The story is in the details – make them shine!

 The critique partners’ comments were unanimous: are all these details really necessary?

I admit, it surprised me. My writing has sometimes been described as “lean.” All I’d done in this chapter was get a secondary character in the room with the protagonist and generate some tension before sending them off to examine a crime scene. The details – a door, a kitchen table with the protagonist latest cooking project, a clothing change. Was that too much, especially for a mystery whose structure requires clues hidden in a morass of, well, details?

The question, I realized at last, was not so much that there were too many details but that the readers couldn’t grasp what was pertinent to the plot and what was disguise. What was needed for setting and character development and what was intended to lead readers astray.

And that all of those details must do not only their plot-centered jobs but be intriguing enough to let readers lose themselves in the story. To set them happily off after the red herrings but still allow them to say, “of course, that’s how it had to be!” at the final reveal.

This epiphany set me searching for what wiser heads have done with the issue of “details,” such as agent/author/instructor Donald Maass’s suggestions for world building: beyond science fiction and fantasy at last fall’s online Breakout Novel Intensive workshop.

“Whatever the setting, it’s a unique world,” Maass told his audience at the virtual workshop. “What is the biggest event in recent history that has affected everyone?. . . If set in a small town, who’s the mayor? Who’s the social arbiter? The secret force?”

See the details? Image: Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay  

And on character building, Maass asked such questions (among others) as: How old is the protagonist? Remember, we’re different in our twenties than in our forties! What characteristic clothes does the protagonist (or any character) wear. “I’ve read 40 pages of everybody’s stories,” Maass said, “and I have no idea how any of them dress!”

What does the character do for a living? What does she look like? What family does she have? Who are her friends? Does she have friends? What’s her favorite food? What does she read? Or does she read? What does she do for recreation? What does her home look like? Smell like? What would other characters say is her defining quality?

On plot development: What is the main character doing on the day the story starts?   What are the events that would be going on in the protagonist’s life even without the plot? What is a personal life problem that might usually be easy to fix, but in this case it’s not? Why doesn’t the usual solution work? What is a smaller problem, even a funny problem that could bedevil the protagonist?

See what’s going on here? Details – but not throwaway ones.

These are only a sampling of details from Maass’s workshop relevant to any story. Now, what about those elusive clues so essential to mysteries? For cozy mysteries like the one I’m currently writing, graphic violence is off the table. And with an amateur detective – again the staple of cozies – police aid is limited, even impossible. At most, she has a friend of a friend on the police force – possibly a family member. But even these probably don’t take her skills seriously.

Access to crime labs and major investigative tools is also limited in cozies. Take away DNA, fingerprints, any technology not readily available to civilians and what’s left are basically the eyes, ears, and other senses available to all of us. What does she see and hear? At this point, the character’s professional skills may come into play. If she’s a cook, what does she taste or smell?

If, as in another staple of cozies, the character has paranormal help, what does it consist of and how reliable is it? Not that she’s likely to mention this except to people she most trusts. But are they really trustworthy?

She also has her social contacts. Who can she talk to – or not? What does she know about the background, the loves and hates, fortunes and misfortunes of people in the setting? Fortunately for cozy mystery’s amateur detectives, she’s working in a limited setting with an equally limited number of suspects. It’s a village, a small town, a school, an island. Details, details, details!

Fortunately, she also has some technology. Contemporary cozies recognize the ubiquity of cell phones and computers, but the key to using these is often to make them unworkable.

“Where technology is not, is where the bodies are buried,” was a suggestion gleaned from Dallas mystery writer Kathleen Kent at the Roanoke Writers Conference, another virtual gem from 2020. (See “Conference-go-round: down & dirty crime writing” at this site.) However, please limit the number of times the character can let her cell phone battery die!

It’s been said both that the devil is in the details and that God is. Either way, it’s up to us not to neglect the importance of those dratted details.

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Need more? Oh, yes! Check out another post, “What’s not to love about cozy mysteries?” also at this site. Of course, it’s chock full of details… Or check out the 2021 version of
BONI still virtual!

To put emotion on the page, you gotta dig!

I went into author/agent Donald Maass’s workshop this fall with a major concern: how to put emotions on my pages in ways that would rock the worlds of both the characters and readers. Steeped in the “show, don’t tell” dictum, I had shied away from flat out telling readers that a character felt sad. Or mad. Or whatever. But when I tried to “show” character emotions through their actions and expressions, critique partners were sometimes left feeling puzzled about exactly what was going on.

 

Image: Stefan Keller from Pixabay

As usual, Maass had something to say about that, although it was so seemingly counterintuitive I initially rebelled: don’t either show or tell the character’s primary emotion. Instead, write something else the character is feeling.

 

Are you like me in thinking, what? why?

 

The reasoning behind Maass’s answer, which he lays out specifically in his book, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface, is that “. . . readers may believe they’re living a story along with its characters. Actually, they’re not. Readers are having their own experience that is merely occasioned by what’s on the page. . . (the novelist) is not causing readers to feel as the novelist does, or as his characters do, but rather inducing for each reader a unique emotional journey through a story.”

 

He justified his answer by using a (ta-da!) show, acknowledging its hackneyed nature in his self-deprecating way: “His guts twisted in fear.”

 

Isn’t that supposed to terrify readers, he asked. But does it? Read it again and notice whether it evokes any reaction in your gastrointestinal system other than, perhaps, indigestion. The reason such writing fails to have the desired effect, he insisted, is because we as writers are asking readers to feel something they don’t want to feel. (Obviously, who would want, well. . . )

 

High, primary emotions such as terror, rage, even love, Maass believes, are too much for readers to process, and even less memorable. (He claimed to have had this epiphany while talking to a friend who writes thrillers – hardly a genre in which we might expect layers of emotional depth.)

 

The work around he advised involves sneaking up on readers’ emotions. Jot down something else your character is feeling – a second level of emotion. Then another emotion the character feels at exactly the same moment – a third level of emotion.

 

“When we feel fear, we can also feel excited, anticipatory, shamed, even glad,” Maass noted.

 

Does the character believe whatever else she is feeling (as well as fearful) is the right thing to feel? Is it a bad thing? Does she feel justification, guilt, revulsion? Is this a necessary and natural way to feel?

 

In describing how the character feels about her feelings – metaphors welcome -- especially the inner conflict of those feelings, the writer can “create the emotional space the reader needs to process their own emotions, to fill in the feeling that they are experiencing” as they relive their own remembered emotional memories.

 

These second and third level emotions also surprise readers with their unexpectedness. And “when you’re working with the internal life of a character, make it surprising!”

 

And while we’re surprising our future readers – and ourselves – how about using our post-NaNoWriMo revision months to find a dozen or more moments of high emotion, take them apart and explore that third level?

 

Have we forgotten my original problem, the old show vs. tell dilemma? Maass recommended resources such as The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression in the Writers Helping Writers series for help with showing through the body language, vocal cues, and visceral reactions associated with emotions. Not that telling is bad in itself, he noted. It’s all in how you do it, and the deep dives of third level emotions can be effective even in telling.

 

(I highly recommend Maass’s book, The Emotional Craft of Writing, whether you’ve been able to attend one of his workshops or not. Both it and The Emotion Thesaurus are available on Amazon. And while you’re at it, dear reader, also check out my August 5, 2020, post on this site, “Shh! Show, don’t tell – unless you must!” with more tips from romance writer Lori Freeland.)

Dive deep into summer reading, writing events

School’s nearly out, but two of the three “R’s” still apply all summer long. That’s reading and ‘riting, of course, and summer 2017 is particularly rich in rrr’s, with classes by internationally bestselling authors, as well as a plethora of free ways for readers and writers to keep their skills sharp. But don’t delay. Some of these events are going, going, nearly gone, including:

image: wikimedia commons

May 23-July 25: Dallas Museum of Art’s Arts & Letters Live programs continue. Ticket costs are typically $40 for the public, with discounts for DMA members and students/educators. Most events are at the museum, 1717 N. Harwood, Dallas. See the site for details and ticket information.

June 1: This is the deadline for author applications for the Local Authors Book Fair at the Audelia Road Branch of the Dallas Public Library. Authors from the surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth area may apply here, or contact librarian Elizabeth Kwan at Elizabeth.kwan@dallascityhall for information. The book fair, where authors may sell their works directly to the public, occurs July 29, 2 – 4 p.m. at the library, 10045 Audelia Road, Dallas, Texas.

June 2-4: Literary agent Donald Maass returns to Texas for a three-day workshop on the Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story beneath the Surface, at the Hyatt Place Houston Airport, 300 Ronan Park Place, Houston, Texas. At the time of this writing (Monday night), only 11 seats were still available. Cost: $529. See the site for details and registration.

June 3-August 12: Mayor’s Summer Reading Challenge at the Dallas Public Library. Kids up to age 18 can keep their reading skills honed and earn free books, and coupons or passes to recreational events and attractions by reading (or being read to, for the youngest tots) at least 20 minutes a day for 10 days. Every 10 days, pick up a new prize, up to five times over the summer. Adults may also earn an entry in grand prize drawings for each book they read. Register at any library branch.

June 7 – July 26: Here’s a freebie just for readers! The annual Rejebian Summer Review Series at Highland Park United Methodist Church, 3300 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, every Wednesday in June and July. Entertaining book reviews free at 7 p.m., beginning with Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill, reviewed by Lurline Morrow, a member of the Dallas Professional Book Reviewers Association. Add an optional dinner at 5:30 p.m. for $12, but please RSVP by Tuesday noon before the program, at 214-523-2249 or stanfordr@hpumc.org so they’ll know how much food to cook!

June 9-10: Robert E. Howard Days, Cross Plains, Texas. Celebrate the life of the Texas creator of Conan and other classic fantasy heroes. Except for the celebration banquet (cost $15) all events are free and open to the public, including tours of Howard’s home (and now museum) at the junction of J Street and Texas Highway 36 in Cross Plains. See the site for details.

June 16-17: Internationally bestselling Australian author Kate Forsyth visits Texas for two events, the Cactus & Kangaroos Readerathon (6/16) at Half Price Books in Dallas, (address), 6:30 – 9:30 p.m. Cost: $49, which includes a copy of either of two bestone of two Forsyth books, Bitter Greens or The Wild Girl. Only 100 tickets available!

On June 17, Forsyth teaches two writers’ intensives from 9 a.m. – noon, and 1:30 – 4:30 p.m. at the Richardson Woman’s Club, 200 N. Cliffe, Richardson. Cost is $99 for each of the sessions, or $169 for both writing intensives (includes lunch). Or get the Super-fan Package for Friday’s Readerathon, both books, and all day Saturday for $199. Sponsored by the Writers Guild of Texas and W.O.R.D (Writers Organizations ‘Round Dallas). See the WORD site for course descriptions and tickets.

June 30-July 2: 2017 Agents & Editors Conference, Writers League of Texas, at the Hyatt Regency Austin, 208 Barton Springs Road, Austin. Workshops, panels, networking events, plus one on one conferences with agents and editors (available for additional charge). Cost: $439 for Writers League members, $499 for nonmembers. See the site for details and list of agents attending.

July 21-23: Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, Hilton DFW Lakes Executive Conference center, 1800 State Highway 26, Grapevine, Texas, is a forum for writers of narrative nonfiction. Speakers, workshops and panels, as well as a variety of writing contests. Cost: $425. See the site for details and registration.

August 4-6: ArmadilloCon is Austin’s science fiction and fantasy convention – plus a writing workshop. (Note: manuscript deadline for the workshop is June 11.) At the Omni Southpark hotel, 4140 Governors Row, Austin. Cost: $50 for the con (until early registration closes in July), $90 for the workshop, which includes convention membership. See the site for tickets and additional details.

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And here’s a sneak preview of two out of this world events this fall: Robert McKee, who wrote the book on Story (literally), brings his 3-day writing seminar to Austin October 6-8, at the Sheraton Austin Hotel at the Capitol, 701 East 11^th St., Austin. Seminar tuition: $865, tuition plus Final Draft Software package, $995. See the site for details and registration.

November 2-5: World Fantasy 2017 Convention, Wyndham Riverwalk, 111 East Pecan St., San Antonio. Attending membership $225, increasing to $275 June 1. See the site for details, registration, and list of special guests.

Wordcraft -- Spawn of the QueryShark, part II

Last Monday I gave readers a recap of the query letter contest run by the DFW Writers’ Conference and my prize as a contest finalist--a critique from literary agent Donald Maass of a query for my real novel. Today, fellow contest finalist Kim Moravec offers her query and critique as well, hoping others can learn from her experience. For more about Kim, follow her on Twitter: @kmoravec314. See the AgentQuery site she references at www.agentquery.com/.

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I was particularly excited to be named as a finalist in the DFW Writers Conference Query contest, thanks to my rewrite of a hypothetical query letter for Finnegan’s Wake. It meant that Donald Maass, New York super-agent and author of Writing the Breakout Novel would critique my query. And dammit, it was a good query. I’d spent a lot of effort learning to write queries, and this particular one had undergone some intense critique over at the AgentQuery website. That is not to say that every critiquer there liked it. There were some who thought the plot was confusing and frankly, unbelievable.

To be noticed by an agent in a sea of thousands, the query must be short, snappy, and crystal clear. Faced with an 80,000-word novel, it is difficult to tease out the critical threads that will both make sense and fascinate an agent. My plot, in particular, relies on a couple of bizarre turns of fate that do have a basis in reality (I do my research, honest) but don’t follow the tropes common in modern fiction.

This is the final query I sent to Donald Maass, with his comments: 

 

Finnegan may live in a bowl of water, but don’t let his ten-second memory fool you. This psychic fish will tell you the winner of the Super Bowl – for a fee.

DM: This confused me right away. I had to read it over twice to figure out that Finnegan is actually, really a fish. Call me naïve, but in a query I come in expecting to read about a human. Maybe try a different way into this clever conceit? Something like, “Can a psychic fish predict the winner of the Super Bowl? You bet—for a fee. That’s just one of the successful scams that teenager Rain Wooten runs online.”

Finnegan is just one of the many online scams teenager Rain Wooten uses to fund her dad’s undercover FBI activities—that super-top-secret, not-quite-legal work that keeps the nation safe in dangerous times. She also hacks the dark underbelly of the internet, looking for evidence of the next major terrorist attack.

DM: This is unusual and interesting, but…uh, doesn’t the FBI have plenty of money to run undercover investigations? Would they really hire a teenager to run online scams? (Imagine the Congressional hearings!) I know you’re setting up a twist but the synopsis at this point is far fetched and working against you. So, maybe play on that very far-fetched quality something like this: “…keeps the nation safe in dangerous times—or so Rain believes.”

Then, when her scams attract the attention of the real FBI, Rain discovers her dad never worked for them. He’s nothing but a con man – keeping her earnings for himself and killing anyone who discovers the truth.

DM: That’s a fine twist but is it really possible that a talented teen hacker wouldn’t figure out that her dad isn’t really an FBI agent? Really? I’ll accept that he’s a talented con but you need to show me a smidgen of proof here to alleviate the oh-come-on feeling I’m getting.

But the terrorists Rain’s been hunting? They’re real. No one with a badge believes her anymore, and unless Rain abandons her desire for revenge [DM: Revenge against whom?] and finds the bombers before the end of the day, one hundred thousand people at the State Fair of Texas will die.

DM: Cool story but this query is heavy on plot, light on what it all means for Rain. I’d like to feel something for her. How does she reconcile to the discovery that her dad is a crook and murderer? Is that even possible?

FINNEGAN’S AWAKE [DM: Cute title!] is a 78,000 word YA thriller, loosely inspired by British conman Robert Hendy-Freegard, who impersonated an MI5 agent for more than a decade. The math and computer hacks throughout the book are informed by my career in computer science.

DM: Ah, nice. The professional close to the query is brief and good.

Donald Maass is an incredibly polite critiquer, and there's a lot of little gems for me to take away from this (he liked the title, yay!), but the upshot is that this is a query that is short and snappy, but not crystal clear.  Ironically, it echoes some of the harsher comments I received from that unhappy critiquer at AgentQuery.  After researching the comments he'd left for others, I'd decided to ignore his comments because I sensed a troll.  It goes to show, even if you don't like the delivery of some criticism, you ignore it at your cost.

When Robert Hendy-Freegard's victims were discovered, they were living in extreme poverty, malnourished, isolated, and terrified.  Despite her technological knowledge, Rain begins the story in a similar state, and I think this is perhaps the key thread that is missing from the query.  By the end, her single-minded moral code and ability to endure discomfort helps her save thousands of lives.  I just have to figure out how to weave that in without preaching or telling.

And, oh yeah, I should probably mention that Finnegan is a fish.

(Next Monday, mystery writer/instructor Daniel J. Hale takes a journey through the plotting of a novel.)

Wordcraft -- Spawn of the QueryShark, part I

Several months ago, I found an article at the DFW Writers Conference site about a query contest. All it involved was writing a purported query to a literary agent or editor for a classic novel. The prize was nice--a free critique of a query letter about the contestant’s real novel by agent/author Donald Maass. And there were no fees. My kind of contest.

I sent in an entry, then forgot about it until May, when I learned from DFW blogger Tex Thompson that my entry was a finalist. In a moment of dazed joy, I promised to post the query and Maass’s comments online for the edification of other writers. I’d thought I’d done a pretty good job. Wrong! But in the interest of helping other writers, here’s the whole thing, with Maass’s comments and what I learned from them.

Originally, Thompson had posted that if contestants really wanted to learn how to craft a query letter, the place to go was the blog of literary agent Janet Reid, a.k.a. the Query Shark, who “ruthlessly (yet generously!) tears apart query letters to help beginning writers improve their craft. Do yourself a favor and read the whole archive.”

I recommend QueryShark.  As happens all too often with Blogger, I can't get a working link to Reid's blog, but you should be able to get it to come up by typing http://queryshark.blogspot.com or http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com into a search engine.  In the meantime, see what QueryShark has spawned.

　

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Dear Agent:

What recovering alcoholic Emma Farouk wants more than anything is to keep her disabled daughter, Suzy, safe. She figures she’s on track to do that. She’s been clean and sober for more than a year. She’s now married to a long-time friend. And her first husband, the one whose name is listed as “father” on Suzy’s birth certificate, is recently, conveniently dead.

DM: I like that opening “everything is good” paragraph and the subtle ways it signals that everything is not going to stay okay.

But Emma’s new husband, Dr. Jilani (Jim) Farouk, has problems. Ever since he finished medical school, he’s sent money to Pakistan to support his widowed mother. Now, federal agents have begun to question why he keeps sending payments years after his mother’s death. If Jim could bring himself to tell the truth about the long-ago rodeo accident that killed his best friend, the feds would back off. But it’s a truth that could ruin his career.

DM: Lost me here. The money mysteriously going to Pakistan is great but then…a secret surrounding a rodeo death? Huh? How are those things connected? (You might make the mystery of that connection the point of the paragraph.) Also, you have stopped telling Emma’s story here, you’re reporting a plot complication. Say (briefly) how this impacts Emma.

Then early parole frees Emma’s violent ex-boyfriend--and Suzy’s unacknowledged father--Sherman McMillan. He wants his daughter. He’s not going to let Emma’s new husband or even Suzy’s own fragile emotional state stop him from gaining custody. And that’s the one thing Emma won’t allow.

DM: Villain wants daughter back, big problem for Emma. Well, okay. The problem is sad, and hopefully scary, but also not particularly special. Is there a twist? Is the villain, say, violent in one particularly gruesome way? Also, paragraph 2 and 3 aren’t connected. I feel like this needs one more paragraph to circle back to Emma, her challenges and changes, to tie it all together.

WILD HORSES is an 80,000-word contemporary suspense novel set in Texas and Wyoming and told from multiple viewpoints.
　

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Maass started out with kind words about the opening paragraph. But as his next comments indicate, my following paragraphs squandered the limited space of a standard one-page query by straying into subplot territory. And of course, I gave the villain too little credit. In the next verstion, I'll to stay focused on the main character and conflict, as Maass suggests in his final “tie it all together“ comment.

I wasn’t the only contestant to receive a critique from Maass. Another finalist, Kim Moravec, also received a critique about her query. Next Monday, she shares her query on her YA thriller, Finnegan’s Awake, with Maass’s comments and her own insights.
　

Wordcraft -- The 21st century’s changing fiction

“What’s happening with fiction in the twenty-first century?” author/agent Donald Maass asked the writers who turned out for his workshop at this year’s DFW Writers’ Conference. “I started to notice changes a couple of years ago when I looked at the New York Times hardcover bestseller list.”

The names of the authors, primarily of thrillers were, for the most part, familiar. What was different were the numbers indicating how long a book had been on the bestseller list. The numbers generally were small, usually single digits, indicating short durations on the list.

But when he looked at the bestseller list of trade paperbacks, the venue for books first published in hardcover, he found books that had been on the bestseller list “40 weeks, 44 weeks, even 111 weeks.” What he also noticed was that “these books with long legs were books that had been published as literary. Literary fiction selling at bestseller levels?

“Nothing can explain why these books are successful except people are having an amazing reading experience and telling their friends. Buzz doesn’t last two years. It’s the book itself that doing that. I started reading to find out what these books are doing. They’re beautifully written. And they have a great story.”

What does he mean by a great story? It’s not necessarily nonstop action. The prompts he gives us for writing great story include suggestions like “writing the thing you’re afraid to write down because it’s too painful, too scary, too wrong, too inappropriate. What’s the moment when your protagonist says the thing you can’t say? Can you write it that straight, that direct, that undiluted?”

Maass isn’t more than average in height. He’s slightly built, okay looking but no head turner, the kind of guy you’d pass on the street without a second glance. And probably many of us at the workshop, many of you reading this, have read his books--Writing the Breakout Novel (with its companion workbook), The Fire in Fiction, and the newest, Writing 21^st Century Fiction. But he’s standing in front of us, so intense he’s electric, pushing us to do these exercises, right now. We write, mostly in notebooks because we’re afraid of running our computer batteries down in a room with limited power outlets. We write about the scary, the painful, the inappropriate.

We do the same for other emotions. “Don’t just name the emotion,” Maass tells us. “Describe the experience of having this emotion.”

He goes on. “Let’s take some of this emotional work we’ve been doing and build an arc, the change a character goes through. How can that transformation, the complete change in a human being infuse the whole story? What is the protagonist’s worst habit, failing, blind spot? Where does this flaw humiliate your character? If you’re got that already, try to make it stronger.

I find the room almost unbearably warm. Others complain it’s too cold. Problems with the thermostat, or symptoms of our own inner turmoil? And wait, we haven’t even gotten to the beautiful writing part.

“Pretty words, lovely images are often what we call beautiful writing,” Maass says. “But there are better ways. Write in it generic words. Now create another event that’s the same thing, but smaller.”

We write more, about locations, time, characters. What does any of this have to do with beautiful writing?

“We’re creating parallels and reversals,” Maass says. “Things that associate in the readers’ minds.” As do symbols. “Go to the climax,” he tells us. “Pick one object there, one thing your protagonist would particularly notice. How many times can you plant this image, this object in this novel?

“It’s not all about lovely imagery. When you give readers a great reading experience, what you’re actually doing it giving extra layers of meaning. When you start writing from a place that’s personal, when you let go of the fear or embrace the fear and let it guide you, you’re writing twenty-first century fiction.”

(Next Monday--about that scary stuff? How about this for scary--I’ll show you the sample query letter I submitted to Maass. And what he said about it, and what I learned.)

Wordcraft -- Character: The likeability factor

I''ve lost the likeable character lottery -- again, after being turned down for the Sword & Sorceress anthology with a rejection letter from editor Elisabeth Waters that said, "This is a perfectly good story, but. . . "

Hey, wait!  She didn't actually say the characters were unlikeable, did she?  But I'd better turn to those who can write with more authority on the magic that makes a character -- specifically the main character, the protagonist -- someone readers (and that includes editors) will want to spend their valuable time with.

One of my favorite books adddressing this subject is the late Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat!"  Not least because it makes me laugh.  Although it's aimed at screenwriters, his discussion of story structure and character can apply to other forms of writing.  As he describes the concept, the "save the cat" scene is "the scene where we meet the hero and the hero does something -- like saving a cat -- that defines who he is and makes us, the audience, like him. . . . You must take the time to frame the hero's situation in a way that makes us root for him, no matter who he is or what he does."

Or as writer and agent Donald Maass puts it in his "Fire in Fiction," our job as writers is to create a bond between our readers and our protagonist.  And that's an immediate bond, on the first page if possible, not the last page or hidden in the depths of the story.  To do this, he said, we must give the readers a reason to care.

I love and care about all my characters, as you love and care for yours.  They're the children of our imagination.  And like good parents, we love our children no matter how weird or naughtly or -- let's be frank -- how unloveable they can sometimes be.  But passing out snapshots of our kids at their unloveable moments isn't going to make random strangers care about them.  We need to show pictures of the kids at their best, remembering that their best may be when they're soaked in sweat and mud.

Show the picture of her standing up for a bullied friend.  Or the one of him hugging his brother instead of hitting him.

In Maass's words, "Demonstrating a character trait that is inspiring does cause readers to open their hearts."

(While pondering editor Waters's words, I read fellow blogger Deborah Walker's wickedly funny post "Rejectomancy," about finding meaning in rejections.  See her post at http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.com/  Next Wednesday:  "The Passage" author Justin Cronin tells us what it's like to get a multimillion dollar advance for a novel -- and what happens next.)
 

Wordcraft -- The write rules and how to break them

At the instigation of blogger Kristen Lamb, I've expanded my blogging topics.  Monday's blog, Totally Texas, features people, places and events around the state.  Wednesday's Wordcraft deals with the art and science of the writing life.  Friday's Adventure Classics features iconic writing with themes of action and wonder. 

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In her workshop at the DFW Writers Conference, agent Amy Boggs told her audience that she was going to show them how to break writing rules (don’t we all wish!).  But before we could know how to break rules, we had to know what they were.  So here’s today’s quiz on writing rules and who made them.  Answers will come later in this post, but give yourself extra points if you don’t have to look them up.

a)What famous science fiction writer stated, “multiple exclamation points are the mark of a diseased mind”?  (Don’t just sit there!  Answer!!  Time’s running out!!!)

b)Which one beseeched us to “use the time of a total stranger in such a way they won’t feel it’s wasted”?  (Hint – it’s the same one who advised, “write to please just one person; if you open the window and try to make love to the world, you’ll get pneumonia.”)

c)Which crime fiction writer noted “if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it”?

d)And, for 10 extra bonus points, what literary agent’s list of rules ends with “don’t start a book in bed”?

All of that adds up to, well, I have no idea how much, except the right to feel superior.  But they were fun.  I promise not to forget them, even if I try.  So how do we break the rules and leave readers (not to mention agents and editors) begging for more?  Almost always, in Amy’s opinion, by developing a character’s emotional ties.  (Personally, I’d draw the line at multiple exclamation points.  No amount of emotional tie can help there.  I’ve been known to drive straight to the nearest used bookstore to dump novels that exceeded the legal limit on exclamation points – not to mention ellipses.  Don’t even get me started.)

Other ways to break the rules and get away with it?  Subtlety helps.  So does a great voice.  Although I’ve found that subtlety and voice are among those things that nobody can describe but everybody claims to know when they see them.  Stick with emotional connections.  Who loves the character?  Who does the character love?  To my personal amazement, I’ve had editors tell me a particular character was strong even on the opening pages when she had done almost nothing.  Instead, another character described how much he loved her.  But romantic love isn’t the only strong connection.  Amy illustrated the strength of connections between brothers and sisters by quoting the opening of The Hunger Games, which begins with the protagonist waking up in her bed.  And that’s from a book Amy said she’d loved to have agented.

About the answers to those quiz questions?  a)Terry Pratchett, b)Kurt Vonnegut (who also said Flannery O’Connor broke all his rules except the one about wasting the time of strangers), c)Elmore Leonard.  Question d)is Amy’s.  But even that, of course, can be broken.

The rest of Amy’s rules? 1)Show, don’t tell (who could leave that off?).  2)Don’t address the reader directly (for theater buffs -- don’t break the fourth wall).  3)Back story and detailed descriptions bog a story down, especially at the beginning.  4)Start with action.  5)Don’t philosophize (includes no lecturing). 6)Don’t start in bed means don’t have your character in bed – dreaming or waking up.  No rules against writing while we as authors are in bed.

Find out more about Amy at www.maassagency.com/agents.html/  And tell us your favorite writing rules.  Or the ones you hate the most, even if – especially if – they’re ones you had to discover on your own.

Making a scene -- it happens in a real place

I keep meditating on my writing friend Pete’s question about what it takes to make a scene.  Briefly, his short story at a recent workshop followed a protagonist traveling to a Buddhist monastery in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) who rescued a fellow passenger from their sinking ferryboat and gave up a job opportunity to the passenger before returning home.  For the rest of us, this was a location exotic enough for a fantasy, and as Pete told the story to us orally, the setting glowed.  He knew what it looked like, sounded like, felt like, smelled like.  Those of us around the table could feel his love and longing, but that sensory detail never made it to the written pages.

So how do you get a sense of place in a story?  It doesn’t come by writing a travelogue.  As John Dufresne says in The Lie That Tells a Truth, “. . . by place I don’t simply mean location.  A location is a dot on a map, a set of coordinates.  Place is location with narrative, with memory and imagination, with a history.”

Agent and writer Donald Maass suggested several ways during his workshop earlier this year in Dallas to turn a place itself into a character.  After giving your protagonist a few moments to look around an important setting, write three things that only he or she would notice.  Write one thing that surprises the protagonist.  Describe how that person feels about the place.  Now, put this in your scene.  If it’s a recurring setting (even better) bring your protagonist back after the major action of the story ends -- a day, a month, a year later – and tell us what has changed in the setting and how the character’s feelings about the place have changed.  You can be sure the emotions of Pete’s protagonist toward the ferry crossing as he left were different from those he had when he arrived aboard a sinking boat.  Now there’s a place with narrative.

(For more about Maass’s workshops, see www.maassagency.com/)

Nothing beats being there

The word for the day is "verisimilitude."  Sounds like "veh-rih-sih-MIHL-uh-tood" for those who haven't had the experience of hearing agent and writing instructor Donald Maass pronounce it during any of his incredible seminars.  Meaning:  the appearance of being true or real, the quality writers use to coax their readers into that vivid continuous dream that is fiction.  Not just to render a setting with phographic-style reality, but to show how the story's characters feel about the place they inhabit.  But before we, as writers, can show the characters' emotions about a place, we have to know what there is in a setting that a person could long for or long to flee from.

And despite all the help of research materials, there's nothing quite like being there to show you what it's like to be there.  You can't smell YouTube; you can't feel Google against your skin.  I took a break from this dreaded Week Two of NaNoWriMo to investigate a city potters' field -- a graveyard for the indigent and unknown -- for the setting of a scene.  Earlier investigations included a mega church, strip club, polo match, criminal courts building, bus station.  Most free or nearly so (depending on how much you drop on drinks and tips for the strippers).  Every one with things I didn't expect, things I could never have found from reading a book or surfing the Net.  Try looking at your story, searching for a place you can take a field trip to for that extra touch of reality.  Because, while you CAN be too rich or too thin, you can never have too much verisimilitude.