Lauren Wayne

Creating character & setting sheets for your novel

2016-01-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in my post on winning NaNoWriMo this past year that one thing I noticed in writing the second book in my mystery series is how hard it is for me to keep track of minor characters' names and settings. I realized I needed a system in place to handle all these details.

Why make character sheets?

You're chugging along on your work in progress when suddenly your mind blanks. Were your protagonist's mom's eyes blue or brown? Rack your brain no more! Simply consult your handy-dandy character sheets, scroll to the appropriate box, and there it is in print: Oh, right! They were hazel!

If you're writing a series, it's even more imperative to keep track of these pesky details from one book to the next. Remember how long your characters have lived in a certain place, or what jobs they had in the past. Note down when they first met a new friend.

You can make the same type of notations for settings and other details in your stories. Then you'll know where their favorite diner is located, what its name is, and who the surly server is they love to hassle.

The other benefit of having character sheets (also known as character profiles, character questionnaires, character charts, etc.) is that it inspires you to include more description. If you're like me and description is locked into your head but rarely makes its lethargic way onto the paper, having character sheets staring you in the face with slots for eye color and height and so forth makes you want to make decisions about those things and figure out interesting ways to include them. Clever descriptions will bring your novel alive, so it's a boon to have an avenue for mindfully considering what to add to your writing.

So, now that I've convinced you you need them…

How do you make character sheets?

Some writing software, such as Scrivener (a Mac program I used for one NaNo), has built-in capabilities for crafting character sheets. I wanted something more mobile, though, because I often work on my novels (and blogging) when I'm out and about. Most comprehensive writing software (including Scrivener) doesn't have a mobile component that works on my (Android) phone.

Enter: Google Drive. Bam.

I already am writing my current novel in Google Docs, and I transferred my earlier writing there as well. (FYI, I blog on the go using Chrome and the horrifying Blogger app, but I don't recommend either for publishing, just for drafting. They both truly suck for the job, and I will take any suggestions for improvement over them.)

For my character sheets, I also considered Evernote, since it's also readily available on both mobile and computers, but I have problems with the Evernote app being finicky, and I understand and like the functionality of Google Drive. Plus, I realized I could best organize the data in — nerd alert! — a spreadsheet!

Google Sheets to the rescue!

Hope you can kind of see that. You can click on it to embiggen a bit.

Choosing your categories

In the left column, I have all the characters' names. So far they're mostly in the order they appear in the novel, though I've moved some closer to related characters (e.g., family members or work colleagues next to each other).

Along the top are my columns of categories to fill in:

Name
Status (whether it's a Main/recurring character or Minor, who's the Victim and who's the Murderer, etc. — you can choose what categories you might need here for your particular novel or series)
Gender
Age
Ethnicity
Skin
Height
Build
Eyes
Hair
Features
Fashion
Lookalike (if they resemble a particular celebrity or person you know in real life — you could type a name or link to an image)
Occupation
Then some particular to me: their places in the praise team and church of my novel's setting (e.g., "Singer: Soprano" or "Pastor" — again, you might have similar columns for your own writing depending on the subject matter)
Personality
Mannerisms
Background
Role in story
Internal conflicts
External conflicts
Relationships
Likes
Dislikes
Notes

I'm going through my novels page by page and jotting down any details that fit in the above columns as I find them. I'm copying and pasting phrases directly from my writing. So, if I say a character has "watery pale eyes," that's the phrase I'll paste under "Eyes." At first I thought I might want to make my descriptions here more terse and generic, but I find that I have an impression in my mind's eye when I write a particular phrase, so putting the more stylish description down triggers that memory and helps me expand on it for future descriptions. FYI, some of these descriptors might seem kind of census-like and binary, but that's a chart for you — your novel is where the ambiguities and depth of your characters can come out and play.

Some of the column headings I thought of for myself, but most I cobbled together from other sources that offer character sheets (including Scrivener). This means that some of the columns are more meaningful to me at this point than others. Some I'm not entirely sure what to do with, ha ha! I offer them all in case they're useful to you, however. I think I'll finish filling my sheet out and then see if there are columns I can do away with to simplify matters. (Now, minor characters will have less description than major ones, so it's not a problem if not every square's filled in for every person.)

There might also be columns I need to tease apart. For instance, "Background" can become unwieldy for a main character with a lot of backstory to note down. I didn't share my Settings spreadsheet, but I'm struggling there to figure out how to separate out categories. Right now I just have "Name," "IRL Corollary" (because many of my imagined Northwest Indiana locations are based on real cities), "Location" (i.e., where a house or business is located in my novel's world), and "Description." It's the Description category that's a doozy. I need to figure out how to separate that out into more useful and specific categories. For instance, if I want to describe my main characters' apartment, I want to put down what the layout is like, what furniture they have, the environment of it, etc. — that's a lot for one little box. Apparently I need, ahem, "Layout," "Furniture," and "Environment," for starters.

Spreadsheet formatting

A word on managing your spreadsheet: Pull down the little gray lines in the corner so that they're on the right of Column A and below Row 1. That will mark those as "header" rows and columns, and it will help you if you want to sort your spreadsheet or scroll over. When you scroll (which you'll have to if you have as many columns as I do), your characters' names will stay locked on the left side of the screen so you can always see what row you're on.

Like so:

You can see I have a lot of Dutch surnames to keep track of. That's why I need this spreadsheet!

Other things you can do with a Google Sheet: Drag and drop rows to sort them in different orders. Select a column and go to Data to sort the sheet by that column. (For instance, if you wanted to make a column denoting main or minor characters, and then sort so the mains are all together.) You can narrow or widen columns to see what you need to. (For instance, "Age" can be narrow since it's usually just a couple numerals, but you might want to widen "Background" to view more at a glance.)

I find it easiest to keep "Text wrapping" (hover over the icons in the menu bar to find it) at "Overflow." If there's no box filled in next to it, the text will flow over as far as it can (the image above shows this in action). If there is text in the next box, it will cut off there, but you can see the full amount by double clicking on the box. This keeps your spreadsheet easier to navigate than using "Wrap."

Updating as you go

The beauty of using a mobile option is that there's a Google Drive app for both Android and iPhone/iPad. Plus, of course, you can access Google Drive from your home computer at Drive.Google.com. Now, when you're out on the town and you have a moment to work on your novel, you can easily access your spreadsheet!

In addition, you can share your spreadsheet with other collaborators. Say you want a virtual assistant to do this tedious work for you (I wish, I wish, I wish) or a spouse or friend who's helping you edit. You could click the blue "Share" button in the top right corner and type in their email address. If you want or need to share with a larger group, you can get a shareable link that makes your doc either view-only or editable.

All right, get to it! Let me know in the comments how you keep track of details for characters, settings, and plot points. Do you use a chart, a note, specific software? Or do you just have a mind like a steel trap (lucky you!)?

Thank you, Mr. Exposition

2015-01-23T17:51:00.000-08:00

Sam and I are junkies for mysteries and appreciators of the jerk-cum-genius character as showcased popularly in House. So we decided to give Backstrom a watch.

For those who aren't as glued to their screens as we are, Backstrom is a new TV detective show on Fox starring Rainn Wilson. The titular character is presumably fabulous at closing cases but is otherwise a nearly unbearable boor. I found the pilot we viewed problematic for several reasons, one of which I'll talk about here.

Despite that, I'm curious now to try out the original source novels by Swedish author Leif G.W. Persson and have the first on hold at the library. I'm wondering how different the show is from the books. For instance, are the women as vapidly pretty? (/sarcasm)¹ Here's an affiliate link to the first in the series on Amazon (the English translation), where you can see the dubious tactic of putting Rainn Wilson's face and full-body silhouette on the cover, a choice that might backfire if the series is canceled.

Anyway, what I'm going to address today is the writing sin of telling readers the background facts in a plodding fashion. There's a scene in which Backstrom goes to his house and says something to the man there along these literal lines: "You're my roommate who's a gay man and who also fences stolen items, which I tolerate because you are my criminal informant. We are not romantically involved."

It's not quite that awkward, but close.

I think sometimes screenwriters, working in their closed-off little rooms (I imagine), forget that television is a visual medium. There can be far less telling and far more showing in general. "Show; don't tell" is a precept in written fiction as well, but it's even more egregious to forget when your medium is so visually centered.

For instance, an older woman sweeping into a room in a flowing fur cape, large sunglasses on, and a pug dog under her arm, addressing underlings as "dahling," doesn't have to say, "I'm an aging actress" (and/or stereotype). We can just see it.

Through costuming, dialogue, and accent, we can see and hear that Backstrom's roommate is gay. (He makes it obvious in a way that could be offensive if the rest of the show wasn't so much more offensive.) We can see Backstrom's house is stuffed to the gills with oddly fancy items when he's a decidedly unfancy guy.

The same scene could have played out much more organically if the information had been woven into the action. First, though, let me give another obvious option: Not all the exposition has to come out at once. Sometimes there's backstory we don't get to for many episodes or pages into a story, and that's all right. There can be some mystery, a little suspense to keep the audience wondering. ("Are Backstrom and his roommate involved? Why does Backstrom have so many expensive items in his house?")

But when you do need to present information, see if you can tie it to action. To me, the no-duh way to handle it in Backstrom is to have Backstrom need his roommate's services. That way, he's not just talking about them in that stilted way, "As you know, you sometimes provide helpful criminal services for me! But not at this moment!"

Imagine what could have been:
Backstrom: "Roomie, I need your help with this case."
Roomie: "Meh. I don't feel like working today. I have a hot date tonight with Dale."
Backstrom: "Who's Dale?"
Roomie: "My Latin dance instructor. You remember how…"
Backstrom: "I don't care. Back to my needs."
Roomie: "I caaaaan't tonight. I have to go out."
Backstrom: "And did you want to move out as well? Because I can tolerate all of this [gestures around room] only if your criminal enterprises actually help me, you know."

Et voilà. We establish that Roomie is gay (no, I don't remember his name. I never remember names. I remember Backstrom because it's the title of the show. I don't know his first name), that Backstrom is not involved with him and probably never was (no jealousy in the talk of Dale), that Backstrom is uninterested in other people's lives and therefore not a very good friend (and possibly not a friend to Roomie at all), that Roomie is involved in something illicit concerning the items in Backstrom's house, that he lives with Backstrom, and that Backstrom makes use of Roomie's criminal ways.

There, wasn't that easy?

I don't make a blanket statement like, There should be no chunks of exposition in a book or script, ever. Because sometimes you have a lot to impart, and you just need to get it over with. You can try to do something creative with it still, by having some of it come through an interesting medium (letter delivered by a pigeon, etc.), but a lot of the time, you can reevaluate: Do I really need all this exposition here and now? Can some of it wait to come out organically, over the course of the story? If so, what actions can I tie the information to so that it comes out naturally?

Try it and let me know how it goes! And let me know when you see Mr. Exposition pop up in your favorite TV shows. (Hint: Castle has a lot of sightings.)

1 Seriously, though, WHY does every U.S. cop show make every female officer tiny and hot? I can't imagine that's the actual demographics of women who go into law enforcement or the usual career choice for women who are petite and smokin'. I'm guessing most of those go into acting…^↩

Vary your characters' names

2013-09-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

I recently read a book in which the three main male characters' names were Rafael, Richard, and Robert.

Dude, I could not keep those suckers straight.

I fully admit I maybe read a little too quickly at times, and I also admit names are not my strong suit, but … but … c'mon, authors, throw your readers a bone and choose names that won't be easily confused.

Richard and Robert were the worst, because in my mind they're sort of interchangeable "nice" names that are both two syllables and start with Rs and have an R toward the end as well. As I'm skimming along, I can't distinguish them for beans.

At least Rafael is a little bit more unusual and with a different sound, and it was often abbreviated as Rafe (oh, for a Dickie and a Rob, too!), but is it too much to ask that if there are going to be three important male characters that they not have names that all start with the same letter?

Now, I know writers of nonfiction or fictionalized history might have no choice. And maybe there are certain occasions when sequels or prequels inadvertently force similarly named characters to collide. But, for the most part, you as the author are fully in charge of giving your characters names that won't give your readers fits.

To that end, here are my humble suggestions:

1. Don't name everyone with the same initial letter.

This is surprisingly tempting. Our brains work in logical trains, after all. When we've come up with one good name that starts with a certain letter, it's only natural to think up similar names first. Keep the wheels turning, and don't settle on your first choice.

Keep in mind letters that are different but sound alike: Corrie and Kerry. I'd suggest avoiding even letters that are the same but sound different: Celia and Chris — because in skimming, it might still be easy to mistake one for the other.

Remember last names, too: Mrs. Adamson and Mrs. Allison and Mr. Arlington would drive anyone to another book.

2. Don't make everyone have the same name rhythm.

RICH-ard. ROB-ert. At least RAF-a-el breaks the syllable and emphasis chain. Give some people names with more or fewer syllables. Nicknames might help here, too, such as Rafe.

And don't make everyone's names rhyme, even inexactly. If your book's group of female friends consists of Mandy, Candy, Wendy, and Maddy, don't hate me if I refuse to finish.

3. Think outside a single culture.

Particularly if you're writing a contemporary story, there's likely no reason or excuse to make all your names of one specific culture. You have less wiggle room if your book is grounded in a definite time and place. Even so, I've found ways to play around with that. Look at Rafael, for instance — he's a character in an English Regency novel, but his name is not ethnically English. (It's sort of Hebrew via France.) A lot of people from that time and place were immigrants from other lands or had ancestors who were, so it was not uncommon even in the titled classes (maybe especially in the titled classes) to have names that were Germanic or French, for instance. And you might even make your story more interesting if you give a character a name that seems out of place — and then find the way to explain it.

4. Find inspiration for names outside your own brain.

It's quite possible you have a limited imagination when it comes to possible names (I tend to), since you're drawn to names you'd give your own children. The beauty of fictional characters is they're much more forgiving. It can be a similar process, though — I love fooling around with online baby name generators, for instance: You can set syllables, starting letters, cultural parameters, and so on. I also love lists of names for a particular culture — you can just type into the search engine something like "boys' names Finnish," for example, and you'll find various people have made lists for you. (Why? I don't know why. Don't you love the internet?) You can find last names this way, too, which is a huge boon if you don't know what to put at the end of all your interesting first names.

If you're writing a historical novel, another fun thing to do is troll around in novels from the time, Wikipedia articles on events of relevance to your novel, or family trees online and find actual people's names in vogue (or at least in use) at the time. I also personally love flipping through hymnals — there are some names in there that make me think, Well, of course you became a hymnist, Augustus Toplady.

If you're writing a contemporary novel, there's the time-honored practice of leafing through a phone book. Digitally speaking, blogs, Facebook, and newspaper articles are also good sources. When finalizing names for my mystery novel set in Northwest Indiana, I made good use of church websites, Facebook pages, and online articles from the area to get a feel for what names are popular. It's best not to lift names whole cloth (these are real people, after all), but it's totally valid to notice there are a lot of Kathys and give that name to one of your characters along with the last name from someone else you observed.

5. Change the names after you write.

If you're sure sure sure you've come up with the perfect names and they all sound exactly alike, fine — for now. Go ahead and write your story. Then come back and figure out which names stay and which names go. That's what Find & Replace is for.

Obviously, these tips are for the main characters, and you'll have more leeway with background characters. In fact, you can make similar names a way of setting the protagonists' relationship with background characters: Maybe the protagonist legitimately can't keep Rosalie and Rosa straight and lumps them together as she ignores them both.

But I'd suggest — please, please, please, as a reader, I beg you — following these simple guidelines for the characters whose names recur the most, likely the main one or two protagonists, along with any love interests or a villain if you've got those.

How about you? Do similar names confuse you when you read? Have you had to change characters' names around in your writing?

Photo Credit: doolloop

Put your children in danger: A guide for authors

2013-05-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

At the same time as I am reading Virals, a young adult novel by Kathy Reichs, I have happened upon this YouTube video from Feminist Frequency (thank you to Our Feminist Playschool for the direct) reviewing the book The Hunger Games:

The whole video's very interesting, as are Anita Sarkeesian's other works, but I just want to pull out one teensy tidbit that relates to the novel Virals as well as the whole oeuvre of children's literature.

Anita says that she finds it unbelievable that the parents in The Hunger Games wouldn't stand up and refuse to let their children be sacrificed.

Oh, yes. Totally. But that's viewing it as an adult and being all reasonable and stuff. Young adult and children's fiction depends on adults — and parents in particular — being ineffectual, powerless, cruel, or entirely absent.

I keep having similar thoughts reading Virals, which is a new young adult series by Kathy Reichs (the mystery writer of Temperance Brennan/Bones fame) that capitalizes both on her expertise in mystery writing and the fad for otherworldly adventures befalling fictional teens.

I'm finding the book to be engaging (though farfetched toward the end) and an interesting read from the perspective of a writer who might one day attempt young adult fiction, and who once used to read quite a lot of it as a preteen and teen. It's especially intriguing to me to read this genre now from the perspective of a parent. Because as a parent, all I want to do is swoop in and save these teens from themselves: Tell a trusting adult; ask for help; don't break into laboratories; and, for heaven's sake, don't investigate decades-old murders!

But, see, my parent persona would quash any drama or, you know, plot. I never, ever, ever want my own children to have adventures that involve superviruses and getting shot at. But if you're the author-parent of the characters in your youth or kids novel, you have to set up the scenario in a way that leaves the children free and vulnerable, and in considerable danger. They need autonomy, and they need to be the driving force behind solving the conflict of the novel.

This is true across genres and age groups, by the way. If you're writing a story about a five-year-old fighting off a bully at kindergarten, the five-year-old has to figure out the answer to the problem, and it can't be to let the adults take over.

So that's why the downtrodden people of Panem don't resist The Hunger Games — because the novel required it. See how that works?

Of course, you want to make it as realistic as possible, and build in supporting reasons for why the adults might be useless or the children so independent. That's why so many heroes and heroines in children's literature are orphans, dontchaknow. It gives them a lot more leeway to go off on their own when no one's looking out for them.

But I suspect that, as an adult and especially as a parent, no reason will ever seem good enough to me anymore. Just make it believable to the kids who are your audience, because they're the ones who want to identify with the protagonists — off on adventures in their minds while their own caregivers keep them securely (we hope) ensconced in a safe home with access to good books!

Original Sign Credit: Creative Safety Supply

6 tips for writing better dialogue

2013-02-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

Today I'm happy to welcome a guest post from Laura of WaldenMommy: Life Behind the Red Front Door. Laura is offering us advice on improving the dialogue in our fiction writing.

Guest post by Laura of WaldenMommy: Life Behind the Red Front Door

A few weeks ago I eagerly downloaded a book onto my e-reader. I was excited to read a new piece of fiction, but my excitement quickly turned to disappointment the deeper I got into the story. Clicking my tongue in disgust, I flipped through the story, hoping it got better. It didn't.

"If it's that bad, stop reading," suggested my husband, who was trying to read but couldn't because I kept making "I am completely disgusted" noises at the book.

"It's like a train wreck!" I complained. "The dialogue! It's horrible! Look at this!" I shoved the e-reader in his face and he blinked, trying to see the screen. "See that? Is that how people talk? Does anyone talk like that? NO!"

Quickly, he read the offending passage. "Uh, what is this book about? Is that a board room scene? They sound like they're in a business meeting." My groan was nearly loud enough to wake the baby.

"You just proved my point! The characters are supposed to be on a date!"

Dialogue is something that can make a book laugh-out-loud funny or so horrible you send the e-reader sailing out the window. I've muscled through books that were otherwise very good (great story line, interesting characters, realistic scenes) but were painful to read because of the dialogue. Character relationships were shown but lacked a well-rounded development because the dialogue between them was unnatural. Poor dialogue can put a damper on an otherwise fantastic novel.

Writing spoken words can be hard for some authors. However, here are some tips to polish your dialogue skills:

1. Read, read, read!

Read good books with plenty of natural dialogue. If you are writing for a specific genre (such as young adult literature or romance) focus on those books. If you are simply looking to hone your dialogue skills, any well-written book will do.

2. Research

Know your characters and their background. If you aren't completely familiar with the dialect they would speak, educate yourself. Read books with characters that have the same background as yours and speak to people with those dialects. Blogs can also be a great source of regional dialects, especially if the author quotes funny things their children or friends say. Look for bloggers who try to record what people say in the way they said it, with local slang, dropped letters and all.

If your novel is historical in nature, research how people of that time period and class system spoke. Not only is it good to read novels from that time period, it's important to look into scholarly works as well that examine the dialects of the time.

Likewise, know the developmental level of your characters. I've read more than a few books that have six-month-old children talking in complete sentences. While, yes, some children do speak very well early on, that is uncommon. Unless a person's abnormal language ability is important to the character and plot, I would keep language as developmentally appropriate as possible.

3. Listen

"Eavesdrop" on conversations around you. Write them down — pauses, fillers, bad grammar and everything. If you want to make your writing as natural as possible, you must listen to how people naturally talk.

4. Read it out loud

Find a quiet spot, and read your dialogue out loud. You don't have to be a fantastic actor, but the words should flow easily from your tongue.

Bonus: Reading out loud forces you to slow down and really pay attention to your writing. This is a good way to catch little errors that might otherwise be overlooked!

5. Have an editor

And, no, I don't mean your spouse or the good friend who always got As on her English compositions. While those people are a great place to start (and can likely find common mistakes or point out events that seem clear to you, the writer, but are confusing to the reader), you need someone with a good eye for dialogue. Listen to their comments and criticisms, and take them to heart.

And, of course:

6. Practice, practice, practice

It may not make you perfect, but it will make you better!

If dialogue is your weak point, don't give up! You can improve on your weakness and make a novel "laugh-out-loud" worthy. Like anything, it takes time and practice, but the results will be worth it!

Laura is a mother to a Herd of four small children and wife to her Engineer Husband. She blogs at WaldenMommy: Life Behind the Red Front Door and has been writing the Great American Novel for the past 20 years.

Photo credit: Ed Yourdon

Bed of Roses by Nora Roberts and writing about professions

2010-07-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

I'm taking Rachel from Common Places' advice and just getting my thoughts out. I apologize if this review sounds a little rushed — because it is. The book was due back at the library three days ago. Whoops.

Bed of Roses, by Nora Roberts, is Book Two in the Bride Quartet, but I'm a rebel and haven't yet read Book One.

This is one of those contemporary romance novels I was talking about that exists in a decadently upper-upper-upper-middle-class American fantasy setting. It's bearable, though, because (a) the characters all work, HARD, for a living and (b) the protagonist's mother was, improbably, a Mexican-nanny-turned-wife.

In fact, as I read any novel, I often like to pretend I'm the film director setting up how I would shoot the book as a screenplay. If I did for Bed of Roses, I'd start with the story of Emma's parents meeting after her father was widowed (instead of that boring sleepover that's supposed to set the scene of the four friends but just kept confusing me as to who was who and which one was going to be the protagonist — maybe I shouldn't have skipped Book One after all). The flashback in the film would be grainy, sepia-toned, and wordless with a dreamy narration, and the romance would be palpable. It would break from there to Emma's face, daydreaming about them — setting up her inability to settle for anything less than pure romance.

Just to sum up my reactions to the novel: I liked it, but I didn't fall head-over-heels with it. Nora Roberts knows how to write, and she's got a varied collection of interesting women in this Bride Quartet.

I find contemporary romances a little harder to swallow than historical, I think because the authors always try so hard to make the heroes manly-men. In historicals, I guess I sort of buy it and figure they might be more nuanced if they lived nowadays. But when people act all macho in a contemporary novel, I just think, "I wouldn't want to know that d-bag." Which is not to say the hero was obnoxious; it's just a general tone I get from most contemporaries, and I didn't feel like this one broke that alpha-male mold.

On the flip side, current contemporaries (contemporary contemporaries?) often try so hard to make sure the female protagonist meets the feminist checklist of being sure of herself, a driven career woman, sexually sophisticated, etc. Which is fine. But often it feels a little bland in itself, like it's compensating for something — like, if we make it really, really clear that the woman is obsessed with her work, then it will be OK she needs sentimentality on the side. Again, just a tad stereotypical. If the macho hero doesn't feel like the type of man I would (did) marry, then that type of heroine doesn't feel like the type of woman I am.

I thought the romantic-plot setup of man-who-can't-commit vs. woman-who-craves-romance was a little … meh. You know, done before.

I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is I didn't particularly connect with either character, but I didn't dislike them, either. They were fine. The book was fine.

But I do want to talk a little about Nora Roberts' skill as a writer, in bringing an interesting profession into the series and doing a skillful job both of researching and writing the details of the business life. The women of the Bride Quartet jointly run the business of Vows, a full-service wedding planning company. Each woman in the quartet is responsible for a different aspect of the business, and Emma is the florist of the bunch (get it?).

Whenever an author needs to do a heap of research for a profession, there's a chance of either of two things going wrong:

cramming so many details in there that the readers get bored — it's a story, not a manual
being so bare bones that readers don't get a true sense of what the profession is like, or getting an inaccurate (or stereotyped) sense

I think Roberts spins it just right in Bed of Roses. Emma as a florist is utterly convincing (to me, as a non-florist) and the glimpse into a florist's life is fascinating (also, to me, as a non-florist).

There are little details that bring her world to life, like the fact her hands are always scratched from thorns and stems, despite working with something so seemingly delicate as flowers, and Roberts describes Emma using Neosporin the way other women use hand cream.

When the Vows ladies are discussing their business plans, Emma puts in a plug for an additional cooler — which I assume is some sort of cold storage to keep flowers from wilting. I don't even really care what it is exactly; I just appreciated hearing new vocabulary. It's like sitting in on a conversation with people from the circus. Isn't it fun to hear the nitty-gritty behind what from the outside seems like such a magical profession?

I think the choice of a wedding planning company was a master stroke, too, because there are so many ways to exploit that in terms of romance plot. But it's also a great way to bring interest to a novel through varied professions and a business in which women can be feminine while being savvy.

This is probably the shallowest part of this book review, but I thought the actual printing of the paperback was very nice. The size is a trade paperback, so larger than average, and the cover isn't glossy like most paperbacks but has that elegant muted sheen. What really stood out — at least as I was trying unsuccessfully to flip through the novel while writing this review — was that the edges of the pages are deckled. It's classy — the sort of detail a wedding planner, or a bride, might have chosen.

No, here's shallower: I was annoyed that it took so long into the novel before I could be sure Emma's hair was dark. Shouldn't that be upfront? I hate imagining characters wrong, or incompletely. I've read two books lately where hair color isn't confirmed till halfway through. And covers are no help in that regard, because (a) in both cases, the color is somewhat hard to see, and (b) I never trust cover artists to have read the book; I've been burned one too many times in the past. That was my overly dramatic way to say that covers often don't reflect the details of the characters' appearances as laid out in the text. Agreed?

What's the most interesting profession you've ever read or written about? What profession would you most like to research, assuming you would get to hang around the practitioners on the job? Come on, wouldn't the circus be awesome?

Where to write out of the house

2010-06-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

Here's an article that offers an alternative to the local coffee shop for getting some writing done outside the home:

Better Than Vanilla: Where’s the perfect workspace for a freelance writer?, by Chad Schomber

It's a place with free wi-fi, comfy seats, convenient outlets, and a hushed atmosphere. Guessed it?

It's the library.

I alternate between the library and a coffee shop when I need a place to hang out while I'm out with my laptop.

The things I most like about the library?

Plenty of seating, including cozy armchairs and sturdy tables, depending on your needs
Atmosphere much more conducive to working than just goofing around on Twitter (ahem)
Can stay as long as you want without feeling guilty about not paying enough "rent" — your taxes will take care of that!
In the same vein, can employ the outlets and wi-fi in a cavalier manner
Need a reference book for research, or perhaps a magazine for a break? They're all right there.
Since I'm on a Mac, sometimes I use the library computers as references for how my site looks and behaves on a PC. And, of course, if you don't have a laptop, here's your chance to enjoy some unfettered out-of-home computer access!
Clean, unlocked restrooms

What I'm not so fond of?

Can't eat or drink

Sigh. I get in the mood for a snack, or at least something to wet my whistle as I work. Sure, there's a drinking fountain out in the lobby, but it's hardly the same thing as nursing a mug of white tea, is it?

Other places I've brought my laptop?

I've hung out at various cheap restaurants. Teriyaki places and sandwich shops work well, if they're close enough to leach the wi-fi from a Starbucks. You have to buy something to justify your seat, but honestly — a meal at a place like that can be cheaper than a drink at Starbucks! Barnes & Noble has really comfy seating and a café, a relaxing atmosphere, and plenty to browse if you're feeling uninspired. The downside to all these places: no outlets. So you have to save your battery but good. I keep my screen dimmed to migraine levels, so it's a trade-off.

Working outside is a catch-22. It has to be warm (and non-rainy) enough to be comfortable to sit outdoors for a long period. (Many's the time I thought the day was pleasant until I stopped moving and realized it was darn chilly.) But when it's warm enough to be comfortable, it's usually bright enough that your laptop screen is completely unreadable.

If all else fails, of course, there's always going back home...

Where are your favorite places to write? Any new locales I should scope out?

Photos courtesy, from top, brewbooks on flickr (cc) and Ed Yourdon on flickr (cc)

A Precious Jewel, by Mary Balogh, and breaking with convention

2010-06-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

Defying the genre's expectations

The premise behind Mary Balogh's A Precious Jewel is intriguing to me as a writer.

The book is an (unaltered) rerelease from 1993 featuring two characters from The Ideal Wife — one of whom is only a minor character, a friend of the hero, and the other who is never seen onscreen as it were but only talked about in her absence. To make matters more complicated in terms of the Regency formula, the former does not fit the standard hero mold in his own right, being rather unintelligent and not as fabulously titled as most, and the woman in question is his mistress.

Mary Balogh talks about the dilemma in her introduction to the rereleased A Precious Jewel:

I was writing traditional Regencies at the time and could hardly have a working prostitute as a heroine and a beta male as a hero!

But the characters "haunted" her to the point that, against fellow authors' advice, Balogh sat down and wrote their story in two weeks. She was subsequently surprised when her editor accepted it without question or revision.

I can understand why, though. It was riveting to get through, even as I was made uncomfortable by some of the characterizations and scenarios. I just couldn't stop reading till these two interesting people's lives were resolved.

Now, Balogh does "cheat" a little by making Priscilla Wentworth, the aforementioned prostitute, a down-on-her-luck gentlewoman instead of a typical working-class prostitute. But it's true that Sir Gerald Stapleton is a beta male. He's titled, but he's not astonishingly handsome. More significantly, he's one of the only heroes I've ever read about who isn't all that bright. Usually they're all geniuses and glib with words and magnificent in bed — Gerald hasn't ever kissed a woman before he meets Priscilla.

But their relationship doesn't start with kissing. It starts with something ostensibly much more intimate — a regular encounter at a brothel where Priscilla, aka Prissy, is working. Gerald is so dissociated from his own feelings and so mistrustful of women that this is the only way for him to connect. There were elements of this that were distasteful to read, but Balogh doesn't do a bad job with it — she makes it clear that the way Gerald is treating women and Prissy in particular is not healthy after all, and of course he must change before their love can flourish.

Priscilla, on the other hand, rather besottedly falls in fantasy-love with Gerald from their first meeting, and there is a little sense of "but why?" — for me, more in terms of Why would a bright woman love a dim man? than the other (many) considerations. But Balogh makes it justifiable by showing us Priscilla's attraction to Gerald's wounded and kind heart (underneath it all), and Priscilla never forgets that she is not a suitable candidate for any love or commitment from him in return — she accepts her role in his life and embraces her fantasies for what they are. Priscilla's development becomes more pleasing toward the end, as Priscilla has to learn to be who she is at heart and find people who accept her for herself, past and all. I was a little worried that I couldn't respect Priscilla (not for the sex worker part, but for her lack of feminism about doing Gerald's bidding), but she becomes more real and nuanced to me as the book goes on, as does her development.

In fact, if Gerald is a sort of beta hero, then Prissy is a sort of beta heroine. Every time I read a gentlewoman-becomes-a-sex-worker plot, I have to wonder how believable it is. Priscilla suffers the loss of close family members and ends up seeking out her former governess at her "finishing school" — not realizing the finishing school is actually a high-class whorehouse. Priscilla decides to throw her lot in with Miss Blythe's "girls." Wouldn't most women raised as Priscilla was and given the morals of her upbringing, when presented with several possible options for making a living, choose anything but prostitution? (And, for that matter, how exactly did her ex-governess end up a madam?) I'm still not entirely convinced her choice was realistic, but I realized that if her character had been entirely strong-minded and defiant of expectations, probably she would not have wound up a sex worker at all or would have been a different kind of mistress, and the story would not have happened. So in that sense, her personality (or lack of a strong one, at least) makes a certain sense. I did appreciate how Balogh wove into Priscilla's thoughts a reconsideration of her own choice: that Prissy chose that route before she fully understood the implications, and that she wouldn't necessarily choose it again if given the chance. Indeed, she is given something of a second chance toward the end.

Here's an example that stood out to me in terms of making the earlier portions of sex-for-hire seem less sordid, by pointing out that their relationship at the start was inadequate. In this scene, Gerald is beginning to realize this as he forces her, through his own fear and distrust and immaturity, into the old positions of mistress and employer again:

But she did and said only what her training had taught her to do and say. And that smile, which had always seemed so warm to him, was not warm at all, he saw when he looked searchingly into her eyes. It was not warm, and it was not a smile. It was a shield, a cold and metallic shield behind which she hid.

…

And so he allowed himself to fall into the ritual she began. He bedded her, and even told her before he joined her on the bed and mounted her that he wanted it the old way. He did not love her body at all. He used it for a pleasure that did not turn out to be pleasure but only physical satiety.

And he was punished justly. She was warm and soft and yielding—and utterly passive. The way he liked his women to be. Sex without a relationship. Physical intimacy without involvement. The illusion that he was in control, that he was master.

It's portions like this that make me as a reader feel less guilty for enjoying the story, even though the hero's often not all that heroic, and even though, as a woman and a feminist, I wish Priscilla had been stronger from the start and not quite so acquiescent.

I feel like both Priscilla and Gerald mature in believable ways over the course of the book, until they become fit partners for each other — who come together not because of circumstance but through choice and genuine love. I thought the very end was extremely touching and not a little humorous.

I'm not trying to spoil the plot, but of course you probably know by now that romance novels end happily…. I'll stop there, though, and let all the details be a surprise!

Limits to doing the unexpected in your own writing

I just wanted to talk a little more about doing the unexpected with your writing. I think there are limits and caveats but also the potential for great things.

First of all, we're not all Mary Balogh with a dedicated following (hi, Mary! *waves*) and a loyal editor. If you're looking to publish your first novel, in whatever genre (including literary), it's probably best to stick to the tried-and-true. Not the boring — put your own spin on it — but when you're trying to get your foot in the door, this is not the time to reinvent the genre.

Secondly, there are limits to how far you can bend the expected even when you are Mary Balogh. If she'd written this same novel but had the characters die in the end (spoiler: They don't!), that would have defied the point of the genre, which is romantic resolution.

Thirdly, and maybe this isn't third, because I didn't really think through this in numbered progression but just as a jumble of thoughts, so maybe it's really just related to one and two, and I'm going to start a new sentence now. [Deep breath.] I think it's easier to change details within a framework than the whole framework itself. For instance, within a typical romance novel formula of guy + girl = love and marriage, you can play around with back story and location. I've seen successful Regencies set in China or the Arabian desert, or dealing with tough issues like incest, alcoholism, spousal abuse, and adultery. There's plenty of room to play within the framework, but it would be sort of silly to write a poem with only 4 lines and call it a sonnet. If you're writing a romance, it needs to be romantic. There are subgenres you can write within, if you want to write a romance between two women, or one set in a futuristic world, or one that contains elements of the supernatural. My understanding, though, is that all of these still need to be … yes … romantic.

Fourthly (?), as relates to heroes and class distinctions and subgenres as well (fifthly?): Regencies are about upper-class England. There it is. Someone in your novel should be part of that world. But I think a successful Regency could play with this by making one or more characters pretending to be part of the world, for instance. And I've certainly seen plenty where one or the other protagonist was of a lower class or not from England originally. Outside the Regency world, there's more leeway to play with class. Contemporary novels are wide open in terms of where you want to set your protagonists on the income ladder, and where in the world you want to plop them. Historicals tend to deal more with the upper class, regardless, but I've certainly read some successful novels that deal with solely middle-class or working-class characters. Western romances (as in Wild Western) in particular come to mind. Most romances play with upper-class settings, and my thought on that is — it's fantasy. It's more escapist to ponder how the other half lives and loves.

I'll leave you with a warning. I was in a writing class where a fellow student was reading his short story. It was written in the first person, and there's a fight at the end where the protagonist narrator is hit in the head, and there the story ends. "Wait, what happened?" we asked in dawning disbelief. The student smiled. "He died." He was quite pleased with himself.

He died? The narrator died? Without warning or foreshadowing or intimation that this was a ghost writing the story? Um, no. The Lovely Bones and American Beauty can get away with breaking one convention because they take the time to set up a believable reason for it. Don't break rules simply for the sake of being different. It's much better to be different with a purpose that helps your story!

When have you broken with convention in your writing or been tempted to? Did it work out the way you wanted? What (published) books have you read that have successfully defied convention?

Poetry: Why and how?

2010-04-08T00:19:00.000-07:00

In the airy heights of hubris, I thought I'd bring you a post on what makes poetry poetry.

I know, I know. Who am I to say? I will be the first to admit: Nobody. I am a big fat no one at all when it comes to poetry.

Yes, I had one poem professionally published … when I was 15 … in a Sunday school newsletter … for $5, I believe the payment was. (Woot!)

I self-published a book of my own poetry, which was a gratifying thing, but not exactly affirmation of my incredible poetic skills, you know? The reviews on it were really good … albeit from my mom and dad.

Have I tried to submit poetry and failed? No. I've been afraid. Very very afraid. Poetry is part of my soul work, and to have it rejected — I don't know if I could stand it.

So, most of what I know of good current poetry I have gleaned from two sources:

A girl I worked with on a literary journal in college.
Contemporary poetry that's generally acknowledged to be da bomb.

As for #1, I didn't even like that chick. She was kind of snooty and airy-fairy and artsy-fartsy and critical and way beyond her years in self-confidence and maturity, which completely intimidated me. I was supposed to be above her in paygrade, and I felt beneath her in every which way. All that was, naturally, not her fault, and she did an outstanding job being the poetry editor for the journal.

The really good thing about working with her was I got to read every comment she wrote on every poem that was submitted. She never failed to write something. And what was the most common thread? "Why is this poetry? Show — don't tell!"

As I've read some of #2 (not a lot — I feel guilty about this, but it is what it is), I see what she means.

Poets like Li-Young Lee; Billy Collins; Gwendolyn Brooks; Rita Dove; the poets linked to by Paige of Baby Dust Diaries like Sharlee Mullins Glenn (can't get enough of that one) or the beautiful poetry in Mothering like this from Cheryl Gardner — even older ones like W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot — or even older still like Gerard Manley Hopkins or Emily Dickinson, poets with a modern sensibility ahead of their time — they all inspire and elucidate and help me see what sparks the current poetry reader's interest.

Because I love even older poets, too, but there is a definite fashion to poetry, and I've noticed what's acclaimed now is more along the lines of this:

Show; don't tell.
If you could say it the same in prose, why don't you?

Show; don't tell

Contemporary poetry has strong imagery. It likes to take visuals, tastes, sounds — often as comparisons — and present an experience to its readers.

Does contemporary poetry have a message? Oh, undoubtedly. But it doesn't just tell you the message. It hints at it. It shows you some clues. It lets you feel the message.

Take a look at Billy Collins' poem, which both talks about and demonstrates this precept:

Introduction To Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

The best poems make me sense something. They give me an emotional response that makes me go "Ahhh." Something in them makes sense, even if I don't have the time or inclination to dissect them line by line.

Take the lines "waterski / across the surface of a poem" — what does that even mean? Who cares! It gives you an idea, right? You get it, somewhere deep down. That's what good poetry does.

Some sniff at modern and/or contemporary poetry as being willfully obtuse. Maybe it is. Some say it's only for snobs who think they're so much smarter than everybody else. I don't know about that. I know poetry isn't everybody's cup of tea, and that's totally valid. But I think good contemporary poems are not trying to keep you from understanding them intellectually — they're just trying to bypass intellect altogether and go straight for the heart.

If you could say it the same in prose, why don't you?

In other words, why poetry? If you have an essay to write, write an essay. If you want to write a novel, write a novel. Don't make a poem carry more weight than it can. Don't try to cram every detail or fact into a poem. It's a fragile frame and easily weighed down. Poetry is more than prose with a lot of choppy line breaks. It's its own art form, and usually? It's pretty short.

Now, again — note that this is contemporary poetry I'm talking about. Homer, for instance, used poetry just like a novel. And there are plenty of more recent poets who've written long, epic verse.

It's just — well, it's not popular right now. It goes back to that in-fashion thing. Poems right now are considered best when they're brief. Take a look at magazines that (still) accept poetry submissions — they'll often have a line limit. Take a look at poetry competitions for buses (hey, I entered once) and see how short poetry must be when it's marketed to the masses (or mass transit).

If you have a definite point you just have to say — then say it. Maybe as an essay or a blog post. With poetry? You're going to have to allow a little leeway. Let the poem shape itself. Use your imagery; weave your metaphors; bring your theme back into itself. And let the message come through subtly in the framework.

Breaking the rules?

You don't like my guidelines? You won't be the first one. Do what you will, and see if you like what comes out. You absolutely might. Poetic styles are fluid and ever-changing, and maybe you're the voice of the next generation of poets.

But take it from this (mostly unpublished) poet: I like poetry that adheres to these rules. Poke around and see if you do, too. Then go try to write some.

Photo courtesy aurelio.asiain on flickr (cc)

Convert your time zone for deadlines

2010-04-06T02:19:00.000-07:00

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. This one will help in making sure you get your carnival submission in by the right time, no matter where in the world you live!

All right, this is probably one of the lighter tutorials for our carnival participants, but it does come up every month, and I might as well have a blog post to point people to.

All the writers outside of the Pacific time zone I set the deadline for want to know: When is the article due in their time?

This tutorial can also help anyone who's writing for an editor across time-zone lines or entering a contest with a firm deadline.

Submissions for the Carnival of Natural Parenting are due by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. Now, I'm not encouraging anyone to wait until the very last second to turn their entries in (although I generally do just that), but it's good to know the latest you can click "send" on the email, isn't it?

But if you live nowhere near Pacific time and can't do the math in your head:

You need a time zone converter.

Here's one:

World Time Server

The top line is showing you 11:45 p.m. (Daylight Saving Time) for Pacific time, the time zone I chose, because I live in Seattle. I wanted as much time as possible to turn in my article. I'm like that.

Find your own country, city, or state in the drop-down menu where it says "In."

Voila! Now you know what your actual deadline is.

Here's a cheat sheet for some of our most common entry time zones, adjusted for 11:59 p.m. PDT. If I say "next day," that means that time on the date after the stated carnival due date (for this carnival, then, April 7).

Time Zone	Adjusted Time
Hawaii Time	8:59 p.m.
Alaska Aleutian Time	9:59 p.m.
Alaska Time	10:59 p.m.
Pacific Time	11:59 p.m.
Mountain Time	12:59 a.m. (next day)
Central Time	1:59 a.m. (next day)
Eastern Time	2:59 a.m. (next day)
Atlantic Time	3:59 a.m. (next day)
Western Africa Time	6:59 a.m. (next day)
Greenwich Mean Time	7:59 a.m. (next day)
Central European Time	8:59 a.m. (next day)
Eastern European Time	9:59 a.m. (next day)
India Standard Time	12:29 p.m. (next day)
Western Australia	2:59 p.m. (next day)
Japan Standard Time	3:59 p.m. (next day)
Australia New South Wales Time	4:59 p.m. (next day)
New Zealand Time	6:59 p.m. (next day)

What time zones am I forgetting? I'll add places if you leave a comment with a request.

Hope that helps you as you plan your procrastination!

April 11, ETA: I realized you might like a chart for Eastern time as well, since some of our Carnival day deadlines are in Eastern. Here you go, a conversion of noon EDT!

Time Zone	Adjusted Time
Hawaii Time	6:00 a.m.
Alaska Aleutian Time	7:00 a.m.
Alaska Time	8:00 a.m.
Pacific Time	9:00 a.m.
Mountain Time	10:00 a.m.
Central Time	11:00 a.m.
Eastern Time	12:00 p.m.
Atlantic Time	1:00 p.m.
Western Africa Time	4:00 p.m.
Greenwich Mean Time	5:00 p.m.
Central European Time	6:00 p.m.
Eastern European Time	7:00 p.m.
India Standard Time	9:30 p.m.
Western Australia	12:00 a.m. (next day)
Japan Standard Time	1:00 a.m. (next day)
Australia New South Wales Time	2:00 a.m. (next day)
New Zealand Time	4:00 a.m. (next day)

P.S. A Facebook comment from mamamilkers said about this post: "I think you made have just taken nerd to the nth degree ;)" I'll take that as a compliment...

Just keep writing, writing, writing

2010-03-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

I'm with Dori on this one. The most important rule of writing, particularly something massive like a novel? You've gotta just keep going.

I've been remiss at keeping up with my novels of late, because I've been expending my creative energy blogging (and parenting). When I opened up my files to get back to work, I winced at how long it had been since the date of my last save.

Sometimes you need a little space to breathe between drafts, but here's the problem with taking too much time off:

It's so, so, very hard to get started up again.

You think about your novel, but you don't quite remember where you were. You know you had some ideas in mind for edits, but what were they again? You kick yourself for not making better notes, but at the time they were so fresh in your head, they didn't seem necessary. Now, though — ugh, to read through it all again, to try to remember what you wanted to remember. Such a chore, such a dragging waste of time.

Maybe you'll just put it off for another day or two...

Here's a kick in the pants for you, if you're anything like me and need one: Get your manuscript out. Start somewhere. Whether it's finishing or editing or writing the first page, start again. And then keep at it.

Repeat as necessary.

For more inspiration on the topic, check out Jerry Seinfeld's advice: Don't break the chain!

How many unfinished writing projects are you sitting on? What motivates you to get back to work? What motivates you to keep working, day by day?

Leaving your laptop in a coffee shop

2010-03-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

I keep having this little problem whenever I decide to write at a coffee shop. See, the rent you pay for your table is in liquid goods, often caffeinated. At some point during my stay, I need to take a trip to the ladies' room.

But what to do with my laptop in the meantime?

I'm not the only one with this problem. Check out this article from Alt Text on Wired:

Workin' at the Internet Cafe: Laptop Dilemma, by Lore Sjöberg

Sjöberg gives eight hilariously worded options. Click over to see. Option 1 is to leave it, which has always seemed foolhardy to me. Every once in awhile, someone will ask me to provide them with Solution 2, which is to ask a stranger to keep an eye on it. (Apparently, I look innocuous and/or trustworthy.) I try to fulfill my duties seriously, but I don't necessarily want to impose on someone in return.

I totally agree with Sjöberg that just bringing the open laptop into the bathroom raises questions, but darned if I don't do that sometimes. Because, see, logging into the internet access takes so long. It's like, what, a whole screen you have to load? Maybe 20 seconds? I don't have that kind of time to waste, people! So I keep my laptop open and bring it in with me. Into the bathroom. And take my time. Hmmm...

He also suggests the possibility of buying some sort of laptop lock, but while leaving my laptop unobserved seems too trusting, buying a heavy-duty chain seems too cynical.

I usually do Solution 7, which is to pack up and bring everything with me. I try to hold it till the very end!

His commenters have some good alternate solutions, including French kissing the laptop or leaving it open to blistering nastiness. I like the woman (and, see, I think there might be a man/woman difference here in how comfortable we feel leaving our keys and wallet as well at the table — from a self-defense standpoint, I do gather everything onto my person) who suggests bringing extra materials to mark her spot, such as sweaty gym clothes. Must remember that next time so I still have a seat when I bring all my valuable belongings into the restroom.

(I don't know why I feel the need to justify my choice to write in a coffee shop, but several of the commenters on the Wired article suggested just staying home. I use a coffee shop when I've dropped my son off at school and need a convenient place to walk to nearby that has an outlet and wi-fi before it's time to pick him up again. If you have a different reason, though, I'm cool with that, too. I'm really enjoying the coffee shop/laptop culture, to be honest!)

What are your laptop-in-a-coffee-shop solutions?

Add tension to your novel

2010-02-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

I liked this writing how-to article from Writer's Digest:

"How to Make Your Novel a Page Turner," by Elizabeth Sims

The basic idea is to throw your beloved characters into trouble. It's a lesson I've been told before, but I can always stand to hear it again!

In Sims' article, the "trouble" is labeled a Heart-Clutching Moment, anything that makes your readers sit on the edge of their seats in suspense for what will come next.

There are a lot more tips than just that one, so head on over and ramp up your novel's page-turning potential.

Give yourself a writing deadline

2009-04-28T09:40:00.001-07:00

One of the problems of being a creative writer without a book contract or editor looking over your shoulder is that getting your work finished is completely up to you. If you're highly self-motivated, there's no problem there. But, for the rest of us, there's usually always something else you could be doing, maybe even should be. So it's a challenge to fit writing into your schedule of work, household tasks, parenting, fun, and you find the days, weeks, months, years going by without your pet projects being completed and sent out for publication.

Or maybe that's just me.

I've discovered that a fun and inspiring way to finish work is to have someone else set the deadlines for you.

My husband was intrigued that a simple PDF certificate was enough to keep me pushing through the intense month of NaNoWriMo. He also noted that I willingly wrote a poem a day for the PAD Challenge hosted by Robert Brewer at Poetic Asides, which this year is also handing out completion certificates.

So he set a deadline for me to finish the second draft of my mystery novel, and promised me a special certificate if I got it done in time. He wondered if that would be magic enough to make me finish.

Well, my friends, he got his answer. I love me some pointless writing certificates!

The wonderful news, then, is that the second draft of my NaNoWriMo mystery novel is done, and we're calling it my reader's draft, because it was finally ready to be read by someone besides me. The grand kinks in the plotting had been worked out, whole sections moved around, and new transitions added. It's much improved, plotwise.

Sam was my first official reader, and there were two pieces of good that came out of that:

First of all, he read it really quickly, because he enjoyed it. Yea! He particularly loved the character based on him. ;)

Secondly, he had a wonderful host of suggestions for making it even better, most related to character building. He pointed out fundamentals of novel writing, like the fact that my main character should have a specific goal in mind from the very beginning, something to drive the story forward before the murder solving gets under way. Since it was a mystery novel, I was shorthanding it and allowing the mystery itself to be the only goal; I think it makes sense that that's the main goal, but since my character is an amateur detective, she needs to have something else going on in her life, some problem she's trying to solve, and ideally it should all relate to the murder in the end as well.

I can foresee a lot of thematic revisions ahead, intwining different threads and adding more character development and backstory, and it excites me at the same time it scares me. Maybe another certificate, Sam?

If you want to accomplish a writing project, you could use this tactic to your advantage. Find a person who will hold you accountable and who will present you with a prize if (and only if) you complete your mission. Unless you're closely related to this person, it should probably be financially inexpensive (e.g., PDF certificate) and not too much work to pull off. Or you could always buy yourself something but have someone hold it ransom until you turn in your manuscript. And it doesn't have to be a thing — it could be a fun outing or experience.

Alternatively, as with NaNoWriMo and PAD, you could find a group that's already doing what you want. There are blog posting and photography challenges out there, for instance, and presumably more besides. If you can't find a group you want, create one! There have to be other procrastinating creative types just aching for a kick in the pants.

In related deadline news, the PAD Challenge is wrapping up in a couple days. With racing to get my reader's draft finished, I have been haphazard at writing a poem a day. I more often write a few poems every few days! But it all counts in the end. I love that I'll have 30+ draft of poems by the end of the month (if I get cracking at catching up!). You still have time to get yours in as well. Remember to post in the comments on Robert Brewer's blog if you want your certificate! I know I'm geeked for it!

Photo courtesy Rodolfo Clix on stock.xchng

Writing software vs. doing the hard work

2009-02-28T06:36:00.001-08:00

I’ve been deep in the throes of editing my NaNoWriMo novel. It’s such a muddle to wade through, 50,000-plus words, and I do understand that that’s on the short end for a novel. In the end, being a cozy, it will be at least 60,000.

But whether 50,000 or 100,000, that’s a lot of words to edit!

I have three murder incidents in my book, as most mysteries do, and I realized after I’d written it in that crazy month that numbers two and three needed to be swapped. It just made more sense that way, and allowed the main character to get to know beforehand the person who’s killed last.

But, oh, dear — that means rewriting and rearranging fully two-thirds of the stupid thing. Even those wonderful, witty conversations I was so proud of will now have to fall, because the characters will all be talking about something else now.

But as someone on the NaNoWriMo boards consoled (and I can’t remember who it was now — sorry), you can’t edit nothing. At least I have a truckload of words to edit!

I thought there might be some computing help out there to make my life easier. Microsoft Word is dismal when it comes to the demands of fiction writing. There’s no easy way to outline or to rearrange whole sections.

I started researching writing software for the Mac, reading reviews and comparing demo videos, and I settled on two that sounded promising — Scrivener and Copywrite — before a review for one of those led me to a third possibility — StoryMill. I looked at other options as well, but those three sounded like the best fit for the kind of writing I do, which is to say, novel-length fiction. Some other programs seemed to have more use for non-fiction writers or technical writing.

Intriguing features of these types of fiction-writing word processors (not available in all of them) are the ability to create timelines that link to your scenes, chapter views, the ability to save multiple revisions and revert to an earlier one if necessary, character description files, virtual corkboard for rearranging index cards that contain parts of the story, multiple windows to see various drafts simultaneously, inherent outlining, etc., and everything’s theoretically linked to everything else — so if you, say, moved a section on your corkboard, it would move that section in your novel as well, no tedious searching, cutting, and pasting necessary.

I have links from Amazon just for StoryMill, so I went ahead and put up screen shots that were available to give a general idea of the sort of experience you’d have with one of these writers’ word processors.

If you want to find out more about the programs, feel free to click on the software site links above or read some reviews for them here: CopyWrite reviews, Scrivener reviews, StoryMill reviews.

I won’t go into the details of each one, because ultimately I decided to hold off. It was when I was reading StoryMill reviews and one reviewer’s words really spoke to me:

May 15 2008 MSWWSM —

I can’t give this product any kind of fair review as I can’t quite figure out what it’s for. If I had to guess, I’d say this — and the similar Scrivener — are for writers who may indeed have the prose chops to get the job done but can’t get a handle on how to organize longer manuscripts in their heads …

Foremost, StoryMill and Scrivener are not models for how novelists I know actually work. We have various loose “processes”, we keep notes, we do research — not too little research on-the-fly, so to speak — and we may rough out in a notebook, on an index card, or on the back of the power bill, overarching plot lines, concepts, perhaps brief character sketches, snippets of especially pithy dialogue or metaphor we just have to use, that sort of thing. But everyone I know merely takes something that’s been stewing, sits down one morning, or evening, or dead in the middle of night, and begins writing; then we go back and eradicate, illuminate and, well, prevaricate, as required to make the story whole. …

As for aspiring novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, etc., I can’t help but advise you’d be far better off just sitting down and writing, ignoring the confusing disorganized mess you may create — because you CAN — and WILL, if you stick at it — develop a process for sorting things out, making sense of disparate parts and gluing them together into a coherent story. The bottom line is, called upon to take 60,000 - 120,000 words or more, vet this draft for grammar, style, continuity errors, etc., it’s never going to just wrap up nicely, and it’s always going to degrade into a brutal grind at times, whether you write on legal pads with a blunt pencil or with these sorts of computerized writers toolkits. It’s never easy, no matter what.

Emphasis mine, because man, oh, man.

Here’s a portion of the response from someone who liked the above review as much as I did:

although i am trying to write a novel with various timelines and therefore became interested in any computerized help i could get, i now am convinced that a dry erase board or a yellow pad with lots of revisions/erasures, as mswwsm notes, will work better.

a writer i admire once told an audience that when she teaches creative writing, she emphasizes B.I.C = butt in chair! there is no substitute and most of these apps are probably - at least for me - more of a distraction and an ill-fitted crutch than the solution and will probably never accomplish what mswwsm suggests. — rich ratzan

So, butt in chair, I have been doing the hard work.

I figured that spending any more energy than I already have on these software apps would just distract me from the task at hand. I would spend so much time copying my scenes into each demo version, then editing in each one to see how it works. I would type in character descriptions and obsess about details. It’s probably best just to use what I have and try to figure out a process for myself.

I think next time I write a novel, I will start off in one of these software options, to see if it helps. Ideally, I’ll start three novels simultaneously, so I can see which of the three options makes things easiest!

But for now — I have an outline of my original draft in OmniOutliner. I’ve rearranged it in the same app, checking my timeline by sketching it out with purple pen (hey, it was around) on the back of an envelope and drawing arrows to show which parts I wanted to change around or add.

I have another file in OmniOutliner for notes and revisions, which includes my character descriptions, painstakingly copied every time a character came up. Then I can make sure haircolor and age and the like don’t change throughout the story by referring back to my notes. I have listed things I want to add and things I want to change. I have ideas for place names and poisons. (Hey, it’s a murder mystery!) I chose OmniOutliner for this file, because I can indent subtopics to show that they relate to an above main topic, but also primarily because OmniOutliner offers little checkboxes all down the side. Whenever I’ve completed a revision task, I can check it off and stop worrying about it. Most of the boxes remain unchecked, but at least I know that they will get done, and I don’t have to keep it all in my head.

I’ve saved multiple drafts now in Word, and I’m going to start the annoyance of cutting and pasting according to my outline, and then … it’s rewrite time. I’ll just have to go in, read it through, and change what doesn’t make sense anymore. Which I’m assuming will be most of it. Sigh.

Butt in chair. I’ll get there.

Getting your characters in trouble

2008-11-28T11:03:00.001-08:00

NaNoWriMo very kindly and wisely provides emailed pep talks each week, some from regional liaisons, and some from published authors. Here's an excerpt from Week Three's pep talk from Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint It Black:

When in doubt, make trouble for your character. Don't let her stand on the edge of the pool, dipping her toe. Come up behind her and give her a good hard shove. ... In life we try to avoid trouble. We chew on our choices endlessly. We go to shrinks, we talk to our friends. In fiction, this is deadly. Protagonists need to screw up, act impulsively, have enemies, get into TROUBLE.

The difficulty is that we create protagonists we love. And we love them like our children. We want to protect them from harm, keep them safe, make sure they won't get hurt, or not so bad. Maybe a skinned knee. Certainly not a car wreck. But the essence of fiction writing is creating a character you love and, frankly, torturing him. You are both sadist and savior. Find the thing he loves most and take it away from him. Find the thing he fears and shove him shoulder deep into it. Find the person who is absolutely worst for him and have him delivered into that character's hands. Have him make a choice which is absolutely wrong.

When I started writing my romance novel, I knew I wanted my hero to suspect the heroine was lying, to manufacture plot trouble for them. But I was cheating the system. I wanted my heroine not to be a liar. I wanted her to remain pure and blameless.

And then I came to my senses. A perfect protagonist is boring (look at Fanny in Mansfield Park -- sorry, Jane!).

I had to throw my characters into trouble. I had to make them flawed so they had somewhere to progress to during the course of the novel. It's frustrating when the novel starts out with an ideal relationship and situation that has problems thrown at it. It's less frustrating and more suspenseful when there's just a vision of an ideal relationship and situation that the characters need to move toward.

In my current novel, I made sure to place my heroine in danger. She needs to have the possibility of failing and even dying to create tension, to create a story. Along the same lines, she has to take steps and try things out that I would never have the gumption to, because it would be really boring to read about me!

It's similar to being afraid to kill off characters, as in my other post. Sometimes being a writer feels like too much power, but we have to learn not to be afraid to use it.

How have you hesitated in creating trouble for your characters? How have you convinced yourself to throw them into danger and face the consequences?

Scary dinosaur courtesy of Rodolfo Clix from stock.xchng

Pushing through to the finish line

2008-11-26T18:07:00.001-08:00

It's coming down to the wire for NaNoWriMo08, and I'm on track with 41,561 words so far. If I write up to 42,000 before bed tonight, I can keep writing 2,000 a day and, assuming I get them in by midnight the last day, finish at exactly 50,000 on Nov. 30. I was feeling really discouraged a couple days ago, but I'm energized now and have a vision of the plot going forward to the end. Now it's just putting it on paper (or screen, in this case).

My husband, Sam, has been making remarks like, "It's ok if you go over by a few days. What's the difference?"

"No, because then you don't win," I told him.

"What do you win?" he asked, rightfully skeptical.

"A PDF certificate," I said sheepishly, "and a widget. And the satisfaction of knowing you're a winner."

Sam laughed at me. "So it doesn't matter," he said.

No! It does matter. Finishing a novel in a month, a specific month, is the whole point of NaNoWriMo. If you could write in anytime, you would. If you can go over by a few days, why not a few months, a few years?

Like all the other times. Like with all the other half-manuscripts in drawers and hastily typed ideas in forgotten files, languishing. Like all the other projects and passions and ambitions you've set aside till the perfect moment, only you never quite find it.

Back during the first season of Survivor, there was an endurance test toward the end where the remaining contestants had to keep their hand on a pole. That was the only rule. One of the contestants, good old Rudy, absentmindedly removed his hand from the pole to scracth his nose or something, and then tried to play it off, but was deservedly disqualified.

As The Daily Show mocked when replaying the clip, "What's the first rule of Keep Your Hand on the Pole Game?"

What's the first rule of NaNoWriMo? Write a novel in a month.

Anything else isn't NaNoWriMo.

Keep your hand on the pole.

See you at the finish line in just a few days!

Dashing off a draft

2008-11-23T12:48:00.001-08:00

I've learned a lot from NaNoWriMo. The main thing I've learned is to be quick and dirty.

Anything to get that first draft in.

I think what's held me up in the past is an obsession with perfecting as I write. For a short story or poem, this can sometimes work. For a novel, it was bogging me down and hurting my brain.

I would decided to change one thing, say, the year the story takes place, or the color of my main character's eyes (no, really! I did this), and I would feel compelled to go back through what I'd written so far, making all those changes before I could move on.

Now I've come to realize that it's more important just to tell the story.

Get it out there, and then go back and polish. I've been using the "Comments" function in Microsoft Word to help me out there. A text-file list or a sticky note on your desk would work just as well.

Whenever I decide that I screwed something up that happened earlier, or that I should shoehorn another event into the narrative, I make a comment to myself, such as: "Change character's name to sound less like main character's."

Voila! No time wasted pondering names. I can continue to use my rough-draft name throughout this first go, and after I'm done with the important part -- the story -- I can start flipping through phone books and baby-name books and getting bogged down in the editing side of things. If I do all that now, it will derail my train of thought, and the story will never get told.

This works for small things like characters' names and eye colors, and for big things like "Make Ann be a blackmailer" or "Add tension between Joe and Betty" or (true story) "Change it to first person." In that last case, I just kept going with the first person from there on out, resolving to edit my first pages to match at the end.

I also, when stuck at a particular word or phrase, instead of wasting time haring off through the thesaurus, just bracket it and, if necesary, add descriptors that make it into one long word indicating "Fix this later." For instance, I have brackets around such things as [LastNameHere] and [DifferentWordForSaid] and [SomethingLikeSmelly] and [HospitalName]. (I didn't want to unfairly inflate my word count by making those into separate words.)

It doesn't matter if it's messy and ugly. This is not my final draft. No one has to see this draft. It is not going out for immediate publishing. I have time to edit...but later!

I'm not promising to continue to write at the breakneck pace of 50,000 words a month, but I will take this little tidbit of oh-duh advice with me when I return to my first novel.

I will write, I will tell the story, and I will finish a first draft! Be it purely awful or pure gold (or purest green, which is maybe somewhere in between), I will finally have a complete story arc, and something to edit.

P.S. I think I need to think of first drafts of novels more like blog posts... Sorry to all my blog readers who now know what quality I put into my blog posts!

Perfect illustration of speed-typing hands courtesy of Kriss Szkurlatowski from stock.xchng

The uneasiness of killing off characters

2008-11-15T07:50:00.001-08:00

I'm halfway through the timeframe of NaNoWriMo, though not halfway through my word count since I started late. I have daily writing goals of 2,000 words that if followed (or caught up on...) will get me to 50,000 words on exactly the last day.

Now it's just down to two things: 1. that I have the story told by 50,000 words, and 2. that I remember to verify my word count by midnight! (I tend to fudge my "days" a little.)

As for #1, I'm trying to be bare bones about this writing assignment and make sure I get the plot told. I figure I can fill in all that fancifying description and character development later!

Here's something I didn't expect, though. As a huge fan of reading murder mystery novels and watching American and British versions of same, I thought of myself as hardened and jaded in terms of committing fictional murder. But in my first chapter, I had to kill off a character (otherwise it's not, you know, a murder mystery), and I felt guilty! She seemed kind of nice, and I'd barely gotten to know her before she was dead. In a horribly agonizing way, although not overly gory. (This is a cozy, so I'm going with things like poison and booby traps.)

I accept with no qualms the deaths of characters in mystery fiction I read or view, but somehow being the perpetrator of the death made me feel bad. I could see it being even more wrenching if I'd really "known" the character and become attached.

How have you experienced the death of a character? Has it felt necessary and acceptable, or has it upset you as much as it did the other characters?

Photograph courtesy of Mateusz Stachowski from stock.xchng

Googling books for research and pleasure

2008-05-31T08:06:00.001-07:00

I'm on a Jo Beverley kick and have just read A Lady's Secret. In her notes at the end, Beverley points out a good resource for writers, particularly of historicals: Google Book Search.

I'd been using it unwittingly for my other blog -- I found old-timey books on wet nursing such as A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health.

You can also often search selections of current books to see if there are passages to interest you, such as The History of the European Family, which also gave me invaluable information on breastfeeding rates from days gone by.

Google Book Search is trying to scan in many copies of old and rare books to preserve and share them for free, and publishers and authors of newer books can offer a glimpse into their pages as a service to potential readers.

As a writer doing research or a publisher promoting a book, it's worth looking into. As a reader scouting out good new reads, it's also a treat!