Writers Blog

2012-01-24T06:44:00.000-08:00

Writing a novel - free tips to get you started

Style is one of the most important considerations when writing a bestseller, and as we mentioned in previous articles, they key is consistency. It's almost a hallmark of a top 10 best seller to have a strong, consistent style. Therefore, hit on a style, and stick to it throughout the novel. Here's a quick checklist for you that should help ensure you keep a consistent style as you write a book. You can save yourself an awful lot of time if you try and avoid the need for editing any copy you use in your plotting stage. For example, if you create a useful plot card for one of your chapters, write it properly, in the style you intend to use within the actual text of the book. That way you can cut and paste it simply and start expanding WITHOUT having to rewrite it from scratch. The Plot Card system on www.GetPlotted.com is excellent for this - when you swap over to manuscript format to actually start writing your chapter, the plot card is right there alongside, so if you want to cut and paste, you can.

Number 1 novel writing style point - passive or active voice. The choice is yours, but most readers prefer the active style - after all, you are telling them a story! If you don't understand the difference, contrast these 2 sentences:- 'Is it time for tea' and 'Do you think it's time for tea'?

Number 2 novel writing style point - don't telegraph your punches. In other words, don't keep repeating yourself, You want your readers to be surprised at developments. If you foreshadow too strongly, the plot will seem obvious and even turgid.

Number 3 novel writing style point - try not to begin sentences with 'It' or 'There'. For example, writing 'There were 3 wise men who decided to visit Bethlehem' is clumsy in the extreme. How much better is 'Three Wise Men, observing a new star in the sky, decided to travel east to Bethlehem'. Likewise, 'It was impossible to find room at the Inn' is nowhere near as good as 'The travelers found it impossible to find lodgings that night as all the Inns were full'.

Number 4 novel writing style point - write like you talk. If you try and use too many 'big' words, or clever phrases, you will probably end up looking like a clown, or worse, like Jeffery Archer. It will also enable you to write faster, as you won't have to keep checking the spelling. Thirdly it will help avoid your work sinking into cliche, and will finally avoid alienating your reader. You aren't gonna win any points for word complexity, either from your readers or potential publishers. This is writing, NOT scrabble!

Number 5 novel writing style point - sentence complexity. The Goldilocks principle operates here - i.e. neither too short or too long. This sentence is too short. This perfectly chosen combination of words making up a single element of narrative description, on the other extremity of an arm, is possibly verging on the point of being perceived as potentially a little on the less than short side. Number 5 novel writing style point - James Joyce already did it. In other words, don't imagine you can ditch the basic rules of grammar and write sloppily. Basic grammar is essential if you don't want to turn off the vast majority of your potential readership. Seriously young Jedi it is.

Number 6 novel writing style point - dialogue to die for. Check your punctuation. One of the most common problems is losing track in the narrative. You've probably seen examples of this - you get confused as to who is speaking, and need to go back over a paragraph. Instant reader turn off! ALso ensure your characters speak naturally. If, when you re-read your dialogue, it sounds stilted to you, it probably is. Never be afraid to reword dialogue until it sounds 'right'. Good dialogue, by the way, should advance the plot, or show some new facet of a character. Small talk is for the bar, not a best seller. The interactive writer's course at www.GetPlotted.com has some good tips on this topic - writing good dialogue is actually quite straightforward, as long as you obey the single easy 'golden rule'. Ultimately, if you can differentiate your characters properly, you will even be able to occasionally drop the 'he said' qualifier - the character's speech will identify them to the reader!

2012-01-24T06:42:00.000-08:00

Show, don't tell

Show, don't tell is an admonition to fiction writers to write in a manner that allows the reader to experience the story through a character's action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the narrator's exposition, summarization, and description.

History

An early example of giving this advice lies with Henry James. In the preface to the New York edition of Daisy Miller, he left a pencil-mark in the margins of his notes, reminding himself to 'Dramatize, dramatize!'

The mantra "Show, don't tell" has become stock advice for fiction-writers; proponents abound. Janet Evanovich considers it one of the most important principles of fiction. ". . . instead of stating a situation flat out, you want to let the reader discover what you're trying to say by watching a character in action and by listening to his dialogue. Showing brings your characters to life."^[1]

Not all writing coaches and bestselling authors agree that "Show, don't tell" is sound advice. According to Renne Browne and Dave King, narrative summary has its uses, the main one being to vary the rhythm and texture of writing. Narrative summary can also be useful where the story has a lot of repetitive action. Also, some plot developments are simply not important enough to justify scenes.^[2] As indicated by Peter Selgin, the main advantage of summary is that it takes up less space.^[3]

According to Orson Scott Card, "showing" is so terribly time consuming that it is to be used only for dramatic scenes. The objective is to get the right balance of telling versus showing, action versus summarization. Either could be right; either could be wrong. Factors like rhythm, pace, and tone come into play.^[4] The issue of when to "show" and when to "tell" is subject to ongoing debate.^[5]

Examples

When applying "show, don't tell", the writer does more than just tell the reader something about a character; he unveils the character by what that character says and does. Showing can be done by:

writing scenes
describing the actions of the characters
revealing character through dialogue
using the five senses when possible

Instead of telling:

Mrs. Parker was nosy. She gossiped about her neighbors.

the writer could show:

By turning the blinds ever so slightly, Mrs. Parker could just peek through the window and see the Ford Explorer parked in the driveway. She squinted to get a better view of the tall, muscular man getting out of the vehicle and walking up to Mrs. Jones' front door. He rang the doorbell. When Mrs. Jones opened the door and welcomed the stranger into her home with a hug, Mrs. Parker gasped and ran to her phone.

"Charlotte, you are not going to believe what I just saw!" Mrs. Parker peeked out the window again to see if the man was still inside.

Telling:

"Five years ago, John Meadows married Linda Carrington. Although both had grown up in Brooklyn and didn't want to leave, John had accepted a job in Montana and moved his young family west. He found he liked the mountains and open sky, but Linda was frustrated and unhappy. This all became clear the night they attended a party at their neighbors' house."

Showing:

"I told you I didn't want to go to this," Linda said as she stood beside John on their neighbors' steps. "It's just going to be as lame as every other party we've been to since we got here."

"You used to love parties," John said, avoiding eye contact.

"Yeah, well, that was back in Brooklyn. But Montana isn't Brooklyn."

"No." He looked at the mountains, colored flame by the setting sun, the sky he had come to love. Then he looked at Linda, glowering even before they went inside. In five years of marriage, she had changed so much. They both had.

Showing dramatizes a scene in a story to help the reader forget he is reading, to help the reader get to know the characters, to make the writing more interesting. "It is the difference between actors acting out an event, and the lone playwright standing on a bare stage recounting the event to the audience."^[6]

Exceptions to the rule

"Show, don't tell", like all rules, has exceptions. According to James Scott Bell: "Sometimes a writer tells as a shortcut, to move quickly to the meaty part of the story or scene. Showing is essentially about making scenes vivid. If you try to do it constantly, the parts that are supposed to stand out won't, and your readers will get exhausted."^[7] Even in the previous example, in the midst of "showing" a reader is still "told" about a different plot point ("In five years of marriage, she had changed so much. They both had")
Showing requires more words; telling may cover a greater span of time. A novel that contains only showing would be incredibly long; therefore, a narrative can contain some legitimate telling. Scenes that are important to the story should be dramatized with showing, but sometimes what happens between scenes can be told so the story can make progress. For example, if George is a character in a story, he could do the following things:

Have an argument with his boss
Drive to his girlfriend's house
Have an argument with his girlfriend

The writer could show the arguments with George's boss and girlfriend, but tell the reader George drove over to his girlfriend's house without excess narrative. As long as nothing important to the story happens on that drive, then the writer need only tell the reader.

Sometimes the difference between showing and telling is even used as a metalinguistic device. For example, the writer could utilize the distinction to reveal to the reader that the narrator of the story (see point-of-view) is not reliable. The narrator may then tell that George is a great guy, evenwhile George is later shown to be a jerk. Then the reader can decide that the narrator of this story doesn't see George for who he is. Or perhaps the different tone of voice notifies the reader about the format that is being employed, as in a fairy tale having happened "once upon a time."

All that leads to the crucial point made by poet and essayist Mario Petrucci, that "expert telling, if it's used sparingly and is utterly earned by the author, may embody an emotive or psychological moment just as effectively as showing".

Francine Prose thinks much the same: "[The Alice Munro passage] contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers--namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine 'dramatic' showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out... when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language."^[8]

Natasha Fondren

2012-01-06T04:19:00.001-08:00

Kindle Formatting for Novels V

Coding the chapter headings is where most of the creativity and design comes in. Make sure to check out Kindle Formatting for Novels IV: Chapter Design for ideas. Almost anything is possible, so get creative!
If I were working along with this series, I would apply each of these changes to my first chapter. When I finished working with this post and the next post, I’d copy the lot, then paste it at the beginning of each chapter, making the appropriate changes. I’d wait until after the next installment, because the styling for the first sentence of the first paragraph can easily be pasted right along with the chapter heading.

Style Code

We’ll be manipulating the style code today, even though I won’t cover the coding for the head portion of your html document until the next installment. You may decide to change parts of this later, so think of this as a foundation. You will almost definitely change the “margin-top” numbers. For now, at the beginning of your document, above the </head>, paste this code:

<style>

p.noindent { text-indent:0; margin-top:60;}
p.right { text-align:right; }
p.left { text-align:left; }
p.image { text-indent:0; text-align:center; }
.center { text-align:center; }
h1 { text-align:center; margin-top:120; }
h2 { text-align:center; }
h3 { text-align:center; }
h4 { text-align:center; }
h5 { text-align:center; }

</style>

Absolute Must-Have

Start each chapter on a new page. If you do no other formatting, please do this. Nothing looks sloppier than a chapter starting only a hard enter away from the last paragraph of the former chapter, helter-skelter in the middle of the page. It will be the first code you enter at the beginning of a chapter:
<mbp:pagebreak />

Header Sizing

Decide which line in your chapter heading will be largest. If you have “Chapter 1” first, and the next line is the title of Chapter 1, you probably want Chapter 1 to be <h3> or <h2>, and the title to be <h1>. Here is a sample of what each heading looks like on the Kindle.

You unfortunately do not have control of the font, unless you use an image instead of text.

Bookmark

For your table of contents, put a bookmark after the page break and before the chapter heading. Something like this is fine:
<a name="chap1"/>
Obviously, you’ll want to change "chap1" to "chap2" for the second chapter, and so on.

Heading Style

If you wish to make any part of the heading in italics, you have two choices: the first way is to surround the text with the <i> tag. If you decide not to use italics with the <h1> tag on your title pages, then this way might be the easiest way to go.
<h1><i>h1 Heading, Italics</i></h1>
If you wish to universally apply italics every single time you use the <h1> tag (or <h2>, <h3>, etc.), then alter the <style> code at the top of your document:
h1 { text-align:center; font-style:italic; }
(If you know CSS, you can create separate classes, but I’m trying to make this simple for now.)
Once you decide the sizing and style of each line of your heading, you need to decide whether you want them aligned to the left, center, or right.

Heading Alignment

To align the heading left, center, or right, alter the style code with your choice of one of the following:
h1 { text-align:left; }
h1 { text-align:center; }
h1 { text-align:right; }
The other alignment we need to alter is how far you’re pushing down the text from the top of the page. As a rule of thumb, I generally push the first heading down 120 pixels. You don’t want to push it down too far, because if your reader is resizing the text to be bigger, then you still want all of your chapter heading and at least the first line of your text to show up on the first “page.”
Whichever heading tag is first on this page, add the “margin-top” styling to the style code:
h1 { text-align:center; margin-top:120; }
If you have more than one line using different header sizes, you might want to put a little space between each line. Or not. Whatever you decide, you can use this method to push text down.

Images

To insert an image, whether for decoration or as a replacement to chapter headers so you have more design freedom, use the following code:
<p class="image"><img src="image.jpg" alt="name of image" align="top"/></p>
The Kindle accepts .bmp, .gif, .jpg, and .png files. If you want to the image to span the width of the Kindle page, then 520 pixels wide is your best bet. The Kindle resizes images with varying results and more complexity than I’m going to go into in this series. Also, keep your image under 64 kb. (You can compress it when you save it as a .jpg in Gimp or Photoshop.)
In the style code, you can alter (or add) the "margin-top" and "text-align" attributes in the style at the top of your document, just as I’ve shown you above. In the place where you’ve inserted the image (such as the beginning of the chapter), you can change the "align=" to top, middle, or bottom, which will align the image vertically to the top of the line, the middle of the line, or the bottom of the line.

Next Installment

Tomorrow we’ll style and code the first line of the first paragraph after the chapter heading and for each section within a chapter.
Any questions? And what will help you most for the post after that? Should I include pictures and the precise coding I used, so you can see examples? Or should I move on?

2012-01-05T03:49:00.001-08:00

Commonly Confused Words