Wordplay

Once upon a time, there were two writers. Both had been writing for ten years. One spent those ten years writing and polishing a single manuscript. The other wrote four manuscripts. Which was the first to be published?


Of course, the answer to this question is hugely subjective (surprise, surprise!), since our equation doesn’t factor in any number of important elements, including the two authors’ respective skill levels and their stories’ respective genres and lengths—but, generally speaking, the answer to the above equation is the second author.


Why is this? Doesn’t it make more sense for an author to invest his time in perfecting a single story, rather than spreading his time and attention over multiple stories? At first glance, yes—but consider the following:


Few authors reach publication with their first novel. I wrote four books before A Man Called Outlaw’s publication. Fantasy titan Brandon Sanderson wrote twelve. In her post “Will Your First Book Be Published?”, literary agent Rachelle Gardner points out:

It takes most people a few tries to write a viable and saleable [sic] novel. Like it or not, this is true for the overwhelming majority of writers.

Few first books are the author’s best work. With time and dedication, most authors are able to refine their mastery of the craft with each story they write. My own experience has taught me I can’t truly see the faults of a book until I’ve written the next one. I routinely put finished manuscripts back on the shelf to await further revision until after I’ve written another book.


Agents and editors want authors who have proven they’re in for the long haul. A stack of completed novels—even if they’re not up to publication quality—prove an author’s dedication and determination. In “Revising Your Path to Publication” (Writer’s Digest July/August 2011), Jane Friedman offers an important insight:

A writer who has been working on the same manuscript for years and years—and has written nothing else—might have a motivation problem. There isn’t usually much valuable learning going on when someone tinkers with the same pages over a decade.

No story can be perfected. Although authors should always be willing to spend the necessary time and energy to make a story the best it can be, they need to realize perfection is an impossible goal. At some point, we just have to cut our losses and move on.


The time each author needs to spend on any particular story is an individual decision. Novels are always lengthy commitments. In general, I spend a year outlining and researching, a year writing the first draft, and three years intermittently editing. But during those five years, I’m also actively working on other projects. Life is too short and too full of stories for us to spend all our time slaving away on just one book. Do yourself, and the quality of your writing, a favor and don’t let one story monopolize your life.


Tell me your opinion: How many books have you written?


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This week’s video explains how interrupting, apologizing, and preaching are three gaffes writers can’t afford to make.




Video Transcription: Fiction is a tremendously powerful medium for sharing viewpoints and changing mindsets. Authors should never be afraid of writing about the subjects and causes in which they are passionately interested. But we also need to realize that nothing turns an audience off faster than the Three Mortal Sins: Interrupting, Apologizing, and Preaching. Often we’ll find all three of these sins walking hand in hand, and if we can stamp out one of them, we can often kill all three.


In a classic novel—which shall remain unnamed—we find an excellent example of how the Three Mortal Sins can bring your story to a screeching halt. Halfway through this book, about prosaic country life in 19th-century Derbyshire, the author commits the first of her sins by interrupting her story with a chapter that first makes an apology and defense of a character she fears her readers will find “little better than a pagan,” then uses the opportunity to preach her views at the readers for a further ten pages.


Whether individual readers agree with the author’s points or not is irrelevant, because very few will appreciate having their story interrupted by a sermon. The best—and, arguably, only—way to share moral, political, or social views with your readers is to allow your story to carry them organically. The moment you decide to interrupt your story to insert information that doesn’t directly move the plot forward is a moment in which you’re going to be trying your readers’ patience. Not only are they unlikely to be receptive to hearing your opinions, they’re also going to take some serious convincing to keep reading.



Tell me your opinion: Have you ever been guilty of one of these mortal sins?


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When writers start talking about the autonomy of their stories, non-writers are likely to give us looks that range from confused to concerned, especially when our comments include the following:


“Nothing was working for me until I quit fighting my story and let it do what it wanted.”


“I have no control over my story. I just sit back and let it take off.”


“My characters made me do it.”


“The story knows best.”


These comments may sound like wild exaggerations to our listeners, but, in truth, we mean every word of them. Our stories often do seem to have minds of their own, and those minds usually seem to understand the subtleties of story craft much better than we do.


But what does this idea that “the story knows best” really mean? As our by now nervous non-writing friends would be quick to point out, a story isn’t a conscious entity. It can’t know anything. Our characters are just figments of our imagination. Outside of our own minds and the words we’ve put on paper, they don’t exist, much less exercise control over us or our story worlds. How can we claim to “listen to the story” when the story is an emanation of ourselves?


To some extent, the phrase “the story knows best” is a pie-in-the-sky concept used by writers to describe the indescribable. When you’re in the throes of creative passion, hammering away at words that seem to appear on your computer screen faster than you can think of them, when the story does things you never planned for it to do, when your characters take the bit in their teeth and gallop away onto trails unknown—that’s something almost too magical to put into words. How do you explain any of that to someone who’s never experienced it, when you can barely grasp it yourself?


We can’t. So we say the story did it. Or our characters took charge. Or we were just a conduit through which higher inspiration could flow.


But none of that is really true. What’s true is this:


The story doesn’t know best. The characters don’t know best. You know best.


Yes, you.


When we say “the story knows best” what we really mean is “our subconscious story sense knows best.” Even when we can’t consciously articulate what we’re feeling, something deep inside of us understands how to craft our stories into something perfect. Every author needs to make a point of not just acknowledging this underlying story sense, but of recognizing it in action and refining his ability to interpret and channel it.


Talking about how our “stories know best” is a fun and easy way to describe the process—but it not only sells ourselves short, it can also inhibit our ability to see that story sense for what it really is and to work toward harnessing it in perfect tandem with our conscious, logical story skills. The next time you’re talking about your story with a hapless non-writer, let that twinkle in your eye shine out as you unnerve him with your announcement that your story knows best. But don’t forget to remind yourself that, really, it’s your inner story sense doing all the heavy lifting.


Tell me your opinion: Do you feel like you’re in touch with your “inner story sense”?


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Today, I’m pleased to present a guest post by author and story theorist David Baboulene, author of The Story Book: A Writer’s Guide to Story Development, Principles, Problem-solving and Marketing.

Plot is character, and character is plot, because as soon as a character takes a meaningful action, his action is driving your plot (whether you like it or not). Conversely, as soon as an event happens which elicits a meaningful reaction from your character, then his true character begins developing in the eyes of the audience (whether you like it or not).


Action Without Character

Let’s look at what happens if we separate plot from character. There are three levels of action without character, each with increasing subtlety.


1. At the end of the spectrum, we have an event with no character involvement whatsoever. Lightning strikes a tree in a remote forest. So what? It’s not a story because no reaction is required of an emotional protagonist. This is not a story. This is a screensaver.


2. In the middle, we have “emotionally detached” action. If you watch the news and see that someone was killed in New York, the event is meaningless because you are not emotionally connected with the individual. If we increase the amount to which the character is known, we increase the emotion: say we find out that John Lennon has been shot in New York. This is a person we “know”; we have been through his Act l and Act ll, and now relate to the tragedy at climax. Look at the emotion on the faces of the friends and relatives of the deceased in New York as they experience the same death, but on a different level of emotional involvement.


3. The most subtle example of action without character actually happens rather a lot in stories that fail to grip. A character takes an action, but it is not a meaningful action, because there is no dilemma riding on his decision to act. If the character is, say, Luke Skywalker, we know he will “decide” to kill the next stormtrooper to come round the corner, and the one after that, and the one after that. Sure, his life is under threat, but that just serves to make his decision to kill even more obvious. His decisions involve no dilemma, so we learn nothing about his true character. However, if the next representative of the Dark Side to come round the corner is also... his father, suddenly he has meaningful decisions and difficult choices with severe consequences. Can he kill his father? Can he risk not killing his father? Now his decision becomes meaningful... and we cannot move until we know what he is going to do.


Character Without Action

From the opposite end of the argument, let’s say we are shown a man. So what? Until he does something, we don’t know anything about him. Let’s dress him up as a policeman. Now we have some characteristics with which our brains can overlay stereotypical presumptions about what makes up a “policeman”—but beware: this is still an individual without character.


Characteristics are just the wrapping. We don’t know if this person is courageous, extroverted, alcoholic, cowardly, or a good father. We don’t even know if he is a criminal or not! Only his actions can reveal these things. When he is faced with a difficult decision—say, to risk his own life to save someone else’s, that is when we discover his true character. What he does will define him. And guess what: what he does—the actions he takes—instantly becomes the plot (whether you like it or not).




Writers are taught to define their characters and plot in isolation of one another. They then find that the way the character wants to behave, if he’s true to himself, doesn’t help them within their plot, which needs a different behavior to drive it believably. The story is compromised from the outset because the character is not credible in taking the actions the plot demands.


Considering either plot or character in isolation from the other will trip you up. One drives the other whether you like it or not. We have to effectively develop both plot and character at the same time and as the same thing. Join them together. Don’t think about “plot” and “character”. Think about the two as a single entity made of Character Behaviours. This entity is called a story.


Stories are about character behaviors. What characters do is who they are and what characters do is what happens.


When your writing has this unity of character and plot, your stories will burst into a third dimension of power that comes from consummating their relationship. And you’ll know it and feel it when it happens, and you’ll never write without it again.


About the Author: David Baboulene has five books published: two humorous books, two children’s books and an academic work on story theory. He also has three film productions deals, two in Hollywood and one in the UK. He is currently proving, through his Ph.D. thesis, that subtext is the defining substance of story. David tours, teaching his seminars on story theory, and writes extensively on his subject, including his monthly column in Writing Magazine and Writers’ News and his blog The Science of Story.


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This week’s video takes an example from George Eliot’s debut novel Adam Bede to show how you can use setting to explain character.



Video Transcription: One of my favorite parts of watching a movie is the opportunity to spy on the main character’s familiar surroundings. His home, his bedroom, and his office all present wonderful insights into his personality. The visual medium of film allows for all kinds of details to be included, some so miniscule or subtle that most viewers probably won’t even notice them. Of course, authors can’t go to quite that same extreme without boring readers with a grocery list of description. But don’t for one minute think you can’t use your character’s surroundings to help readers understand him in a more intimate way.


In her debut novel Adam Bede, George Eliot introduced readers to a farming family by first introducing their home. She gives us the broad overview of the house, then zooms in on details such as fleeces and empty corn bags stacked in the corners and the child’s doll lying on the floor. Before we’ve met even one member of the family, Eliot has already allowed us to form an accurate opinion about them simply by showing us where they live, how they care for their possessions, and which items they treasure.


Although writers need to be careful not to overdo their descriptions, they also need to be aware of this technique and be willing to put it into practice. If your story allows, stage at least one scene in your character’s personal surroundings. Sketch the setting briefly when the characters first enter it, then scatter important details throughout the scene. Is your character sloppy or neat? Rich or poor? Can we tell his interests or hobbies from the items he has on display? Are there any clues to his backstory or his dreams for the future? The possibilities are endless—and, happily for us, easily unleashed.



Tell me your opinion: Do you show the details of your character’s personal surroundings?


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Description: Friend or Foe?

By the time you reach the end of your story, you’re sometimes out of steam, sometimes out of ideas, sometimes sick of your story, and sometimes just plain wrong about how to end it. As a result, you might find yourself walking through the yellow caution tape into the pothole of deus ex machina before you realize the danger.


“What is this deuced deus ex machina?” you ask. “It’s all Greek to me,” you say.


Well, actually, it’s Latin. If I wanted to get technical, I could explain that the phrase literally translates “god from a machine” and was originally a reference to the “god” (played by an actor lowered onto the stage on a “machine”) who descended at the end of the Greek and Roman plays to solve all the mortal characters’ problems and put everything in order for a happy ending. However, for our 21st-century English purposes, we could just say it translates “don’t do this in your story” and be just as accurate.


At first glance, deus ex machina—the idea of all the plot problems being fixed in one fell swoop—might seem like a pretty good idea. But the only thing deus ex machina is guaranteed to fix is your readers’ low opinion of your book. This plot device might have worked for the ancient Greeks and Romans (although Aristotle might—and did—argue that point), but for modern authors it presents a number of difficulties.


It robs cohesiveness by introducing a new element at the eleventh hour. To reach full potential, every piece of your story must be part of a consistent whole. If the cavalry has no place in your western, the climax in which it charges in to save the pioneers won’t seem logical or resonant.


It frustrates readers by taking the power out of the characters’ hands. Readers want to see the characters put under excruciating pressure, so they can then observe their reactions and, usually, their tenacity, skill, and courage in escaping and triumphing. When the damsel tied to the railway tracks is saved at the last minute by a handsome stranger, the heroine herself becomes a non-factor.


It endangers suspension of disbelief through unlikely coincidences. Miracles may occasionally happen in real life, but in fiction they tend to make readers scoff. When your characters escape their mafia debts by winning the lottery or being adopted by a little old lady millionaire, the result is both unsatisfying and difficult to believe.


It cheats readers by eliminating proper foreshadowing. In order to achieve resonance, stories need to provide all the puzzle pieces to the reader by the time he reaches the climax. The foreshadowing found in the character’s previous struggles will lead us up to the moment when he uses the lessons learned in those struggles to overcome this ultimate challenge. When he suddenly develops magical powers at the last moment, his escape from danger won’t be satisfying because it’s too different from the one readers expected.


It disappoints readers by removing characters from danger too soon. After waiting for 300 pages to reach the climax, readers want to see the characters sweat. They want to see them pushed to the very brink of their physical, mental, and moral endurance—and then rise up from their own ashes to conquer both inner and outer demons. When the avenging angel swoops in to save the characters, the result is anticlimactic. Instead of thrilling readers, your ending is more likely to have them heaving your book across the room.


Deus ex machina comes in many different shapes, but once you learn how to look for it, you can squish it on sight and save your readers from wanting to think up uncomplimentary Latin translations.


Tell me your opinion: Have you ever written a story that ended with deus ex machina?


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This week’s video shows how Patrick Rothfuss cleverly made even his slowest scenes in The Name of the Wind interesting by prompting reader anticipation with foreboding and foreshadowing.




Video Transcription: Not every scene in our stories can be set at a fever pitch of excitement. Just like our own lives, the lives of our characters need to balance the tense, dangerous, exciting moments with moments of calm reflection, everyday activities, and seemingly safe retreats. Without these slower scenes, our books run the risk of feeling frenetic. But how do we make sure readers don’t find our necessary low-key scenes so low-key that they start yawning and flipping pages to get back to the “good stuff”?


We can start by borrowing a page from Patrick Rothfuss’s fantasy The Name of the Wind, Book 1 of the Kingkiller Chronicles. This novel is a lengthy, lyrical, detailed account of the first fifteen years of its narrator’s life. The character, who readers are told will grow up to be a tortured hero with a dark past, encounters all sorts of interesting and dangerous adventures, which are interspersed with slower, information-heavy scenes. Rothfuss does an admirable job of using tension and foreboding to keep readers glued to the page during even the slowest of scenes. For example, an early scene features the hero visiting a tavern to listen to a famed storyteller. The scene itself doesn’t present much in the way of conflict, so Rothfuss cleverly opens by telling readers that this particular tavern is the haunt of the narrator’s enemy, who’s out to kill him. Instantly, we’re invested in this seemingly mundane scene. Certain the protagonist is going to be ambushed any minute, we chew our fingernails as he sits there calmly listening to the storyteller.


Whenever you have the need to write a low-key scene, make sure readers understand that more is at play than just what they see on the surface. If you can help readers understand that this quiet scene is only a lull before the storm, their sense of foreboding will ratchet tension into even the gentlest of scenes.


Tell me your opinion: What's your best trick for keeping readers interested in slower scenes?


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Very few authors can get through even one story without writing about a character of the opposite gender. The interaction between the sexes is vital in fiction, just as it is in life. If nothing else, it’s a sure solution for creating conflict. But writing a character of the opposite sex can be tricky, as the result of two universal principles:



1. Men and women are different.

2. Men and women don’t always rarely get each other.

Anyone writing a character of the opposite gender will find himself flying in the face of the write-what-you-know principle. As David Farland noted in his thought-provoking post “Kill the Crybabies,” writers too often find themselves creating unrealistic characters by imposing their own perceptions (or fantasies) onto the opposite sex. In the hands of female authors, male characters start emoting and crying all over the place, while female characters, left to the mercy of male authors, turn into hard-case warrior chicks of effortless beauty. The mark of a truly great author is the ability to write compelling and realistic characters of both genders. Following are few tips for achieving that ability:

Engage your rubbish detector. Keep your eye open for actions that don’t ring true. Get in tune with your inner story sense—your gut instinct. If something doesn’t feel quite right, it probably isn’t. (For a great example of how to present and balance male/female interactions, watch Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore’s relationship in The Dick Van Dyke Show.)

Tone back over-the-top tendencies. If you’re staring at the scene you just wrote, wondering if your hero is too much of a sap or if your heroine is sounding too much like Vin Diesel in a skirt, go ahead and tone them back a bit. Subtlety is a writer’s most effective tool anyway, which means less is often more when it comes to characterization.

Base characters on people you know. When struggling with whether or not your character is acting realistically, compare him to people in your own life. How would your father/husband/brother react when a woman bursts into tears? How would your mother/wife/sister handle a high-tension situation? Returning to the source—the opposite sex in flesh and blood—is often the surest way of crafting realistic personalities.

Enlist readers of the opposite sex. Your list of beta readers should include a good mix of both genders. Readers of the opposite sex can bring an entirely new perspective to your story—and they can offer invaluable insights into the actions of your opposite-gender characters. When you give these readers your manuscript, specifically ask them to be on the watch for scenes in which your opposite-gender characters act unrealistically.

Don’t fall for the flip-side stereotypes. In our desire to avoid unrealistic opposite-gender characters, we can sometimes take things to the other extreme. Even the toughest of guys have a soft spot or a sensitive side, and even the most gentle and delicate of women can be tough or brave when the need arises. Balance your characters’ personalities with a mix of traits—good and bad, weak and strong, courageous and cowardly.

Relax into the character’s unique qualities. Some men cry during chick flicks. Some women can bench-press 150 pounds. No one, of either gender, fits into a mold. We’re all unique—and so should our characters be. If your opposite-gender character exhibits a few traits that aren’t universal to his gender, don’t sweat it too much. Apply the tips listed above to double-check yourself, but don’t be afraid to write the characters your story demands.


Tell me your opinion: Do you find it difficult to write characters of the opposite gender?


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This week’s video cautions against stepping over the boundary between realistic conflict and tension into the dreaded realm of melodrama.




Video Transcription: To be interesting—to be a story—our novels have to possess an important component. This element is so inherent to the fictional arc that it’s actually the official title of performance plays: Drama. Drama indicates a quality in an event, or series of events, that offers excitement, tension, and emotional involvement. When your main character punches out his best friend over a girl, that’s drama. When your heroine rear-ends the cop car in front of her, drama again. When the world’s about to end in 9.87 seconds and the protagonist has to come up with a brilliant plan to save everyone, what is that but drama?

But as marvelous a friend to writers as drama may be, it also possesses a dark side, and that dark side is… melodrama. The last thing an author wants is for his work to be labeled melodramatic—because it means his story has stepped over the bounds of realistic conflict and tension into the realm of the sensationalized and overwrought. The problem is that, in our desire to keep readers hooked with an appropriate amount of drama, we can sometimes push the envelope into melodrama without even realizing it.

Even the best of authors occasionally did this. The opening chapter of Daphne du Maurier’s romantic pirate tale Frenchman’s Creek is rife with purple prose, told in a distant narrative, and pumped up with highfalutin language that makes it read like an 18th-century lawyer’s writ. Du Maurier, at the height of her authorial power, might have been able to get away with this, but we most definitely can’t. Subtlety is surprisingly effective at conveying tension and emotions such as anger and grief. Take a look at some of your most dramatic passages. If any of them sound like they came straight from your drama queen side, do yourself a favor and tone them back a bit.

Tell me your opinion: Do you ever struggle with recognizing the difference between drama and melodrama in your own work?

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Do You Know How to Use Emphasis in Your WRITING?!

The Benefits of Saying Less

Your opening line may be bristling with energy, danger, and barbed fishhooks with which to reel in your readers, but if the paragraph that follows pulls the old switcheroo, your reader is more likely to be irritated than impressed. Let’s take a look at an example of a lying line:

Jeanette rounded the bend in the mountain trail, and came face to face with a huge grizzly. The bear reared up on two legs and bellowed at her.

Image by C12

Scary, right? This opening line drags us into this exciting tale because we want to discover what happens to poor, trapped Jeanette. Then we read on…

I turned another page in the book and looked down at my two wide-eyed children, cuddled under my arms. “Too scary for you?”

If you can imagine the sound of air rushing out of a punctured balloon, you’ve pretty much captured the feeling of anyone reading this story. Sure, the author’s opening line hooked us—but it was just a lousy trick. The book isn’t even about Jeanette, and she certainly isn’t in imminent danger of becoming a slab of meat in the grizzly’s midmorning sandwich.

This sort of trickery can take several forms, including…

The Dream

Brett gasped for breath, struggling against the pull of the riptide as another wave hammered into his face. Suddenly, the shriek of his alarm clock yanked him from sleep, and he sat up in bed with a sigh of relief. Just a dream, thank goodness.

The Joke

When Kelly screamed, Joanna whirled around from flipping the burgers to find her best friend with a vegetable knife and blood all over her hand. Joanna darted forward, grabbing a towel to stanch the blood, but Kelly burst out laughing and started licking the red stuff off her hand. “Gotcha! It’s just ketchup.”

The Hyperbole

“My life is over!” Sandra sobbed into the phone. “Do you realize what this means? I’m going to have to move to Argentina under an assumed name!”
“Chill,” Callie said. “So you got a bad haircut, so what?”

The False Alarm

Eric looked up from his class of kindergartners as the fire alarm shrieked through the building and the sprinklers blasted water from the ceiling. Heart pounding, he herded his screaming kids through the fire drill, only to be met halfway down the hall by the sheepish principal. Someone had accidentally set off the alarm.

Conceivably, you could make any of these lines work if the switcheroo isn’t a lie, but instead an important example of characterization (for instance, the Hyperbole example might be illustrating that Sandra is shallow, self-conscious, and prone to hysteria). But, too often, opening hooks like these are constructed for no other reason than to allow an otherwise boring opening to start off with a bang.

Take a look at your opening line. Does it fool the reader into believing something is happening when it really isn’t? Does the information that follows appropriately build on the tension offered in this first line? If not, you may be lying to your readers without even realizing it. Readers, as the best friend any writer can have, always deserve to be treated with more respect than that.

This is the seventh 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.


Tell me your opinion: Does your opening line lead in solidly to the rest of your story?


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