Tag: how to write a novel

Backpacks across the galaxy: how to personalize the epic

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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.”

5 Ways to Make Your Characters Believable

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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.”

Word search: the magic diet pill for novels

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 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

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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?

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photo by Kabilan Subramanian

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.