Important blog note: If you go back to earlier postings - as I hope you do - please don’t post your comments or questions there. I don’t check and may never see what you wrote. Even if what you have to say concerns an old post, please add your comments to the most current one, where I’ll be sure to read it and so will the other writers who frequent the blog.
On March 17, 2010 April wrote, It sounds like you rely primarily on books for research, with online searching as a supplement or back up. Is this just your preference? Or do you think the kind of information you're looking for is more trustworthy in a book? Or perhaps another reason?
And Priyanka wrote, April- my answer to you for that is that material you find in a cloth-bound book, which took a lot of time to edit and compile, is most probably more reliable than the majority of websites on the web, which probably got their own information from a book! (Take a look at the bibliography sections on well-written Wikipedia articles, they often have an extensive list of books.)
There are some exceptions for research online! I would trust anything I find in JSTOR or an online database such as EBSCO. I'm not sure how easily accessible those are for everyone, but high schools and universities usually have subscriptions to them, as do some public libraries. All it requires is a little searching! :)
I’m not an expert on research, so please keep my non-expertise in mind as you read. I also don’t have access to university databases or live near a big public library, so I’ve never used the online databases Priyanka cites. I do google the topics that interest me, and I use Wikipedia a lot, but the online sources that I find mostly give overviews. When I want more depth, I read books.
As you guys probably know, most of my novels are fantasies. Ever, for example, is set in a made-up version of ancient Mesopotamia. To help me write it, I read two books about the period and visited the ancient Mesopotamian collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I also read Mesopotamian myths and reread the Greek myths. I read the bible as well, which, among other things, contains information about ancient daily life.
But my purpose wasn’t accuracy, it was flavor and detail. I didn’t mention Mesopotamia in the novel; the city of Hyte and the kingdom of Akka, where the action takes place, never existed. If I used a detail from an online source that was wrong, it didn’t matter.
It helps me to have specific information when I write, even if the information is riddled with inaccuracies. Reading that the houses of the period were made of baked mud helped me picture them (I’m pretty sure this detail is true). I read about the layout of rooms, and that helped too. If I’d discovered that these layouts were inaccurate, I would have tried to find out what was correct, but then if the correction didn’t suit my story needs, I would have gone back to what I knew to be wrong. I make no claims of historical verity, and I hope no teacher has made Ever part of a curriculum of the ancient world.
An aside: I found an online dictionary of ancient Sumerian and used it to invent names, places, and a few words. But I worried that I might have accidentally created words that exist in modern Arabic or Farsi, and I couldn’t tell if the words happened to be offensive. My publisher found a speaker of both languages to look at my inventions. Turned out that a couple were real words, but nothing bad.
Another aside: I discovered, online again, numbers as they would have been written in cuneiform. So, above the ordinary Arabic numerals at the beginning of each chapter are the same numbers in cuneiform. If you look, you can learn to write cuneiform numbers up to sixty-nine (the number of chapters in the book)! I love that.
My fairy tale books from Ella Enchanted through Fairest are not set in any time period more specific than pre-industrial. I did little research. I looked at costume books, especially for Fairest, but I roamed from century to century to find gowns that fit what I wanted. (Some of the fashions were completely ridiculous, which suited my story. For a hoot, take a look at an illustrated fashion history book.) For Cinderellis and the Glass Hill, I researched armor, but not extensively.
I have gotten letters from children, thanking me for teaching them about the middle ages through my books. When I read these letters, I shudder and feel guilty. So for A Tale of Two Castles, which April named on the blog, I did read two books about medieval daily life, and I referred constantly to a children’s book, Castle by David Macaulay, about castle architecture. If kids write to me about the middle ages in that book I’ll feel a little better, although I still made things up.
Children’s nonfiction is a great source for gaining nontechnical understanding of a complex subject. In For Biddle’s Sake a fairy turns characters into frogs, and I read two children’s books about frogs. They told me everything I needed.
It’s important to note that although I’m writing from a European fairytale tradition, there is no Europe in my books. My fairytale novels take place nowhere on planet earth. Even though I researched frogs, if I’d wanted to give them wings or make each of them as big as tyrannosaurus rex, I could have. If you do set your story in a real time and place, then I think you need to be accurate. For example, suppose your fantasy takes place in sixteenth century France, even if you have dragons dotting the landscape, you need to be true in other respects to the place and time.
When I wrote my non-fantasy, realistic historical novel, Dave at Night, which takes place in New York City in 1926, I did extensive research and tried to get everything right. I read several books about the period as well as poetry and a novel written at the time. I spent days going through the photo collection at the main branch of the New York Public Library, looked at street plans of the time, visited the Tenement House Museum and spoke to the curator, visited the New York City Transit Museum and talked to an expert on mass transit during the era. And much more. Best of all, I had two friends with excellent memories who were alive at the time. If you’re writing about a period that’s within living memory of your parents or grandparents or of people you can contact, talk to them. They will give you details and a flavor of the time that you can’t get any other way. But then fact-check their information. When I was little, for example, I remember telephones being only black. I would guess that they began to be produced in colors in the mid to late 1960s, but the change may have begun earlier. Dates in memory are often slippery.
These prompts involve research. If you want to surround them with a story, so much the better.
• Some emergency has arisen during the night. Your seventeenth or eighteenth-century daughter of a duke has to dress in a hurry. Write about her getting dressed with as much historical accuracy about her clothing as you can find. Remember, she is rushing.
• Describe five minutes of a medieval feast with as much historical accuracy as you can.
• A young squire (or female equivalent) is polishing his lord’s armor and decides to try everything on. Once he’s outfitted, he mounts his lord’s charger, just as someone unexpected (you pick) enters the stable. Write the whole scene, including what happens next.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
I'm a boy!
On March 13, 2010, Mya wrote, One more question: Though I don't know why, most of my characters are boys. The only problem with this is that sometimes, I can't tell how TO write---think---like a boy to portray him correctly. Do you have any advice on writing from a different gender's perspective?
And on April 21, 2010, Silver the Wanderer wrote, I'm a girl, but my whole novel is written from the point of view of a guy. Sometimes, I'm afraid of making his thoughts and dialogue sound too girly and/or out of character. Do you have any suggestions pertaining to this?
If you’re a boy or man reading the blog, please post your ideas on this subject.
I’ve written from male points of view several times. In my historical novel Dave at Night, the POV character is an eleven-year-old boy. My loosely historical fantasy Ever alternates chapter by chapter between a male and a female character. And my Princess Tales, while told in third person, shift back and forth in each book from the male and female leads.
Each of these male characters is different from the others, just as every real boy is different from every other boy. Obviously same for girls. As I wrote in my post about writing characters older than you, one sixty-year-old will not be like another, and certainly not just because both are sixty.
This gives you a lot of freedom.
In Dave at Night, the main character, Dave of course, is based on my father, whose name was also Dave. I imagined my father as a boy, and as I wrote I had him firmly in mind. Because I knew what kind of man he was - spunky, smart, kindhearted, stubborn, diffident - I was able to intuit the boy he would have been. My father didn’t express his masculinity in bluster. In the novel he defeats a bully, but not by fighting, by his wits.
So it may help you to have a particular boy or man in mind when you write your male character. Or you can combine people you know. Write down the qualities that make them themselves. How might these characteristics mark them as male on the page? Think of the way particular boys and girls or men and women in your life behave when they’re angry or arguing or when something lovely has happened. Compare your male teachers with your female teachers or your male colleagues with your female ones. Or the male and female members of your family. Think not only of their inner selves, but also their outer. Watch the way people stand, sit, walk, run. Girls are sometimes accused of running or throwing “like a girl.” Go beyond the stereotype to what you actually see. Listen to conversations. Obviously most males, once their voices change, speak in a lower register. Listen to what’s said, what’s emphasized, which topics are chosen.
In my mystery, A Tale of Two Castles, coming out in 2011, the dragon Meenore keeps ITs gender secret, but, without intending to, I’ve made IT read more masculine than feminine. In revision I’ve added a few touches to muddy matters. IT bows to Count Jonty Um, the ogre, and then follows the bow with a curtsy. I make IT like to play knucklebones (like jacks), a girl’s game.
These two examples are shortcuts rather than deeply rooted character traits. We need shortcuts because we don’t have an eternity to establish our characters. But shortcuts can tend toward stereotype, so use them with care. Here are a few that come to my mind. You can think of more of your own. Many boys and men, even in our enlightened twenty-first century, are more restrained about crying and more embarrassed when they do cry than girls and women are. In dialogue a male character may be less expansive about his feelings. He may make them known, but maybe not in long paragraphs with many explanations. He may use bigger gestures or have more explosive pent-up energy. I once read that women laugh more in the presence of men, and that men are less likely to laugh at a woman’s jokes. See if you find this to be true. Along the same lines, I read that women want their men to be funny, and men don’t say they care if their women can make them laugh. But of course these are generalizations.
It will help if you establish your character as male clearly at the start of your story. Don’t give him a name that could belong either to a boy or to a girl, for example. Find a way to describe him early on. Say that he’s the shortest or tallest boy in his class, for instance. Have somebody say something to him that demonstrates we have a guy here. The reader will help you once she’s clued in. Unless you go far off gender, whatever he says, she’ll hear your boy saying it. Whatever he does, she’ll see your man doing it.
If your main character is male, you may have an easier time by writing in third person. You’ll still have to reveal his thoughts and feelings, but you won’t be living inside his head and giving him your feminine ideas and responses. If you’ve been writing in first, try switching to third and see what happens.
When you write a scene or when you go back to revise it, picture your character. Does he read as male for you? If not, what can you do? Change his dialogue? He may need to say whatever he was saying, but he can say it in different words. Or maybe the setting is wrong, and simply by moving him, he will be changed. Or you can give him something to do while the scene is moving forward that will feel masculine, assembling a model airplane, raking leaves, digging for buried treasure (not that girls can’t do any of these things).
When you’re ready, ask a guy to look at what you’ve written and point out to you where the character feels female. If you’re never going to be ready to do this, you can be more subtle: Ask a few people of both sexes how they think a male character would act and think and feel in the situation you’ve set up in your story.
This has been a touchy topic, because for every characteristic I suggest as masculine there are a lot of women who have it. But it is the sum of the person that you’re going for, not one trait or another. Blog readers, please chime in if you have more ideas for Mya and Silver the Wanderer. If you are an actual man or boy, what do you think?
Here are prompts:
• Your male main character is assigned to work on a project with another male character he dislikes. Make up the project. Write what happens.
• A male character is trying to release his male friend from the clutches of a possessive female centaur. Invent the circumstances: where they are, what the centaur’s powers are, how the friend is trapped. Write the scene in first person from his point of view. Now write the same scene, making the male characters female and the female character male..
• Write a male Cinderella story: two mean stepbrothers, a mean stepfather, a wizard godfather. See where you take the story.
Have fun, and save what you write!
And on April 21, 2010, Silver the Wanderer wrote, I'm a girl, but my whole novel is written from the point of view of a guy. Sometimes, I'm afraid of making his thoughts and dialogue sound too girly and/or out of character. Do you have any suggestions pertaining to this?
If you’re a boy or man reading the blog, please post your ideas on this subject.
I’ve written from male points of view several times. In my historical novel Dave at Night, the POV character is an eleven-year-old boy. My loosely historical fantasy Ever alternates chapter by chapter between a male and a female character. And my Princess Tales, while told in third person, shift back and forth in each book from the male and female leads.
Each of these male characters is different from the others, just as every real boy is different from every other boy. Obviously same for girls. As I wrote in my post about writing characters older than you, one sixty-year-old will not be like another, and certainly not just because both are sixty.
This gives you a lot of freedom.
In Dave at Night, the main character, Dave of course, is based on my father, whose name was also Dave. I imagined my father as a boy, and as I wrote I had him firmly in mind. Because I knew what kind of man he was - spunky, smart, kindhearted, stubborn, diffident - I was able to intuit the boy he would have been. My father didn’t express his masculinity in bluster. In the novel he defeats a bully, but not by fighting, by his wits.
So it may help you to have a particular boy or man in mind when you write your male character. Or you can combine people you know. Write down the qualities that make them themselves. How might these characteristics mark them as male on the page? Think of the way particular boys and girls or men and women in your life behave when they’re angry or arguing or when something lovely has happened. Compare your male teachers with your female teachers or your male colleagues with your female ones. Or the male and female members of your family. Think not only of their inner selves, but also their outer. Watch the way people stand, sit, walk, run. Girls are sometimes accused of running or throwing “like a girl.” Go beyond the stereotype to what you actually see. Listen to conversations. Obviously most males, once their voices change, speak in a lower register. Listen to what’s said, what’s emphasized, which topics are chosen.
In my mystery, A Tale of Two Castles, coming out in 2011, the dragon Meenore keeps ITs gender secret, but, without intending to, I’ve made IT read more masculine than feminine. In revision I’ve added a few touches to muddy matters. IT bows to Count Jonty Um, the ogre, and then follows the bow with a curtsy. I make IT like to play knucklebones (like jacks), a girl’s game.
These two examples are shortcuts rather than deeply rooted character traits. We need shortcuts because we don’t have an eternity to establish our characters. But shortcuts can tend toward stereotype, so use them with care. Here are a few that come to my mind. You can think of more of your own. Many boys and men, even in our enlightened twenty-first century, are more restrained about crying and more embarrassed when they do cry than girls and women are. In dialogue a male character may be less expansive about his feelings. He may make them known, but maybe not in long paragraphs with many explanations. He may use bigger gestures or have more explosive pent-up energy. I once read that women laugh more in the presence of men, and that men are less likely to laugh at a woman’s jokes. See if you find this to be true. Along the same lines, I read that women want their men to be funny, and men don’t say they care if their women can make them laugh. But of course these are generalizations.
It will help if you establish your character as male clearly at the start of your story. Don’t give him a name that could belong either to a boy or to a girl, for example. Find a way to describe him early on. Say that he’s the shortest or tallest boy in his class, for instance. Have somebody say something to him that demonstrates we have a guy here. The reader will help you once she’s clued in. Unless you go far off gender, whatever he says, she’ll hear your boy saying it. Whatever he does, she’ll see your man doing it.
If your main character is male, you may have an easier time by writing in third person. You’ll still have to reveal his thoughts and feelings, but you won’t be living inside his head and giving him your feminine ideas and responses. If you’ve been writing in first, try switching to third and see what happens.
When you write a scene or when you go back to revise it, picture your character. Does he read as male for you? If not, what can you do? Change his dialogue? He may need to say whatever he was saying, but he can say it in different words. Or maybe the setting is wrong, and simply by moving him, he will be changed. Or you can give him something to do while the scene is moving forward that will feel masculine, assembling a model airplane, raking leaves, digging for buried treasure (not that girls can’t do any of these things).
When you’re ready, ask a guy to look at what you’ve written and point out to you where the character feels female. If you’re never going to be ready to do this, you can be more subtle: Ask a few people of both sexes how they think a male character would act and think and feel in the situation you’ve set up in your story.
This has been a touchy topic, because for every characteristic I suggest as masculine there are a lot of women who have it. But it is the sum of the person that you’re going for, not one trait or another. Blog readers, please chime in if you have more ideas for Mya and Silver the Wanderer. If you are an actual man or boy, what do you think?
Here are prompts:
• Your male main character is assigned to work on a project with another male character he dislikes. Make up the project. Write what happens.
• A male character is trying to release his male friend from the clutches of a possessive female centaur. Invent the circumstances: where they are, what the centaur’s powers are, how the friend is trapped. Write the scene in first person from his point of view. Now write the same scene, making the male characters female and the female character male..
• Write a male Cinderella story: two mean stepbrothers, a mean stepfather, a wizard godfather. See where you take the story.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
More talk about talk
Before I get to this week’s question, I want to let everyone know about two appearances coming up this summer. For members of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), I’ll be speaking at the national conference, which will take place in Los Angeles from July 30th to August 2nd, although I won’t get there until July 31st. Here’s the link: http://www.scbwi.org/Conference.aspx?Con=6. I intend to talk about subjects that have been raised on the blog, so thanks to all of you for making my speech easier to prepare.
To those of you who are writing for kids but aren’t members of SCBWI, I hope you’ll consider joining the biggest writers’ organization in the world and the most welcoming. For kids who are writing for kids, sorry, you need to be at least eighteen to join.
The second appearance is for high-school-age people and above. It’s a conference called The Gathering, and it will be held from July 15th to 18th in La Plume, PA. I’ll be discussing my book Ever and also running a workshop on writing for kids. This will be my fourth year doing the workshop but my first as a featured speaker. The conference is always fascinating, good food, okay accommodations, great ideas. This year’s topic is Chaos and Creativity. Here’s the link: http://www.gathering.keystone.edu/.
In June I’ll be touring for Fairies and the Quest for Never Land, but I don’t know where I’ll be yet. I’ll post my itinerary when I get it.
On March 4, 2010, Amy Goodwin wrote... How do you write believable dialogue that is unique to each character's personality? Every time I try it seems to come out sounding so much like me and more straightforward than I want it. They all seem to say what they think and not think either logically or in directions that suit their characters. How do you get around this and write dialogue that shows characters’ personalities and gets the story moving at the same time? I'm pretty clueless on both.
When you are working out what a particular character is like, think about how she might express her nature in speech. Figuring this out may take you an entire book or three revisions of the book, but that's okay, I get to know my characters slowly. You can give her a speech mannerism in the first seven chapters and decide it doesn’t work in the eighth and remove it or exchange it for something else in revision.
If you’re developing a ruthless character, for example, you might make her interrupt often, without thinking about it, possibly without being aware of her rudeness. She wants what she wants, and she doesn’t care what anyone else has to say on the subject. A character who thinks he knows everything may also interrupt - same behavior, different reason.
In my Disney Fairies books, the character Rani, who sympathizes with everyone, tends to finish people’s sentences for them, sometimes correctly, sometimes not. When the reader sees a sentence completed by a second character, he knows Rani is the speaker.
There are lots of devices - and you can invent your own - to make a character’s speech special for that character and revealing of her inner nature. In life, everyone expresses himself uniquely. You and I have different ways of speaking. We use some expressions more often than others. I may speak in exclamations, you in questions. I may fly from topic to topic. You may stick to the point. A friend may speak so softly that you constantly have to ask her to repeat. Someone you’ve met acts as if everyone else is deaf. I haven’t nearly exhausted the possibilities; they’re legion.
And then there are the gestures that accompany speech. Somebody, perhaps a schemer, twists a length of hair around her finger when she’s lying. Manic Uncle Jack uses his hands constantly as he speaks. Secretive Alma never uses her hands. Insecure Mary moves with you while she talks so you can never avoid meeting her eyes. Bashful Stephan addresses his shoes.
In a movie or a play, this is enviably easy. The audience sees the characters do their physical bits, and the actors have tonal qualities too. We can identify such and such an actor with our eyes closed. But on the page, we have to remind the reader now and then. Someone needs to say to Stephan, “Look at me!” and then the reader will remember that he never does. Somebody has to say to Mary, “Get out of my face!”
If the speaker is a major character, you definitely want his way of speaking to go with his nature. If it’s a minor character, you can go generic, mention an accent, for instance, or nothing. Not everyone needs distinctive speech, as long as the reader knows who’s talking.
Amy, if your characters always sound like you, then you know how you sound, which is good. Try underlining the parts of dialogue in your stories that sound just like you. In notes, list five other ways of saying the same thing. Think about how your sister might say a particular bit of speech, your brother, your best friend, your worst enemy, a teacher or former teacher.
As for dialogue contributing to plot, except for out-of-control events, most of plot grows out of character, and dialogue is an expression of character. Let’s go back to the ruthless character. Suppose she interrupts someone in authority once too often... A plot event happens. Or suppose her interruptions irritate Stephan so much that he actually yells at her. Yelling and surviving it changes him. Maybe yelling at the ruthless character gives him the courage to declare his love for Mary.
Although in general you do want your characters to sound different from one another, you don’t want to overload the reader with a circus of exotic talkers. Usually somebody has to tell it like it is, and often (but not always) that will be your main character. Your main character, if you are telling the story from his point of view, is present in every scene and is the voice the reader will hear in her mind.
Also, once you have established your characters (on the first go-round or in revision), the reader will help you. If shy Stephan is in a scene, the reader will remember (after being reminded a few times) that he’s looking at his shoes or mumbling or blushing. Part of the reader’s pleasure will be in this insider knowledge. If a teacher booms at Stephan, “Speak up, young man!” the reader will squirm right along with him.
In these prompts, think of characteristic ways of speaking, including gestures, for everybody:
• Three different characters habitually address everyone as Sweetheart, and each of them means something else by it. Write a page of dialogue for each one that shows what the speaker intends to convey.
• Two characters are accusing each other of not keeping promises. Make up the promises they’re arguing over, and write the scene three times, once for each of three different pairs of characters. In each case, what would be the plot consequences of the argument if you put it in a story? If you like, write the story.
• A character wants to do something that is certain to turn out badly. Two of his or her friends are trying to talk him or her out of it. Make up the foolhardy act. Decide ahead of time or as you write or in revision whether or not the friends succeed. Write the scene.
Have fun and save what you wrote!
To those of you who are writing for kids but aren’t members of SCBWI, I hope you’ll consider joining the biggest writers’ organization in the world and the most welcoming. For kids who are writing for kids, sorry, you need to be at least eighteen to join.
The second appearance is for high-school-age people and above. It’s a conference called The Gathering, and it will be held from July 15th to 18th in La Plume, PA. I’ll be discussing my book Ever and also running a workshop on writing for kids. This will be my fourth year doing the workshop but my first as a featured speaker. The conference is always fascinating, good food, okay accommodations, great ideas. This year’s topic is Chaos and Creativity. Here’s the link: http://www.gathering.keystone.edu/.
In June I’ll be touring for Fairies and the Quest for Never Land, but I don’t know where I’ll be yet. I’ll post my itinerary when I get it.
On March 4, 2010, Amy Goodwin wrote... How do you write believable dialogue that is unique to each character's personality? Every time I try it seems to come out sounding so much like me and more straightforward than I want it. They all seem to say what they think and not think either logically or in directions that suit their characters. How do you get around this and write dialogue that shows characters’ personalities and gets the story moving at the same time? I'm pretty clueless on both.
When you are working out what a particular character is like, think about how she might express her nature in speech. Figuring this out may take you an entire book or three revisions of the book, but that's okay, I get to know my characters slowly. You can give her a speech mannerism in the first seven chapters and decide it doesn’t work in the eighth and remove it or exchange it for something else in revision.
If you’re developing a ruthless character, for example, you might make her interrupt often, without thinking about it, possibly without being aware of her rudeness. She wants what she wants, and she doesn’t care what anyone else has to say on the subject. A character who thinks he knows everything may also interrupt - same behavior, different reason.
In my Disney Fairies books, the character Rani, who sympathizes with everyone, tends to finish people’s sentences for them, sometimes correctly, sometimes not. When the reader sees a sentence completed by a second character, he knows Rani is the speaker.
There are lots of devices - and you can invent your own - to make a character’s speech special for that character and revealing of her inner nature. In life, everyone expresses himself uniquely. You and I have different ways of speaking. We use some expressions more often than others. I may speak in exclamations, you in questions. I may fly from topic to topic. You may stick to the point. A friend may speak so softly that you constantly have to ask her to repeat. Someone you’ve met acts as if everyone else is deaf. I haven’t nearly exhausted the possibilities; they’re legion.
And then there are the gestures that accompany speech. Somebody, perhaps a schemer, twists a length of hair around her finger when she’s lying. Manic Uncle Jack uses his hands constantly as he speaks. Secretive Alma never uses her hands. Insecure Mary moves with you while she talks so you can never avoid meeting her eyes. Bashful Stephan addresses his shoes.
In a movie or a play, this is enviably easy. The audience sees the characters do their physical bits, and the actors have tonal qualities too. We can identify such and such an actor with our eyes closed. But on the page, we have to remind the reader now and then. Someone needs to say to Stephan, “Look at me!” and then the reader will remember that he never does. Somebody has to say to Mary, “Get out of my face!”
If the speaker is a major character, you definitely want his way of speaking to go with his nature. If it’s a minor character, you can go generic, mention an accent, for instance, or nothing. Not everyone needs distinctive speech, as long as the reader knows who’s talking.
Amy, if your characters always sound like you, then you know how you sound, which is good. Try underlining the parts of dialogue in your stories that sound just like you. In notes, list five other ways of saying the same thing. Think about how your sister might say a particular bit of speech, your brother, your best friend, your worst enemy, a teacher or former teacher.
As for dialogue contributing to plot, except for out-of-control events, most of plot grows out of character, and dialogue is an expression of character. Let’s go back to the ruthless character. Suppose she interrupts someone in authority once too often... A plot event happens. Or suppose her interruptions irritate Stephan so much that he actually yells at her. Yelling and surviving it changes him. Maybe yelling at the ruthless character gives him the courage to declare his love for Mary.
Although in general you do want your characters to sound different from one another, you don’t want to overload the reader with a circus of exotic talkers. Usually somebody has to tell it like it is, and often (but not always) that will be your main character. Your main character, if you are telling the story from his point of view, is present in every scene and is the voice the reader will hear in her mind.
Also, once you have established your characters (on the first go-round or in revision), the reader will help you. If shy Stephan is in a scene, the reader will remember (after being reminded a few times) that he’s looking at his shoes or mumbling or blushing. Part of the reader’s pleasure will be in this insider knowledge. If a teacher booms at Stephan, “Speak up, young man!” the reader will squirm right along with him.
In these prompts, think of characteristic ways of speaking, including gestures, for everybody:
• Three different characters habitually address everyone as Sweetheart, and each of them means something else by it. Write a page of dialogue for each one that shows what the speaker intends to convey.
• Two characters are accusing each other of not keeping promises. Make up the promises they’re arguing over, and write the scene three times, once for each of three different pairs of characters. In each case, what would be the plot consequences of the argument if you put it in a story? If you like, write the story.
• A character wants to do something that is certain to turn out badly. Two of his or her friends are trying to talk him or her out of it. Make up the foolhardy act. Decide ahead of time or as you write or in revision whether or not the friends succeed. Write the scene.
Have fun and save what you wrote!
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Flashing back
On February 25, 2010, Jill wrote, My big problem is when my character did something important that I want the people reading to know all about. I tried starting the story with a flashback but realized what I want them to know didn't happen in one event. It happened over many years. I tried skipping year to year in the flash back but I got confused just trying to write it. I really just want to tell them what happened and move on but it’s hard to get out all the information with out making it seem like two books in one. Any suggestions?
The kingdom of Bamarre in my The Two Princesses of Bamarre is plagued by monsters and by a terrible disease called the Gray Death. Events in the story are connected to events during the founding of the kingdom centuries ago. I brought the back story into the current one with an epic poem that winds through the book. The poem, which was written in the earlier time, is known by everyone. People quote from it, perform scenes from it, refer to it. My main character often thinks about it.
The Blind Assassin (high school level and above) by Margaret Atwood alternates in sections between the past and the present. In the course of the book, the back story catches up. The past is told in third person, the present in first. The reader quickly adjusts to the shifts, cued by the change in point of view. The story is a sort of mystery, and the time jumps contribute to the puzzle. It’s a brilliant accomplishment.
Margaret Atwood introduces her chapters in the past with old newspaper clippings. You too can come up with devices not merely to start the switch, but to reveal the events themselves. For example, you can alternate the current story with old diary entries or old letters, or you can invent fictionalized newspaper articles too.
Or you can think up other ways to bring the past into the present . Suppose, for instance, that your main character is haunted by a memory of being cruel to her brother only a few hours before he was killed in a car accident or abducted by aliens or morphed into an alien himself, and suppose she discusses what she did with a counselor or her new college roommate, someone who doesn’t know her past. This can become a boring recitation, however, unless you do something to bring in tension, like maybe the confidant has a hidden connection to the brother.
If the back actions were performed by your main character (not carried out before her birth or beyond her knowledge), you can start with the first act and keep going, no need for flashbacks or anything else. I’ve begun several of my books with the birth of my main character–Ella Enchanted, Fairest, and Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep, to name a few. The story then jumps forward through selected episodes, sometimes years apart, to the present where most of the action takes place. This is a straightforward way to do it and the least likely to cause reader confusion. My favorite writing teacher, years ago, disliked flashbacks. I have nothing against them, but if there is no reason not to write in sequence from past to present, this is the way I would go.
If you use them, flashbacks can be hard to pull off because you’re wrenching the reader away from the ongoing story. Then, you want to excite his interest inside the flashback, but you don’t want him to fall so much in love with it that he doesn’t want to return to the present. Quick flashback scenes often succeed, since the reader comes to understand that the digression will be short.
The television series Lost - High school level? Middle school? I’m not sure, so check with an adult - is wild with its scene switches. The story jumps in and out of flashbacks, and then, to further complicate matters, characters become unglued in time. The viewer learns to expect this madness and adapts. I don’t always admire the show, but I enjoy the craziness, and it’s worth studying how the endless complications are handled.
Of course television is a different medium. Information can be conveyed instantly. The viewer has only to see a telephone with a cord to know that she’s in the past. We writers have to reveal the switch in words, which takes longer.
The Long View by Elizabeth Jane Howard (high school and up) and the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along tell their stories backwards. The novel starts with a marriage that has fallen painfully apart and progresses back in time to the first meeting of the couple and their early love. The musical begins with the misery of a man who has misused his artistic gifts and ends with his hopeful college graduation. Both are tragic. I don’t know if it’s possible to tell a happy story this way.
Saying It Out Loud (middle school and up), which I think I’ve mentioned before, by my friend Joan Abelove, moves effortlessly through time. Joan uses flashbacks a lot, so you may want to read the book to see how she does it.
Many actors develop back stories for their roles. They may flesh out a childhood, adolescence, family, school that never come into the actual play or movie. But the back story adds depth to the performance. The audience picks up on the complexity. So it’s a good thing to have earlier events influencing the current story.
Whatever method you use, sympathetic or fascinating characters in a difficult situation will lure your reader in and keep him in. If he is hooked, cares about your main character, roots for her, he will keep reading and may love the all the track switches you conduct him through.
You can try any of the techniques I mentioned: flashbacks, diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, backward telling, an epic poem, dialogue in a counseling session. And here are three specific prompts:
• Make up a back story for a character in a book you love. If you love Pride and Prejudice (as I do), for example, make up a back story for Wickham or Mr. Collins or Charlotte beyond what Jane Austen provides.
• Make up a back story for one of your own minor characters. Figure out a way to introduce a bit of it into your story.
• Develop a flashback scene in a story you’re working on now or an old story. Keep it in if you like it. Otherwise take it out.
Have fun and save what you write!
The kingdom of Bamarre in my The Two Princesses of Bamarre is plagued by monsters and by a terrible disease called the Gray Death. Events in the story are connected to events during the founding of the kingdom centuries ago. I brought the back story into the current one with an epic poem that winds through the book. The poem, which was written in the earlier time, is known by everyone. People quote from it, perform scenes from it, refer to it. My main character often thinks about it.
The Blind Assassin (high school level and above) by Margaret Atwood alternates in sections between the past and the present. In the course of the book, the back story catches up. The past is told in third person, the present in first. The reader quickly adjusts to the shifts, cued by the change in point of view. The story is a sort of mystery, and the time jumps contribute to the puzzle. It’s a brilliant accomplishment.
Margaret Atwood introduces her chapters in the past with old newspaper clippings. You too can come up with devices not merely to start the switch, but to reveal the events themselves. For example, you can alternate the current story with old diary entries or old letters, or you can invent fictionalized newspaper articles too.
Or you can think up other ways to bring the past into the present . Suppose, for instance, that your main character is haunted by a memory of being cruel to her brother only a few hours before he was killed in a car accident or abducted by aliens or morphed into an alien himself, and suppose she discusses what she did with a counselor or her new college roommate, someone who doesn’t know her past. This can become a boring recitation, however, unless you do something to bring in tension, like maybe the confidant has a hidden connection to the brother.
If the back actions were performed by your main character (not carried out before her birth or beyond her knowledge), you can start with the first act and keep going, no need for flashbacks or anything else. I’ve begun several of my books with the birth of my main character–Ella Enchanted, Fairest, and Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep, to name a few. The story then jumps forward through selected episodes, sometimes years apart, to the present where most of the action takes place. This is a straightforward way to do it and the least likely to cause reader confusion. My favorite writing teacher, years ago, disliked flashbacks. I have nothing against them, but if there is no reason not to write in sequence from past to present, this is the way I would go.
If you use them, flashbacks can be hard to pull off because you’re wrenching the reader away from the ongoing story. Then, you want to excite his interest inside the flashback, but you don’t want him to fall so much in love with it that he doesn’t want to return to the present. Quick flashback scenes often succeed, since the reader comes to understand that the digression will be short.
The television series Lost - High school level? Middle school? I’m not sure, so check with an adult - is wild with its scene switches. The story jumps in and out of flashbacks, and then, to further complicate matters, characters become unglued in time. The viewer learns to expect this madness and adapts. I don’t always admire the show, but I enjoy the craziness, and it’s worth studying how the endless complications are handled.
Of course television is a different medium. Information can be conveyed instantly. The viewer has only to see a telephone with a cord to know that she’s in the past. We writers have to reveal the switch in words, which takes longer.
The Long View by Elizabeth Jane Howard (high school and up) and the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along tell their stories backwards. The novel starts with a marriage that has fallen painfully apart and progresses back in time to the first meeting of the couple and their early love. The musical begins with the misery of a man who has misused his artistic gifts and ends with his hopeful college graduation. Both are tragic. I don’t know if it’s possible to tell a happy story this way.
Saying It Out Loud (middle school and up), which I think I’ve mentioned before, by my friend Joan Abelove, moves effortlessly through time. Joan uses flashbacks a lot, so you may want to read the book to see how she does it.
Many actors develop back stories for their roles. They may flesh out a childhood, adolescence, family, school that never come into the actual play or movie. But the back story adds depth to the performance. The audience picks up on the complexity. So it’s a good thing to have earlier events influencing the current story.
Whatever method you use, sympathetic or fascinating characters in a difficult situation will lure your reader in and keep him in. If he is hooked, cares about your main character, roots for her, he will keep reading and may love the all the track switches you conduct him through.
You can try any of the techniques I mentioned: flashbacks, diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, backward telling, an epic poem, dialogue in a counseling session. And here are three specific prompts:
• Make up a back story for a character in a book you love. If you love Pride and Prejudice (as I do), for example, make up a back story for Wickham or Mr. Collins or Charlotte beyond what Jane Austen provides.
• Make up a back story for one of your own minor characters. Figure out a way to introduce a bit of it into your story.
• Develop a flashback scene in a story you’re working on now or an old story. Keep it in if you like it. Otherwise take it out.
Have fun and save what you write!
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