Month: February 2015

Pain! Agony!

First off: a reminder about my appearance on Woozworld on February 21st from 1:00 to 2:00 PM. I’ll be there in the form of an avatar (with gray hair and gray-green eyes–and the resemblance ends there), answering advance questions and questions that crop up at the time. If you participate, I’ll meet you through your avatar, but we probably won’t recognize each other in the actual universe. My hesitations about the event are that it may be too young for many of you, and (the more serious hesitation) that you have to join Woozworld to participate. Please discuss this with your parents before you plunge in. For the adults who read the blog–for me, if I were a follower–the attraction would be to see this method publishers are using to promote books to kids in the tween (middle-grade) age group. If you decide to attend, go to www.woozworld.com and look for the HarperCollins Bookz Lounge.

Second off: The blog recently achieved a milestone and crossed over the 500 follower mark after hovering at 497 for many months. I’m not sure what benefits there are for being a follower (please say if you know), but I love to see the numbers tick up.

And on another subject, my last post was written while on vacation in Hawaii. If you want to share in the beauty we enjoyed, click over to my husband’s photographic website on the right. Alas, the photos won’t waft in the delicious warm air…

Now for today’s topic. On September 18, 2014, Deborah O’Carroll wrote, In the latest book that I finished writing, there was a very tense and awful scene for the climax, and I piled on as much hurt as I could handle doing to the characters, but I held back a bit. Even that was awful and I almost couldn’t. But I found that a couple months later, when I was editing, that since I had read the scene over several times, I was used to it. So I was able to add in some more problems to draw out the peril and seriousness of the situation even more. In that case, if I had tried to do it all at once, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it (even if my characters could!).


One thing I’ve been worrying about lately is high stakes and peril and stuff. I have a hard time making it so that we’re actually WORRIED about my characters. I think mostly I let them off too easy, and that’s something I’m struggling with…

Deborah partially answered her own question at the beginning of her comment. If we let time go by before revising, we can see everything more clearly. Our characters aren’t quite as precious to us as they were during the writing, so we can torment them some more.

What can we do, though, to make the misery tolerable while we’re writing?

• If we’re not writing tragedy and our MC is going to be okay in the end, and probably even better than she was at the beginning because her trials have made her grow, we can remind ourselves of that as we devise torture for her. We can even write an ending scene in which she’s fine. This may not be what we actually write when we get there, but it may make us feel better, and we can read it whenever we need courage.

• We can write comforting lines to ourselves right in our manuscript, like, Remember, Gail, she’s going to survive. Then we can cut these editorial remarks when we revise, and be careful to remove all of them before submitting our story to a publisher.

• We can entertain ourselves by writing on the side a monologue for our villain, in which he rejoices in every terrible thing that happens to our MC. He can even help us come up with more disasters for her. He can say, The only thing that would be better would be if… And we can put in whatever he suggests. If we don’t have a human villain, we can write in the voice of someone who doesn’t like our MC. If necessary, we can imagine such a character. The comfort in this comes from the humor.

• Going the other way, we can deliberately think about how much we love our MC and how much we admire her. We can think about what a privilege it is to watch her figure things out and overcome obstacles–and then we can turn the screws on her extra hard. We remind ourselves that we don’t want her to have an easy time winning her victories, because then we won’t admire her so much. Plus, we want to tailor the obstacles so she struggles, because if success is easy, what’s to admire?

• Of course we can remember that we’ll have a good story only if we make the going rough. When we spare ourselves by sparing her, we don’t wind up with much to interest our readers.

Back to my penultimate point, reader worry will intensify if the problems we’ve made for our MC push her buttons. In my novel, Ever, one of the MCs, Olus, the god of the winds, can’t tolerate being cooped up. Naturally, I confine him, and I make it a test. If he can’t cope, he loses his love.

In The Lord of the Rings, many characters, some of them beloved, like Bilbo and Frodo and even Sam, have to face their desire for power. In my opinion, it’s the central problem of the books. Some face down the temptation, but others succumb. In Anne of Green Gables, to take another example, Anne has to contend with her impulsiveness, her temper, and her unwillingness to forgive, and L. M. Montgomery keeps challenging her. One more instance: the sad core of Peter Pan is brave Peter’s cowardice about growing up.

A fun thing to do to is to think of a challenge for our MC, one we can’t figure out how to beat. Maybe we put her in a chest at the bottom of the ocean a la Houdini or we present her with a riddle that the greatest genius in world history has been unable to solve, and the consequences of failure are severe. Or we tempt her with a desire she knows is wrong.

Having said all this, I have to confess my fundamental wimpiness. I may write children’s books because there are limits to my making trouble. I create suffering for my MCs, but I doubt I’ll ever write a complete tragedy. I can’t tolerate reading tragedies or seeing them on stage or screen. To my discredit, I’ve stopped reading two beloved novelists for adults, Larry McMurtry and Mary Gordon, because their books make me too sad. I refuse to see or read King Lear (after the first time) for the same reason.

Here are three prompts of misery and suffering:

• Your MC, kind and generous as he is, cannot resist pointing people’s mistakes out to them. Put him in a situation where the consequence of speaking out will be dire, and have him do it anyway. Write the scene and delay getting him out of trouble for at least five pages.

• Last week the journalist Bob Simon died tragically in a car crash. The next day I heard a rebroadcast of a radio interview with him. One of the topics discussed was his forty day imprisonment in Iraq. He said that a hardship he and his companions endured was the constant cold. I confess that my mind wandered at that moment, because I can barely tolerate being cold for five minutes. If I were made to be cold all the time, I don’t know what I’d do. I might confess to anything in exchange for a warm room, a blanket, and a cup of hot chocolate. Give your MC a condition that she cannot abide and then inflict it on her. Write the scene and decide what she does.

• Oh! I can barely write this prompt! If you can’t stand to do it, I’ll understand. Your MC’s parents take in their evil niece when her parents vanish mysteriously. Your MC loves animals and the niece loves to torture them and gets double pleasure out of causing her cousin misery. The family has at least one beloved pet. Write a scene or the entire story from the niece’s POV, and delay the MC’s eventual triumph for at least five pages.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Smooth sailing

Before the post, this news: On Saturday, February 21st at 1:00 PM, there will be a virtual launch party for Writer to Writer, which will run for an hour on Woozworld. HarperCollins has set this up and I’ve never done it before, but I’ll be there answering questions. I’m a newbie, so I don’t know what it will be like. There’s an avatar who sort of looks like me in a funhouse mirror kind of way (minus the wrinkles). It may be a bit young for many of you, but if you’re interested in ways that publishers promote books these days, this will be an example. I’m hoping that we can interact a bit and meet in this strange way. I’ll post details about how you can participate if you’re interested as soon as I get them, which may be between this post and the next, so stay tuned.

On August 19, 2014, Kenzi Anne wrote, Does anybody else have issues where their writing doesn’t flow–it comes out choppy and episodic? I want my stories’ events to lead into each other, like a domino effect where each event affects the next (like real life), which is much more fun to read and makes the story have a flow to it (in my opinion), but I just have THE HARDEST TIME IN THE WORLD with it! How do you all work with that?

The trouble may come from related problems with plot and character, which have to mesh. If they don’t, the reader has a bumpy ride. Suppose our MC, Vincia, has run away from her menial job in the laundry room of the king’s castle, where the chief laundress is a bully and where the lye that Vincia has to use to make the soap causes her hands to crack and bleed. And suppose we have in mind a series of plot points:

• Vincia overhears the king’s evil minister planning to assassinate the queen.

• Vincia’s brother has been captured by a brigand. She knows he’s in danger because her magic marble has turned a muddy brown.

• An injured troll lies along the road that leads from the castle, the road Vincia travels.

• Enemy forces allied with the evil minister are mustering at the border.

• In the battle that comes, Vincia  discovers in herself unexpected sword-wielding skills.

We have an ending in mind: Vincia replaces the evil minister and becomes the closest adviser to the king and queen. Her brother becomes the emperor’s adviser in the neighboring kingdom. Peace reigns.

The trouble is that we don’t know Vincia’s character and what she wants, besides quitting the laundry. And if we don’t know, she’s just a chess piece that we move from event to event, and of course the action feels episodic, so we have to craft a personality for her in order to create continuity.

We cast our eyes over our plot points and look for a possible person to go with them. If we make a Mary Sue out of Vincia, then her overall goal will be to save the kingdom. She’ll naturally want to thwart the evil minister, save her brother, defeat the enemy, and her amazing fencing will come as no surprise to us or our readers. The story will still feel episodic because Vincia won’t be real.

But there are other possibilities. Here are a few:

• Vincia can be so downtrodden by her laundry experience that she doesn’t think she can help the queen. She hears the plotting, feels bad, but continues with her escape.

• Vincia and her brother don’t get along. She thinks he’s an obnoxious know-it-all and a stint in captivity will do him good. Besides, the very word brigand tingles with romance for her. She’s intrigued rather than outraged.

• Vincia shares the common revulsion for trolls. She doesn’t even look closely enough at this one to realize he’s wounded. Instead, she detours as far as she can from him and keeps going.

• Vincia isn’t sure which side in the upcoming battle has her sympathy. After all, the chief laundress is a loyal subject of the king and queen.

• Vincia hates violence. When her sword arm seems to act on its own, she exerts her will to put down the weapon.

We probably don’t want all of these. Each one makes our ending harder to achieve. But one or two will create tension, will make our readers turn pages breathlessly, and will help our story feel seamless. They’ll also bring Vincia to life.

As for what Vincia wants, there are lots of possibilities. Here are a few:

• A plot of land far from any castles, where she can herd goats in peace.

• To clear her family name. She’s a laundry wench because her mother was accused and convicted of stealing a historic and enormous diamond from the treasury. Otherwise, Vincia would be the daughter of a duchess.

• To become a skilled musician; to learn to play the lyre well enough to make her listeners feel whatever she decides they need to feel.

• She may not be aware of her deepest desire, which is to become someone who can deal with a bully (and not by becoming a bully, too).

If the reader knows what she wants or needs, he’ll measure everything that happens in terms of how it moves her closer or farther from her goal, which will give our story a sense of flow.

Continuity is most easily achieved from a single POV, whether in first person or third, but it can be done from multiple POVs or from an omniscient narrator, who jumps around from one group of characters to another. At the moment, I’m reading Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett (love it!), which is told in third-person omniscient. It’s held together by an overarching problem: One of the characters is building a glass clock, which will stop time, end history, and destroy life. The story moves here and there–scenes with the clockmaker, the monks of time, DEATH and DEATH OF RATS, the granddaughter of DEATH, the “auditor” who hired the clockmaker–but it coheres because of the overarching problem. We can do that too. If the trouble is significant enough and the events move the story back and forth from danger to relief, the reader won’t feel that anything is choppy.

I noticed a couple of mechanical things Terry Pratchett does to sustain the continuity. Scene switches are separated by the italicized word Tick, which reminds the reader what’s at stake. And Pratchett ends one particular scene with the question: Who is this boy? The next scene begins with Who is this girl? And I shake my head in admiration.

Here are four prompts based on Vincia and her story:

• List three more possible over-arching goals for Vincia.

• Write a beginning scene between Vincia and the bullying laundress. Next, write a scene involving the brother and the brigands, and find a way to link the two, which can be subtle (as little as a hint) or obvious.

• Continue, and bring the evil prime minister into the story, as well as the king and queen.

• Keep going, and don’t forget the troll.

Have fun, and save what you write!