Category: Writing tips

How to Stop Boring Your Readers with Scenic Description

  By ,
Photo by David Herrera

Photo by David Herrera

You go to visit some friends you haven’t seen in awhile, and find yourself sandwiched between your hosts on the couch with a giant scrapbook over your lap like a seat belt, as they show off the half million pictures of snow-capped mountains they snapped on their most recent vacation.

While we introverts may actually appreciate this in lieu of starting a conversation, it isn’t exactly entertainment. And here’s the awful truth:

You may be doing it to your readers.

In writing, this sin is known as scenic description. No matter how artfully you describe those snow-capped mountains, if it’s longer than a few sentences and not relevant to the plot, it’s boring.

The difference is, your readers don’t have to politely “ooh” and “ah” for two hundred pages. They can simply shut the book.

That brings us to two rules for scenic description:

Rule Number One: Less is more.

Don’t interrupt the climax with a description of janitorial supplies purchased in bulk; just give the reader a sense of the area—if possible, mix it with action—and move on.

Rule Number Two: Scenic description should do more than describe scenery.

Whenever possible, make description do double duty: for instance, use it to illustrate your character’s mood.

This doesn’t mean make it sunny when your hero is happy and rainy when he’s sad: you can use any scene and any type of weather to convey any mood, simply by changing your tone. A sunny day can either warm the cockles of his heart or blithely mock his pain.

Let’s take a noisy tavern as an example:

The creak and slam of the door cut out the howling wind and heralded the music within, so loud he had to shout his order in the barmaid’s ear before taking a seat by the great fire. The crackling of the wood lay down a kind of beat for the lutenist at the other end of the room, who dared the revelers to keep up with his quick fingers. Thudding boots made empty tankards dance on the tables, and spirited singing from the depths of barrel chests dissolved into thunderclap laughter each time a lyric was slurred.

Versus this:

The hinges screeched, the door slammed, and the clamorous indoors suddenly choked off the soft moan of the evening breeze. He had to scream his order to the barmaid, and even as he huddled, sweating, next to the coughing fire, he couldn’t hear his own thoughts over the revelers at the other end of the room, whose discordant bellows and guffaws shook the rafters, dwarfing the lute accompaniment to a tinny whisper.

Notice the facts are the same, but the words I use to deliver those facts have different connotations. First, the positive connotations of words like heralded, great, quick, dance, spirited, laughter. Then the connotations feel of words like clamorous, choking, scream, sweating, coughing, discordant, guffaws, tinny.

The result: you feel, rather than read, the mood. Another example of Show, Don’t Tell.

What are some other ways scenic description can do double-duty? Tell me in the comments!

—

7 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Write

  By

 

Photo by Anthony PC

Photo by Anthony PC

It hardly ever fails. Just when you sit down to write, no matter how long you’ve been waiting for the chance, you suddenly feel like doing anything else.

Check Facebook. Watch Netflix. Clean toilet.

Part of it is being tired. I know. Most of us are writing in the wee spare hours between the full-time job, school, cooking, cleaning, child-rearing and whatnot.

But if you wait to feel like writing, you never will. If you wait for inspiration to find you, it never will. You have to make it happen.

Here are some ways to do that.

1. Publicly commit to a deadline

There’s nothing like accountability. If I wasn’t committed to posting on this blog every Monday and Friday, you’d probably never hear from me. Make your own commitment by meeting regularly with a writer’s group or a critique partner, or try signing up for NaNoWriMo or the 3-Day Novel contest (please note I recommend spending considerable time after these writing marathons editing your work).

2. Keep a favorite book close

Is there a particular book that always gives you the urge to put pen to paper? Keep it close to your writing space and read a few pages when you sit down to write. I find great motivation in Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing.

3. Train your brain

Develop a routine: Choose the same time to write every day (when your mind is freshest, if possible). Listen to the same type of music, drink the same type of tea, light the same scented candle – or all three. In time, the sensory repetition will help to trigger that writing urge in you.

4. Escape from the Internet

Web 2.0 has turned the Information Age into the Distraction Age. Remove yourself completely from the temptation to surf by taking your laptop to a place without Wi-Fi, or just use a notebook or old school typewriter (don’t you love the sound anyway?).

5. Take the hint

If you can’t get the motivation to write because you’re just bored with it, chances are your readers will be bored with it, too. Find a more interesting way to tell the story. Revisit your plot to find opportunities to increase drama and decrease exposition.

6. Get your 8 hours and drink a cup

I’ve heard some people don’t need a full 8 hours of sleep per night, but personally, I function much better after 8 hours of sleep vs. even 7. And when you’ve had a full night’s rest, caffeine doesn’t just resuscitate your zombie self – it makes you want to write and create and be generally brilliant at turbo speed. NOTE: I decrease my coffee consumption throughout the week (e.g. one cup Monday, down to a quarter cup on Friday, another full cup the following Monday) so I don’t have to keep upping the dose to get the same “buzz.” This method also prevents caffeine headaches if you go a day without it.

7. Visualize the finished piece

I know this sounds rather hippie-zen, but it’s actually pretty powerful. Do you want to be just working on this book forever? Or do you want to hold the hardcover edition in your hands with your own name staring back at you in glorious black and white?

—

Thanks to Spider42 for suggesting this topic. Want a topic you want talked about? Drop it in the Suggestion Box!

coffee

7 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Write

What’s as Dangerous as a Fairy Tale Ending – and How to Avoid It

  By , ,
Photo by Joe Penna

Photo by Joe Penna

Today’s topic comes to us from Jubilare:

“I worry a lot about the dysfunction of my characters being taken as an approval of dysfunction in relationships.…One can avoid idealizing the flaws, sure, but how does one accept that humans and relationships are flawed without sending out the message that people should be satisfied with potentially abusive relationships…without seeming to say ‘look at the nice romance you can have with people who have X dangerous flaws’?”

We have a tendency to write about seriously flawed people. Depressed addicts with childhood scars and abandonment issues. Let’s face it: they’re just more fun.

But through this, we risk giving our readers a skewed view of the world. Just as sugary-perfect princess endings can train little girls to believe their lives will be perfect once they get married, moving tales of troubled souls can lead readers to believe dysfunctional relationships are the only real kind; that the best they can hope for is to find poetry in the pain. Worse, they might even believe such relationships are romantic, something to chase after.

What guy doesn’t want to hold the manic pixie dream girl when she cries?

What girl doesn’t want to soothe the nightmares of the war-torn bad boy?

Now, some readers will romanticize dysfunctional relationships no matter what you do, just as some will find sexual innuendos, political statements, or religious dogma in places you never intended to put them. That can’t be helped.

But we have a responsibility to do what we can: both to faithfully represent reality and to give readers the courage to improve that reality.

Here are three ways you can do that when writing about dysfunctional relationships. Try using at least two wherever the need arises.

Know the signs.

Read up on the signs of abusive relationships so you know whether or not you’re writing about one. Also research the typical physical and behavioral struggles that come with your character’s flaws. Show realistic consequences; don’t pull any punches when it comes to the pain of living in an unhealthy relationship, even if your hero is the one inflicting that pain.

Show an alternative.

Use secondary characters to show a healthier version of the flawed relationship in question. For instance, if your hero’s parents had a horrible marriage, and he struggles with knowing how to treat the girl he loves, give him a happy aunt and uncle, or a best friend with a good marriage. Give him (and your readers) something to aspire to.

Include a victory.

Every story has a physical plot and an emotional one. A dysfunctional relationship is an emotional plot. Don’t just leave it as-is at the end: make your hero come to terms with these problems at the climax, have him make an ultimate decision, and lead him to at least a small victory in the end.

A note about victory:

Be careful how your hero comes by that victory. Real healing is difficult and painful; it doesn’t happen instantly. Her love alone can’t make him stop drinking. His love alone can’t pull her out of a clinical depression.

But maybe it can help them take the first step.

—

Got a writing topic you want talked about? Drop it in the Suggestion Box.

What is Suspension of Disbelief?

  By
Photo by Adam Hodgson

Photo by Adam Hodgson

I felt awkward as the photographer told me to turn my head this way and that, and our production director played AC/DC from her iPhone to set the mood. Between instructions, the photographer kept up small talk about Jethro Tull and praised my modeling abilities. “You’re a natural!” he said.

I knew, of course, that wasn’t true.

But I was willing to let a part of myself believe it was true, because I’d be more comfortable if I thought I was doing well. Therefore I would take better pictures. He knew that. I knew that.

We had entered into an unspoken contract known as a suspension of disbelief.

This contract requires something from each party. I had to agree to believe, on a superficial level at least, something I knew was not true. He, in turn, had to keep the lie within the realm of plausibility. It was not too far-fetched an idea that at least one person out of several he photographed that day would be good at tilting their head at aesthetic angles.

But if he’d said I was the prettiest, most talented subject he’d ever had the honor of photographing, he would have broken the contract. I’d become uncomfortable, suspicious he was mocking me or insulting my intelligence with such a brazen lie.

So how does this apply to fiction?

Well, here’s another example.

I was in the third book of the Inkheart trilogy, reading about a couple of characters escaping from a dungeon. I’ll redact names to prevent spoilers:

——- threw a rope down. It’s didn’t come low enough, but at a whisper from above it began growing longer, lengthened by fibers made of flames…They would have to climb fast to keep from burning their skin.

“That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed under my breath, “They’d burn their hands as soon as they touched it.”

And then I burst out laughing at myself. This was a story about people who could read things into being. Where women could turn into birds and back again, where men could command fire to take the forms of animals. And I hadn’t had trouble believing in any of that. But climbable fire – this was too much?

Yes. Because magic doesn’t eliminate the necessity of rules in a story. Anything can happen within fiction—but only within the framework of the fictional world and the tone of the story.

It’s perfectly acceptable in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s trilogy when Arthur Dent discovers the secret to human flight is to throw yourself at the ground and miss–because that nonsensical-yet-witty logic fits in a universe where six times nine equals 42.

But in a serious story—even a magical one—fire cannot support weight or fail to burn the skin instantly when grasped. Otherwise it’s not fire.

The moral of the story

Don’t blame your readers for failing to suspend their disbelief if you write something that breaks the laws of your own world. Most readers pick up a book with every intention of suspending their disbelief.

It’s up to you to make it possible for them to do it. Take it from Mark Twain:

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

—

Your plot is useless without this

  By , ,
Image by Francisco Osorio

Image by Francisco Osorio

–

A hundred strangers cling to one another as their runaway train thunders toward a dead end.

Across town, the only woman you’ve ever loved is strapped to a time bomb.

Save her, keep your heart from breaking. But a thousand other hearts get broken instead.

“My husband!” a woman screams as she runs up beside you, clutching a small boy to her chest. “My husband is on that train!”

Save the train, do the right thing, the city will throw you a parade. But all you’ll see through the floats and confetti will be the grief-ridden faces of your true love’s family and the knowledge that you’ll never see her again.

You inhale the deep breath you’ll need for the flight across town.

You’re frozen in mid-takeoff. You can’t take your eyes off the boy in the woman’s arms. He’s the age you were when your father was killed. Young, but you can see in his face he knows what’s happening. Because you felt the same.

Oh, snap. You curse and hammer the keyboard. You threw the little boy in to milk the drama, not to change your hero’s mind—but now you see there’s no turning back. This is going to mean rewrites.

For all the dramatic events that happen around your hero, there are equally dramatic events happening inside him. Events that move him to action. If you don’t keep track of what’s going on inside his head, you won’t be able to predict how he’ll react to any given situation, and by the time you realize it, you might be in a terrible plot bind.

Keep that from happening by mapping your hero’s emotional journey along with the plot. Here are a few guidelines to help.

Outline your hero’s history.

Three forces influence your hero’s decisions: logic, emotions, and morals. What makes sense? What feels best? What’s right? How each of this forces affects him is first determined by his past. So start by outlining his history with questions like:

  • What’s the most traumatic thing he’s ever experienced?
  • What’s the safest he’s ever felt and why?
  • What’s the worst sin he’s ever committed?
  • Which two people have the biggest positive and negative influence on him?
  • What does he want most?
  • (Here’s more help getting to know him)

Use his history to determine how he will react to each major plot point.

The severity of each situation relative to his personal demons will determine his decision. And every decision he makes will affect future events, which, in turn, affect him right back. As the story progresses and the stakes are raised, his decision process will change. Emotional turmoil clouds his moral judgment. Righteous anger clouds his logical judgment. It’s a tumbling system of cause and effect, playing on your hero’s weaknesses and leading to the climax.

Equip him for the ultimate decision.

At the climax, your hero must make one final decision between right and wrong. The forces influencing him are now one big mess of everything that’s happened so far. Of longing and pain and fear.

Make sure that mess includes the motivation for him to make the decision he is supposed to make. If you want him save the people on the train, kill off his father; plant the boy. But if you want him save the girl, you’d better plant something early on that will undermine his empathy for the boy and push him in a different direction.

And if you want him to find a clever way to save everyone (like they do in all the movies), you’d better give him a memory that inspires the answer.

—