Early in July, M.K.B. wrote, ....Sometimes I feel some of my characters don't have enough volume and they don't feel as real to me as some of my other characters. I was trying to formulate a system to create characters. Do you have any suggestions?
And Lexi asked a related question: I know everything about my characters; there are reasons for the jobs I chose for them and backstories that explain their personalities. I just don’t know how much or how to tell my reader. How do you pack in as much information as possible without sounding stilted, and how much is too much?
In Writing Magic I offer a character questionnaire that is a kind of character-development system. (I just looked at it and was embarrassed to discover that, although I asked about appearance, I didn’t specifically mention apparel, a sad omission.) If you answer most of the questions, your character will be quite rounded - in the questionnaire. How to get all that information into your story, and whether you need to, are other matters.
There are real-life people, people I’ll bet you’ve known almost always who still surprise you. An elderly friend of mine, let’s call her Betty, pampered from childhood on, who doesn’t cope well with ordinary vicissitudes, has been battling cancer for the last five years, and about the cancer she is uncomplaining. I would never have guessed. If she were a character I would have had to give her cancer to find out.
And yet we size people up in two seconds. Someone - let’s call her Hetty - called in to a talk radio show I was listening to recently, and I disliked her by the time she’d spoken three sentences. Her hearty voice (too hearty, in my opinion) seemed to my warped ears to proclaim, Look how delightful I am. I didn’t even see her! I don’t know if she kicks her cat or volunteers at a nursing home, and even if I learned she does volunteer and is unfailingly kind to animals, I’d have to recite her virtues in my mind over and over to get past that voice.
So let’s make me and Hetty minor characters in a story. Hetty’s overbearing voice and overconfidence establish her, at least partially. My dislike of a boaster sets me up too - let’s change my name to Bonnie for this post. The reader, Lenny, who knows nothing more about these two, feels that he’s encountered two complicated people. He hasn't read much about them, but the little suggests that more is there.
If they’re minor characters, that’s all we need. In fact, it may be too much. It’s too much if Lenny is distracted, if he wishes the story would veer off and have Hetty and Bonnie meet in person and develop their relationship. Sometimes all you need is a long, trailing scarf or an interesting name. And sometimes characters aren’t important enough even to warrant a name; male or female and old or young may be sufficient. We don’t want to burden Lenny’s brain with characters he doesn’t have to remember.
Or Hetty and Bonnie may be fine with the amount of detail provided. Lenny appreciates how we populate our stories with intriguing oddballs.
What reveals character?
Hetty has an unpleasant voice, so voice helps define a character. Along with voice, there’s dialogue. What does Hetty say and how does she say it? Does she interrupt people? Does she disagree with whatever is said to her, or does she always agree? How’s her enunciation? Her grammar? And many other speech possibilities.
Bonnie’s thoughts show her to be a tad prickly or sound sensitive; thoughts bring character to light. Of course we have access to the thoughts of POV characters only - unless we’re writing in third-person omniscient.
Lenny may be a writer as well as a reader. If he becomes a character, and if his writing enters the narrative, then it will help reveal him. Introducing a character's writing, a diary, for example, is a way to slip in the thoughts of non-POV characters.
What else?
Those aspects of appearance that a person can control, which covers a lot of territory. Bonnie, for instance, is short (I am). Does she wear three-inch heels or flats? Does her erect bearing suggest a taller person? Lenny sports a goatee and chooses to wear glasses rather than contact lenses.
Clothing. One could write about this forever. Not only clothing itself, but also about clothing in a setting. Does Hetty wear a suit to the company picnic?
The setting that a character controls, Lenny’s house, his room if he’s too young to have a house (forget the goatee in this case). What’s his taste? Is he neat or sloppy?
These seemingly little things, Hetty’s bedroom with the martial arts posters, the free weights in the corner, the biography of Helen Keller on the desk, or Lenny’s goatee or Betty’s weighty painted beads around her neck and the four bracelets on each arm, suggest developed, deep characters.
Actions, which may be more important than anything else, define character. Hetty listens and calls in to a talk show. Bonnie just listens. Betty calls her son and complains, but never about the cancer. Lenny reads.
Everything is subject to interpretation. Does Hetty listen and call in out of loneliness? She lives alone and likes to hear voices on the radio. Then she gets so caught up she has to respond. Or does she call for some other reason? Does Lenny have a goatee and glasses because he wants to appear professorial? Or is the goatee hiding a weak chin, and he wears glasses because contact lenses seem vain to him? Or a thousand other reasons. If Lenny moves from reader to important character, we may learn what his motivations are. We learn motivation from further action, possibly from his explanations in dialogue, from his thoughts if he’s a POV character.
I’m not sure about backstory. If the backstory doesn’t move to the front story, I think it’s more for the writer to know than for the reader. Backstory will influence a character's actions, but Lenny doesn’t have to know that Hetty’s father locked her in the cellar when he was in a bad mood - unless the father or the cellar or something directly related comes into the story.
Coming into the story is the key to what character development to put in and what to leave out. If you need it for the plot, then include it. If you don’t and the information makes the story drag, leave it out. If you don’t need it but it’s fascinating in its own right and Lenny doesn’t get bored, it’s up to you and the kind of story you’re writing. You can’t please everybody. Lenny may like an embellished story but his brother Lonny may prefer his fiction stripped down to action action action.
Only one prompt today:
Betty, Bonnie, Hetty, and Lenny, strangers to one another, all attend a reading by the famous teenage fantasist Tammy Millhart. At the end she announces that before the event she hid a talisman, an ebony ball, somewhere in the local amusement park. She chooses three teams, one of one of them comprising our characters, to look for the ball. Whichever team finds it will be given a far more serious mission; the entire population of a mid-size city will be at risk. Write our quartet’s search while developing each one as a complex personality. Do all of them want their search to succeed? Tammy can be an important character too if you like. She can attach herself to your team or wander from team to team. Is she helping or getting in the way?
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Description galore
On June 27, 2011, Agnes wrote, When I write a story the writing process goes like this. I have an idea, so I think about it and act it out until my plot has a basic shape. Then I start writing it down, my problem is that my descriptions get way too long. How can I stop this?
Acting your story out is a terrific idea!
I wouldn’t worry about the length of your descriptions while you’re writing them. Just keep going. When you’re finished, you can see what you need and what you can do without.
When you go back, regard your adjectives and adverbs with suspicion. Test your sentences without them. If nothing is lost by removing the word lovely, for example, delete it. Usually, the adjectives and adverbs that we can’t do without are the ones that convey information, like green, hot, wobbly, sparsely.
More general adjectives sometimes have their place. For example, I used the word terrific above in a sentence of less than spellbinding prose. If I had been going for something better I might have written that acting your idea out ensures that your story has tension and feeling. Terrific is a summary word, and in this case I wanted speed. I wanted to convey approval, not necessarily the reason for the approval.
Generally, nouns and verbs should do your heavy lifting. Better than “Don’t eviscerate me with that long weapon,” he said softly would be “Don’t eviscerate me with that saber,” he whispered. Better and shorter.
I’ve said this before: Take care with words that weaken, like almost, slightly, somewhat. Occasionally they’re essential, but often they reflect an unwillingness to take a stand, as in Hilda felt almost jealous. Let’s let her go lime-green with envy.
More broadly, think about what you want your description to do. Description sets the movie going in your reader’s mind, so you need to provide enough to let him see and possibly hear, touch, and smell his surroundings. When Hilda goes into her bedroom and the reader sees it for the first time, he needs to know more than that there’s a bed in there, but he doesn’t need a raft of specifics. He probably should be told if the bed is a bunk bed. Let’s suppose it isn’t. Let’s suppose the room is fussy. There’s a dust ruffle around the bed, which is an antique reproduction of Benjamin Franklin’s bed (I have no idea if this is possible). Roses are stenciled on the bureau. Atop the dresser, real roses fill a rose-colored vase, and under the vase, a doily. The walls are covered with William Morris wallpaper. The floor sports two braided rugs. A quilt in a classic pattern hangs on the wall.
The poor reader doesn’t have to be burdened with all this; a few details will do. But I’d like him to know who decorated the room, especially if Hilda chose everything, and she’s seven years old! Seriously, because then the description reveals character, and that’s cool.
As a sidebar, the reader doesn’t have to know what William Morris wallpaper is. He’ll get the idea, or he can look it up. You don’t have to worry about his comprehension in such a little matter. If William Morris wallpaper is exactly what you want, keep it in. You can even make up a kind of wallpaper if you like, Millicent Popper paper, say, and no one will ever discover more about it than you reveal.
Another consideration is what’s going to happen. Suppose there’s a rocking chair in the room, and Hilda is about to rock so enthusiastically that it falls apart, which will be the last straw for her foster parents, and they’re going to call Social Services. Then the reader has to know there's a chair, probably before she sits down in it.
Description can convey feeling. Hilda is sent to jail, maybe for bad home decorating decisions. You want your description to convey how bad the prison conditions are: the stink, the chill, the iron bed, the single blanket, the cockroaches. If this is a comedy, the lack of art on the walls. Then Hilda is released. Again, you may want to describe her new situation for contrast. But you don’t want to go too far. Enough to let the reader experience the place, not so much that boredom sets in.
You can use description to heighten suspense. Hilda’s foster parents tell her that she can’t live with them anymore. The scene takes place in the kitchen. Everyone is waiting for the social worker to come. Hilda spends the time noticing the abundance of food in the kitchen, the bowl of fruit, the cake cooling on the counter, the soup pot on the stove, the fridge with its automatic ice dispenser, the spice rack, the branch of basil hanging by the window. The reader gulps and wonders when Hilda will experience such abundance again.
Often we put in a lot of detail so that we know where everything is and we can see the movie. When we revise, we need to ask ourselves what purpose our description is serving.
• Is it creating the movie?
• Is it revealing character?
• Is it making a mood?
• Is it conveying feeling?
• Is it heightening suspense?
This may not be an exhaustive list. If you can identify some other objective your description is fulfilling or if it’s serving one of the ones I’ve listed, then it deserves to live. But if not, or if it has a purpose but you’ve gone on too long, that’s the time to cut.
Sometimes we fall in love with our words and it’s hard to give them up. I particularly like the doily under the rose-colored vase, but if the reader wants to shred it and flush the bits, then it’s doing no good, and it should go.
Of course, it can be hard to tell what should stay and what should be deleted. For that, you need the usual resources: time away from the manuscript to give you objectivity, helpful criticism, and experience. The more you write the better you’ll get at this one particular thing. I guarantee it.
Time for prompts:
• Hilda has taken refuge from her foster family with the seven dwarves. It’s two months after Snow White left. The dwarves have gone to the mines for the day, and she’s alone in their cottage. Describe the cottage through her eyes.
• After deliberating a while, Hilda makes some changes to the dwarves’ home. Their cottage can be in the middle of a village of dwarves’ cottages with shops and so forth, or it can be alone in a forest. Describe what she does.
• Describe what happens when the dwarves return.
• Put what you’ve written aside for three days.
• Now look at it all again. What can you cut? What do you need to add? Revise.
Have fun, and save what you wrote!
Acting your story out is a terrific idea!
I wouldn’t worry about the length of your descriptions while you’re writing them. Just keep going. When you’re finished, you can see what you need and what you can do without.
When you go back, regard your adjectives and adverbs with suspicion. Test your sentences without them. If nothing is lost by removing the word lovely, for example, delete it. Usually, the adjectives and adverbs that we can’t do without are the ones that convey information, like green, hot, wobbly, sparsely.
More general adjectives sometimes have their place. For example, I used the word terrific above in a sentence of less than spellbinding prose. If I had been going for something better I might have written that acting your idea out ensures that your story has tension and feeling. Terrific is a summary word, and in this case I wanted speed. I wanted to convey approval, not necessarily the reason for the approval.
Generally, nouns and verbs should do your heavy lifting. Better than “Don’t eviscerate me with that long weapon,” he said softly would be “Don’t eviscerate me with that saber,” he whispered. Better and shorter.
I’ve said this before: Take care with words that weaken, like almost, slightly, somewhat. Occasionally they’re essential, but often they reflect an unwillingness to take a stand, as in Hilda felt almost jealous. Let’s let her go lime-green with envy.
More broadly, think about what you want your description to do. Description sets the movie going in your reader’s mind, so you need to provide enough to let him see and possibly hear, touch, and smell his surroundings. When Hilda goes into her bedroom and the reader sees it for the first time, he needs to know more than that there’s a bed in there, but he doesn’t need a raft of specifics. He probably should be told if the bed is a bunk bed. Let’s suppose it isn’t. Let’s suppose the room is fussy. There’s a dust ruffle around the bed, which is an antique reproduction of Benjamin Franklin’s bed (I have no idea if this is possible). Roses are stenciled on the bureau. Atop the dresser, real roses fill a rose-colored vase, and under the vase, a doily. The walls are covered with William Morris wallpaper. The floor sports two braided rugs. A quilt in a classic pattern hangs on the wall.
The poor reader doesn’t have to be burdened with all this; a few details will do. But I’d like him to know who decorated the room, especially if Hilda chose everything, and she’s seven years old! Seriously, because then the description reveals character, and that’s cool.
As a sidebar, the reader doesn’t have to know what William Morris wallpaper is. He’ll get the idea, or he can look it up. You don’t have to worry about his comprehension in such a little matter. If William Morris wallpaper is exactly what you want, keep it in. You can even make up a kind of wallpaper if you like, Millicent Popper paper, say, and no one will ever discover more about it than you reveal.
Another consideration is what’s going to happen. Suppose there’s a rocking chair in the room, and Hilda is about to rock so enthusiastically that it falls apart, which will be the last straw for her foster parents, and they’re going to call Social Services. Then the reader has to know there's a chair, probably before she sits down in it.
Description can convey feeling. Hilda is sent to jail, maybe for bad home decorating decisions. You want your description to convey how bad the prison conditions are: the stink, the chill, the iron bed, the single blanket, the cockroaches. If this is a comedy, the lack of art on the walls. Then Hilda is released. Again, you may want to describe her new situation for contrast. But you don’t want to go too far. Enough to let the reader experience the place, not so much that boredom sets in.
You can use description to heighten suspense. Hilda’s foster parents tell her that she can’t live with them anymore. The scene takes place in the kitchen. Everyone is waiting for the social worker to come. Hilda spends the time noticing the abundance of food in the kitchen, the bowl of fruit, the cake cooling on the counter, the soup pot on the stove, the fridge with its automatic ice dispenser, the spice rack, the branch of basil hanging by the window. The reader gulps and wonders when Hilda will experience such abundance again.
Often we put in a lot of detail so that we know where everything is and we can see the movie. When we revise, we need to ask ourselves what purpose our description is serving.
• Is it creating the movie?
• Is it revealing character?
• Is it making a mood?
• Is it conveying feeling?
• Is it heightening suspense?
This may not be an exhaustive list. If you can identify some other objective your description is fulfilling or if it’s serving one of the ones I’ve listed, then it deserves to live. But if not, or if it has a purpose but you’ve gone on too long, that’s the time to cut.
Sometimes we fall in love with our words and it’s hard to give them up. I particularly like the doily under the rose-colored vase, but if the reader wants to shred it and flush the bits, then it’s doing no good, and it should go.
Of course, it can be hard to tell what should stay and what should be deleted. For that, you need the usual resources: time away from the manuscript to give you objectivity, helpful criticism, and experience. The more you write the better you’ll get at this one particular thing. I guarantee it.
Time for prompts:
• Hilda has taken refuge from her foster family with the seven dwarves. It’s two months after Snow White left. The dwarves have gone to the mines for the day, and she’s alone in their cottage. Describe the cottage through her eyes.
• After deliberating a while, Hilda makes some changes to the dwarves’ home. Their cottage can be in the middle of a village of dwarves’ cottages with shops and so forth, or it can be alone in a forest. Describe what she does.
• Describe what happens when the dwarves return.
• Put what you’ve written aside for three days.
• Now look at it all again. What can you cut? What do you need to add? Revise.
Have fun, and save what you wrote!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Gap
Before I start, hope to see some of you this weekend in Rhode Island. If you haven’t seen where I’ll be, check the Appearances page of my website.
Josiphine, whose first question I discussed last week, had a second: ...any tips on rewriting would be extremely appreciated.
In thinking about my response, I remembered a post on the subject and looked it up. My post of November 18th, 2009, is all about revision. If you read it and have further questions, please ask.
Along the same lines, Ella wrote, I’m the kind of writer that plans everything out before I write. When I come to the few spots that I didn’t plan, I skip over them and go on. But now I’m revising and I have to fill in those gaps, and go back and add details and emotions, but it’s really hard. Any tips?
Let’s go to pre-revision. In your next story, which you may be working on now, I suggest not skipping these unplanned parts. Since you’re a planner, when you reach such a place, try planning it out and writing it then and there in your first draft.
It’s possible that these spots don’t fit into your overall story scheme. They may reveal plot problems that get worse if you just soldier on. When you fill in later, the emotions may not feel genuine because you’re forcing your characters to act according to your outline, not according to how they’d actually behave in the situation.
You may discover that these junctures are the keys to your story. They may take it in directions that surprise you but represent, or represent more effectively, your underlying theme.
Now let’s fast forward to revision, to the situation you asked about. You’ve got these gaps. It's too late for the first draft. What to do?
First off, do you need these scenes? If not, cut them and problem solved.
Do they need to be scenes? Or do they merely represent information that needs to be conveyed, which you can tuck into the narrative or dialogue in another scene? Suppose, for example, that main character Eliot’s uncle has just died, which is important because he was going to pay Eliot’s college tuition. We don’t need the death scene. We may not even need the scene when Eliot finds out. What may be important, however, is his blow-up at his girlfriend Amy because he’s distressed that his education, his hoped-for career, his entire future, is now in doubt. After the argument, during the making up, if he wasn’t too horrible for a reconciliation, he confesses what’s really eating him. Amy and the reader find out together.
If your omissions do have to be scenes, why not plan them even at this late date? (Remember that I’m not a planner and am just guessing how planners make their magic.) Look at where your caesura (If you don't know the word, look it up!) fits into your outline. Reread what went before and what comes after. Think about how your characters, acting according to their natures, can bridge the gap. How can they express their feelings through thoughts, action, dialogue? What can you find that interests you, that will make the process fun? Is there some aspect of Eliot, for example, that you haven’t explored before? Has the reader experienced his sense of humor or his intellectual side? Can you bring one of these into the new scene? Outline and then write.
Do the new scenes take place in old settings? Can you move the action somewhere else, somewhere you may enjoy describing? Or, can you highlight unexplored aspects of your setting? Eliot will have needs in this scene, or his girlfriend Amy will. Suppose their argument happens in her bedroom. She’s chilly, so she opens the door to her closet where her sweater and tee-shirt shelves are. Above the sweaters is a shelf of stuffed animals that she’s outgrown but can’t bring herself to throw out. She touches the nose of her stuffed penguin for comfort. The stuffed animals and the gesture brings Eliot to his senses, and he realizes how much he’s upset Amy and how adorable and sweet she is.
I’ve exhausted my ideas on this aspect of revision, but I’d welcome follow-up questions.
So, changing the subject. I’m a radio addict. I love to listen to programs that I can learn from, and one of these is Freakonomics Radio, which applies economic theory to surprising topics. I recently listened to a podcast about quitting, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The economists who narrate the show have a position, that quitting is good. They advocate quitting - anything! - and quitting quickly.
I’ve been mulling over the program's ideas as applied to writing, and I think the good economists left out a lot of complexity. Naturally, they’re arguing against the prevailing idea that quitting - being a quitter - is always bad.
Questions come in to the blog sometimes about not finishing stories, and I always say it’s okay not to finish, because we learn from everything we write, fragments as well as completed stories - as long as we keep writing. Many of you are about to participate in NaNoWriMo, and you’re resolved not to quit. In a month you’ll have a big first draft, and then what?
Since they’re economists, the podcasters talk about costs, in this case two kinds of costs relating to quitting or not quitting. There’s opportunity costs and sunk costs, and they’re kind of opposed to each other. You finish your NaNoWriMo book. Maybe you’ve met your word count, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. You start revising and the going gets rough.
The opportunity costs start beckoning. Every hour you devote to revision is an hour you can’t spend starting a new story - or eating, sleeping, studying for your Physics exam. You think about quitting, but you remember your sunk costs. You’ve sunk a month into this book, a month when you could have been eating, sleeping, or studying for your Physics exam. If you walk away, you may have wasted that time and energy and creativity.
I’ve been working on Beloved Elodie for a dauntingly long time. I’m finally making progress but I don’t think I’m even at the halfway point. Should I have quit, maybe after my second false start?
Possibly, but I guess I’m a sunk-costs type. If I had quit I wouldn’t find out where the story goes. I would find out what other tale was waiting for me, but that other tale isn’t as alive for me as the one I’m butting my head against.
Actually, I did quit. Each time I started over I abandoned the storyline that wasn’t working and I’ll never know if I could have pushed on and made it succeed. This hurts. There were good aspects to each attempt, one in particular that I wish I could have figured out.
I guess this is where I wished for more complexity from the radio. There’s loss when you quit, even when quitting is right. And there’s loss when you continue and don’t write whatever else you might have. And there are gains on each side. We have to weigh one against the other. The only certainty I have is that there's no disgrace in either decision.
Now I’m quitting. Time for prompts:
∙ Find a time gap in one of your stories, a day, a week, whatever. Invent a new scene that takes place during the gap. When you’re finished, ask yourself if you’ve you discovered anything new that will deepen the reader’s understanding of what’s going on.
∙ Write the dust-up between Eliot and Amy. Decide how he would pick a fight. What’s he like when he argues? Show him at his worst.
∙ Now write Eliot’s journal entry about his uncle’s death and his behavior to Amy.
∙ Think of the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” which we discussed at length in a long-ago post. If you don’t remember the story, look it up. At the end, the soldier chooses the oldest princess for his bride. Let’s imagine that she can accept him or quit being a princess. She’s hardly met him and has hardly been kind to him. Write the scene in which she decides. Write the scene following her decision.
∙ Yes, Cinderella inexplicably continues to obey her stepsisters and stepmother in the original story, not my version, but they also continue to torment her, which cannot be good for their self-esteem. Write a version in which one of the stepsisters decides to do something different, to quit her role. What happens?
∙ Rewrite the tall tale of John Henry and have him quit pounding his hammer and live. What happens next?
Have fun, and save what you write!
Josiphine, whose first question I discussed last week, had a second: ...any tips on rewriting would be extremely appreciated.
In thinking about my response, I remembered a post on the subject and looked it up. My post of November 18th, 2009, is all about revision. If you read it and have further questions, please ask.
Along the same lines, Ella wrote, I’m the kind of writer that plans everything out before I write. When I come to the few spots that I didn’t plan, I skip over them and go on. But now I’m revising and I have to fill in those gaps, and go back and add details and emotions, but it’s really hard. Any tips?
Let’s go to pre-revision. In your next story, which you may be working on now, I suggest not skipping these unplanned parts. Since you’re a planner, when you reach such a place, try planning it out and writing it then and there in your first draft.
It’s possible that these spots don’t fit into your overall story scheme. They may reveal plot problems that get worse if you just soldier on. When you fill in later, the emotions may not feel genuine because you’re forcing your characters to act according to your outline, not according to how they’d actually behave in the situation.
You may discover that these junctures are the keys to your story. They may take it in directions that surprise you but represent, or represent more effectively, your underlying theme.
Now let’s fast forward to revision, to the situation you asked about. You’ve got these gaps. It's too late for the first draft. What to do?
First off, do you need these scenes? If not, cut them and problem solved.
Do they need to be scenes? Or do they merely represent information that needs to be conveyed, which you can tuck into the narrative or dialogue in another scene? Suppose, for example, that main character Eliot’s uncle has just died, which is important because he was going to pay Eliot’s college tuition. We don’t need the death scene. We may not even need the scene when Eliot finds out. What may be important, however, is his blow-up at his girlfriend Amy because he’s distressed that his education, his hoped-for career, his entire future, is now in doubt. After the argument, during the making up, if he wasn’t too horrible for a reconciliation, he confesses what’s really eating him. Amy and the reader find out together.
If your omissions do have to be scenes, why not plan them even at this late date? (Remember that I’m not a planner and am just guessing how planners make their magic.) Look at where your caesura (If you don't know the word, look it up!) fits into your outline. Reread what went before and what comes after. Think about how your characters, acting according to their natures, can bridge the gap. How can they express their feelings through thoughts, action, dialogue? What can you find that interests you, that will make the process fun? Is there some aspect of Eliot, for example, that you haven’t explored before? Has the reader experienced his sense of humor or his intellectual side? Can you bring one of these into the new scene? Outline and then write.
Do the new scenes take place in old settings? Can you move the action somewhere else, somewhere you may enjoy describing? Or, can you highlight unexplored aspects of your setting? Eliot will have needs in this scene, or his girlfriend Amy will. Suppose their argument happens in her bedroom. She’s chilly, so she opens the door to her closet where her sweater and tee-shirt shelves are. Above the sweaters is a shelf of stuffed animals that she’s outgrown but can’t bring herself to throw out. She touches the nose of her stuffed penguin for comfort. The stuffed animals and the gesture brings Eliot to his senses, and he realizes how much he’s upset Amy and how adorable and sweet she is.
I’ve exhausted my ideas on this aspect of revision, but I’d welcome follow-up questions.
So, changing the subject. I’m a radio addict. I love to listen to programs that I can learn from, and one of these is Freakonomics Radio, which applies economic theory to surprising topics. I recently listened to a podcast about quitting, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The economists who narrate the show have a position, that quitting is good. They advocate quitting - anything! - and quitting quickly.
I’ve been mulling over the program's ideas as applied to writing, and I think the good economists left out a lot of complexity. Naturally, they’re arguing against the prevailing idea that quitting - being a quitter - is always bad.
Questions come in to the blog sometimes about not finishing stories, and I always say it’s okay not to finish, because we learn from everything we write, fragments as well as completed stories - as long as we keep writing. Many of you are about to participate in NaNoWriMo, and you’re resolved not to quit. In a month you’ll have a big first draft, and then what?
Since they’re economists, the podcasters talk about costs, in this case two kinds of costs relating to quitting or not quitting. There’s opportunity costs and sunk costs, and they’re kind of opposed to each other. You finish your NaNoWriMo book. Maybe you’ve met your word count, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. You start revising and the going gets rough.
The opportunity costs start beckoning. Every hour you devote to revision is an hour you can’t spend starting a new story - or eating, sleeping, studying for your Physics exam. You think about quitting, but you remember your sunk costs. You’ve sunk a month into this book, a month when you could have been eating, sleeping, or studying for your Physics exam. If you walk away, you may have wasted that time and energy and creativity.
I’ve been working on Beloved Elodie for a dauntingly long time. I’m finally making progress but I don’t think I’m even at the halfway point. Should I have quit, maybe after my second false start?
Possibly, but I guess I’m a sunk-costs type. If I had quit I wouldn’t find out where the story goes. I would find out what other tale was waiting for me, but that other tale isn’t as alive for me as the one I’m butting my head against.
Actually, I did quit. Each time I started over I abandoned the storyline that wasn’t working and I’ll never know if I could have pushed on and made it succeed. This hurts. There were good aspects to each attempt, one in particular that I wish I could have figured out.
I guess this is where I wished for more complexity from the radio. There’s loss when you quit, even when quitting is right. And there’s loss when you continue and don’t write whatever else you might have. And there are gains on each side. We have to weigh one against the other. The only certainty I have is that there's no disgrace in either decision.
Now I’m quitting. Time for prompts:
∙ Find a time gap in one of your stories, a day, a week, whatever. Invent a new scene that takes place during the gap. When you’re finished, ask yourself if you’ve you discovered anything new that will deepen the reader’s understanding of what’s going on.
∙ Write the dust-up between Eliot and Amy. Decide how he would pick a fight. What’s he like when he argues? Show him at his worst.
∙ Now write Eliot’s journal entry about his uncle’s death and his behavior to Amy.
∙ Think of the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” which we discussed at length in a long-ago post. If you don’t remember the story, look it up. At the end, the soldier chooses the oldest princess for his bride. Let’s imagine that she can accept him or quit being a princess. She’s hardly met him and has hardly been kind to him. Write the scene in which she decides. Write the scene following her decision.
∙ Yes, Cinderella inexplicably continues to obey her stepsisters and stepmother in the original story, not my version, but they also continue to torment her, which cannot be good for their self-esteem. Write a version in which one of the stepsisters decides to do something different, to quit her role. What happens?
∙ Rewrite the tall tale of John Henry and have him quit pounding his hammer and live. What happens next?
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Dreams, glimpses, and other tantalizing story morsels
To start, I’ll be speaking and signing books in Rhode Island on Saturday, October 15th, along with a bunch of other terrific kids’ book writers. You can find out where and when on my website. Hope to see some of you!
And, a few questions have come in about my Disney Fairies books and about Writing Magic and others. If you want to ask me about any of my books, please let me know and I’ll answer in a post - if I can. Sometimes I forget what I had in mind when I was writing and sometimes ideas pop out of nowhere and I can’t explain them.
And, puppy Reggie is almost nine months old and got his first haircut. My husband has posted new photos on the News page of my website. My fave is the one with his best friend, Sage, in which Reggie is revealed as a supremely happy maniac.
Now for this week’s post topic. On June 25th, 2011, Maddie wrote, ....I keep on getting very vivid "glimpses" of stories, but I don't know anything about the characters or plot besides what is in the "glimpses." Can you help me with this? I think that I can probably start working on a story if I can get past this.
Also, I had a dream a few months ago, and since I wrote it down, I'm thinking about basing a story off it. Do you have any suggestions?
And on July 2nd, 2011, Josiphine asked a related question: ....I'm an aspiring writer and have completed several books. But my problem is making my books book-length. Most people I know say that each time they do a rewrite they cut back so their novel isn't as long. I'm in the opposite predicament. My books are never long enough, a short story, or a novella at a stretch.
Do you have any suggestions about making my books the right length? I know that my plots have enough meat to last...I just can't make them do so.
Some fairytales remind me of dreams. Putting a pea under twenty mattresses to test potential princess is dreamlike in its lack of logic. I love to work with these kinds of fairytales. The ones that make complete sense, like (in my opinion) “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” offer less fodder for fooling around. So I say, Maddie, go with your dream.
You can begin with the events that lead up to the dream. These are some questions you might ask yourself:
∙ Who is the main character in the dream? Is it you? Or someone else?
∙ Who are the other characters? Describe them.
∙ What is the world of the dream?
∙ What happens after the dream ends?
∙ What is the conflict?
∙ What scenes can you write to dramatize the conflict, extend it, deepen it?
∙ What concrete, specific details can you include in your scenes to make the dreamscape real?
If you make your reader aware that the story is a dream, he may not get emotionally involved, so I would avoid this. Likewise, I suggest you not end your story by having the main character wake up, which usually results in a reader feeling cheated. In other words, the dream should be the story’s reality.
Same approach for your glimpses. Ask yourself questions to flesh out what you have. What went before the glimpse? What can come next? What’s the conflict? Write the answers in notes. Try writing the glimpse, fragmentary though it is, not in notes but in story form. Just the writing may elicit more.
As I suggested in an earlier post, think about your other glimpses. Can you string them together to make a fuller story? Is there anything else you can bring in? A memory? A myth? A news item?
Suppose you try, and you write part of a story then can’t go any further. I say, count this as a victory. Save your pages, of course. Maybe the fragment needs something for completion that you can’t get to yet, something you’re going to write next month or even three years from now. Or maybe this bit will seed a seven-book series. Or you’ll cannibalize it in five other stories - or for the rest of your life.
Josiphine, my most helpful writing teacher used to say there was no right length for a story, which needs to be as long as it needs to be. I’d add that padding isn’t the right technique for achieving length.
Having said that, my suggestions for Maddie may work for you, too,. Look at your conflict. Have you come up with a variety of ways to reveal and intensify it? In Ella Enchanted, for instance, I kept devising ways to have obedience make Ella suffer. She loses a friend because of it early in the book and then, when she’s older, is forced to give up Areida. The ogres show the physical side of the obedience curse, the parrot Chock the humorous aspect, and so on. If your reader cares, she won’t tire of new ways for your main character to struggle.
Are you including your main character’s thoughts and feelings? Leaving these out will speed up your scenes, but in a bad way, because the action is likely to fall flat. Adding them will probably engage the reader more deeply and may involve you more, too. You’ll know your main better, and that inner understanding may suggest follow-up scenes that you hadn’t thought of before.
Consider your setting, too. Our goal is to start a movie in the reader’s mind. Have you put in enough detail to get the movie going?
Look at your transitions. Have you filled in the movement from one scene to the next? Are there any leaps of logic that leave the reader flummoxed? Are you jumping from plot point to plot point?
Last, you may get the best help from a reader. Ask a fellow writer (the best choice, if possible), a friend, a teacher, a librarian, a relative to read one of your stories. Then ask this person if anything seems to be missing, if your tale seems truncated. Ask her to be as specific as she can be. Then, if you want a second opinion, ask someone else as well.
Here are three dream prompts. First, I offer two of my dreams to turn into stories if you can. For these prompts you’ll need to do a lot of expanding.
∙ This is a recurring nightmare. I’m climbing the subway stairs in New York City and my legs become very heavy. I can’t drag them up. The people behind me are angry and I’m terrified because I don’t know what’s happened to me. That’s it. It hasn’t visited me lately, maybe because I turned it into a pantoum (a poem form), which appeared in a book of short horror fiction for kids called Half-Minute Horrors (because each one can be read in thirty seconds).
∙ I’m at a dinner, a wedding or some other celebratory event. I know that if I eat the shrimp I’ll turn transparent. I don’t serve myself any, but they appear on my plate anyway. Use this any way you like.
∙ Write down your own dreams for a week. Keep a pad next to your bed. Use one or all of your dreams in a story.
Have fun, and save what you write!
And, a few questions have come in about my Disney Fairies books and about Writing Magic and others. If you want to ask me about any of my books, please let me know and I’ll answer in a post - if I can. Sometimes I forget what I had in mind when I was writing and sometimes ideas pop out of nowhere and I can’t explain them.
And, puppy Reggie is almost nine months old and got his first haircut. My husband has posted new photos on the News page of my website. My fave is the one with his best friend, Sage, in which Reggie is revealed as a supremely happy maniac.
Now for this week’s post topic. On June 25th, 2011, Maddie wrote, ....I keep on getting very vivid "glimpses" of stories, but I don't know anything about the characters or plot besides what is in the "glimpses." Can you help me with this? I think that I can probably start working on a story if I can get past this.
Also, I had a dream a few months ago, and since I wrote it down, I'm thinking about basing a story off it. Do you have any suggestions?
And on July 2nd, 2011, Josiphine asked a related question: ....I'm an aspiring writer and have completed several books. But my problem is making my books book-length. Most people I know say that each time they do a rewrite they cut back so their novel isn't as long. I'm in the opposite predicament. My books are never long enough, a short story, or a novella at a stretch.
Do you have any suggestions about making my books the right length? I know that my plots have enough meat to last...I just can't make them do so.
Some fairytales remind me of dreams. Putting a pea under twenty mattresses to test potential princess is dreamlike in its lack of logic. I love to work with these kinds of fairytales. The ones that make complete sense, like (in my opinion) “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” offer less fodder for fooling around. So I say, Maddie, go with your dream.
You can begin with the events that lead up to the dream. These are some questions you might ask yourself:
∙ Who is the main character in the dream? Is it you? Or someone else?
∙ Who are the other characters? Describe them.
∙ What is the world of the dream?
∙ What happens after the dream ends?
∙ What is the conflict?
∙ What scenes can you write to dramatize the conflict, extend it, deepen it?
∙ What concrete, specific details can you include in your scenes to make the dreamscape real?
If you make your reader aware that the story is a dream, he may not get emotionally involved, so I would avoid this. Likewise, I suggest you not end your story by having the main character wake up, which usually results in a reader feeling cheated. In other words, the dream should be the story’s reality.
Same approach for your glimpses. Ask yourself questions to flesh out what you have. What went before the glimpse? What can come next? What’s the conflict? Write the answers in notes. Try writing the glimpse, fragmentary though it is, not in notes but in story form. Just the writing may elicit more.
As I suggested in an earlier post, think about your other glimpses. Can you string them together to make a fuller story? Is there anything else you can bring in? A memory? A myth? A news item?
Suppose you try, and you write part of a story then can’t go any further. I say, count this as a victory. Save your pages, of course. Maybe the fragment needs something for completion that you can’t get to yet, something you’re going to write next month or even three years from now. Or maybe this bit will seed a seven-book series. Or you’ll cannibalize it in five other stories - or for the rest of your life.
Josiphine, my most helpful writing teacher used to say there was no right length for a story, which needs to be as long as it needs to be. I’d add that padding isn’t the right technique for achieving length.
Having said that, my suggestions for Maddie may work for you, too,. Look at your conflict. Have you come up with a variety of ways to reveal and intensify it? In Ella Enchanted, for instance, I kept devising ways to have obedience make Ella suffer. She loses a friend because of it early in the book and then, when she’s older, is forced to give up Areida. The ogres show the physical side of the obedience curse, the parrot Chock the humorous aspect, and so on. If your reader cares, she won’t tire of new ways for your main character to struggle.
Are you including your main character’s thoughts and feelings? Leaving these out will speed up your scenes, but in a bad way, because the action is likely to fall flat. Adding them will probably engage the reader more deeply and may involve you more, too. You’ll know your main better, and that inner understanding may suggest follow-up scenes that you hadn’t thought of before.
Consider your setting, too. Our goal is to start a movie in the reader’s mind. Have you put in enough detail to get the movie going?
Look at your transitions. Have you filled in the movement from one scene to the next? Are there any leaps of logic that leave the reader flummoxed? Are you jumping from plot point to plot point?
Last, you may get the best help from a reader. Ask a fellow writer (the best choice, if possible), a friend, a teacher, a librarian, a relative to read one of your stories. Then ask this person if anything seems to be missing, if your tale seems truncated. Ask her to be as specific as she can be. Then, if you want a second opinion, ask someone else as well.
Here are three dream prompts. First, I offer two of my dreams to turn into stories if you can. For these prompts you’ll need to do a lot of expanding.
∙ This is a recurring nightmare. I’m climbing the subway stairs in New York City and my legs become very heavy. I can’t drag them up. The people behind me are angry and I’m terrified because I don’t know what’s happened to me. That’s it. It hasn’t visited me lately, maybe because I turned it into a pantoum (a poem form), which appeared in a book of short horror fiction for kids called Half-Minute Horrors (because each one can be read in thirty seconds).
∙ I’m at a dinner, a wedding or some other celebratory event. I know that if I eat the shrimp I’ll turn transparent. I don’t serve myself any, but they appear on my plate anyway. Use this any way you like.
∙ Write down your own dreams for a week. Keep a pad next to your bed. Use one or all of your dreams in a story.
Have fun, and save what you write!
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