Archive | February, 2011

Inspiration Monday

28 Feb

Per Debra’s suggestion, I’ve decided to post some weekly writing prompts, here forward known as, “Inspiration Monday.” Of course, because I won’t get around to getting the post up until 8 or 9 pm CST Monday, most of you won’t see it until Tuesday. But I digress.

The Rules

There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.

No really; I need rules!

If you work better with guidelines: write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before 6 pm CST on the Monday following this post.

 

The Prompts

Leftover humans*

Our last kiss

When it looked at me, I screamed

I knew I shouldn’t have published that article

The invention of music

 

If you want to share your Inspiration Monday piece, post it on your blog and link back to today’s post; I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post.

Happy writing!

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* Today’s first prompt is brought to you by The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak.

Backpacks across the galaxy: how to personalize the epic

25 Feb

Epic-ness is all well and good, but without a personal touch, it can fall flat. We wouldn’t care whether or not Middle Earth fell to Sauron if we didn’t get to know Frodo and Sam along the way. It’s the little, everyday details that make us care; that show us the relevance of the big picture by connecting it to a close-up of the character(s).

This concept really threw me the first time I read Out of the Silent Planet. A man is on a walking tour in England, when he loses his backpack and is kidnapped by two men who take him to an alien planet. He escapes, and spends the next several chapters living among the locals, learning their language and discovering fascinating things about the universe. Then, on page 96, he gets a chance to look through a telescope at a planet the locals call Thulcandra:

He wondered for a moment if it was Mars he was looking at; then, as his eyes took in the markings better, he recognized what they were—Northern Europe and a piece of North America. They were upside down with the North Pole at the bottom of the picture and this somehow shocked him. But it was Earth he was seeing—even, perhaps, England, though the picture shook a little and his eyes were quickly getting tired, and he could not be certain that he was not imagining it. It was all there in that little disk—London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk.

This last sentence is so amazing it makes me dizzy. From the alienness of another planet, the hugeness of the universe, the awe of seeing Earth from space, the vastness of human history—to the ordinariness of a backpack left on a porch. This is why C.S. Lewis is my favorite writer; he turns my brain inside out.

Douglas Adams does something similar (but much more humorous) in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, when Arthur Dent is falling to his death and suddenly remembers he has a bottle of olive oil in his knapsack—possibly the last piece of the Earth left in the entire universe (this realization enabled him to learn how to fly…but that’s another post).

And I experienced something similar when I was driving home from visiting my grandparents last Christmas. We stopped at a Denny’s, and I happened to notice that the walls at this Denny’s had the exact same texture as the walls at home. And although I hadn’t been gone long enough to miss home, I suddenly got a lump in my stomach and felt homesick.

Moral of the post: the details make it meaningful. The next time you are writing a “big picture” scene, consider making your character notice or remember something that gives you a “close up.”

The four days that made me a writer

22 Feb

When I was in grade school, I went to writing camp with my two best friends. This consisted of the three of us staying at the house of a creative writing teacher for four days.

The first thing I remember doing was sitting down at her little card table, one of us on each side, pencils poised over notebooks as we gazed off into space. Miss Judy was spouting random phrases, spaced out to give us time to think in between, and occasionally one of us would bend over the table, scribbling something on the notebook paper. I can’t remember any of the specific phrases she gave us, but they were something like: a strange visitor…the first day of school…the last time we met…my best friend…and so on. Writing prompts. Sources of inspiration.

Since then, I’ve looked at writing prompts on a few writing websites and been disappointed. Most set up a situation and then ask you how it ends. Others give you a list of words to use, or a picture to write a story about. This seems to me more exercise than inspiration. The simple phrases Miss Judy gave us sparked our imaginations and empowered us to write whole stories.

Second, Miss Judy separated us. We each had our own corner of the house, where we wouldn’t be distracted by one another. She would set the timer for 45 minutes and we would sit there and write whatever story had been inspired by her prompts. My writing spot was a long, straight hallway, with very few doors and no decoration. Stark white. It had a cold, clinical, futuristic feel. I can’t stress enough just how much I enjoyed sitting in this hallway. Something about its emptiness excited me, the same way a blank page excites me. I think this was the first time I felt the intense joy of creating.

When the 45 minutes were up, we gathered together and read aloud what we had written – and here was the kicker: we had to read it exactly as we had written it. No fixing grammar mid-read. This encouraged us to edit more meticulously before we came to the group session; it helped us to look more objectively at our own writing, because we knew we’d soon have to face the criticism of our fellow writers (which was always kind…but still!). Then, of course, we gave each other suggestions and encouragement.

Best. Four days. Ever. It was eat, sleep, write, critique. Miss Judy taught me a lot about writing, and she fueled my passion for something I had, until that point, only been mildly interested in. Although my two best friends now only write casually, occasionally, I have grown into a writing fiend. I’m addicted. If I go more than a week without working on some form of fiction, I start to get depressed. And I couldn’t be happier about that.

What’s your origin story? How did you become a writer?

5 Ways to Make Your Characters Believable

18 Feb

Characters are the soul of a story, and the more clearly you can paint those characters, the more believable they (and your story) will be. So how do you do that?

1. How they talk

The more character you can convey through dialogue, the better. Make sure your characters don’t all talk the same way. Teach yourself to write unique speech for each character by listening to real people around you. How do your friends talk, in contrast with your parents? How does your boss talk as opposed to the guy in the next cubicle? Do they have an accent? Do they use certain phrases a lot? Do they tend to focus more on the technical side of things, or the emotional side? Are they sarcastic? Passive-aggressive? Non-confrontational?

2. How they move

Body language is a great way to Show, Don’t Tell. She stared at him as he struggled to find words. His eyes darted around the room as he looked for an escape. She push her hair behind her ear as she blushed. He folded his arms and shook his head as he surveyed the damage.

3. How they act

Actions speak louder than words, even when you’re using words to describe those actions. I’m always tempted to write things like; “He was a generous man,” but that’s telling, not showing. Show he’s kind by describing a specific act of generosity, like paying for the groceries of the woman behind him at the checkout.

4. What they think and feel

Use your character’s thoughts to convey their deepest desires, and what they learn throughout the story. Thoughts can greatly enhance any of the above three methods:

Your character might be furious her father, and might think out a whole paragraph of passionate things she’d like to say to him. But maybe she’s intimidated by her father, so all she gets out is one weak sentence.

If their words are the opposite of their thoughts, make their body language match their thoughts. The child says he didn’t steal the cookie, but drops his eyes in shame.

And third, of course, thoughts convey motives. Maybe by reading the thoughts of our generous man, we find out that he is generous now because he feels guilty about someone he hurt in his past.

5. What they look like

I listed appearance last, because many writers rely on it too much. Avoid the laundry list description; “He had blue eyes, blonde hair, and a medium build.” Instead, think about the things you notice the first time you meet someone; you really just get a general idea of what they look like. Convey a sense of appearance, rather than a list of details; “Scraggly yellow hair and a grin that seemed almost too wide for his face.”

How to write a hook: a lesson from film adaptations

15 Feb

I love the 2005 film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, but I hate the 2002 film adaptation of the same author’s The Time Machine. Here’s why – and here’s how it will help you write a hook and sell your book.

The War of the Worlds is modernized. The characters are warped. There’s more personal drama than there was in the book. And Tom Cruise is in it. So why do I still like it? Because the central point of the story remains intact: Martians invade Earth, no human weapon can stop them, but ultimately they are defeated by disease – which they long ago eliminated from their own planet.

In The Time Machine, they also changed characters and added personal drama, but that wasn’t what bothered me. Once the Time Traveler gets stranded in the future, the story should get back on track. But it doesn’t, because the two futuristic peoples, the Eloi and the Morlocks, are all wrong. The Eloi are smart, strong, tribal people, who fight the Morlocks as best they can. No doubt the screenwriters thought this was much more interesting than the weak, stupid people that the Eloi were in the book. They almost get the Morlocks right – frightening creatures who live underground, know a lot about machinery, and regularly kidnap Eloi – except that the Morlocks occasionally come out in daylight.

These changes collectively ruin Wells’ original concept. In the book, *SPOILER ALERT* the Time Traveler discovers the Eloi and the Morlocks are both evolved from humans. The Eloi were the upper class – rich and lazy. They paid the lower classes to work for them, and over generations gradually became stupid and weak. The Morlocks were the working class. They spent long hours cooped up in dark factories, growing allergic to the sunlight. But the work kept them sharp, and when other meat sources ran out, they began killing and eating the weak upper class. The masters became the food of the servants.

This was a fascinating and thought-provoking concept – a warning to both classes. Not so with the movie. The Time Traveler just ends up hooking up with the Eloi girl, who is a sort of Xena Warrior Princess, instead of the airheaded child she ought to be. The screenwriters cut the heart out of Wells’ story and replaced it with a cliché.

Is there a moral to this rant? Of course! It’s important to be able to recognize the core of the story, the plot twist or character detail that turns a dime-a-dozen time travel or alien invasion story into something unique and brilliant.

What unique feature is at the heart of your story? Can you describe it in one sentence? That sentence is called a “hook” - your number one tool for selling your book to literary agents, publishers and readers alike. Also known as an elevator pitch, the hook beomes your query letter – which is your foot in the door for getting published.

 Just think twice before you sell the movie rights.

More resources:

More about writing a hook

Hook examples

Word search: the magic diet pill for novels

12 Feb

 DailyWritingTips.com recently published a guest post I wrote called 3 Things the Novelist Can Learn from the Copywriter, roughly 1/3 of which was about brevity. Let’s expand on that!

Brevity is the soul of wit. The fewer the words, the harder they hit.

You’d be amazed how many unnecessary words are weighing down your manuscript, clogging up your sentences and tiring your readers. Fortunately, modern technology has given us an easy way to trim some of this grammar fat: word search!

How do you do a word search? In MS Word, click “Edit” then “Find…” and type in the word you are looking for. If you use a different program, try typing “word search” or “find and replace” into the “Help” search bar.

Got it? Here are eight examples of word calories you can cut:

1. Very

“Very” is a very evil word that sucks the power out of nearly every sentence it appears in. Just look at how very unnecessary “very” is in these sentences from a very old draft of my book:

It would very soon become the same for her.

She vaguely remembered seeing a very bright light coming at her.

He would have to decide very quickly how much he could tell her.

Very soon. Very bright. Very quickly. “Very” is overkill – modifying modifiers.

It would soon become the same for her.

She vaguely remembered seeing a bright light coming at her.

He would have to decide quickly how much he could tell her.

Do a word search in your novel or story for “very” and eliminate all that you can.

2. That

Not as bad as “very,” but still often unnecessary. Try eliminating this one as well.

3. By

“By” is a sign of passive voice, which should almost always be avoided which you should almost always avoid. (Except to preserve clarity or to break up a monotonously-active paragraph.) Search “by” and reword all you can.

      Passive: The ball was thrown over the fence by Billy.

      Active: Billy threw the ball over the fence.

4. –ly

Never use an adverb when the right verb works fine on its own. “Very” is just one example; most adverbs end in “ly.” Do a word search for “ly” and pay special attention to phrases like “walked quickly.” Search thesaurus.com for the root verb, “walk.” Keep clicking words within your results to find the right one. “Trotted” is descriptive enough to replace “walked quickly” – it sounds better, too.

5. In order to

Almost always cut “in order.”

6. The fact that

Depending on the context:

            “Owing/due to the fact that” – replace with “since” or “because”

            “In spite of the fact that” – replace with “though” or “although”

7. The question as to whether

Cut “the question as to”

8. The reason why is that

Replace with “because”

The Elements of Style by Strunk & White gives additional word-trimming advice (rule #17, p. 23-24). This book is the writer’s bible. If you don’t already own it, read it free here.

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5 Tips for Turning Your Short Story Into a Novel

8 Feb

I already posted some tips on keeping your short story from turning into a novel, but what if you want to turn that literary appetizer into a five course meal? Here are five tips to get you all the way through desert.

1. Second-guess yourself.

Some stories just aren’t meant to be 300 pages long. Some are perfect at ten, or five, or even two pages. Ask yourself if you feel satisfied after reading it. If so, leave it short. But if you want to know what happens in the story next, move on to tip #2.

2. Write forward, not backward.

If you followed the advice from my last short story post, you wrote the climax of your would-be novel, and that scene became your short story. Logically, then, you should go back and expand on the parts that lead up to that scene, right? Wrong. If you are writing just to drag out the beginning, that’s all it will be – a drag. Instead, try picking up where you left off at the end of the short story. Ask yourself what happens next.

3. Treat each chapter as its own short story…

I got this advice from someone else; naturally I can’t remember who, but it stuck with me because the idea was intriguing. Imagine a book so tightly constructed that each chapter could stand alone. No extraneous plot exposition; no wasted words. It would be incredible.

4.      …But make them flow together.

No. 3 is great advice if you’re used to writing short fiction, but remember; you are writing a novel, not a collection of short stories. It needs to flow like a single story. If each chapter has buildup, backstory, climax, and conclusion, readers will feel full after only the first course and won’t want to keep reading. Experiment with the placement of your chapter breaks; try ending a chapter at its climax, and beginning the next chapter with the conclusion, cliffhanger style. Once you’ve accomplished that, it’s only a matter of flowing that conclusion into the next part of the story.

5. Read good books. [a.k.a. Writing Law #1]

Two books come to mind when I think of short stories transformed into novels, and they are both by Ray Bradbury. Each is a different take on the process:

The Martian Chronicles

Each chapter follows a different set of characters; each is complete in itself, but each is also a glimpse of a greater whole. Together, the chapters give us a “wide-shot” of the story – complete, because it shows us the big picture, yet less personal, because there is no single protagonist for us to follow throughout the whole story.

Dandelion Wine

Almost the opposite of The Martian Chronicles; although each chapter tells a story in itself, they all follow the same character, and all of the chapters serve a common purpose: the growth of the protagonist. We get a narrower, yet more personal perspective; a “close-up.”

Do these summaries seem vague? Read the books! You’ll learn far more than I could ever teach you in a blog post.

What does “hang a lantern” mean, and how do I use it in my book?

4 Feb

 

One if by land, two if by sea

 

To hang a lantern (or “hang a lamp”) is to call attention to an inconsistency in the story by having a character notice the inconsistency. It’s the writer’s way of telling the reader “I did this on purpose; it’s not a mistake.”

Detective stories are rife with lanterns;

“That’s weird; blank doesn’t usually blank.”

“Oh, it’s probably just because of blank.”

Little did they know, it was actually blank!

There are three reasons to hang a lantern. We’ll use a sample story so we can explore each one.

The inconsistency: Jimmy is not at the Laundromat this Saturday morning – but it’s already been established that Jimmy goes to the Laundromat every Saturday morning. The lantern: Sarah notices Jimmy is not there.

  1.  To create intrigue by pointing out clues

Sarah was at the Laundromat until noon, but there was no sign of Jimmy. Odd.

      2.     To surprise the reader by cluing him in without him knowing it

Sarah scanned the room as she made her way to an idle washing machine, then tried to hide her disappointment when she realized that Jimmy wasn’t there. Of course; he’d mentioned that he might have to work today. She just hadn’t realized, until now, how much she had been looking forward to seeing his crooked grin as he wished her happy birthday. [Sarah returns home later only to discover that Jimmy has planned a surprise party]

    3.       To explain away a plot inconsistency

Sarah’s mind wandered as she watched her socks tumble round and round in the drier. Jimmy had had to work today – some hot project that couldn’t wait until Monday – so she was alone with her thoughts.

In the first example, there’s no explanation for Jimmy’s absence; Sarah simply wonders where he is, which makes us suspect something fishy is going on.

In the second example, Sarah dismisses his absence as nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but focuses on how much she misses him. The writer tricks us into thinking this scene exists only to establish Sarah’s growing feelings for Jimmy – so we are pleasantly surprised when we discover that Jimmy’s absence was actually a sign of his feelings for Sarah.

In the third example, the writer just wanted to give Sarah some time to think, so got Jimmy out of the way for a while with a simple excuse. The parenthetical statement acknowledges that he doesn’t usually work on Saturdays, but offers a plausible explanation for an exception to the rule. This both explains away the inconsistency and lets us know that it’s not important to the plot.

Lanterns are also useful in trilogies and series. Say you leave a plot question unanswered in book one, because you plan to reveal all in book two – but in the meantime, you don’t want your readers to accuse you of overlooking it. Hang a lantern on it; have a character ask himself (or another character) that question, then leave it. Your readers will simply expect the answer in the next book.

A made-up word that will add depth to your characters

1 Feb

 

Kramer bursting through Jerry’s door. Garfield kicking Odie off the table. Michael Scott turning an innocent statement into an innuendo by adding “that’s what she said!”

What do all these things have in common?

They are all arsidities!

What the heck is an arsidity?

  1. A word I made up.
  2. The phonetic spelling for the pronunciation of the acronym RCDT: Recurring Character Development Theme. This is a phrase, object, or quirk that bears significance to a certain character or characters, and appears more than once in a single piece of work.

Wait a second, isn’t that called a “motif”?

Yes and no. A motif is a type of arsidity. A motif represents something – for instance, the sound of footsteps in A Tale of Two Cities represents the oncoming troubles of the characters, particularly Carton’s fate. An arsidity doesn’t always represent something, and is not always “important” – it is just a detail that adds depth to your characters and soul to your story. Arsidities help make a story and its characters more lovable, meaningful, charming, or funny.

More examples of arsidities:

The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) – “my precious”     

The Outsiders (Hinton) – “gallant” and “stay gold”

Ocean’s Eleven – Rusty, Brad Pitt’s character, is eating in almost every scene

Silence of the Lambs – Hannibal Lector never blinks

Star Trek – Spock’s famous “Live long and prosper” gesture; Bones’ “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor not a [fill in the blank]”

None of these arsidities are vital to the plots of these books, movies, and TV shows, but can you imagine them without their arsidities? What a dull world it would be!

Do you use arsidities in your novel? How have they enhanced your character development, world building, and voice?

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