Tag: writing fiction

Posted on

What’s In A Name?

A novel often goes through several working titles

Writing is re-writing, and that includes book titles, the name of a book.

It’s been said that the title is the number one element of a book. If potential readers are grabbed by the title, they turn to the back cover, then open the book and read the first page.

Since ancient times, fathers have been careful about the names they give their children, knowing that it becomes their identity and will affect each child their whole life through.

So also do our titles reflect the perception others will have of our stories. Many books go through several title changes during the creation of the story. My current manuscript certainly did.

Because I thought the book was about false accusation (it is part of the story), and since the character, Danni Wagoner, was victimized, I began with the working title of Danni’s Story. 

Danni was deceived by someone she thought was a friend, so the title changed to Deception.

Then a brainstorming session with an editor brought out that all my stories seemed to have a theme running through them of a woman’s dream. Hence the change to Violated Dreams.

Then as the story progressed we had a final title change to Through Fiery Trails, or so I thought.

Yes, I realize a publisher will likely change a title, but I expected this to be my last change while it was a working title.

While the story never changed, my understanding of it did. More brainstorming revealed I was focusing on the wrong character for lead. I must have known this at a deeper level, because my elevator pitch was not about Danni at all, but rather her Old Order German Baptist friend. This character had to choose between following the expectations for women born and raised in this group and the pull of her heart strings, knowing she was in a position to help her friend get to the bottom of . . . who-dun-it.

So that made the story Evalena’s Dilemma, or as we are now calling it, Through The Deep Waters.

I still like the earlier titles (except for the generic ones with the women’s names). But all is not lost, for they can be used on future books.

Q4U: How have you chosen the titles for your book(s)? Are they just an afterthought? Are you emotionally attached to the first one you gave the book, back when you first dreamed of the story?

Posted on

The Warp and Woof of Weaving Stories

When I was in college, I went on a retreat. One of the skills I learned during the weekend was basket weaving. It was a lovely art, both in what I ended up with, and how I got there. In other words, the process led to a product I was proud of: a tightly woven basket with an intricate design of my own creation.

Writing a novel, I find, parallels that experience. The warp of my story is the primary structure, and the woof is the way I hold it together by weaving in and out of the structure with the scenes and details that make it distinctly my own design. Sometimes, I make an impulsive change in the course of the weaving of my tale, which then affects the entire design, and I end up with a different – but even better – story than I had anticipated; sometimes, I find the change is a mistake, which means I have to unravel back to that point and make corrections.

Unlike crafting a basket, however, the task of weaving a story gives me a dimension of creativity the basket doesn’t allow: I can add in even more layers – more woof – after my initial story is complete.  When I finish a basket, the weaving is of one piece – I can’t cut out a section of threads and replace it, or expand it, and expect the basket to hold together.

With writing, though, I find the extra woof is what gives the story its defining success. In revision, I can add a new character to further complicate the plot or add comic relief. While the main structure of the work doesn’t change, that new character can help breathe more interest into interactions with, and between, other characters. In the case of my mysteries, I often create a character in the revision process who can help move my story through spots that are weak or slow, especially when I need some red herrings thrown in to mislead my readers. I created one such character in my first book as a last-minute thought to complement one of the subplots, only to have readers so enjoy the character, that they repeatedly asked me to bring him back in a later book!

Adding in subplots that reflect the primary plot is another trick to elaborating on my initial story design. When revising, I try to give almost every character some personal issue that can tie into another character’s. Doing so not only makes the characters more real – who, in real life, doesn’t have problems to deal with? – but it affords me more opportunities to weave in conflict, which adds to the story’s pacing. My solution to keeping track of the characters and subplots is the creation of a master flow chart that follows each element of the story from beginning to end. That way, I accomplish every weaver’s goal: no loose ends.

Happy weaving!

What are your favorite threads to add to the warp and woof of your writing?

Posted on

Cast Your Line to Hook Agents, Editors, and Readers

CatfishWe writers talk about luring and hooking readers. Makes writing sound a little like a field-and-stream exercise, doesn’t it? In some ways, writing is like fishing. In both cases, you have to step out of your comfort zone, bait your hook, and make your cast. Then you wait for results you can’t see.

In writing, as in fishing, it’s important to know the denizens inhabiting the particular “pond” where you’ve cast your line. It does no good to fish for something that isn’t there. This is why studying publishing trends is important to your survival. Good starting points to catch industry news are at Publisher’s Weekly and the ECPA community site.

In fishing, you bait your hook with delicacies enjoyed by the kind of fish you want. Just because a particular fish exists doesn’t mean you should catch it, though. You might not care for the taste of catfish, for example, but you love trout. Writers who follow every trend in the hope of landing a book contract often leave their interests out of the equation. When it comes to deciding what to offer, don’t pursue soulless commercialism. That may appear attractive, but it’s not sustainable.

For a chance to catch a fish, a fisherman has to ready and throw a line into the water. Similarly, a writer needs to prepare a line, bait a hook, and give a great pitch to ever hope to snag an agent, land a contract, and net readers.

Once that line is in the water, any fisherman watches the pole. If you leave it unattended, when you return you’ll most likely find your hook stripped. That’s because fish nibble at bait without swallowing the hook. A good fisherman knows it’s important to set the hook at just the right moment. It’s one thing to lure a reader into the first chapter of your book. It’s another to have that reader go on to chapter two. Ending each chapter with a new hook will string your reader happily along.

A complaint made by editors is that beyond the first 50 pages, manuscripts often fall apart. Readers want the same thing that editors do—a story that sustains interest throughout its pages. Once you have that, it’s time to go fishing.

Posted on

The ‘Real Stuff’ of Character Building

A few years ago, my sister gave me a t-shirt that reads, “Careful or you will end up in my novel.” She meant it as a joke, but the truth is that my t-shirt does not lie: for me, every person I meet is a potential character in my mystery series. Like every writer, my writing is informed by my experiences and that includes experiences of people.

That said, none of my fictional characters are ‘real.’ Though they may be inspired by someone I meet, I usually take my creative license very seriously and make my characters composites of traits that fit the needs of my story lines. For example, I met a charming World War II veteran at a dinner speaking engagement last fall. He kept everyone at the table laughing with his wisecracks and his stories of being an ordnance (explosives expert) officer during his military career. When he noted that he still had all ten original fingers, I knew I had to use that line in a novel, so I began to formulate the character of Vern Metternick in my upcoming release.

What was even more surprising to me – and especially delightful! – was that as I developed the character and his relationships with other characters in the book, I realized his explosives experience could lead to a key, and very funny, scene in the novel that I had not anticipated. So my chance dinner partner unknowingly not only gave me the kernel for a wonderful character, but also actually helped shape the plot of the book. It really is true that authors can create characters, but not always control them, and I say that’s a good thing! Especially when those characters can solve knotty plot problems and make the book even better than I had planned.

There is also a flip side to my t-shirt – on occasion, I do use real people in my mystery series. Since my books deal with current conservation issues, and I aim for strong local connections, I use real places in my books, and actual experts in the story. I always ask those folks for permission to write them into the novel and then thank them in my acknowledgments. To put them at ease, I promise not to make them murderers (unless they ask to be!), and I generally give them an overview of how they’ll fit into the story. So far, no one has turned me down, and I get a real-life connection out of it that my readers love…not to mention one more person who is almost as excited as I am when the book debuts!

As a result, I assure my friends who see my shirt that their secrets are safe with me. Besides, they can always take comfort in that lovely disclaimer that prefaces fiction: “Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.”

And if you believe that, I have some ocean-front property in Arizona I’d be happy to sell you.

Where do your characters come from?

 

Posted on

Does Reading Fiction Affect Your Brain?

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

Annie Murphy Paul raised the question earlier this year with her article: Your Brain on Fiction posted in the New York Times Sunday Review. As readers and writers, we need to know the answers to the questions raised by her article.

In this day of instant gratification, with our children and grands fixated on computer games and other digital distractions, is reading dead?

According to Neuroscience’s findings on how reading affects the brain, perhaps we should encourage the old-fashioned virtue of reading stories.

Or should we?

For further research, I ordered first one book and then another.

Keith Oatley’s Such Stuff as Dreams, Brian Boyd’s On the Origin of Story,  Tilottama Rajan’s The Supplement of Reading, Lisa Zunshine’s Why We Read Fiction,  Lewis Mehl-Madrona, D.D., Ph.D.’s Healing the Mind Through the Power of Story

To read Keith Oatley’s blog go here.

While waiting for the books to arrive, I printed out 50 pages of web articles on the subject. I searched the brain’s known language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. Fascinating stuff for me, it brought back memories of pouring over Dad’s medical books as a child.

It was worth it. Now to compress all this information into a 500-word blog post.

Can you say brain overload?
#1. Does reading fiction affect the brain differently than reading non-fiction?

#2. If so, is reading fiction . . . safe?

#3. Will reading fiction turn men into sissies?

Neuroscience shows the Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area of our brain affect how the mind interprets written words. Other parts of our brains are involved as well.

No wonder the experience of reading can feel so alive. (At least for those of us who love novels.)

While words describing smells like “apple pie” or “vanilla” or “vomit,” cause a response from Broca and Wernike, the language-processing areas of our brains, these words also affect the parts that process smells and scents.

Anne describes using brain scans to reveal how stories stimulate the brain and can even change how we act in life. I’ve condensed and paraphrased her content.

Volunteers read while scientists scanned their brains with a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. As the readers looked at the words cologne, bacon, and eggs, their primary olfactory cortex lit up. The words describing objects such as car, or building, left this part of the brain dark.

Motion words activated sections of the brain other than those for language processing. Participants read sentences like “Gritting his teeth, he ran after her” and “He grabbed her forearm.” Interestingly enough, these scans showed stimulation in the part of the brain which coordinates body movements. When the action described was arm-related, the stimulation was concentrated in one part of the motor cortex and in another part when the action concerned the leg.

Fiction, in the form of a novel, examines the social and emotional world of mankind through created characters. We have documented how the brain responds to words of smells and textures and movements as if they were the real thing.

While we read, our brains treat the interactions among fictional characters the same as if we, or someone in our real life, has experienced them.

Which leads us to the next question, “Is reading fiction . . . safe?” What are your thoughts? I will discuss the answers in my next post.

Posted on

How to Captivate Readers

Small Child Reading

Wonderment

Children’s eyes

See marvels,

Creation

Born anew,

Wonderment

In each small

Everything.

Give me, Lord,

A child’s view.

©Janalyn Voigt

The cup of tea at your elbow grows cold.The dryer buzzes, but you hardly notice. The clock ticks past the time to make dinner, but you turn the page and read on, captured by the author’s creative world.

When they can make readers forget they’re reading, books rank high on purchase lists. Figuring out how this happens is well worth the effort. Can such a thing be identified? Bringing the reader so fully into a story would seem to take an elusive blend of mastery and pixie dust. Besides, don’t readers’ preferences dictate which books will draw them in?

I would have agreed to this idea a week ago, but not any longer. You see, the book I’m currently reading for a literary contest is a young adult story. With my teen years forever behind me, I am not a target reader for this book. In fact, when I first picked it up, I groaned inwardly. While being required as a literary judge to read a slew of books might seem an envious pursuit, the bare truth is that sometimes I wind up stuck with a book I’d otherwise never open. It would be arrogant of me to judge another author’s writing without actually reading it, and so in a fit of fortitude I slog doggedly onward until the merciful end.

If that had been the case with this particular book, I wouldn’t be writing this post. It wasn’t. I did have to push past a slow start, but then the story enveloped me like a warm shawl on a chilly evening. I read late into the night, turning pages in a way that would have gratified the author. As I mentioned, I am not this author’s target audience, so I may never crack one of her books, but the next day I found her Goodreads page and became a fan. Why? Because her writing transported me in a way few books have. And I read a lot of books. If my experience is anything to go by, preference has little to do with captivating a reader.

What does, then? I asked myself this question with an interest not in the least academic. I want to apply this writer’s secret sauce to my own writing. I read the rest of the book with that goal in mind. What I discovered rocked me to the core.

Apart from the necessities of craft and mastery, two distinct factors elevated the story: a unique writing voice empowered by a vivid imagination. The author’s strong sense of self expressed without reserve resonated within her fully imagined story.

In these days of rapid writing, let’s not forget to add art to craft. The demands on you to produce and promote can steal the soul from your writing, if you let it. Feeding your inner artist is the only way to tap the wellspring of creative life within and produce enduring works. That will look different for each of us, but one thing remains true for all. The way forward is backward. At least mentally, let yourself step backward into childhood and discover the world with fresh eyes.

What books have you read lately that have surprised you? Transported you back to your childhood?

Posted on

Top 5 Self-Editing Tips: Structure

Writing is rewriting, and rewriting is self-editing. “But isn’t that the job of the editor after I’ve made the sale?” No. Some writers think running spell-checker is self-editing. Not so much.

“But won’t rewriting my work edit the life out of it?” No, but it will catch the eye of an agent or editor as a well-written manuscript and may lead to a sale.

Obsessive editing during the writing process will destroy your work. However, after you’ve written the first draft, gain some distance and perspective on your manuscript by setting it aside for a few weeks or a couple of months. Now it’s time to rewrite.

Here are my top 5 self-editing tips in their order of importance for polishing your work to a high sheen.

  1. Structure: Think of the structure of your work as an arched bridge spanning a great river. If the contractor takes short cuts (such as using less cement, steel, or fewer bolts) because she’s bored with the process and rushes to the end, the bridge is weakened and will collapse.  The same holds true for both ends of the bridge. If too much cement is used at either end of the bridge, it will collapse from the added weight.

For the purposes of this post, I’ll concentrate on the structure of novels. If the structure of your story is solid, the reader will continue to turn the pages until the ending scene.

The material of the structure is comprised of the elements of the story arc (the basic story thread) held in place by a beginning, middle, and end. Pretty simplistic, huh? Yet the three-act structure has worked since Aristotle’s days whether you write plays, scripts, short stories, or novels.

Sydney Harbor Bridge

Some authors maintain they have a four-, five-, six-, or even eight-act structure. I maintain if you break down the parts of their story arcs, you will discover classic Aristotelian structure.

Using the bridge analogy, a car drives onto the bridge. This is the point in the novel when you can lose a reader in the first page or two. I’ve thrown many a book (or manuscript) on the pile beside my bed if nothing happens right away. The author might as well have written “blah, blah, blah-blah, blah.”

A novel that piques the reader’s interest starts as far into the story as possible. I don’t want to know that the protagonist’s parents left him stranded in a snowstorm when he was a toddler and that’s why he’s terrified of snow (or abandonment). That’s back story. The story should begin with stasis (a state of equilibrium) and then the main character, pressed with conflict, reveals her goal.

One of my favorite movies is Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark. The story throws you into the action, and the back story―Indy’s character, profession, the setting, and the antagonist―are revealed as Act 1 plays out.

As the story progresses into the middle (Act 2) and the bulk of the novel, you should have rising and falling tension as your protagonist encounters numerous obstacles or crises.

The main turning point, or big surprise, comes in the middle of the novel. By this time the reader believes he has the story figured out. You need to turn his assumptions on their head. The major turning point should be such a shock that no one sees it coming. It should keep your reader up at night turning pages.

The crises continue. Will he? Won’t she? Oh, no! What will happen to this character your reader has invested her time in? Will everything turn out all right? How will the story ever end on a happy, satisfying note now?

Tension mounts and we reach another major turning point before we head into the final third act. Every turning point should be a surprise to the reader.

The crises are unrelenting until we reach the climax halfway through the third act. The protagonist faces off against the antagonist. The clash of the titans ensues. A woman faces her attacker or her paralyzing fear. The antagonist is not always a person. A man pushes his wife out of the path of a stampeding herd of cattle. Will he live? You get the picture.

Tie up all the loose ends of your storyline in the denouement―the final resolution of the plot or story arc. Is your ending satisfying? Does the main character live happily ever after? If you live and write in America, trust me, she better if you want to succeed as a professional author. Americans are eternal optimists.

To be continued…

How will you self-edit your novel to make sure your structure is strong enough to carry your storyline through to the end?

Photo credit: Sydney Harbour Bridge with the Opera House in the background by Ian.

Posted on

How to Plot by the Numbers

Plotting By the NumbersShow, don’t tell. Watch your participial phrases. Don’t head hop. Whatever you do, stay within manuscript length recommendations. For a writer scrambling to keep up with all the dos and don’ts, the writing profession can seem full of arbitrary rules. And when someone breaks said rules and goes on to win awards, it’s tempting to follow suit. One standard you shouldn’t buck, however, is a publishing house’s word-length requirements.
Why? Shouldn’t you let your story tell itself without regard for its length?

If you will be the one footing the bill, you’re free to make your manuscript whatever length you prefer.  But if you hope a publisher will pay to produce your book, it’s important to understand that additional pages cost extra money, and not just in terms of paper and ink. It takes several editors (who are on the payroll) to review and guide you in polishing a manuscript. Proofreaders don’t work for free either. If your last name is Tolstoy or Michener you might get away with submitting a beefy manuscript. The rest of us need to keep the bottom line in mind.

Book stores base the number of copies of a particular title to order on standard widths. If a publisher fails to adhere to these widths, it throws off a bookstore’s shelving efforts. Besides this, writing your novel shorter or longer than genre readers expect can negatively influence their buying decisions.

Aren’t these considerations crass? What about your inner artist?

Your inner artist will recover, and you’ll even grow as a writer from keeping to practical guidelines.

But how on earth can you tell how long a novel will be until you’ve written it?

You can’t know entirely, but I’ve developed a method that helps me write to a specific length. Even if you’re a seat-of-the-pants writer and allergic to plotting, my technique may help you. Here’s a screen shot of one of my working calendars. CS stands for my current novel, and the number represents the scene I’ll write that day. (I number them in my plot outline.) I find it helps to include upcoming deadlines and events as well. The DS represents DawnSinger, the first novel in my epic fantasy series, Tales of Faeraven. The Renewal mentioned was a conference I attended.

Sample Scene Calendar

1. Estimate your desired word count. If you don’t know what that might be, read publishers’ submission guidelines at their sites. As a starting point, here’s an agent-maintained list of word count guidelines. Find the happy middle ground in a given range. That way you can guard against running too-short or too-long.

EXAMPLE: A publisher gives the range of 80,000-100,000 words for a historical romance. The middle ground to aim for is 90,000 words.

2. If you already know the average number of words you write per scene, use that figure. If you don’t know this number, write the first 50 pages of your book, then estimate the average number of words per scene. You can also base your figures on 1,500 words per scene, but eventually, you’ll want to check your own average against this figure and make adjustments as needed. It’s okay to round your numbers.

EXAMPLE: Approximately 12,500 / about 8 scenes = 1,500 words per scene

3. Divide your average words per scene into your desired total word count. The answer is the number of scenes to brainstorm.

EXAMPLE: 90,000 / 1,500 = 60 SCENES

4. Develop your plot to include the number of scenes you should write for your desired total word count. Write just a few sentences to describe each scene. This keeps you from bogging down while plotting and gives you a flexible guideline you can easily adjust as you write.

What’s next?

To learn more about my system of plotting, read How to Plot a Novel in Three Acts at my Live Write Breathe site.

Are you more of a plotter or a seat-of-the pants writer?

Posted on

Making Dialogue Work

Dialogue is one of the hardest working tools we have because we ask it to do so much. It has to convey information, develop and move the plot, increase tension and conflict all while sounding natural.

Perhaps most importantly, dialogue must engage the reader through revealing our characters. It brings them to life and shows their personalities, their quirks, their goals, and their fears.

The most effective and real dialogue comes when we know our characters as intimately as possible. Whether our story is plot-driven or character-driven, we have to invest the time in writing biographies, character analyses, Meyers-Briggs assessment, journals, interviewing them, and experimenting with how they speak, act, think, and feel. And they’ll still surprise us.

In my first novel, Journey to Riverbend, I had a problem with the story arc of my female protagonist, Rachel. She was a former prostitute who received Jesus. She was also striving to open a dress-making business in a town where many were hostile to her because of her past. It wasn’t until I interviewed her that I learned Rachel was a feisty, determined young woman with numerous questions about her new-found faith, anxieties about her future, and wondering if love could ever be part of her life.

And I discovered her voice changed depending on her situation. She had a business voice she used with customers and an almost child-like awe when she talked about her faith. At times her prostitute “don’t mess with me” voice came into play. When the mayor attempted to get too familiar, Rachel stopped him cold with the whispered line, “I’m making dresses for your wife. I can make her look like a laughing stock while convincing her she looks like Queen Victoria.”

With these new insights, Rachel’s dialogue became stronger, more connected to her emotions at the moment, more realistic. It revealed more of her personality, her dreams, her fears.

Rachel came to life through her dialogue.

Make the time to know your characters. They’ll reward you with stronger personalities and become people that readers will keep turning pages for.

How has dialogue allowed you to develop your characters even further? What have you learned about your characters through dialogue that surprised you?

Posted on

The Joy of Research

What’s black and white and red all over?

Or is it “read” all over?

No matter.

The answer is: The desk of a writer.

Covered in words and, yes, sometimes blood, my writing nooks are piled high with books, inch-thick binder clips full of internet printouts, magazines, journals, sticky notes and more. Commonly known as research, this is what the necessary, most rewarding (and fun!) part of the novel-writing process looks like.

Many novels are character-driven, so some folks might not think research plays much of a role in writing a solid story, especially if you’re following the old adage, “write what you know.” However, for characters to have depth, you have to know them. Really know them. You have to know their hobbies, their likes, and their dislikes. You need to know what it felt like to grow up in their hometown and region. You need to know what it feels like to live in the current story setting as well.

So, if you’re new to the writing process, I thought I’d share three research tips with you today.

Research tip #1: Libraries are not dead.

When I’m in all-out research mode, you can find me at my local library at least twice a week, if not more. I live in a relatively small town, so sometimes the strange call numbers I need are not represented on the shelves. But thanks to an amazing, free system called Evergreen Indiana, I can (and do) check out books from all over my state. In fact, Evergreen offers over 2.6 million bibliographic records and provides access to over 6.2 million items. (I think I’ve checked out 1.2 million so far!)

The internet cannot replace the richness of photography and history found in books. Also, books make me feel hot on a story trail like a blood hound after a fox, especially when references at the back of one book open up a wealth of resources and other books I never considered.

The other great (and possibly the best) thing about libraries: there’s no dust or laundry vying for my attention.

Research tip #2: The internet rocks.

If you’re as old as me, you might remember when the go-to resources for current event research were microfilm reels, aperture cards and microfiche. Only after thumbing through phone book-thick books of references could one find relatively current articles on a research topic. Then, there was no guarantee the library carried that journal or magazine. And if it did, squinting through the microscope-like lenses to try to find the information led to headaches and frustration.

Thank goodness for the internet. A few key strokes and you’ve got a gold mine of information to cull through. Here are a few of internet research sites I find especially helpful:

Research tip #3: Master the art of conversation (or listening, rather).

I’m lucky to be a nurse as well as a writer. Not just because it allows me to have enough money to eat, but also because it offers me so many chances to talk to and learn from folks I’d otherwise never meet. My favorite patients are octo- and nonagenarians, because I can pick their wise and nimble brains for topics like what it really felt like to live through the depression and what really makes a marriage work for 60+ years.

But you don’t have to be a nurse (or a patient, for that matter) to enhance a story. For one of my novels, I spent an afternoon talking to a local bar owner five states away, just to hear what he had to say about local lore and life.

Take time to listen to people,  and you’ll gather interesting story ideas otherwise never imagined.

What about you? What are your favorite research tools? Websites? Resources?