Secondarily

Happy new year to all!

November 2, 2013, Kenzi Anne wrote about her difficulty with secondary characters: Usually I get pretty unique main characters that I feel satisfied with, but I feel like the secondary characters in every one of my stories fit the same mold–like I plop the same character into four different stories and just change the looks. “This is the funny one,” or “this is the brooding one,” or “this is the one that has trust issues and betrays everybody else.” I guess I feel like all of my secondary characters are cliche. When I tried to make them unique, they became too main. How do I make secondary characters interesting and unique, while still keeping them secondary?

Elisa suggested that giving quirks to secondary characters can help distinguish them, and J. Garf wrote, I used to have that problem too, until I started thinking about people I really know. Think about your friends. What makes them different from everyone else? Maybe one of them is really tall. Maybe another only has a sense of humor when it comes to horses or hot air balloons. Maybe one enjoys math and is a total nerd…. I have one character who was the standard, funny and supportive secondary character, and it didn’t take me very long to realize that he was way cliched. So, I edited him and made him seem different from the very beginning. He is part of a group of men that has to be very strong, which he is, but I made him really short for a man. He now has one of those odd personalities that’s so positive that you have a hard time believing that they’re serious, which would be weird if he was the main but he’s just a secondary, so it just makes him interesting. He’s very friendly, immediately. He’s still supporting, and is the funny one, but he’s different enough to make him a unique character. Just make sure that you don’t give too much detail, or too much uniqueness if you want to keep the character secondary.

These are interesting ideas. Something along the lines of J. Garf’s suggestion comes up in Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande, a book I found helpful when I started writing. As an exercise, Brande has her reader think of a story she knows well and plug into one of the main characters a real person she also knows well and imagine the result. I thought of Pride and Prejudice and my sister as Elizabeth. In my imaginings my sister would find Darcy way too stuffy. The story would have to find a new direction.

This technique works equally well with secondary characters, and your story doesn’t have to be derailed in the process. Think, for example, of “Snow White.” We have a rich cast of secondaries here in the hunter and the seven dwarfs. Try this prompt: Pick three of the dwarfs and the hunter. Think of four people you know and endow the characters with their personalities. The real four don’t all have to be male. Neither do the dwarfs or the hunter, for that matter. The four are walking through a forest and discussing what to do about Snow White, how to protect her, how to keep her occupied and happy, what the hunter should tell the evil queen. In the middle of the discussion some crisis arises, which could be exterior, like a bear, or interior, like a disagreement–or both. Let your characters show themselves as they would in real life. Be sure to include dialogue. For example, one of the dwarfs could be a person I know who says everything more than once. The dwarf who stands in for her would do the same, and might get interrupted by another dwarf who’s impatient and a tad rude. In the exchange they will each distinguish themselves for the reader and as the scene progresses the reader will be able to pick out each one.

Obviously, we can use this technique on any secondaries who’ve entered our story with nothing more than a stereotype.

I love quirks for secondary characters, who often don’t have to have the depth of mains. They can be all quirks, sometimes just one. For example, I was able to nail King Lionel in The Two Princesses of Bamarre just from his habit of consulting The Book of Homely Truths whenever he has to make a decision or respond to someone. Or in Fairest the library-keeper speaks mostly in book titles.

Often, secondary characters can be as peculiar as we want to make them because the reader isn’t likely to identify with them as much as with our MCs. The reader won’t see herself in the secondary. And they don’t have to carry the full weight of the plot, either. We can fool around. So, for example, Kenzi Anne’s brooding character–let’s call him Hamletti–doesn’t have to worry about ordinary problems, like personal failures or relationships. He can stress out over the danger of plankton eating their way out of the ocean and becoming an invasive terrestrial species, and he can be really despondent over this. If he’s sympathetic, the reader can pity him.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem to have more than one story with a secondary who has trust issues–as long as the reasons are different and the manifestations are, too. For example, maybe Johanna, when she feels threatened, retreats into long sessions of Monopoly, playing in her imagination against the person who’s frightened her. But Thomas expresses his fear by writing long letters to the editor of the local newspaper.

I like to make lists of possibilities in my notes. It could go like this: Why does Johanna mistrust?

1. Her parents lied to her about what happened to her puppy.

2. She went to sleep when she was eight in her own bedroom and woke up stretched across two seats in a bus bound for Pittsburgh.

3. The first time she tasted tofu she lost her hearing for a week.

And so on. Maybe whenever a new character meets her, Johanna feels obliged to tell her sad history as a way to protect herself.

If our secondaries threaten to take over our story it may not be because they’re too interesting. More likely it’s because we’re giving them too much stage time. The thrust of the story, the major problems belong to our MCs. The secondaries appear once or intermittently. To keep them from stealing the show, we need to remember what the main problem is and how our MCs are approaching it.

But, if we do fall in love with Johanna and want to tell her story, well, we can change our mind. Or we can finish this story and write a sequel about her.

Here are five prompts:

• List five more reasons for Johanna’s trust issues.

• List eight ways Johanna shows her mistrust.

• List seven other reasons that Hamletti finds to fuel his despondency.

• Both, Johanna and Hamletti, are persuaded by friends to go ice skating. Have them collide, meet, and set each other off. Write what follows.

• Make Johanna and Hamletti into dwarfs in “Snow White.” Write a scene with the two of them and Snow White, but keep Snow White and her problem central to the scene. They’re preparing her, because they suspect the queen is going to show up, and they want her to survive, but their advice is filtered through their own quirky perspectives.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Personhood

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

Lately a lot of questions have come in about person. This one came into the website in October from Anna Baber: I’ve been working on a book and even though I usually use first person, I decided to try third person/second person. However, my characters seem so dead. So dead even I didn’t care about them. Do you know how I should fix this???

An exchange followed with carpelibris, who wrote, A few offhand thoughts:

Do they face challenges?
Do they do things, as opposed to having things happen to them?

Something I read once, although I can’t remember where or who wrote it: “Think of what 9 or 10 people would do in a given situation. Have your character be #10, who does something different.”

Random thought: Why do you usually write in 1st person, and what about this story made you choose to write it in 3rd?

Anna Baber responded, I love reading first person and it’s easy for character development. Aside from that, I’ve been writing for about four years and I’ve written around twenty “novels”–almost all in first person! So I’m much more comfortable in first person. What about you?

From carpelibris: I’ve tried both (even a short story in second once, but that felt weird.) I mostly default to third for novels For short stories (Runs off to do a quick check). Ok, I just did a rough, arbitrary count of my submissions in the last 6 months that weren’t Drabbles. (100-word stories.) 3 were in 1st person and 6 were in 3rd. When I do 1st it’s usually because the character comes into my head that way and their voice is a big part of the appeal, or the story’s mostly about what the POV character’s thinking and feeling.

First off, kudos to carpelibris for putting your work out in the world. And thanks for sharing your success on the blog. I’ve enjoyed reading your stories. The last one made me cry!

And congratulations to Anna for your productivity!

Next a definition: in second person, the main character, instead of being I, is you, as in, You look up from your meal. You swallow, although the gooey mass sticks in your throat and the ton of hot sauce makes tears well up. “Tastes great, Dad,” you say and put your hand in your lap to cross your fingers.

I’ve never written more than this little sample in second person. Seems hard to pull off in a longer form. The only book I’ve read in second person is a young-adult novel by A. M. Jenkins called Damage (high school and up). We need a reason to choose second person. In this case MC Austin Reid is depressed, and second person is a great way to put across his isolation, even from himself.

I love the distinction carpelibris makes between characters doing “things, as opposed to having things happen to them.” When characters are active in the face of the crises in their lives, rather than the passive recipients of events, they come to life. If our MC is hit over the head by a two-by-four, she has no choice but to go down, no matter who she is–-unless she’s a mutant with an extraordinarily thick skull. But in most disasters, our characters face choices. Suppose a tornado rips through town, cutting a narrow swath of destruction. Our MC Jacqui was visiting a friend whose house was untouched. As soon as the twister passes, she races for home. It’s a weekend, and both her parents were there, along with her older brother and the family dachshund. When she gets to her street, she hears sirens, and the house is flattened.

This is where carpelibris’s suggestion comes in, to have our character act surprisingly. What does Jacqui do?

Here’s a prompt: Write nine likely responses from Jacqui at the scene. Write one unlikely response. Write five more unlikely ones.

If Jacqui picks one of the unexpected ones, she will stop seeming dead. The reader will get interested and wonder about her character, feelings, thoughts, motives. We can then selectively reveal her inner life.

And that inner life can be as surprising as her actions. Her feelings may be something other than distress. Her thoughts may be about the neighbor’s house rather than her own. Physically, her heart may not speed up at all; tears may not well up. In third person, we can go into this with our POV character. If Jacqui is a secondary character, we can see that her eyes remain dry, but we won’t have the direct experience of her inner life. She can let us in on some of it through dialogue and whatever she may write, plus other exterior physical clues and further actions.

Of course, if our narrator is omniscient (all-knowing), we can dip in and out of everyone’s mind and heart.

To continue the prompt, write nine likely thoughts and six unlikely ones. Write five common emotional reactions and three incongruous ones.

Trying different POVs is great practice. I’ve suggested before that if a scene isn’t working in third person, rewrite it in first and then translate it back into third, including the material that made it come to life. This translation will probably lead you to see how to use the new POV effectively. You can keep doing this as you go along until third person becomes as easy as first.

More prompts:

• Translate a scene from a story you’ve been happy with in first person into third-person omniscient, bringing in the thoughts and feelings of your secondary characters. If your story takes off in a new direction, go with it.

• Translate the beginning of one of your first-person stories into second person. See if you can go all the way to the end that way.

• Maisy looks out her bedroom window. On the street below, a motorcycle strikes what seems to be one of Santa’s elves, who falls and hits his head on a fire hydrant. The street is empty. Maisy runs downstairs and does something surprising, thinks something unusual, and feels something downright strange. Write the scene in third person. If you like, write the story. You can begin with the accident or you can go back to an earlier moment. Switch back and forth from third person to first if you need to.

• Write Jacqui’s story in third person, but, again, if you need to put parts of it into first, do that, and then change back.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Thinking in Person

Oh, my! Many, many thanks to everyone who sent in subtitle suggestions! I can’t say enough how helpful they’ve been. I’d been stuck in a rut of subtitles that varied by only a word or two and weren’t very interesting. You blew the rut away by going in directions I hadn’t dreamed of. My editor likes several ideas, and she’s taking them to the all-important sales team for their judgment. I’ll let you know when there’s a decision. Alas, I don’t know how long that will take.

This came into the website from Sophie in October: My problem is that when I write in third person, I don’t think I get into my characters’ heads enough. I talk about their actions, their conversation, and their instincts, but not their thoughts. Or if I do get into their heads, I often jumble up their thoughts, confusing both myself and them.

On the other hand, when I write in first person I’m afraid I’m showing their thoughts far too much, giving too much sarcastic commentary and showing too many of their likes and dislikes.
Ideas?

Early in my writing days I took a wonderful workshop class and took it again and again for several years. Every week our teacher, Bunny, would read student work without identifying the authors and we would discuss and praise and critique. Often, when a chapter of mine was read, people said I had neglected to show what my MC was feeling. After a while, I’d hear the voices of my classmates in my mind while I was writing, telling me to include emotion. Then, when I worked with an editor for the first time, after nine years of trying, the criticisms I heard most often from her worked their way into my brain, too, and joined the helpful refrain.

We can install our own helpful voices even without a workshop or an editor. The most important word in the last sentence is helpful. We don’t want the drumbeat to go, What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I remember to show feelings? It should be more like, Let there be feelings! Feelings will bring out the terrific stuff I’ve got going.

If we already know we’re not putting in thoughts enough when we’re writing in third person, we can set up ways to remind ourselves and to get in the habit of remembering. Some writers edit the work from their last session before writing anything new. If this is what you do, you can start by looking for places to add thinking. Or, as you write, you can remind yourself every half hour to think about thinking. You can make a poster for yourself that says, Think about thinking, and pin it up in your workspace. You can put reminders on your phone or set an alarm to go off. When it rings you have to edit for thoughts. As you drift off to sleep, you can chant, Into their heads! These techniques will help you create a routine, and eventually you won’t need them.

You can use the same approaches when you’re writing in first person, reminding yourself to limit the thoughts when you’re writing a first draft and also to trim them in revision.

Here’s another technique to try: When you have a third-person scene that lacks thoughts, rewrite it in first person. And vice versa. Yes, this is time-consuming and word-consuming, but who’s counting? I toss out tons of pages on every book. I learn by trying. Writing isn’t efficient.

To recognize what warrants thoughts and what doesn’t, we keep an eye on our story elements. For example, say our MC Sharyn falls off her bike and a new character, Willard, stands over her and says, “Some hedgehogs run away instead of using their needles. I mean, spines. They’re really called spines.” Third person or first, Sharyn has got to think something. For example, she may think first about her bike and whether it’s been damaged. She may notice what this stranger is wearing. She may remember how bad her whole day has been. Or dozens of other possibilities. After the thought, but only after the thought, we can have her say something. Her thoughts contribute to the reader’s understanding of her character. If she notices what Willard is wearing, we also get more development of his character. If the bicycle or her bad day or this new character has anything to do with our story’s trajectory, we advance the plot.

But if Sharyn is merely biking along and not falling, we may want to keep her thoughts to a minimum and just get her there. Not always, though. The ride may give her a chance to mull something over and come to a decision that will move the plot along.

In my opinion, usually reactions belong with events. Suppose we delay Sharyn’s thoughts after she falls. Willard appears, says what he says. She replies. He says some other disconnected thing and wanders away. She brushes herself off and rides on and starts thinking about the experience. As a reader, while events unfold, I’m thinking, What does Sharyn make of this? What’s going on with her? Is she in shock? When she finally does start thinking, I may be satisfied. No. I won’t be. By then it’s too late for me.

On the other hand, we don’t want to interrupt an exciting moment like the fall and the introduction of Willard with a paragraph of thinking. We can drop in just a quick thought here, another there, as the dialogue develops. Then, when Willard leaves, we can have Sharyn think more expansively.

A note about sarcasm: In my opinion, a little goes a long way. If a character is sarcastic by nature, a few salvos in dialogue or thought when we first meet her will establish that characteristic. In future scenes, just one will be enough to remind the reader.

If our MC is a sarcastic-by-nature person, we’ll have to work harder to make her likable, if we want her to be likable. It certainly can be done, but we’ve added a hurdle.

Sarcasm is easy to write. For example, the first thing that may jump to mind for Sharyn to think after Willard speaks could be something like, Thanks for helping me up. In the circumstances, the thought is justified, but it isn’t the most interesting way to go. Instead, she might wonder where he lives or if he owns a hedgehog or if he knows how strange he seems. In dialogue we can resist a sarcastic comeback and consider other possibilities. Sharyn may say, “Yes, and foxes are really easy to domesticate.” If she’s kind she might say, “I didn’t know that.” If she’s mean, she could say, “Well, you’re a freak.”

Going back to the problem of including the right amount of thinking, the solutions I’ve proposed are mechanical, which I see nothing wrong with. We’re learning a skill, writing, and we need protocols to help us. When we train ourselves to play an instrument, we play scales. When we train in a sport, we practice. Same with fiction writing. And if we’ve identified the difficulty, we’re way ahead.

Here are three prompts:

• Continue the scene with Sharyn and Willard. If you like you can introduce additional tension in the reason Sharyn fell off her bike. After you’ve written the scene in first or third person, look it over and decide if you’ve included the right number of thoughts. If not, revise. If you like, keep going with the story.

• Your MC Paulette has to decide between two kingdoms. Both want her for the magic sword that she alone can wield. She’s meeting with both rulers in a neutral place, and each is trying to win her allegiance. Write the scene in first person, including her thoughts. Make her suspicious and angry. Rewrite, making her feel honored and loved, with thoughts to go along with those emotions. Rewrite again, and this time give her a secret desire.

• Try the scene with Paulette again but this time in omniscient third person. Include the thoughts of each ruler.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Help!

Not a post but a plea. My new writing book, which is based on the blog and which will be out early in 2015, will be called Writer to Writer. That’s settled, but it needs a subtitle and all the minds involved, mine and my editor’s and her team’s, are struggling. I would appreciate ideas. The subtitle of Writing Magic is Creating Stories That Fly. This subtitle needs to be different. If you work on this, keep in mind that the book covers poems as well as stories. One more thing: the subtitle probably shouldn’t mention the blog, although I talk about the blog throughout the book, except for the poetry section.

If you come up with the subtitle we use, I will be delighted to acknowledge you and your contribution in the book.

Thank you, thank you, those of you who give this a try!

Never Ever Ever Ending Story

To the NaNoWriMo writers: How did it go?

At the end of October, McKennah wrote this on my website: How do you know when to stop writing stuff for a certain story? I mean you could keep writing a story forever, but how do you know when enough is enough?

E.S. Ivy commented, Hmm… I get what she means because when I read a book, I always think about the story that goes on after it ends. 🙂

Maybe: Think in terms of an obstacle, task, or main milestone for the main character to achieve. Then your story is about how they go about getting there and the failed attempts. The story ends when the goal is obtained. I find that looking at early MG or chapter books are a great place to start picking out how to plan a story arc.

I piped in with: Just a definition for anyone who’s uncertain: MG is middle grade, which would include books and stories for kids roughly in the eight-to-twelve-year-old range.

And Nikitah Luse added, Think of your over-arching story: Maybe you have such a long idea that it “may never end”, but find places where you could cut a logical ending while still leaving it open for future stories. Example: Your story idea might be about a group of questers whose destiny it is to save a kingdom. Unfortunately, that can go on forever and ever with all of the side quests and problems. So you find that in your head the story has three main moments: the questers meeting, learning to work together, and fighting the bad guy at the end. That’s three stories right there! Conclude the first after they have all managed to find one another and figure out what the problem to be overcome is, the second after they have bungled through many problems and are finally a team (maybe even one of their own is threatened–great cliffhanger!), and the third when the bad guy is defeated, the heroes are figuring out what to do to clean up the mess and what is next for them. And then you can keep going with another foe in your next story, but by this time your readers will know the characters and how they work together, so the hard part is done.

And Kenzi Anne contributed this: I used to have the same problem, and I felt like my stories were becoming never-ending rants. I decided to choose my endings by finding a point in the story when I could wrap up all my loose ends, especially the main problem that my story revolved around. That way I could find my ending. If I wanted to write a second book, then I could also use this method to separate the first story from the second but leave enough strings “untied” to still have an ongoing plot.

I think all these ideas are right. I’d like to highlight E. S. Ivy’s suggestion about looking at other books to help figure out how writers keep from nattering on forever.

Let’s do that together, using Peter Pan by James M. Barrie as an example. If you’ve never read it, Aaa! I don’t know what to suggest for reading this post, because it’s going to be full of spoilers. Maybe you should read it and come back. In my opinion, there’s a treat in store for you. It’s one of my favorite books.

Usually, a book introduces a problem somewhere near the beginning and solves it somewhere near the end. In Peter Pan, there are a few problems. One starts in the backstory when Peter runs away from home and becomes the enchanted character we know and love. His problem, which we pick up from hints that Barrie drops, is the conflict between his wish to stay a child and his desire for a family. Next, Wendy, Michael, and John lose their parents and their Nana (their dog) by flying away from home. And the Darlings and Nana lose their children. We’ve got three problems that are central to the plot. Important also is Captain Hook’s ambition to defeat Peter. That’s Hook’s problem; Peter doesn’t think about Hook all that much.

Peter’s problem is temporarily solved when Wendy and her brothers take up residence with him and the lost boys. He has a family and he doesn’t have to grow up. The Darlings and Nana are miserable. The story returns to them now and then but they don’t do much more than wring their hands or whimper.

The middle of the book, which isn’t very long, not long enough for me, brings the children to Neverland, introduces the island and its inhabitants, establishes a way of life there (which suggests time passing), and puts the boys and Wendy through an adventure on the lagoon. A single adventure! Unless I’m forgetting something. Maddeningly, Barrie dangles an array of adventures but chooses only one.

Then the beginning of the end begins. In the course of evening story time, Wendy’s brothers, John and Michael, reveal that they’re forgetting their original home. Wendy is alarmed, and a decision is reached to return. Then Hook attacks, which launches the book’s crisis .

With Hook’s demise and the return of the children all the problems are solved, not happily for Hook. Peter remains young but alone, so the ending is mixed for him, and possibly also for the other children, who, in my interpretation, have a little lingering regret.

What an economical story it is! Barrie could have invented other adventures and threatened Peter and his merry band in myriad ways. The Darlings could have taken action, too, set out from the mainland or hired detectives or whatever else. Nana could have started swimming. Maybe Barrie did write more and cut those extra parts when he revised. The point is, he made a decision. He said, Enough!

And because he left us wanting more, stories have spun off his for a hundred years.

It’s up to the writer. Our story may not announce that it’s finished. We get to make that determination.

Let’s look at my The Two Princesses of Bamarre for a minute. It’s longer but simpler. There are two essential problems: the Gray Death and Addie’s timidity. When she sets out on her quest for the cure the middle of the book begins. There are three kinds of monsters in this world, and I wanted her to contend with each of them and with her fear. But I could have gone on longer. I could have made the disease develop more slowly so that other adventures could happen. I didn’t think it out that clearly, but I guess I felt that more would have been overload.

As we continue to write, we get better at sensing when we’ve reached a satisfying point in our story. For now, try the rule of three, which we often find in fairy tales. Cinderella goes to three balls and loses her slipper after the last one. The evil queen in “Snow White” makes two attempts on Snow White’s life before she finally seems to succeed on the third. The miller’s daughter gets three chances to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name.

Success on the first or second try can seem too easy. On the fourth or twelfth, readers may be yawning or thinking our MC is useless. But we do want to vary the number in our stories sometimes. If we always follow the rule of three, we can become predictable.

Not all books introduce an overarching problem and then solve it. Some just cover a period of time with smaller problems along the way. I’m thinking of Little Women, for example. In the course of the book the girls face challenges and grow from little to big. Louisa May Alcott decided how many incidents to include at each stage in the lives of her MC’s. When they’re big, the story ends.

Here are three prompts:

• Your characters are shipwrecked on an island inhabited by unfriendly dwarfs and fierce pirates. There’s a traitor among the survivors. Staying alive is the problem. Endanger them three times before they establish themselves safely or escape.

• Your MC is at summer camp or boy or girl scout camp. The story ends when camp does. Create a series of problems as the camp experience progresses. Develop supporting characters, who can be other campers, counselors, the camp director, parents. Decide how many incidents you need to make the story feel complete.

• Cinderella and her stepsisters are just backstory. Your MC is the prince. At midnight, in the middle of the third ball, Cinderella runs out. Your MC chases her, trips on the stairs, tumbles down, hits his head, loses consciousness, and wakes up, holding one glass slipper, his memory gone. The only clue he has to his identity is the slipper. Take the story from there. He can wind up with Cinderella, or not.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Mind Reading

To all you laboring on your NaNoWriMo novel: Happy writing! May words pour out of you like water over Niagara Falls! May ideas crop up like dandelions in July! And if you have questions, think of this blog.

This question came into the website in September from Rebekah: I recently reread Writing Magic and the section on POV to see how I could make it work with my own story, but I didn’t find anything.
My story is in 3rd person, but I wanted to try it in 1st person. I really love being in my MC’s head, but it’s also hard because then I can’t let the reader know what some of the other characters are thinking as well, and that makes it really hard on me. Do you have any suggestions for me on a way to compromise?

Athira Abraham responded with this: If your story is fantasy, maybe she has magical powers of reading people’s mind. Or she might have an object that helps her, like Gail’s magic book or spyglass.

And Eliza added:
1. Have more than one protagonist.
2. Don’t let the other characters take over as protagonists, but let them speak for little snippets. I’ve read some books that switch over to other characters at the beginning of chapters, usually in italics.

These are great ideas. I invented the magic book in Ella Enchanted so that Ella, who’s the first-person POV MC, can have an idea of what’s going on with other characters when she isn’t present. She can’t hear thoughts, but she gets a hint of the action. But you could invent a device that can receive thoughts, or you can make your MC telepathic, as Athira Abraham suggests. Or you can alternate among a few first person POV characters, changing perspective from chapter to chapter or between sections within chapters, which should be clearly marked because we want the reader to always know whose head he’s in.

Along the lines of Eliza’s second suggestion, I’ve seen bits (clearly marked) of diabolical narration from the POV of the villain in a Terry Pratchett novel or two, and, in my opinion, whatever Pratchett does is worth imitating.

When we write in first person, we lose direct access to the feelings of other characters, in addition to their thoughts, so whatever we come up with to bridge the gap can include feelings (the racing heart, the churning stomach, the tension headache).

Telepathy, magic spyglasses, and magic books are possibilities. What else is there?

Let’s imagine that Julie, the best friend of our MC Marcy, has been unusually quiet lately, hasn’t wanted to hang out. She’s dropped out of the chorus at school. A planned sleepover happens, but Julie is too uncommunicative for it to be fun. Marcy is worried about her friend and also about their friendship. What can she do?

Of course what she does depends on her personality, but let’s think about what she might do:

• She can ask Julie and may find out what her friend is thinking and feeling through dialogue.

• She can get angry and possibly learn the information through an argument, again dialogue. Or she may not succeed, but she’ll know her friend is mad at her, at least for that moment.

• She can ask other people what’s going on and possibly find out that way.

• She can think about Julie, remember when the strange behavior started, consider everything she knows about her friend, and maybe arrive at the answer.

• She can snoop, read Julie’s journal. If she has real snooping skills, she can bug Julie’s phone and conceal a camera in Julie’s room. Or, if she’s wealthy, she can hire a detective.

• With our authorial power, we can show the reader Julie’s journal so that he knows but Marcy doesn’t.

You may think of other ways. You’ll find a masterful example of one character discovering what’s going on with another in the young adult novel The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg.

We’re all the first-person MC of the story of our lives, and we’re probably not mind-readers, but in order to get along with other people, to have friends, to be decent students and family members – to do many things – we have to make assumptions, and sometimes we know with a high degree of certainty what other people are thinking and feeling. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to make others feel good or to push their buttons not in a good way. We do it by some of the methods I suggested above, by knowing our friends and family over time, by understanding ourselves and figuring that others are at least somewhat like us.

When I wrote the beginning of this post I was on the train on my way to New York City. A man across the aisle behind me talked loudly on his cell phone in a thick voice. I looked back, nosy writer that I am, to get a fix on him, and, instantly, he snapped, “Mind your own business.”

It didn’t take mind reading to know he felt angry. My guess is that this guy is always on the edge of anger and almost anything can push him over. It’s also possible that he felt guilty for being so loud – although that didn’t stop him from taking three more calls and it didn’t make him lower his voice. Guilt can make people angry; you may have noticed this.

As for me, I was a little scared, which he probably knew, because I’d imagine he wanted to intimidate me. Total strangers and we knew each other’s feelings! And only one sentence passed between us. Fortunately, he got off the train soon – which I knew he would, because he announced his stop on the phone.

In the example above, Marcy knows Julie isn’t happy, because people signal their feelings, smile, frown, stamp, cross their arms. The clues are legion. What we lose by writing in first person is the texture of others’ thoughts and feelings, the insider perspective, and I sympathize, because I love that, too. If a first person single POV best suits our story, that’s what we should use, but there’s nothing to stop us from writing a scene in third person in our notes, or from a different first-person POV, also in notes. We’ll have the pleasure of doing it, and we may learn something that we can work into our first-person narrative. Nobody ever called writing efficient!

Here are three prompts:

• From Marcy’s first-person POV, write the story of Marcy and Julie, and have Marcy try a bunch of methods to find out what’s going on with her friend. Surprise the reader with the answer.

• Marcy is the friend everyone goes to when they’re unhappy. She’s keeping more secrets than she has fingers and toes combined. But two secrets don’t add up. Someone is lying. Have Marcy delve into the thought and feeling life of her friends to find out what’s really going on.

• In the myth, “Pygmalion and Galatea,” Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he creates. The goddess Venus takes pity on him and brings her to life. Write from Galatea’s POV the scene when she wakes up . She used to be marble; she has no past. What does she think and feel? What does she make of Pygmalion? How does she figure out what he’s thinking and feeling when she has no experience to guide her?

Have fun, and save what you write!

Memorable MC

Because you should get something out of my poetry school, here’s a link to a beautiful poem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175780. Let me know what you think. Have you ever had a similar experience? Have you ever felt the way the speaker of the poem does?

I want to let you all know that an audio version of Writing Magic is now available, and I’m the reader. So, if you’ve never gotten to a signing and would like to hear my somewhat scratchy, old-lady voice, now you can. What a recommendation!

In August, Rebekah wrote, When I’m writing, I can’t seem to make my MC believable. My other characters all have memorable qualities, voices, and such (or I hope so, anyway), but I can’t seem to find my MC’s voice! Any suggestions on making her more memorable?

In response, Bug wrote, I may be misunderstanding a little, but when I had trouble with this, I switched the POV (not for the whole book) and wrote a scene from one of my minor character’s eyes. I then discovered what I had not realized about my main character-he was a lot more sarcastic then I had thought; he was funny, etc.

Bug’s suggestion is excellent. Anyone with this problem is likely to benefit from trying it. I’ve had this kind of trouble myself, and I’ll keep Bug’s idea in mind if it crops up again.

The root of this particular evil lies, I think, in reliability, and it crops up most often, I suspect, when we’re writing in first person. The reader sees our story through the eyes of our MC, so we want the lens to be clear. Sometimes, though, that clear lens washes out our MC’s distinguishing qualities. She’s showing everyone else to the reader, but how do we reveal her?

We may have to step back and consider her. She has a problem or a situation, or there would be no story. How does she approach solving it? At this point we may want to revisit our better defined secondary characters. How would each of them attack the problem? How is our MC’s method different?

If we don’t know, we can decide.

Let’s say our MC, Leona, is in a theatrical troupe that’s been sent to a neighboring kingdom to promote goodwill between the two, which have been at war intermittently for generations. In the production they’ll be performing, Leona plays the younger sister of the female star, and she’s also assistant stage manager. Her mother, the prime minister of the kingdom, has impressed on her that if this mission fails, war will result. Things are not going well. The star, who shares a room with Leona, keeps sneaking out at night. Will she cause an international scandal? The male lead hasn’t learned his lines. The director directs mostly by yelling.
The stage manager is disorganized. The first performance, which will be attended by the king, is three days off.

Oy! This is hard! I don’t know what I would do. But the situation suggests lots of questions we can ask ourselves about Leona:

• Is she direct with people?
• Or subtle?
• Is she a good judge of character?
• Or does she tend to trust the wrong people?
• Is she cautious or reckless?
• Does she worry about hurting people’s feelings?
• Does she give up easily?
• How talented an actor is she?
• Is she organized?
• Does she get along well with the other cast members?
• Can she cultivate allies?
• Does she annoy people?
• Is she shy or outgoing?

You can think of more questions. A benefit of asking them is that we see choices. We can also come up with flaws in Leona that distinguish her and make her task harder, and we’ve given her ways she can grow in the course of our story. Probably we’ll want her first attempts to go badly. If she trusts the wrong people, for example, she’s bound to make mistakes.

That’s the big picture. Now we want to know how she expresses the character that we’re beginning to develop, so that the reader will recognize her easily.

If she’s our POV character, we have direct access to her thoughts. She can seesaw between despair and hope. On the page she can think, This will never work. Then, Bad attitude, Leona. It will work! There. A few pages later she can get discouraged again and pep-talk herself out of it. Or she can pepper her thoughts with anxious questions, like, What am I doing? How can I say that? Will he hate me? Or she can recite a phrase to calm herself, like, The ground is solid, the sky is always there, and I am here. If she is a talented actor, she’ll probably be thinking about her art. If she’s not talented, if she has a role just to help her mother, she may be worrying about ruining the show. Or she may not be a worrier. Her thoughts may be exceedingly organized. Plan A attempted. Move on to Plan B.

Of course, we don’t want to overdo these thought tics. Occasionally is enough.

Feelings help the reader relate, so consider Leona’s inner life. She may be homesick or delighted to be on this mission, which she regards as an adventure. She may be confident or a worrier. She may cry easily, or she may hold her feelings in, and the reader discovers them through her thoughts and clenched jaw. She may be cheerful or depressed, or her feelings may swing from one to the other.

Distinguishing dialogue will also make her interesting. I’ve gone into this in Writing Magic and in dialogue posts. We all express ourselves uniquely, and Leona can, too. How does she speak? Slow? Fast? In bursts punctuated by silence? What kind of vocabulary does she use? What body language accompanies her speech? Again, dialogue tics, once we establish them, should be used sparingly.

And, of course, how does Leona look? Aside from her face and body, how does the inner person affect the outer? I bet you know people who look worse than they could, and vice versa, those who, through fashion sense or posture or flair, always look great. What does she wear? Does she know which colors are best on her, or does she not have a clue? How does she move? Is she graceful? Always rushing? Are her gestures big? Or do her arms stay tight at her sides?

Here are four prompts:

• Write a scene in which Leona and the entire troupe have an audience with the king the day they arrive. Have Leona do or say something that does not go well. Make sure you include her thoughts and feelings.

• Write the first rehearsal, with Leona juggling her time onstage with her stage managing. Be sure to include dialogue. Make things go badly in this scene, too.

• Using Bug’s suggestion, rewrite the first rehearsal from the POV of one of the other characters: the director, the leading man or lady, the stage manager. Show Leona through the eyes of the character you pick.

• If you like, write the whole tale.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Shocked! Villains from the Reader’s Perspective

These questions about villains came in at the end of July and the beginning of August:

First from JesseGee: I have a character in my book named Garrett. At the end of my story, he will betray his family and friends by trying to kill my main character for the queen, an evil woman who wants to annihilate his kind (which he knows) but needs his help to do it. I have put bits into my story that will help his betrayal in the end make more sense, but, purposely, I haven’t yet made it clear if he is working for the queen out of his own free will (which he is), and they’re small enough bits that my readers might not know exactly what he is doing, which I’d like to keep that way until the end. He has problems with drinking and other addictions, and can be very violent when he is drunk or angry.

At the same time though, my main character thinks that Garrett is his friend. Garrett happens to be very attractive, and can be quite charming when he wants or needs to be, and seems, to my main character, like a pretty good guy, but I’m not sure if my readers will think that way. How do I make him a likable character, likable enough that my readers will be upset when he turns traitor, even though he is truly, completely evil through and through?

Then Elisa commented along the same lines: I’m doing that too (Well, something similar anyways) so these comments will be helpful to me too! However, I do have my own methods. My story is divided into two parts, the first is told by the “good guy” And the second by the “Villain”, who is actually the good guy. So, the first bit is told in first person POV by the “good guy” who is really the bad guy, and I want the reader to think him a good person at first, and I want a slightly-more-than-mild surprise at the end of his narrative, but I don’t want them to be shocked nearly to the heart-attack stage. So I make him do subtly horrible things, like take pleasure in making people do things for him, or make them make mistakes. Or he likes punishing people and getting them into trouble, things that are more or less normal. He is rather arrogant, intensely sarcastic, very revengeful and he has a horrible temper; but seldom lets it get away with him. When I write him, I give him little evil thoughts, like how very much he would like to slap that crying child, and then his thoughts go from slap to knock over and then he’s on the verge of wanting to strangle her and then he is interrupted. Or he goes out of his way to kick a dog, or says something quite awful to a maid who tripped over her skirt and spilled a tray of ashes. Once the readers get to part two, they get a sort-of surprise, but they understand what’s going on.

And Emma wrote, So, in the book I’m writing, the MC’s boyfriend turns out to be an evil murderer. About halfway through the book the MC (and the readers, since it’s in first person) learn what he’s really like and during the second half of the book the MC is fighting him to stop him from killing a bunch of people. Up until he’s revealed as a murderer the MC is madly in love with him, and it’s a total shock when she finds out about him (he actually kills a girl who’s like a little sister to the MC, so she goes from loving him to hating him while still caring about him some). I want the readers to like him at first, obviously, but then they have to hate him because he takes over as the main villain. I’ve given him a sort of darker personality, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to hint at what happens later. Do you have any ideas?

These questions seem as much about what the reader knows as they are about villains. When JesseGee’s question came in, I wrote this: I’m not sure why the reader shouldn’t know Garrett is evil. If they know and your main character blissfully believes he’s good, the reader will be in a tizzy of worry for your MC, which is a good thing.

I still think that’s a fine way to go, but if we want Garrett to be likable, he needs to be good company or interesting or sympathetic and certainly not annoying, in my opinion. If at first the people he harms are ones the reader doesn’t care much about, he’ll probably be forgiven. Let’s imagine the queen gives a reception attended by Garrett and our MC, Ralph, who gets stuck talking to a third character, Petra, who is dishing nasty gossip about everybody at the reception. Kind Ralph longs to escape but can’t think of a polite way to do so. Garrett sweeps in to the rescue. He puts his arm around Petra’s shoulder and, while chatting with her and promising her some juicy secret, walks her outside the double entrance doors, says he’ll be right back, then closes and bars the doors, even though a blizzard is raging outside. He heads back to Ralph, on his way passing a message from the queen to one of her lackeys. When he returns to Ralph, they talk, and he encourages Ralph, who is shy, and makes him feel especially interesting. Then he introduces him to people he’s wanted to meet and generally makes sure that Ralph’s evening is a success. The next morning, Petra is found frozen to death, and the person Garrett has passed a message to has arrested the prime minister, whom the reader understands to be good but knows only distantly. The reader will be wary around Garrett after that, but probably won’t hate him. Hatred will come when Garrett turns on Ralph, if Ralph is beloved by the reader.

Elisa seems to have taken on something really hard: to write from the POV of a character who behaves badly and thinks terrible thoughts while persuading the reader that he’s the hero and even a little likable. If I were going to attempt it, I would probably give him some mitigating qualities. For example, maybe he’s an amazing artist and his work brings pleasure to many people, even though he gets really unpleasant when he’s interrupted. And maybe there’s someone he cares about, possibly not enough to give up his evil plans, but the caring is genuine.

Emma’s villain reminds me of someone I once knew and admired, a professor who turned out to be much less than admirable. He would say that he used to be friends with this person and that person but they had stopped liking him for some reason that bewildered him. When I realized his true nature, the reason became understandable, but at the beginning I sympathized with him and pitied him for being misunderstood. Emma can use something like this as a clue. Her MC’s boyfriend can have no friends of long standing, which may ring an alarm bell in the reader’s mind. A mutual acquaintance can hint to the MC that her boyfriend has behaved badly in the past. Jane Austen does something like this concerning Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. Emma’s MC can ask the villain about the hint and he can say something that subtly contradicts the past he’s already revealed to her. More alarm bells for the reader. He can be secretive. Their first argument can come about when he accuses her of prying. These intimations of future trouble are subtle, as they should be. Emma’s MC can shrug them off, but the reader will notice and remember.

I’ve mentioned this before: The best examples I’ve ever read of surprises about the true nature of certain characters are in The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, which I would say is appropriate for middle school and up. A marvelous, exciting read that is full of astonishing revelations. We can all learn a lot from these books. Science fiction at its best.

Here are four prompts:

• Write a scene from the POV of a famous fictional villain, could be the queen in “Snow White,” an evil stepsister in “Cinderella,” Bluebeard, or Captain Hook. Make the villain, if not likable, a fleshed-out character, more than the collection of evil qualities.

• Write the backstory of one of these villains. Show the descent into villainy.

• Let’s zero in on one of the stepsisters in “Cinderella.” Write a sequel to Cinderella in which the stepsister starts out villainous and gradually becomes good. Show her progression.

• The evil magician in “Aladdin,” who poses as Aladdin’s uncle, initially seems good. Slow the fairy tale down and show his first meeting with Aladdin, his entry into Aladdin’s home, his interaction with Aladdin’s mother. Present him as good, with hints of something else under the surface. Make the reader uneasy.

Have fun, and save what you write!

You, the Narrator, the Character

Before I start the post, just want to let you know that I’m going to be at a library in Irving, Texas, on Saturday, October 12th. You can find details on the website. I’ll be there to talk about my historical novel, Dave at Night, but I’m sure I’ll take questions about anything. I hope some of you can make it, and please let me know that you read about the event here.

In August, Abby wrote in to the website with this: …I am aiming to write a book on myself. I have a very interesting background, being a traveling homeschooler, being a regular school-going kid, living in two different countries at different times. I feel like I have so much to share, but I honestly don’t know where to start. I love writing poems, though I don’t read much of poems. I TOTALLY love reading books. How do you think I should start my journey of writing a book?

And just so you know, I already write a lot. My creative juices are flowing. I’m becoming a writer, regular blogger and I write journals and poems.

In my answer I wrote, I haven’t done much memoir writing, although there are snippets in WRITING MAGIC, or much autobiographical fiction, but I’ve written two related posts. To find them, click on “writing from life” on the right. Also, I think you should read memoirs and autobiographical fiction, which a librarian or a bookstore salesperson will help you find.

I’d also suggest you look at some travel writing books, not guidebooks, but travel writing as literature. Again, a librarian or bookstore salesperson should be able to help.

I’m glad you called writing a book a journey. I’d say it’s a trip on a slow boat or on foot. Books aren’t written at rocket-ship speed, except during NaNoWriMo (coming up soon), and even then there’s revision afterward. So you seem to have the first element down. Patience is the most important virtue a writer needs.

I just googled the difference between autobiography and memoir and found this link, which you may find helpful: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/knowing-the-difference-between-an-autobiography-an.html. And here’s a link to a Wikipedia article about memoir: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoir. I looked at a few more links and gleaned that memoir uses more of the strategies of fiction than autobiography does. I’m guessing here, but I suspect that retelling a conversation in autobiography, for example, would have to be exact. In memoir who said what can be filtered through the memoirist’s memory.

When you start, don’t worry about beginning in the right place. The most important thing is to put something down. You can figure out what goes where later. Of course, in a memoir the beginning may wind up being the earliest chronological point. Or not, depending on what you eventually decide gets the narrative going.

In my earlier posts I mentioned the short story I wrote for a collection of stories and memoirs about grandmothers, called In My Grandmother’s House, which seems to be out of print and hard to find. I also contributed a memoir piece to a collection that is still be available, called Thanks and Giving. My grandmother story was fictionalized, but the family in the story was mine, minus my sister; the unpleasant grandmother and aunts were definitely mine. The main character was a slightly more outspoken version of me. The memory in the Thanks and Giving story was true to the facts as I remember them, although I was very young at the time.

In both I regarded myself as a character and not a perfect being – I was flawed. I criticized my grandmother in one; in the other, I destroyed an expensive doll. Whether you’re writing autobiography or memoir, you need to become character-like. The reader has to engage, must find herself in you, and you have to be sympathetic. That I was flawed was fine. Nobody identifies with a Mary Sue.

How to achieve that empathy?

We need tension, maybe not as much as in fiction, but some. For example, you might include your worries, if you had any, when you moved to foreign countries. If things didn’t always go well, readers will want the details. And details in any kind of writing bring experience to life.

If something funny happens, please share. Details are essential here, too, to set up the situation and ensure that the reader gets the joke.

Your thoughts and feelings, negative as well as positive, are also essential. The reader walks in our MC’s shoes when he enters her mind and heart. Same for the narrator of a memoir.

Naturally, there will be other real people in a memoir. If any of them are also flawed, you may need to consider hurt feelings. I go into this in more detail in my other posts, but you may want to start by talking to those involved and telling them what you’re doing.

I once heard a children’s book author say in a speech that she learns by being surprised, which struck me as true. An unexpected fact lingers in my memory. For example, when I wrote my historical fantasy, Ever, I read up on ancient Mesopotamia. When I looked into medical practices way back then, I discovered that a physician, on the way to a patient, would look for omens that would help him make a diagnosis – before he even saw the sick person! I’ll never forget that. If something astonished you, it will likely surprise your reader, too. Don’t leave it out.

Likewise, what interests you will probably interest your reader. Another example: Disney sent me to Japan to promote Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg. Before I went I asked for help bridging the culture gap, and Disney set me up with a consultant. Here in the U. S., when I promote a book I’m expected to say good things about it – that’s the purpose of promotion, right? But the consultant told me to be careful about that in Japan where anything that smacks of boasting is frowned upon. I had to find ways of talking about the book with humility. It was fascinating! (And I learned that it’s perfectly acceptable to eat sushi with your fingers.)

Prompts:

• When I researched my historical novel Dave at Night, I read about early automobiles and learned that carriage companies commonly made the auto bodies. Think Cinderella’s pumpkin coach with an engine. The driver’s seat in an early chauffeured limousine was lower than the passenger seats, and short chauffeurs were preferred so that the gentry who rode in these cars would appear bigger and more important. Write a story about a character who is desperate to break into high society in a fantasy world that makes these kinds of obvious, even physical, class distinctions.

• Pick a character from one of your stories and make him or her the MC in an anecdote from your own life. After the incident gets going, let the MC take the story in a fictional direction.

• I don’t know if this is still true, but when I was in school teachers loved to assign “My Summer Vacation” as a September essay topic. So let’s revive the practice if it’s fallen out of use. Write a memoir piece about your summer. Look for the tense times, the disappointments, the crazy jokes, the near-drownings. Make yourself into a character readers will identify with. If you had the dullest summer in world history, fictionalize! Invent the near-drownings!

Have fun, and save what you write!

What about politics?

On July 20, 2013, Elisa wrote, What about politics? I’m a Republican and conservative, and I feel pretty strongly about my beliefs. It’s not like I’ll get all over someone for being Democrat or a socialist (I know and like plenty of them), it’s just that I really believe in what I am. Anyhow, the libraries are SO full of socialist writers, and socialism is getting pretty popular and one of my characters is very conservative. And very opinionated. Even more so than me! And I’m worried that she’ll step on people’s toes and make them mad. It’s not like some writers don’t do that to me, but some people are a lot more sensitive to people who don’t agree with them than I am. I don’t want to change Mahala, because she’s just herself and changing her would make her someone entirely different. She just wouldn’t be my beloved character being different; but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. At the same time, changing Mahala would mean changing my story, and also it would mean that I’m watering down my beliefs. I hate it when other people do that. I don’t want to be a hypocrite by doing it myself. What am I supposed to do?

I don’t usually write about politics here – or anywhere, except in occasional emails to my Representative or Senators. But something political came up in the new book, Stolen Magic, which is set on the mountainous island of Lahnt, no place on our earth. I’m not giving much away to tell you this (and it does tie in to Elisa’s question):

In this world there are brunkas, short, helpful creatures whose senses are sharper than humans’. High Brunka Marya is in charge of the Oase, where the brunka treasures are kept. One of these is the Replica, a sculpture of the island, which always sits on a pedestal. If it’s taken off the pedestal for a length of time, a volcano starts to bubble. If the Replica is off for long enough, the volcano erupts, and the mountain and everyone on it are destroyed. Marya’s main responsibility is to keep the Replica safe, but she’s very polite and doesn’t use her powerful sense of hearing to eavesdrop on people’s conversations, although some may be plotting to do evil. Masteress Meenore, the dragon detective, thinks she’s foolhardy, to put it mildly.

When I wrote this, I wasn’t thinking about domestic spying in the news in this world. But when I reread it, the connection jumped out. In real life I’m confused about the subject. I certainly don’t want another terrorist attack, but I feel strongly about a person’s right to privacy. Masteress Meenore, however, isn’t confused. IT is sure that preventing a mountain from exploding trumps politeness (privacy). Marya takes the other position, but her voice in my story doesn’t carry the same weight as Meenore’s. He wins the argument.

I’m certainly not going to change ITs opinion because people may see the politics and disagree. I’d have to change ITs character to do that, and, in the second book, it’s too late for that. Plus, I don’t want to. Like Elisa’s Mahala, Masteress Meenore is beloved by me. And I don’t think I have to make the dispute fair. I don’t have to even my story out so that Marya’s position is equally valid. This is a novel, not a playground, for example, where fairness truly is important.

Like Elisa I’ve read and enjoyed books that put forth a political ideology. Ayn Rand’s novels (high school and up) and the science fiction of Robert Heinlein (some are for children, others definitely not) spring to mind. And sometimes, especially with Ayn Rand, I’ve been fascinated by her arguments, although she stacks the deck in their favor as she works out her plots–which I think is a flaw. As for Heinlein’s books, I just get into the plots and don’t care.

But even though I’ve liked tendentious (a great word!) books, what I generally like about them is the plot, the characters, and the voice. Story and strong characters are what count with me. Just as I’m not fond of an obvious moral, I don’t relish having a point of view repeatedly thrust in front of my nose, whether I agree with it or not.

Uh oh. I think I just worried Elisa all over again. Let me be specific. Suppose Mahala is intensely political and sees everything that happens through a current events lens, I’m okay with that if she’s interesting. Let’s imagine that she’s babysitting her little brother Camo when he spills his milk at breakfast, and she says something about dairy subsidies (a subject I know nothing about, if there is a dairy subsidy). Camo asks what a subsicky is. Mahala takes a quarter out of her backpack and puts it in his chubby hand. “Let’s say Mommy and Daddy give you a toy subsidy.” She looks at the ceiling, figuring out how to explain. “That means they would pay you–“ She looks down again and sees his fist in his mouth. Where is the quarter? His fist, when she extracts it from his mouth, is empty. So is his mouth when she persuades him to open it. What does she do next? It will be her fault if anything happens to Camo. Now we’re off into the story. If she thinks about one of her political heroes and how she would act in a crisis and it works out perfectly and the reader has a moral to swallow that’s much bigger than a quarter, I’m not happy. But if her interpretation leads her to do something truly goofy and the story gets complicated, then I’m delighted, especially if Camo survives–since I’m a wimp!

I’ve written other posts about giving offense in stories, so anyone who struggles with this might like to look at the giving offense label on the right. The post of November 11, 2011, is especially on target.

I’ll end with Elisa’s worry about becoming a hypocrite. Art is where we have to be true to ourselves. When we’re tiptoeing around a subject, when we’re being oh-so careful, we are stamping on our creativity, and our ideas are likely to shrivel. Instead, let them rip and roar with power.

Here are three prompts:

• You were probably expecting this: Tell the story of Camo and his sister and the swallowed quarter. Bring politics into it.

• Your MC is a volunteer for a candidate who supports an issue that is more important to her than any other. She witnesses the candidate acting despicably, corruptly, unethically – but in a way that has nothing to do with your MC’s cause. What does she do? Write a scene or the whole story. Mix it up with complex characters and plot twists and no easy morals.

• In one of my poetry courses we’re starting off with the poems of Emily Dickinson. When we read this one in class, I thought, Wow! This is fantasy! And I thought of the blog. So here’s the poem (numbered, because she didn’t give her poems titles), which is in the public domain for anyone to fool around with, and the challenge is to turn it into a story:

280

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

In case you’re confused, then – is the end of the poem. Dickinson ended a lot of poems ambiguously and with a dash.

Have fun, and save what you write!