Known quantities

Just curious: Did anyone join in the Woozworld event? I found it strange and didn’t feel as if I met anyone, really. If you were there, what was your experience?

Here’s a link to an interesting article in The New York Times about the cheerful bias in journalism and, by extension I guess, in humanity: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/science/why-we-all-sound-like-pollyannas.html. I think it’s something to keep in mind as we write stories.

On September 18th or later, writeforfun wrote, I’ve been meaning to start writing the third book in my trilogy for months now, but I’m stuck, and a big part of it, I think, is that I can’t seem to keep my characters interesting enough for a third book. Perhaps that doesn’t make sense. You see, in book one, my MC, Ben gets kidnapped by the five others, grows to accept them, and then gets rescued by them – and he ends up marrying one of them. In book two, all six of them are the MC’s, and they all go on a top-secret mission with a couple of CIA agents to save the world, and learn how awesome they can be. In book three, all six of the MC’s have to track down a mysterious criminal who is trying to capture Ben and his wife’s daughter. This’s where I run into trouble. Half of the book is about Ben’s daughter (that half comes with its own set of problems). The other half is about the six of them trying to catch the stalker, but the whole thing just doesn’t seem new and interesting enough. I mean, we’ve already learned about these characters and seen them reacting in regular life, and we’ve seen them in action and being awesome. What now? I know my characters and I love them like they’re my family, and it’s not that I’m really bored with them; but I can’t think of anything that will really keep me, or the reader, motivated to keep watching them. Is there any way to keep well-known, previously established characters interesting and surprising?

Michelle Dyck responded: First idea off the top of my head is: if you’re getting bored with the characters, maybe they’re getting bored with each other. It sounds as if they’ve been together for a long time. Even if they’re close, so much time together can give rise to conflicts (petty or otherwise). Just think of sibling rivalry.

And Deborah O’Carroll sympathized: I’m having a similar problem with a trilogy of mine… I’m trying to write the second book, but in the first one I already had monsters and trying-to-save-the-world, so going down a step to minor mysteries seems like an anticlimax, and I’m worried about the third as well… PLUS all the characters know each other now, and them not being sure about one of the characters the first time around was the other main source of tension… I’m trying to add some excitement, and keep a little leftover tension between the characters, plus I have some pretty big surprises the character has been keeping from the others, one for this book and another for the third.

And Elisa suggested: Maybe you could add a new member to the group, one that not everyone knows or completely trusts. Perhaps a former criminal who worked with the “mysterious criminal” in your book. S/he could end up being either good or bad, but it would help up the tension whichever way you go.

I’ve said this before: We tend to be a little over-critical of our work, and I wonder if this is the problem now, because when I love a series I don’t mind that the characters are known quantities. In fact, their familiarity is part of what I enjoy, spending more time in their delightful company. For example, I adore the characters in the Discworld series: all the witches, Sam Vines and the others on the City Watch, DEATH. How can I love DEATH? But I do, and I wouldn’t change a bone in his skull!

Or take Sherlock Holmes, who is reliably brilliant, enigmatic, and difficult. If I knew him in real life, I might tire of his unexplained pronouncements, his certainty that what he’s involved with is more important than anything in my life, and his reliance on unhealthy substances. But in fiction? Never!

I’ve now written two, albeit short, series: the three Disney Fairies books and the two books about Elodie and the dragon Meenore, A Tale of Two Castles and Stolen Magic. I don’t count The Princess Tales because only Ethelinda appears in two books or Fairest, because Areida is just a minor character. Part of the fun of reading a series is seeing how beloved characters will be themselves in new situations. Same goes for writing a series. In Stolen Magic, I use Elodie’s mansioning skill to actually save lives; Meenore practices ITs reasoning powers in a different setting, and I discover IT likes to sing limericks; and the ogre, Count Jonty Um, behaves nobly as usual but is appreciated as never before. Returning to them was part of the fun of the writing.

Assuming, though, that Elisa isn’t just being over self-critical, let’s explore some possibilities to create freshness.

• I like Michelle Dyck’s idea of sowing dissension in the ranks of our heroes. Think of rock bands and how often they break up once they’ve achieved success. Think of anybody’s family cooped up together on a long car trip. Charming traits start to irritate, and annoying ones become character flaws as deep as the Grand Canyon. People try to behave and be their best selves, but sometimes– sometimes often–someone erupts. Regrettable words are spoken, and rifts form that take a while to heal.

• We can disable one or two or all of them or make some of them unavailable. Can be simple things. Zeke might have broken his leg. Yolanda may be babysitting her niece while her sister and brother-in-law are on vacation. Wayne is studying for exams in particle physics. Vera is in a running argument with her cousin and can think of nothing else. Uli is on an expedition to Antarctica. Tess is in a long-running chess competition. Whatever. Their attention is divided; they can’t always be there for each other. The problem needs their complete concentration, but they can’t give it.

• Our characters don’t have to stay the same forever. They can develop and change in good ways and bad, and they can do it in the course of the new book. We can watch in horrified fascination as Yolanda loses herself to the world of video games, where she can save universes without ever leaving her chair. Uli can achieve a higher state of consciousness through meditation, which changes his perspective on threats. In the end this higher state may contribute to the stalker’s defeat, but in the meanwhile he may seem lost to his friends. Tess can fall in love.

• Are our MCs, individually or as a group, invincible? If they’ve already saved the world, is a stalker enough of a challenge? Can we introduce some new Achilles’ heels for each of them so that the threat intensifies?

• We make the stalker the perfect villain for our MCs. He knows how to turn their goodness against them. He uses their own strengths to their disadvantage. This may call for more scenes for him and possibly more character development. We show how he thinks; we lay out the resources he has at his disposal; we reveal his despicable plan for Ben’s wife’s daughter. We demonstrate how he spies on our heroes, and the reader squirms as he gathers his data. In both my Fairies books and the mysteries, the excitement comes from the fresh danger, and maybe this is what we need to do here.

• As Elisa suggests, we can introduce another new character, or more than one. The stalker can have allies, and there can be other characters who are trying to bring him to justice. We can have fun developing all of the newbies. The reader will be interested in how we bring them into our plot.

Here are three prompts:

• Remember the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz and how she watches Dorothy and her friends in her crystal ball? The stalker has this actual ball, which he got on a trip to Oz. Write a scene in which he’s observing one or more of our heroes. You can use any of them, from Zeke to Tess, in any of the scenarios I laid out, or make up some of your own. Include his thoughts and his plans as he spies.

• There have been a bunch of TV and movie spinoffs based on Sherlock Holmes. Why shouldn’t we join the fun? Holmes is presented with the problem of a missing heiress and a threat against the life of the chief of chief constable in the English town of Chipping Norton. Write the story and be sure to include Dr. Watson and arch-villain Moriarty. At least at the beginning of your story, keep them as their old selves. If you change them, make sure the reader sees the transformation take place.

• The stalker is after Yolanda, who is addicted to video games. Her friends, our heroes, try one way after another to try to get her back. Following Michelle Dyck’s idea, they start to argue over their friend. Write a scene in which words are spoken that aren’t easy to take back. The band of six is disbanding. Make it happen. You decide whether or not to reunite them.

Have fun, and save what you write!

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!

Setting Wake Up

On August 15, 2014, carpelibris wrote, Anyone have the opposite problem: livening up a story that takes place on a single, rather ordinary location?

Let’s break this into two pieces, the ordinariness and the unmoving-ness of the setting and start with the first.

Pick the most boring, most blah place in your life that you can go to right now. Your assignment, as soon as I tell you to, is to take yourself there.

Right now I’m in my most boring space, a Metro North train rattling toward New York City, where I often write the blog. I’m not talking about my fellow passengers, who often aren’t dull at all, sometimes unfortunately, but the train itself: gray speckled linoleum, tan-gray walls, seats in tan-gray molded plastic with blue upholstery. The intention, I suppose, is to offend no one. The emergency exit signs are always the same, same smudged window, same handicapped and priority seating signs. Soundwise, the same automated station announcements.

But there’s this ad on the wall from Grub Hub (an online restaurant delivery service), which horrifies me: “Say hello to ordering food online, and say goodbye to saying hello into a phone.” As if that were a good thing. I like to talk to people! This would not make me happy! But it isn’t boring.

When you go to your height-of-ordinary place, write a short description of its uninteresting features. Then hunt for at least one unboring thing, maybe a discovery that surprises you. Look, listen, sniff, touch. Take your time, and when you’re finished, come back.

Go there now.

Music to accompany time passing. Imagine a beat that represents the ticking of an analog clock.

Welcome back!

Did you discover anything? My guess is you did. Whether or not you did, you can use other factors to liven up the environment. Your character can have history in this place. One night, on my ride home, my train ran into a tree that had fallen across the tracks. No one was hurt, and I was in the second car, but I walked forward to see improbable branches and part of an actual tree trunk filling half the car.

In our story, our MC can have been injured, and there can have been fatalities. She can remember that the accident took place during a spring storm. A nest of cardinals were in the tree, and she heard silence right after the collision and then the chirping of frightened nestlings. Whenever she’s in the train at night she’s on edge.

People perceive settings differently depending on their personalities. So do our characters. For a bookworm in a library, the walls don’t exist. For a reluctant reader, who’s come for literacy tutoring, the walls may be closing in. The emotion of the character will affect how she sees her environment. We can use that perspective to create interest.

And it’s fun to show the differences in perception. Two friends, Owen and Maya, are describing the local park to Owen’s cousin, Erin, who’s visiting. Maya talks about the tennis courts, the carousel, the picnic tables where people play chess in the summer. Owen goes on and on about the café and its fifty ice cream flavors. Erin doesn’t care about any of it. What she wants to know is if kids skateboard there, and if they’re any good.

In a minute, go back to your boring place. When you get there, think about a few of your characters, three, say. What’s the first thing each one would notice? What’s the last thing? If it’s far from the cleanest spot on earth, who would be uncomfortable? Who oblivious? Same with the noise level. Use all your characters’ senses. Would each of them find the boring place boring?

Now go take a look and return.

If all else fails and our real-life dull setting stays dull, we are writing fiction; we can liven it up. Let’s suppose that our story is stuck in an ordinary dining room: oak table, eight chairs, a breakfront where the good china is kept, and a side table, pale blue walls, windows onto a small backward.

Although we could put a shrunken head on the second shelf of the breakfront and make the family dog be a werewolf who’s gotten stuck in wolf form, we don’t want to add anything that will derail our plot, so we won’t go that far. But there probably is a mood that we can heighten with the kind of artwork on the walls, the photographs on the mantel (once we give the room a fireplace). Temperature conveys mood to me, so we can fool around with that. A chilly house may depress Maya. A room that’s too warm may make Owen sleepy and Erin fidgety. Inviting cooking smells will have their own effect; burnt smells or the aroma of disinfectant a different effect. And the Bob Dylan CD that Owen’s father has put on may please some and annoy others.

Suppose our entire story has to take place in this dining room, what to do? I also discuss this topic in my post of August 29, 2012, so you may want to take a look. Be sure to check out the prompts, because they expand on what goes before. And here are some fresh thoughts:

• Concentrate on character, especially on the relationships among our characters. The setting may fall away entirely, because it’s always the same, but our characters are constantly butting against each other, forming and breaking alliances.

• Bring in fresh characters, so there’s newness.

• Visit other places in flashbacks, in the imaginations of our characters, in their dialogue.

• Connect to other places by phone, text, email, even television, if we can put a TV in our setting. Depending on genre, telepathy with people in other places might be possible, or communing with spirits, or even creating the illusion of another location.

Here are four prompts!

• Describe the dining room or any humdrum setting from the POV of Owen, Maya, and Erin. Through the descriptions, give the reader insight into each personality.

• The world outside this dining room is unsafe. You decide how and why. Our three MCs have found sanctuary there and have been together for three hours when someone appears in the window, begging piteously to be let in. Write the story.

• The house this dining room is in was built by Owen’s ancestor in 1735. Something that happened (you decide what) in the dining room in 1745 reverberates through the centuries to this day. Write the original event, a scene one hundred years later, a scene shortly after World War II, and the final, contemporary scene.

• Reverse the order in the last prompt. Show the contemporary scene first and work backward. Write it so that the reader understands the meaning of the scene in present time only when she reads the earliest one.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Vive la difference!

I’m putting two related questions and accompanying comments together in this post. On August 2, 2014, F wrote, I’ve found that over the course of all my stories, my characters seem to repeat a lot of the same kind of traits. Whilst I do sometimes feel like they’re independent and distinguishable and have their own voices, I feel like their personalities boil down to be very similar, not to mention that these personalities seem to have, at their core, an enlarged aspect of my own (I guess I rely on writing what I can identify with).

Although my characters aren’t carbon copies of me (thank goodness), OR carbon copies of each other, there are definitely similarities, and I’m torn between wanting to change the characters to make them unique but not wanting to lose the essence of the character as I’ve come to know them. Thoughts?

Bibliophile answered, If they’re a group of friends, and in books they normally are, then it’s okay if they have similarities. I would keep them the same, and maybe add in some little extra quirks like this: suppose Jenna and Robert are both really easygoing, happy people, but Robert blubbers at the mention of unicorns and Jenna gets really angry when she hears the word ‘elf’. That should be enough to differentiate.

And Anonymous said, What I try to do to make characters sound unique is one of two things:
-Write it and try to exaggerate all the characters’ traits and edit them down later, or
-Imagine a different character in their shoes. What would they do differently?

This related question came in from J. Garf on December 26, 2014: In nearly every story I’ve written I have the exact same character, only under a different name with very slightly varied physical features. This character is a ruthless villain (though they normally work for the true antagonist) that goes by a title instead of a name (the warden, the jailer, the sheriff, etc.), holds a position of authority that is honorable in a real community (similar to a chief of police) but is the exact same every time, and causes extreme problems for my main character. My characters usually react differently, but this default villain is so similar every time that I’m worried my readers will be bored if they read more than one of my stories. Help! How do I fix this?

Elisa weighed in with this: I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM! Default characters are bothersome. One of the best solutions is quirks! I know in a ruthless villain, you probably don’t want hilarious/lovable quirks (unless… maybe you do?) so I’d go more with subtler things. But keep them varied for each villain and INTERESTING! I do so love an interesting villain. (I mean, I hate them. I love to hate them!) Say the Warden is large and strong, the Jailer is fat, and the Sheriff is a small man. Maybe the Warden is fond of music, while the Jailer is tone deaf and the Sheriff only tolerates music, but loves ballroom dancing. The Warden can be something of an introvert, while the Jailer is downright reclusive and the Sheriff is a social butterfly… There are a wealth of differences between three individuals that have the same job (specifically the job of the Ruthless Villain). Take any two fellows who work at the same job and note their differences and then use the observations to flesh out your Ruthless Villains.

And Erica Eliza wrote, Sometimes default characters become an author’s trademark. I have a friend who’s a big Dickens fan. When we had to read TALE OF TWO CITIES in school, she was disappointed because it didn’t have a spunky orphan character.

First off: Sometimes we are a tad (or maybe more?) too hard on ourselves when we critique our own work. F, since you’ve described differences between your characters, I wonder if anyone else will see the redundancies. You may want to start by getting an objective opinion from a reader you trust. And J. Garf, I’d suggest doing the same, after you name these secondary villains, beyond their occupations. Your readers may see these characters as individuals, not as knock-offs of one another.

But assuming they really are too similar, the suggestions above are great. I love Elisa’s suggestions about the physical aspects of a character. In movies and on TV, each actor is so different in appearance, in movement, in voice quality, that–even if their roles are essentially the same–we never get confused. Think, for example, of gangsters or police. There may be, say, five on the force or in the gang, and four of the five aren’t particularly differentiated. The viewer never gets confused because they look so different. Or think of all the versions of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Moriarty that have come along; the characters are differentiated to at least some degree by appearance.

As writers we can remind our readers of how our characters look, not constantly, but often enough, and once their appearance is established, the reader will bring the image along into situations. If one character is tall, we can have the others crane their necks to look up at her. We can have the leader take her height into consideration when he plans his team’s actions. If another is especially tiny, he can be the one to fit through a basement window.

Even dress style can help. No matter the occasion, Sam looks like he just rolled out of bed, but the crease in William’s pants is always sharp enough to slice bread.

And a simple sex change will accomplish miracles in setting characters apart. Both Sam and Martha are selfish and sneaky, for example, but making them different genders will influence how we write them. I doubt there will be confusion or a feeling of sameness.

And I agree with both Elisa and Bibliophile about quirks and temperament, like introvert versus extrovert. Both comments offer terrific ideas for differentiating characters.

Of course we have to be consistent. We have to remember that Sam is chatty and Martha chooses her words carefully and raises her voice if anyone disagrees with her. We can’t put our short character in the middle of a crowd and expect him to see anything a yard away. In most circumstances we can’t make William slip in a mud puddle and not be upset about the dirt. Anonymous’s suggestion about exaggeration comes in here. If we exaggerate traits we won’t forget. It’s easy to tone down the over-the-top spots in revision.

Here are two more ideas:

If we plug actual people from our lives into our characters, they will naturally be unique. If we think of our cousin James when we write Sam, Sam will become unlike any of our other characters. As we write, we’ll see James. At meals, he reaches across three people to get the potato salad. When he walks, he leans forward as if into a strong wind. He’s not a great listener, so Martha has to be especially forceful to get his attention. If he’s our main villain’s henchman, his intrinsic loyalty will be put to (evil) use. If he’s a good character, that trait is likely to come in handy, too.

Or we can borrow from a few real people to come up with a composite Martha who is unlike anyone but herself. We can give her my late friend Nedda’s digressive conversational style, my friend Joan’s insight, and my late mother’s freakish ability to write upside down and backwards as fast as ordinary humans can write right-side up and forward.

Notice that we stay away from ourselves when we’re going to real people, since F worries about her characters’ closeness to herself, and because our characters are going, inescapably, to have some of ourselves in them, which isn’t a bad thing. We’re complex and multi-faceted!

The second idea is to think about our plot. What’s the action like? Do we have battle scenes? A trek across a mountain? Crowd scenes? Where does the tension come from? What role does this character have in the story?

Let’s imagine that Martha is Sam’s best friend, and he’s our MC. His goal is to win a competition. If he fails, the consequences will ripple out beyond himself. His family, Martha, his teammates will also be hurt. Back to Martha. How can we design her so that she both helps Sam and hinders him?

Below are three possibilities for each. You come up with three more. The choices are legion.

Helpful:

• Martha is a whiz at one aspect of the competition, and she’s a good teacher.

• Martha is super-calm. When anxiety gnaws at Sam, she can settle him.

• Martha believes in Sam. When he doubts himself, her confidence pulls him through.

Unhelpful:

• Martha is a pessimist. She wants Sam to win, but she expects the worst.

• Martha has needs of her own, and she draws Sam into the whirlwind of her problems.

• Martha is jealous of Sam’s abilities, even though they’re on the same side.

If we figure out how Martha can raise the tension in our story, we’ll come up with an interesting character whose nature fits our narrative.

Here are three prompts:

• Write the story of the competition. Decide what the competition is and what’s at stake. Make Martha help and hinder Sam.

• Rewrite the competition and make Martha the MC and Sam the one who assists and creates obstacles. The story may come out differently.

• Write a scene between the main villain and the Jailer, but give the Jailer a secret the villain doesn’t know about. Rewrite the scene, and if the Jailer was a man, make him a woman. Rewrite the scene, but use some of the strategies we’ve talked about for making him different from the other jailers.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Hooray for Quests!

First off, the big news: Writer to Writer is OUT–RELEASED–PUBLISHED!!! It came out yesterday. Some of you are in it–no last names, of course. Thanks to you all for making this blog a great, helpful, safe place for writers, and for making this book possible.

Second off: Ho! Ho! Ho! Happy holidays, and best wishes for great writing in 2015!

This question came into the website late in July from Writer At Heart: What are you supposed to do when all of your stories seem to repeat? Like, I’ve had this GREAT idea for a girl going on quest, but all of my other stories seem to copy this idea. What do you do in situations like this?

Just about any story can be expressed as a quest. Consider these: Heidi is a quest for a safe home; The Wizard of Oz, a quest for contentment; Anne of Green Gables, a quest to be loved; Charlotte’s Web, a quest for survival; Pride and Prejudice (and all of Austen–every single book!), not only a quest, but the same quest every time, for marital happiness. All my three Disney Fairies books even have the word quest in the title.

You may disagree with my description of the quest in these books, but I hope you’ll agree that in each one a character wants something and struggles in ways direct and indirect to get it. The character has an objective, even if he or she wouldn’t put it that way. The objective can be called a quest.

Let’s think about Jane Austen, my favorite writer. If you haven’t read her books, I can’t recommend them highly enough. She gives the twenty-first century reader an un-self-conscious look at an earlier age, which I enjoy, but I love her humor most of all, which never gets stale, no matter how often I reread her, and certainly never gets dated. She shows us our timeless humanity, flawed and funny and sympathetic.

Yes, her stories are each wrapped around an identical objective, but the way they play themselves out is different in each one. Austen is a genius at character development. Her characters are unique and meticulously defined, and their natures determine the way they approach their quest. The obstacles are different, too, but in an Austen novel, in my opinion, the freshness comes from the richness of the characters.

In my Disney Fairies books, many of the characters are the same, because the cast always includes the major Never Land fairies: Rani, Tinker Bell, Prilla, and Vidia. And the shape of each story is circular (***SPOILER ALERT***): the fairies’ world and Never Land itself are threatened; events play out; order is restored. But there are new characters, and the threat is different in each book, and the reader gets to see how the old characters respond to an unexpected situation. I hope the reader feels the comfort of the familiar combined with the excitement of the unknown.

As I’ve said before on the blog, there aren’t many possible plots. There’s always a problem, characters who influence events, and almost always a happy or sad resolution. I’ve suggested two major strategies for creating freshness: characters and obstacles. I can think of a third: setting. Austen’s novels would have to be different if they were set in a present day town, different again if they were dropped down in Oz.

Let’s think about “Jack in the Beanstalk.” The quest is for enough money to live on, so Jack’s mother sends him off to sell the cow. Jack is willing to trade it for beans a stranger tells him are magical. Another character wouldn’t be so trusting. The quest would have to be pursued in a different way. Same quest, though. Different story.

Or we can keep Jack but change the obstacles. He takes the beans. His mother throws them out the window, because her character hasn’t changed, either. The story veers from there, though. Suppose what grows is a coat tree upon which hangs a cloak. Jack puts on the cloak, which confers magic powers, although he doesn’t know what they are. His disgusted mother kicks him out, and, in true fairy tale fashion, he sets off, innocent and gullible as ever, to make his fortune and keep his mom from starving. Same quest. Different story.

Or suppose we set the story in modern times. The beanstalk pops up. Jack climbs to the penthouse gym of his forty-story apartment building. The giant is a body builder. Killing him will land Jack in jail, if he gets away with it. Same quest. Different story.

We writers are stuck with ourselves. The themes that hold us in their grip today may change only slowly, if at all. We may have to work through them in story after story. Obedience and its mirror image, rebellion, crop up in many of my stories, obviously in Ella Enchanted, but also, to name two more, in Ever and The Fairy’s Mistake. In Ever, this saying runs through the book: As you wish, so it will be. In The Fairy’s Mistake, Rosella has to toughen up and resist her natural impulse to do what others want, while her sister has to make an exception to her own me-first motto. But this theme and the plots that it calls forth don’t make my stories all the same!

If our plots often present themselves as quests, maybe there’s something in the story shape that we’re figuring out. There may be questions we’re trying to answer through quests, or we may be exploring the limits of personal power, or could be there’s a loss we’re trying to recover. Or, since quests are so varied, it’s something entirely different. We don’t ever have to know. I believe that our hidden motives give our stories energy, vitality, and depth. If we know exactly what we’re doing (if that’s possible), we’re working only on the surface.

I like the quest shape. When I’m having plot trouble, when my story seems to be wandering and getting too complicated, I examine it to find the quest. I ask myself what the basic problem is and what my MC wants most of all–what she’s questing for. When I figure that out–things are really bad if I can’t!–I see the quest and the obstacles to its success. Then I can streamline my story and my plot falls into line.

A quest shape keeps a story moving. The reader knows what the prize is, wants it to be reached, groans at every setback, marvels at the variety of problems that we’ve created, and holds her breath until the resolution, for good or ill, arrives. Hooray for quests!

Here are four prompts:

• Write the “Jack and the Beanstalk” quests three ways: change Jack’s character; change the obstacles to his success; change the story’s setting. When you change the obstacles, you can use my coat-tree idea or anything else you come up with.

• Instead of changing Jack, change another character: his mother, the giant’s mother, the giant himself. See how the story plays out.

• I think the quest, which fails, in “Snow White” belongs to the queen, who wants to remain the most beautiful. If you disagree, indulge me anyway. Try these approaches to creating new stories with a kernel of “Snow White.” For character, she wants desperately to continue to win the beauty contest, but maybe she isn’t quite as evil as the original or isn’t evil at all. When you change the obstacles, she can’t disguise herself; she’s a complete bust at impersonation, so she has to go about endangering Snow White differently.

• If you have a story with a tangled plot that’s driving you crazy, apply the quest method. Frame the plot as a quest and work out the knots. Keep writing.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Thoughtses!

First off, very exciting! Here’s a link to the beginning of the audio version of Writer to Writer: https://soundcloud.com/harperaudio_us/writertowriter_levine?in=harperaudio_us/sets/harperchildrens-audio. At the end, it moves on to another excerpt from a different book. Of course, you can keep going or stop. Hope you enjoy!

On July 26, 2014, Angie wrote, I have a question that pertains both to dialogue and relationship development. I have two taciturn characters who have to spend quite a bit of time together, and are untrusting of each other for a while. The result is that they are both pretty tight-lipped, which makes the scenes feel boring to me. I am hoping to develop their relationship to the point where they want to confide in one another, but am struggling with making that leap, and with creating some natural, interesting dialogue in the meantime. How do you make characters talk when they simply aren’t inclined to do so?

Elisa weighed in with, Thoughtses, thoughtses, use thoughtses! Seriously though, when no one talks, make them THINK. I like it when people have these super sarcastic thoughts about each other without saying anything, its funny. And then one of them can accidentally say a super-sarcastic remark out-loud, and they start a bit of a fight, and then end up laughing (This happens to me and my sister ALL THE TIME!). That breaks the ice pretty well, at least, for me (and my sister).

I’m with Elisa. Thoughtses can wake up our scenes! Especially if our two characters think differently. Since we can never be in anyone else’s mind, we can’t know what’s really going on. Maybe we are all alike when it comes to thinking, but I doubt it.

Let’s start by naming these characters: Victoria and Wilson, and let’s imagine some ways of thinking. I’ll suggest three and you come up with three more:

• Digressive. Wilson starts thinking about how dark it’s getting in the forest and how loud Victoria’s footsteps are and segues to thoughts of night in his bedroom at home to memories of a Halloween sleepover to wondering what his friend who was at the sleepover is doing right now.

• Methodical. Victoria is planning where to sleep tonight and whether it will be better to lose Wilson or to camp together and how she’s going to feed herself and possibly him and how they can work together without ever talking and how she can protect herself in case he attacks in the middle of the night. And she’s coming up with solutions for all of these.

• Irrepressibly happy. Yes, they’re in the middle of a forest. Yes, the king’s evil prime minister is after them. But the air smells so fresh! And listen to the birdsong! Yes, Victoria doesn’t trust Wilson. But he’s a good talker when he talks, which she isn’t, and the gift of gab could come in handy, and the prime minister is the enemy of both of them. And besides, she’s always loved hiking.

Your turn.

Of course, if we’re going to be in the heads of both of them, our POV has to be third-person omniscient. If we’re writing in first person, we have just one mind to work from, which is okay, too. If Victoria is our MC, she can speculate about what Wilson is thinking and what he’s up to.

Each of them also needs to be differently taciturn. Wilson, for example, can be uncommunicative because he’s desperately shy. If we’re not in his mind we can make him blush easily. He can walk behind Victoria on the path, because he’s too unsure of himself to take the lead. But this manifestation of bashfulness can be misinterpreted by Victoria as sneakiness.

Victoria can be silent because she’s a collector of secrets, and she’s learned that she’s more likely to be confided in if she keeps her own conversation to a minimum. Her friends call her The Clam. She’s always been completely trustworthy–although that may change as this tale continues.

There’s opportunity for fun, as each misunderstands what the other is doing. Victoria, for example, can step into a patch of poison ivy simply because she doesn’t see it in the dusk, but Wilson’s interpretation is that she wants to show him how tough she is. If we can arrange matters so that their silence gets them in trouble, that’s even better. Boredom will be banished.

We might introduce another element to create this tension. Suppose the forest is the home of a band of elves, who have been lied to by people in the past. While Wilson is asleep, an elf joins Victoria, who’s guarding the campfire, and asks why she’s in the forest. Uncertain about whether the elves are allies of the evil prime minister, she says that she and Wilson are brother and sister on their way to visit their uncle. When Wilson’s turn to watch comes, Victoria thinks about telling him of the elf’s visit, but she decides the visit is over, so she doesn’t think she needs to and stays silent. The elf returns and talks to Wilson when he’s on watch duty, and he gives a different story. The angry elves capture the two of them and hold them for trial as spies. Each can blame the other, but they’re talking, and–also good–they’re in danger.

Or, Wilson can look up and see a tree tiger, which I just invented, about to pounce on Victoria. He shouts, “Run!” and runs, too. They both live and start talking and planning how they can avoid being taken by surprise.

What will get them talking depends, at least in part, on their characters. If Wilson is digressive in his thinking, he may get so carried away by his thoughts that he forgets where he is and starts thinking out loud. Victoria can say, “What the heck are you going on about?” Not friendly, but they’re talking.

Or methodical Victoria can reach a point in her planning where she needs to share her ideas with Wilson or they won’t work. She’s uneasy, but she speaks.

Here are four prompts:

• The elves put them on trial and appoint a lawyer, who has a very hard time with two uncooperative defendants. Write the scene or scenes. Part of the fun may be inventing the elves’ judicial system.

• Both Victoria and Wilson are starving. Both are excellent archers, but they’re sure, if they pull out their arrows, the action will be misunderstood. Write this scene.

• One of them, you pick which, is actually an agent of the evil prime minister. He or she is quiet, waiting for the other one to say something revealing or to make a fatal mistake. Write the forest crossing.

• The two are destined to fall in love. Write their gradual evolution from suspicion to infatuation.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Smile Induction

My best wishes to all of you who are bravely writing away on you NaNoWriMo projects. Hope it’s going along swimmingly!

For any of you in my neck of the woods, I’m going to be part of a kids’ book author panel and then a signing on the evening of Monday, December 8th, from 6:00 to 7:30 at Fox Lane Middle School, 632 South Bedford Road, which is in Bedford, New York. If you can come, I’d love to meet you!

Also, at the suggestion of Lydia S. last week on the blog, we’ve added a new feature right to the right of these words: FOLLOW BY EMAIL, which will let you know about blog updates, if you’d like. Strictly voluntary. Thank you, Lydia S.!

On July 24, 2014, Kenzi Anne wrote, I’ve noticed that while I’m usually a very goofy, lighthearted person, my stories always end up being dark and fairly heavy. I know I need some humor and comedy in there, but it always sounds forced and unnatural. How do I lighten my stories but still keep them serious?

Elisa suggested, Have there be a character for comic relief, like Razo in the Goose Girl and Enna Burning, both books are by Shannon Hale. (I LOVE[!!!!!!!!!!] Razo.)

And Michelle Dyck weighed in with: I second what Elisa said. 🙂 That, and a bit of sarcasm or even slapstick humor can help.As for humor sounding forced… it might help to show it to another set of eyes and ask for an opinion. And if you know someone witty, he or she could help you out too.

These are great suggestions. Not only Shannon Hale includes humorous characters for comic relief; Shakespeare did it, too. In his tragedies, he gives minor characters entire funny scenes. If it’s good enough for the bard…

You might introduce a character, say Salli, who sees the bright side of everything. Your MC, Carole, takes a drubbing at the hands of a bully. Her nose and cheek are bruised an interesting shade of purple. A dance is coming up the next day, which will also be Carole’s first date with Mark. Salli says, “Wear the blue dress. Blue and purple–very pretty.”

The mood is further lightened if Carole smiles and says, “Mark will know I have good taste.”

Things get worse, since this is a story about bullying. Carole loses a tooth. She’s weeping. Salli says, “Wow, the space is just the size for a straw. Handy.”

Again, it will help if Carole goes along. She says, “You think?” Only it comes out, You zink? She adds, “Oh! I can’t say tee aitch or even tee–” though the words don’t come out that way.

Salli, cheerful as ever, says, “It sounds like Transylvanian. A vampire would say that.”

The seriousness of the situation hasn’t changed. The bully is still increasingly dangerous, but the reader enjoys what’s going on more, and he likes these characters better and better. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen to these endearing people.

Salli’s crazy optimism doesn’t pop up unless something bad has happened. When the worst happens, whatever it is, Salli’s consolation is so far-fetched and pathetic, it breaks the reader’s heart even while he’s aware of the humor.

Mishaps, even tragedy, can have a humorous side, usually do in real life. For example, I was a plump child, and once, ice skating on a frozen lake, I fell through after two of my (thinner) friends had skated safely across the same spot. I’d have died if my father hadn’t pulled me out fast, but all I was thinking about was that I was fat and that my friends were more aware of it than ever. The contrast between the seriousness of the situation and the frivolity of my thinking is where the humor lies–but only if I’m aware that my worry is silly and the danger is real. Decades later I reconnected with Michael, one of the friends, and he remembered me falling through the ice. When I told him what I had been worrying about, his jaw dropped. He was a sweet boy, and that never occurred to him.

There’s the scene in Ella Enchanted when the parrot Chock commands Ella to kiss him and then keeps flying away when she tries. It’s funny but also powerful, because it highlights the crazy things the curse forces Ella to do–and she’s perfectly aware of this.

So how do we get these deep but humorous moments?

Look for the contrast. Let’s say our villain, the bully, has managed to push Carole into a lake (not frozen). She’s soaked from the waist down and running for her life. What she’s aware of as she runs–one of the things she’s aware of–is that her skirt is clinging and transparent now that it’s wet. She isn’t sure which she hates more, being so afraid, or having her knock-knees revealed as well as the print on her panties: black bunnies leaping across a red background.

This is serious humor, but I love humor that’s silly, too, and I love word play. My Princess Tales books are full of this kind of humor. For example, in The Fairy’s Return, one of my MCs, Robin, loves to pun. They’re groaners, but I enjoy them. Here are three examples:

What’s the best food for a dwarf? Shortbread.
What’s a jester’s favorite food? Wry bread.
Why do elves taste delicious? Because they’re brownies.

And Robin’s father is a poet. Here’s one of his poems:

Royalty and commoners must never mix.
Do not forget or you will be in a predicament.

Also a groaner, but I had fun writing it.

I also like writing subtle humor that doesn’t make even me crack a smile, but that causes an interior nod of recognition, a little spark of pleasure. In a poem I wrote this week, I wrote about forgetting things when I went shopping. Then I wondered in the poem if I should list what I forgot, and I wrote, “Lists are good in poems but these aren’t interesting, just soy milk, eggs, and almond butter.”

Do you get it? If not, doesn’t matter. The pleasure is for me and anyone else who notices.

Here are four prompts:

• Write the story of Carole and Salli and the bully. His or her target is Carole, and Salli is the eternal optimist.

• Write the story of Carole and Salli and the bully, only in this version the funny one is the bully, and this makes him even scarier.

• In the version of “The Frog Prince” that I know, the frog turns into a prince, not when the princess kisses him but when she throws him against a wall as hard as she can. This scene is begging for comedic treatment. Write it!

• Carole is a punster. The dance date with Mark is handicapped for two reasons: Carole’s face is bruised, and she keeps punning. Decide how Mark handles this and write the scene, including at least five puns.

• I listen to a comedy-news quiz on the radio every week. One of the segments, called “Bluff the Listener,” presents the contestant with three goofy solutions to a problem, one of which actually happened. The topic might be increasing tourism or winning customer loyalty, but last week it was getting kids to eat their vegetables. Figure out your own wacky solution to this age-old problem, and write a scene in a family in which it plays out for good or ill.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Picky, Picky

In July, this question came from Leah on the website: What is the right kind of details? Which details are important and which not so much?

I talk about this in Writing Magic, so if you have the book you may want to look at Chapters 8 and 20. For now, let’s start with what a detail is, which is slippery, like most matters in writing.

I’d say that a detail is any snippet that conveys information. Sometimes whatever that is may not seem like a detail. Suppose, for example, our MC is Candace whose birthday is today. Her mother comes into her bedroom to wake her up, bearing a big gift-wrapped box. Candace sits up, smiles, and carefully removes the wrapping paper. When she opens the box, she meets her mother’s eyes and says, “Beautiful.”

And the reader sighs with relief and thinks, Whew! Finally.

I’d argue that, if it was set up well, the word beautiful is a detail even though it tells us little about what’s in the box, even though this word is often a generality. The word’s success as a detail depends on what went before. Imagine that Candace’s fourteenth birthday in her world is the day she has her Admission Ceremony, when she becomes a full-fledged member of her clan, but she suffers from self-doubt and a need to be perfect in every circumstance. In the close-knit clan, the mental state of every full member affects the entire community, and the elders, who wouldn’t dream of holding Candace back, are worried that her anxiety will infect everyone. Candace has been working on her serenity, but until now she’s made little progress. However, when she pronounces the box’s contents beautiful, the reader understands that she’s changed profoundly.

If the reader already knows what’s in the box, the effect of the word is further strengthened. It’s the ceremonial robe, and it has a small brown stain in the otherwise creamy linen. The stain was made on purpose to reveal Candace’s frame of mind when she sees it. That she calls it beautiful despite the stain demonstrates that she’s truly ready to become a clan member (or that she’s lost her eyesight! Just kidding.).

On the other hand, if beautiful is pronounced in the first sentence of our story, the reader will have to wait to discover the significance of the word, and if that significance is never demonstrated, then it will remain vague and won’t work as a detail.

When we write, we want to create a movie in our reader’s mind. Part of the movie is established through the scenery, the setting, although we can’t ever describe everything. Even the attempt would exhaust us and bore the reader. We wield an authorial spotlight. When Candace’s mother enters the bedroom, we have to decide what to reveal. Maybe we want to illuminate the box with its star-patterned wrapping paper and the ribbon that curls like confetti, and her mom’s hands on the box, nails neatly trimmed, clear polish, the thumb callus that’s characteristic of her occupation, whatever that is. Or maybe we want to show her mom’s expressive face, where her inner peace combines with pride at her daughter’s accomplishments. Mom’s expression may add to the reader’s worry that Candace will shatter the clan’s calm, regardless of the other benefits her joining will bring. Or maybe we decide to pan across the untidy room, with clothing and books scattered about, reflecting Candace’s emotional state when she finally collapsed into bed at 2:00 AM.

We’re guided in our choice of detail by our need to advance plot and develop our characters. The details that do neither may be unnecessary. Take the gift wrap paper, which may shed light on Candace’s mother’s love for her daughter, but if the reader already knows all about these feelings, this particular detail may not be needed. Secondary considerations can come into play, too. We may decide that the gift wrap detail helps create a mood or establishes the setting. The reader almost certainly doesn’t have to be told what the ceiling looks like or whether the desk lamp uses a seventy-five watt bulb or a sixty–unless either is going to come into our story.

Detail can be presented in dialogue, narration, and thoughts. We’ve seen it operate in dialogue, when Candace says, “Beautiful.” She can say more, too. She can go to the window, pull aside the curtain, and add in a satisfied voice, “Beautiful again. I wanted a sunny day.”

There is a danger in conveying details in dialogue, however. If Candace and her mother discuss something they both know, the dialogue is likely to sound staged. For example, if Candace says, “I hope I don’t trip on the way into the Meeting Chamber,” and her mother answers, “The stairs are very steep,” well, she probably wouldn’t say this, because they both know what the stairs are like. The one she’s really speaking to is the reader, and there are better ways to convey the information: in narration or in thoughts–if the steep stairs are important.

But, aside from that caution, dialogue is a great vehicle for detail, because along with the facts conveyed, the reader also gains insight into the speakers: what they notice and how they express it. Same with details relayed in thoughts. Through what Candace notices, for example, we learn not only the details themselves but also more about her character. Candace, in her nervous state, may be extra aware of things that appear threatening. Let’s imagine her in a park with her friend Vergil. She notices how thick the bushes are and thinks that a whole battalion of soldiers could hide behind them. He says something about the family of ducks and ducklings in the pond. She answers, “They’re cute. I didn’t even see them.” The reader gets a double dose of information.

A few words about sensory details: We tend to neglect senses other than sight. Sound, smell, touch, and sometimes taste are also important. Imagine a seaside scene, for example. It won’t come alive without the sound of the surf, the wind on our MC’s cheek, the weight of the sun in summer, the smell of the ocean. If our MC sticks out her tongue, she can taste the salt.

Here are four prompts:

• Look around the room you’re in right now. Pick a detail– anything–and make it the focus of a story.

• Use the sixty-watt light bulb as the central detail in a story. Write the story.

• In Fairest I gave the magic mirror in “Snow White” a back story. Write a version of “Sleeping Beauty” in which the spinning wheel that delivers the soporific pricking is more than it seems.

• Write Candace’s Admission Ceremony, and make it the beginning of your story, so it does not go well. Deliver details through dialogue, thoughts, and narration. Include all sorts of sensory detail.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Mama Mia!

For those of you who are about to dive into NaNoWriMo, all my best wishes! Don’t forget to eat and sleep and read this blog!

I look forward to meeting one–carpelibris!–or more of you this Saturday in Albany, New York!

Now, imagine fanfare, a trumpet blowing, confetti. See it first here: the final cover for Stolen Magic!

I think it’s appealing and inviting, just what we want a cover to be.

And on to the post. Two related questions came in over the summer. On July 23, 2014, Elisa wrote, What do you do with parents? I mean, I write from the perspective of children and teens–for the most part–and the things the children/teens do in books these days (you know, saving the world, etc.) are not even remotely possible, most of the time. Kids don’t do that sort of stuff. Plus, since technically our brains haven’t fully developed yet, we wouldn’t have the wisdom to deal with such situations and would need a wise and generally smart, fairly all-knowing adult with us to deal with such things. (Because, from the kid’s perspective, grown-ups know EVERYTHING! Seriously, until I was eleven, I REALLY thought my parents knew basically everything!) So, what to do with the parents, or even grown-ups in general? I know lots of kids in books are orphans, but that’s really cliche, and don’t even get me started on having the kids save the parents, nuh-uh, not even gonna go there, it’s WAY too twisted. I want my parents to be good parents while, at the same time, their kids can do some fairly cool stuff. I can only have them be invalids so often. How do I keep them involved, and not interfering too much, while being really solidly good (also smart, I hate it when the kid is brilliant but the parents are idiots, in real life, the kid would probably be pretty dumb too, you learn from your parents after all) parents?

And on August 19, 2014, Elsabet wrote, What do I do with parents? I really don’t like how uninvolved parents are in literature these days. They’ve all but disappeared! I want the parents in my stories actually BEING there. But them being there means they would cut into the adventures of my kid/teen MCs. How do I work around or through this? Actually, how to I work WITH this? I don’t want the parents to be dumb, or dead, or evil, and I don’t want the kids to be bratty or sneaky. Kids lying to the parents is just not an option. For one, most parents would see through the lies – therefor making it unrealistic – and secondly, I don’t want sneaky, scheming, lying “heroes” in my stories. I don’t like glorifying ugliness. Upon occasion I will have one (scheming liar) as an MC, but only to bring a point across, or to create a contrast. So how do I work this?

The questions generated this from Kenzi Anne: I’ve discovered it’s easier to write parents when they have an actual character. I read the “How To Train Your Dragon” book series a while ago (they are adorable) and I love how the parents are unique individuals with their own characteristics and personalities that actually add to the story– rather than just being the “mom” or the “dad”–there for reality’s sake but not really the story’s. Giving them hopes, dreams, fears, etc. like you would for a main or secondary character might help you to incorporate them better into the story and the plot :). Parents are people too!

Elsabet added: I would like to be accurate, authentic and realistic. Actually, the real reason I want to write parents like this, is because I am modeling them somewhat off of my own parents. My parents are the very best, they really are. And they would do anything to protect their children. They would never be foolish enough to get caught in a situation where they both needed to be rescued at the same time, and if, by some completely random circumstance and several simultaneous coincidences of astronomical oddness they did happen to get into such a situation, they would never wish, or even allow us (their kids) to come to harm by trying to rescue them.

This topic really is a problem for us writers. One of the first laws of children’s literature is that the young protagonist has to solve the story. The parents can’t do the solving or the saving. Readers are asked to suspend their disbelief, big time. Okay, maybe it’s unlikely that a parent needs rescuing or that so many MCs are orphans or that a teen can save the world, but the reader knows this is fiction and, if the story grabs him, he’s happy to go along.

We counter the unlikeliness by developing our situation realistically. Maybe we set the story in a dangerous part of the world. If we’re writing fantasy, we can establish that kidnapping or hostage-taking is common in this kingdom. Then we create a detailed setting and complicated characters and believable characters. The reader may think, I’ve read other stories of parents who need rescuing, but this one is pretty exciting and I’ve never seen it done exactly this way before. And he keeps turning pages. As I think I’ve said before here, there aren’t many possible plots; complete originality is either unattainable or incomprehensible. Even Shakespeare recycled stories from older sources. We take the common elements and reshape them in uncommon ways.

You who know my books are well aware that the only parents I allow on the scene are, ahem, defective. The good ones are either dead or out of the way. In The Wish, Wilma’s mom. a single parent is terrific, but most of the action takes place where she isn’t. So that’s one way–and the true-to-life way I got to be the MC in my own actual growing up. My parents were good people, but they were offstage when I faced most of my challenges: at school, at a friend’s house, in the local park, at the skating rink, in one of the museums I could walk to or get to by bus or subway. (I was lucky to grow up in New York City, where I didn’t need an adult to drive me places.) You can give your characters public transportation to help separate them from grownups.

In Fairest, Aza’s adoptive parents are super caring, but they can’t leave their inn to travel with her to Oscaro’s castle. In their defense, they have no way to anticipate the danger that their daughter will encounter, and, besides, she’s under the protection of a duchess. In A Tale of Two Castles, Elodie’s loving parents send her off to become an apprentice, unaware that the apprenticeship rules have changed. So that’s one strategy: the young MC leaves home for an ordinary reason, but extraordinary things happen, and she can’t go back. The parents, if they know, are wringing their hands, but they can’t rescue their child.

I’m as guilty as any other kids’ book writer of killing off good parents, and I agree that parental mortality is much more common in fiction than out of it, which is fortunate. However, there are orphans in the world. Dave, the orphan I write about in Dave at Night, is loosely based on my father, whose mother died of childbirth complications a few months after having him, and whose father died of (ugh! and gasp!) gangrene when he was about six. I hasten to add that they died a hundred years ago, and medicine has come a long way since then. I doubt that anyone in a developed country dies of gangrene anymore, and death after childbirth is very rare. Interestingly, my father’s stepmother was as bad as Snow White’s. Sometimes life imitates art.

Here are three prompts:

• Your MC’s mom sends her to the corner store for a container of milk. Let’s say she goes reluctantly, because she was in the middle of something, and she isn’t pleasant when they part. On the way, or when she gets to the store, something unanticipated and horrifying happens that makes return impossible. Write what happens in a scene or a story or your NaNoWriMo novel.

• Your MC, Matthea, has great parents, whom she loves and admires. Whenever she has a problem, she discusses it with them, and they always offer great advice. In this story, the advice is good as usual, but following it never seems to work out as planned. Sometimes Matthea flubs when she acts on it, and sometimes the other person doesn’t react as expected. She returns for more advice, which also backfires. Matthea is in a downward spiral. Write the story.

• In the real fairytale, Snow White’s father isn’t around at all. In your version, he is, and he’s kind, and he doesn’t want bad things to happen to his daughter. Include him in the story, but make it all go wrong anyway.

Have fun, and save what you write!