Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors: September 2011

September 30, 2011
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K.M. Weiland
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This week’s video digs into the reasons why dream sequences are almost always a bad choice for your stories. Don't forget that the Grand Prize Giveaway, celebrating the launch of Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, is still underway. Enter for a chance to win a Kindle, over $100 in writing craft books, and a book-themed poster from PosterText!

Video Transcription: By now it’s common knowledge that agents and editors hate seeing stories that begin with dream sequences. A story opening that features a dream is a story opening that almost always fails to present a strong hook, character, setting, conflict, or frame. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but your wisest move is generally to cut the dream and find a stronger opening. So what about including dreams later on in the story? Does the same aversion apply there as well? In a word—or two—that depends.

Occasionally, dreams can be used to set the tone, introduce symbolism, or offer a laugh. But successful dreams are rarely longer than a paragraph. In fact, a short sentence—such as, for example, “Andre woke from another dream of bats and rainbows”—is probably your safest bet. Otherwise, you risk confusing, boring, and distancing readers. I recently read a literary novel that included a dream sequence that spanned thirty pages. The author did a good job crafting the dream to feel like a dream, and for that he should be commended. But the downside of this is that real dreams are rambling, incoherent, and pointless—a combination few readers will appreciate.

Every now and then, my favorite television shows will include an episode that is entirely a dream sequence. These episodes are invariably some of my least favorites, not only because their bizarre tone doesn’t fit the rest of the show, but because their storylines add nothing that builds upon either the show’s general plot or the characters’ growth. If you feel you need to include a dream in your story, stop and ask yourself if this scene is absolutely necessary to the story, if it’s clear, if it contains conflict or tension, and if it advances character growth. If the answer to any of these is no, you’d probably be wise to trim the dream to a sentence or two—or delete it entirely.

Tell me your opinion: Have you ever decided to include a dream sequence in one of your stories? Why or why not?

Related Posts: Is Nothin' Happening in Your Scene?

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Skip the Boring Parts

September 28, 2011
35 Comments
K.M. Weiland
Posted in Characters , conflict , Feature , framing , hook , scenes , SYN

September 26, 2011
32 Comments
K.M. Weiland
Posted in Feature , outlining

September 25, 2011
14 Comments
K.M. Weiland
Posted in Characters , endings , Feature , style , Theme

September 23, 2011
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K.M. Weiland
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September 21, 2011
37 Comments
K.M. Weiland
Posted in Characters , Feature , foreshadowing , outlining , OYN , pacing , pov , voice

The opening line of your book is your first (and, if you don’t take advantage of it, last) opportunity to grab your reader’s attention and give him a reason to read your story. That’s a gargantuan job for a single sentence. But if we break down opening lines, we discover a number of interesting things. One of the most surprising discoveries is that very few opening lines are memorable.

Say what?

Before you start quoting the likes of such classic (and highly memorable first lines) as “Call me Ishmael” and “It is a truth universally acknowledged…”, take a moment to think about the last few books you read and loved. Can you remember the opening lines?

The very fact that these unremembered lines convinced us to keep reading until we loved the books means they did their jobs to sparkly perfection. I looked up the first lines of five of my favorite reads from the last year:

“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”—The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

“From a little after two oclock [sic] until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and the dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.”—Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

“It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.”—The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

“They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days.”—My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

“On the night he had appointed his last among the living, Dr. Ben Givens did not dream, for his sleep was restless and visited by phantoms who guarded the portal to the world of dreams by speaking relentlessly of this world.”—East of the Mountains by David Guterson

So what make these lines work? What about them makes us want to read on? Let’s break them down into five parts.

1. Inherent Question: To begin with, they all end with an invisible question mark. Why is the other side of the bed cold? Why are these characters sitting in a hot, dark room? How can silence be divided into three separate parts? Who did they hang in the old days—and why don’t they hang them anymore? And why and how has Ben Givens appointed the time of his death? It’s not enough to tell readers what’s going on in your story; you have to give them just enough information to make them ask the questions, so you can answer them.

2. Character: Most of these opening lines give us a character (and the rest quickly introduce their characters in the sentences that follow). The first line is the first opportunity the reader has to meet and become interested in your main character. Faulkner and Guterson ramp this principle to the max by immediately naming their characters, which allows readers that many more degrees of connection.

3. Setting: Most of these lines also offer a sense of setting. In particular, Faulkner, du Maurier, and Rothfuss use their settings to impart a deep sense of foreboding and to set the tone of the book. Modern authors are often shy of opening with description, but a quick, incisive intro of the setting not only serves to ground the reader in the physicality of the story, but also to hook their interest and set the stage. In Worlds of Wonder, David Gerrold explains that opening lines “that hook you immediately into the hero’s dilemma almost always follow the hook with a bit of stage setting” and vice versa. The opening line doesn’t have to stand alone. It is supported by and leads into the scaffolding of all the sentences and paragraphs that follow.

4. Sweeping Declaration: Only one of our example books (du Maurier’s) opens with a declaration. Some authors feel this is another technique that’s fallen by the wayside, along with the omniscient narrators of Austen and Tolstoy. But the declaration is still alive and well, no matter what point of view you’re operating from. The trick is using the declaration to make readers ask that inherent question we talked about above. “The sky is blue” or “a stitch in time saves nine” are the kind of yawn-infested declarations that lead nowhere. But if you dig a little deeper—something along the lines of William Gibson’s “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel”—you find not only a bit of poetry, but also a sense of tone and the questions of why? that make readers want to keep going.

5. Voice: Finally, in every one of our examples we find the introduction of voice. Your authorial voice in general, and the voice of this story in particular, is your reader’s introduction to you. Your first line is your “hello.” Don’t waste it. Is your book funny, snarky, wistful, sad, or poetic? Make sure we find that core element in your opening line. Don’t hand readers a joke at the beginning if your story is a lyrical tragedy.

Opening lines offer authors their first and best opportunity to make a statement about their stories. Play around until you find something that perfectly introduces your story’s character, plot, setting, theme, and voice. Your opening line may be as short as Suzanne Collins's. It may (heaven forbid) be as long as William Faulkner’s. It may be flashy, or it may be straightforward. Whatever the case, make sure it’s an appropriate starting line for the grand adventure that is your story.

Tell me your opinion: Do you remember the opening line of the last good book you read?

Related Posts: Use a Question to Create an Unforgettable Opening Chapter

Is Your Opening Line Lying to Your Readers?

Why Opening With a Characteristic Moment Is So Important?
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Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Wordplay podcast in iTunes).

September 18, 2011
39 Comments
K.M. Weiland
Posted in beginnings , Characters , Feature , opening line , opening question , Setting , SYN , voice

September 16, 2011
2 Comments
K.M. Weiland
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Today, we’re continuing with our series of video/audio trailers, offering a sneak peek into the first chapter of Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success. We’re also continuing our month of prize giveaways, building up to the Grand Prize, worth over $400, on September 26th. Be sure to leave a comment on this post to register for today’s prize, a signed copy of my historical western novel A Man Called Outlaw. And now let’s talk outlines—specifically the misconceptions about outlining.

Video Transcription: Many authors decide outlining is “not for them” after hearing the surface arguments. Before you make that decision, let’s take a look at some of the common misconceptions about outlining.

Misconception #1: Outlines Require Formal Formatting

Much of the avoidance of outlining comes down to nightmarish memories of the outlines we had to learn in high school. You know the type: Roman numerals, graduated indents, and perfectly parsed grammar. Just looking at one is enough to kill your creativity:

I. The Galactic Empire attempts to squelch the Rebel Alliance.
   1. Big spaceship goes after little spaceship.
        a. Big spaceship catches little spaceship.
          i) Bad guy boards little spaceship; bad guy breathes heavily.

That’s just a whole barrel of fun, isn’t it? Even with an exciting story, you’re more likely to snap your pencil point in frustration than wear it down to a nub with a flood of enthusiastic ideas. Formal outlines such as we learned in school may suffice for recording the bare bones of our stories. But, let’s face it, they’re not exactly enjoyable. By the time you reach “II. Farm boy goes on mission to save beautiful princess,” you’re probably going to be yawning and checking Twitter.

Fortunately, outlines don’t have to look anything like this inverted staircase. In the next chapter, we’ll explore a variety of outline formats, but, for now, remember outlines don’t require the crossing of every T, the dotting of every I, and the buttoning of your top collar button. Rather, they should be opportunities for throwing caution to the wind, living on the edge, and breaking any rule silly enough to raise its head.

Misconception #2: Outlines Limit Creativity

Authors sometimes feel writing an outline will box them into a rigid plan, which can be deviated from only under risk of death. As soon as they put an outline on paper, they fear they’ve locked their story into an immutable form that can never be changed, even if they come up with a better idea halfway through the first draft.

When I was a kid, I loved those connect-the-dots puzzles. The artists would remove the lines in their sketches and replace them with spaced-out dots, each of which was accompanied by a number. If I succeeded in connecting the dots in the correct order, I would magically end up with a kitten or a dolphin or a barn. It was fun, but it didn’t allow for much creativity. If I didn’t follow the dots exactly, I wouldn’t end up with a picture of anything recognizable. In other words, if I didn’t follow the predetermined outline, I was sunk.

Fortunately, however, this needn’t be the case with a novel’s outline. Like the pirate code in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, we should consider outlines to be “more like guidelines.” A good outline should be a spur for creativity, not a stumbling block. The author is the master of the outline, not its slave. If and when you come up with a better idea while in the midst of writing Chapter Seventeen, by all means take a good tight hold on the muse and let its wings bear you to new and exciting shores—even if those shores weren’t originally on your map.

Outlines should encourage wild creativity, daring experimentation, and focused inspiration. If you’re not encountering these elements in your own outline, you’re probably looking at the process in the wrong light.

Misconception #3: Outlines Rob the Joy of Discovery

Some authors rebel against outlines because they believe creating one will sap the joy of discovery they find in writing a first draft. It’s true that for all the benefits outlining offers, it also requires a few sacrifices. The opportunity to write a first draft full of unexpected discoveries is one of those sacrifices. But it’s not as black as it sounds. You’re not losing the opportunity for unexpected discoveries. Not at all. What you’re doing is moving those discoveries from the first draft to the outline. All the fun’s still there; it just occupies a different place in your timeline. Thriller author and Edgar nominee Raymond Benson explains, “I figure out all the hard plot details in the outline, so you might say I really write the book when I do the outline.”

In many ways, an extensive outline is a first draft. The only difference is the outliner’s process takes maybe a quarter of the time. The outline, like the first draft, is the “mistake” draft, the dry-erase board where we unveil our ideas and see how they line up on the page. Outliners and pantsers alike go through this process.

Instead of stealing creative joy, the outline expands an author’s opportunities for exploring his story. He gets to experience the original act of creation in the outlining process, during which he comes up with the raw story idea, sorts out implausibilities, and fills in plot holes. In essence, he’s constructing the skeleton of his story. When he later begins the first draft, he isn’t retreading old ground. Instead, he’s digging deeper into his understanding of his story by fleshing out the skeleton: adding the new material that will become the inner organs, skin, hair, muscles, and cartilage. Using the outline to figure out the technicalities of your plot gives you the freedom to explore your characters, settings, and themes in intimate detail in your first draft. Prolific fantasy author Jeff VanderMeer explains:

Yes, I knew what I was going to write about in a chapter ahead of time, so there was less process of discovery in terms of what was going to happen. However, I found I could give more thought to how and why things happened because I already had this outline in place—on some level, I focused more on each scene, and how the scenes fit together…. I find that there’s relief and a great calming effect in knowing that I can extrapolate ahead of time on the macro level, fill in a certain level of detail, and still find the writing and the actual scene-writing vibrant and exciting.

Studies have proven most people are noticeably stronger in one hemisphere of the brain or the other, mostly due to their tendency to exercise one side more often. The left brain is analytical and logical, allowing us to plot our stories in a linear timeline and make rational decisions about our characters and their motives. The right side of our brains is where all the juicy creativity and raw inspiration takes place. The left brain thinks in facts; the right brain thinks in images and feelings. Neither side of the brain is better than the other. But, as writers, we can’t discount the value of figuring out which side we live in most—and then stretching ourselves to explore the uncharted territories on the other side.

Utilizing an outline allows us to take advantage of both sides of our brains by divvying up the necessary responsibilities of creating a story. When we outline, the creative process can be divided into four categories: conception, outlining, writing, revising.

Conception is a deeply right-brain activity. We can’t explain where the first spark of an idea comes from. It’s often nothing more than an image or a feeling welling up from our sub-conscious and demanding an explanation. My own period of conception can last several years. I allow the story to kick around in the back of my head, adding to it through subsequent flashes of inspiration, until I feel it’s grown into an idea large enough to explore with my left brain.
Outlining is where the left brain gets its first crack at the story. This is the phase in which I lay out all my touchy-feely ideas and analyze them with my left brain to make sure they all fit together. I identify the missing pieces and fill in the holes. Although outlines demand right-brain creativity as well, they are primarily a logical left-brain activity. I have to ask myself, Does this character’s motivation make sense? Does this event in the plot logically lead to this outcome? Does the story arc hold together? Getting the majority of the left-brain gruntwork out of the way in the outline allows me to once again turn my creativity loose in the writing stage.
Writing the story is an intensely right-brain experience. This goes against popular opinion, which believes the outline quashes any hope of creativity by imposing a predetermined plan onto the story. Just the opposite is true. Because I know where the story is going and because I’ve already put my left brain to work ensuring the story makes sense, I can surrender the discovery of the story details back into the capable care of my creative right brain.
Revising brings the process full circle by once again imposing left-brain rationality onto the creativity of the first draft. Where the right brain has charged ahead in all its sloppy, colorful wonder, the left brain now follows behind, mopping up the excess and straightening ideas so they achieve their maximum power through clarity and cause and effect.

Misconception #4: Outlines Take Too Much Time

One of Polly Pantser’s arguments against outlines is that they take “weeks, or even months” to write—and that’s absolutely true. On average, each of my outlines takes me three months from start to finish. Three months is a long time—but not so long as you’ll spend on the heavy-duty rewrites required to turn a rambling first draft into a tight, cohesive, salable novel.

Consider again my experience with my fantasy Dreamlander. Before writing my outline, I spent eight months writing fifty pages. That page count totals out at just over six pages a month. That’s a page and a half a week and less than a third of a page a day.

That’s pitiful.

It was also torturous. And, if that weren’t bad enough, I eventually had to go back and spend an additional three months rewriting those fifty pages to bring them up to speed with the outline’s improved and streamlined version of the story. I ended up spending nearly a year on a process that would probably have required only a few months had I taken the time to outline in the beginning.

Outlining requires an outlay of patience. We have to be willing to put off the actual writing in order to get our ducks in a row. But this preparation pays for itself in innumerable ways. A mountain climber would never consider tackling Mt. Everest without investing serious preparation time in planning his route, organizing his group, collecting and double-checking his gear, and training his body. Authors who dash off to write a 100,000-word novel are just as likely as hasty climbers to get themselves in trouble in the long run. Preparation takes time and effort, but it’s always worth it in the end.

Tell me your opinion: Have any of these misconceptions scared you away from trying outlining?

Related Posts: Opening Yourself to Inspiration

10 Habits of Successful Authors

How Not to Be Inspired

September 14, 2011
41 Comments
K.M. Weiland
Posted in Conscious , Creativity , Feature , Inspiration , outlining , OYN , Unconscious

Some characters are born with “lovable” written all over their cute little faces. But some just pop out ugly—and mean—and generally rough around the edges. Most of my protagonists are people who have made major mistakes in their lives (we’re talking killing people, selling out to the dark side, and, in one case, putting sugar in the salt shakers). They’re scarred, they’re cranky, sometimes they’re just plain wrong. I can tell you right now that even I, their creator, wouldn’t want to run into some of them in a dark alley.

There’s a little trick authors can use to make even their darkest anti-heroes sympathetic.

It’s what TV writers call “petting the dog.” All you have to do is insert a scene in which the character—who’s presumably embattled on every side—pauses a moment, perhaps at risk to himself, to help something or someone who as, James Scott Bell explains in Revision and Self-Editing, is “weaker and more vulnerable than he is.” Bell goes on:

A pet-the-dog beat, properly executed, creates great sympathy for the character, while at the same time may add to the suspense. It doesn’t have to be a literal dog, but any other character who is vulnerable.

For example, in John Robinson’s mystery Until the Last Dog Dies, gruff PI Joe Box adopts a scruffy alley cat and mourns when he believes the cat dies in a house fire. In the Coen brothers’ recent movie adaptation of True Grit, “notorious thumper” and general rough character Marshal Rooster Cogburn nonchalantly wallops two Indian boys who are mistreating a mule. And who could forget assassin Léon’s devotion to his Japanese peace lily in Luc Besson’s The Professional?

Your hero might also win audience sympathy through his devotion to a person, such as Katniss Everdeen’s sacrificial love for her younger sister Prim in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. Or Dr. Richard Kimble’s risking his disguise to diagnose a car wreck victim in Andrew Davis’s The Fugitive. Or the people of Guernsey’s adoption of a war orphan in Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Your pet-the-dog scene must be organic to your character and your story.

Having your hero dive into the middle a firefight to save a lop-eared puppy won’t work unless the puppy’s survival drives the plot forward. In some stories, petting the dog becomes the story, as in L.M. Montgomery’s classic children’s story Anne of Green Gables, in which a crotchety woman adopts an orphan girl and is transformed by the experience. Or as in Frank Capra’s movie It’s a Wonderful Life, which features its cranky, unhappy hero looking out for other people over and over again.

If you find yourself with a dark character on your hands, stop worrying about whether or not audiences will like him and up the odds by giving him a dog to pet. After all, even bad guys love their mommas. A pet-the-dog beat won’t salvage an unlikable character if petting the dog is his only good deed, but audiences will be much more likely to connect to even the crankiest, grumpiest, most misunderstood anti-hero when the character reaches out and shows compassion to a brown-eyed puppy dog.

Tell me your opinion: What’s your hero’s pet-the-dog scene?

Related Posts: Eliciting Emotion

It's What Your Characters Do That Defines Them

Why Character Stereotypes Are a Good Thing
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Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Wordplay podcast in iTunes).

September 11, 2011
39 Comments
K.M. Weiland
Posted in antihero , Characters , Feature , protagonist

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