcription: Controlling and influencing a reader’s experience of your story is one of your most important jobs as an author. One of the most trustworthy ways to accomplish this is through pacing. In a sense, pacing in a story is like the soundtrack in a movie. Like the ominous music before a murder or the swell of the heroic theme before a charge into battle, pacing prepares the reader for what is about to come next in a scene. When the pacing is rapid-fire, he knows something intense, important, and possibly dangerous is occurring. When the pacing slows down, he knows he’s resting in a more languorous scene.

In William Faulkner’s Flags in the Dust, he shows a masterful control of pacing, particularly in a scene late in the book in which a young World War I veteran’s reckless driving leads to a near accident and the incumbent heart attack of his grandfather who is riding in the passenger seat. This event is a crucial turning point for both the character and the book itself. Faulkner wanted his readers to understand this, to pay attention, and to feel every detail of the near-accident, so that we could, in turn, share in the main character’s wrenching guilt after his grandfather’s death.

Faulkner takes a scene that could easily have been conveyed in a sentence or two and stretches it out across two pages, illustrating every detail, from the expression on the grandfather’s face to the “corroded” bark of the scrub cedars along the road. The result is almost like a slow-motion film, or a series of vibrant photographs. Thanks to the expertly timed pacing, the reader not only catches every moment of this important scene, he also gets a feel for what it means to the characters and what is yet to come.

In the wake of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers Award, myself and the other nine winners have recovered from all the happy dancing and rewarding ourselves with chocolate enough to put our heads together and plan some collective goodies for our blog readers. Over the next couple months, we plan to share posts on one another’s blogs and collaborate on an e-book of writing and blogging tips. If you haven’t already checked out the blogs of the other winners (you can find the links here), this will be a fabulous way for you to benefit from the wisdom of some of the best writers on the web. Today, I'm honored to be hosted on Victoria Mixon's wonderful blog. (Be sure to check back this Friday for a guest post from Victoria.)

• 5 Writing Rules You Should Break

Tell me your opinion: What are you trying to accomplish with the pacing in your work-in-progress's current scene?

Related Posts: 5 Ways to Pace Your Story

How Scene and Chapter Length Control Pacing

How to Use Scene Breaks to Cut the Fat