Copy cat!

On May 8, 2013, Elisa wrote, I need help, I have a problem with my voice. My writing voice, that is. I’m a copy-cat. If I’ve recently read a book, say, by Shannon Hale, and then I go to write on my story, I find that my writing style is a lot like hers. If I haven’t read anything recently and have started writing, my writing is really bland. I do actually have my own “voice,” it’s quick, sarcastic and quite funny. (Think Patrick McManus, only, slightly less hysterical.) My problem is, I write a lot of serious stuff, and I’m not sure I like my “voice” very well for that type of tale. And, also, I can only slip into my “voice” every once in a while. I’ll come up with one thing, (say: “Atomic just doesn’t fit those cinnamon jawbreakers. No sir, Atomic just doesn’t do them justice.” Excerpt from one of my “try-out” stories, called “Ode to Atomic Fireballs.”) and then I come up with a whole string of them and mold them into a story. My problem is this “Voice” strikes at the oddest times, very rarely while I’m in a position to write stuff down and it never lasts long. In my “Ode to Atomic Fireballs”, my “voice” died out right before I finished the story (It is maybe two pages long) so the end didn’t quite fit. I have a problem and I don’t know how to solve it. Can anyone help?

I’ve said this before on the blog. Being able to imitate other writers is good. The ability proves that you’re impressionable. What you’re reading is permeating you, becoming part of you. Someone else’s style may pour out sometimes when it’s not wanted, but that’s a minor problem, easily fixed in revision. The great benefit is that you’re assimilating myriad ways of expression, which, once you’ve mulched them down, will flow out in interesting, flexible writing. This is cause for celebration.

Let’s look at the beginning of Elisa’s question, which seems to me to be written in a distinctive voice that isn’t sarcastic or especially funny. Here it is again: I need help, I have a problem with my voice. My writing voice, that is. I’m a copy-cat. If I’ve recently read a book, say, by Shannon Hale, and then I go to write on my story, I find that my writing style is a lot like hers. If I haven’t read anything recently and have started writing, my writing is really bland.

Do you see it, too?

The strength of the voice is in the short, snappy sentences at the beginning, followed by two longer sentences and repetition of the word If starting the last two. Plus, the term copy-cat has power. Elisa, I don’t know if you thought about voice when you wrote the question, but it’s there, and it isn’t bland.

If you want more of the quick, sarcastic, funny voice, which you liken to Patrick McManus’s, I’d suggest you study his writing. How does he get his effects? I’ve never read any of his books, but I googled him and then I checked out his writing using the search-this-book function on Amazon. He reminded me a little of Mark Twain, a high compliment. Anyway, he seems to pack a lot of his humor into his verbs, so I’d look at them in particular. Then try writing with him in mind, imitating on purpose. The goal is to have the funny voice always available to you.

Mostly when I’m writing fiction, I’m not concentrating on voice. I’m focusing on my characters and what they’re thinking and feeling, which will lead them to act or to speak. Basically I’m trying to get out of the way so my story can tell itself. I want my readers to lose themselves and not to be pulled out of the narrative by the antics of my voice.

Same thing when I’m writing this blog. I want you to be concentrating on the meat of what I’m saying, not on my language.

I do think about smooth and lively writing, decent writing – about varying the lengths of my sentences, about not starting more than two sentences or two paragraphs in a row with the same word, about not repeating sentence structure, one sentence after another. An example is a string of sentences that are two independent clauses connected by and. Another example is a succession of sentences that also have two independent clauses connected by but. In the first case, I’ll break some of the sentences into two shorter ones. In the second, I’ll sometimes start with Although. Or I’ll use however, just to avoid monotony.

And since I’ve been writing poetry, I’ve become more aware of the sound of my words, like more and aware have the same ending sounds. I could have written more alert to instead of more aware of, but I like the similar sounds. I often go for alliteration when I can. But I never sacrifice clarity for euphony. Clarity trumps everything else.

When I deliberately create voice, I’m generally writing dialogue. For example, Masteress Meenore, the dragon detective in A Tale of Two Castles and Stolen Magic, peppers ITs sentences with fifty dollar words. There’s also a cadence to ITs speech that I fall into. The ogre, Count Jonty Um, says little, and what he does say, he expresses economically. When I’m writing his speech, I trim away any unnecessary words. His vocabulary is excellent, and he’s by no means stupid, so I may throw in a big word here and there. But not many words anywhere.

I don’t mean to suggest that there’s anything wrong with a quick, sarcastic, funny voice. I just don’t think you should strain for it. My guess is that it pops out when it’s needed. And the less noticeable voice (not bland!) may be what’s needed to push your story to the fore.

Here are four prompts:

• As I suggested to Eliza above, try imitation on purpose. Read a page or two of a book you love. Analyze it if that’s helpful. What is this writer doing? Long sentences? Short ones? Paragraph length? What is the tone? Action-packed? Reflective? Funny? Now, go to a story you’re working on. Rewrite a page in that voice.

• Do the same with another writer.

• Do the same, if you haven’t already, with an author who wrote at least fifty years ago. A hundred years ago. Out of curiosity, I once compared Jane Austen’s style with Charlotte Bronte’s, whose work came later. In particular, I wondered which one used longer sentences. The answer surprised me. Check it out!

• Retell a fairy tale, concentrating on varying your sentences and paying attention to the sounds of your words. Work in assonance, alliteration, repeat end sounds. Include dialogue. Give Snow White, for example, a different way of expressing herself from the evil queen, the hunter, a dwarf.

Have fun, and save what you write!

R trouble

When one of my books is published in another country, I’m sent a copy or two, and I always enjoy seeing how my story is represented on the cover. Last week the Turkish edition (translated into Turkish) of Ella Enchanted came in the mail, with a fetching cover, which I asked my husband to put on the website. You can see it and other foreign editions of Ella if you click on this link: http://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/ella_oth.html. They’re not for sale. I don’t know how you’d purchase them if you happened to be interested.

On to the post, and this week I’m letting you do a lot of the work because there were so many comments when this question came from unsocialized homeschooler on May 8, 2013: I’m writing a story right now, and one of the characters has a speech impediment. The character often drops his “Rs” and pronounces them wrong. I read online that an author should never write out accents or quirks in the character’s speech, and that it’s distracting, hard to follow, and generally doesn’t work. The author of the article that talked about this said that mentioning it a few times will do the trick, but I’m not sure. What does everyone here think about writing out things like that? Is it annoying? Should it not be done? Does it make it easier to hear the character in your mind if it’s written out, or is mentioning it a few times enough?

In response, Michelle Dyck wrote, I’d find it annoying if it was overdone or simply hard to read. But I have read several books where I thoroughly enjoyed the accents the author wrote out:
-A mystery series set in London in the 1800’s, where the lower-class people dropped their Hs. (For example, “Mr. Astley set ‘er out on ‘er ear, ‘e did.”)
-And a series set in the South during the Civil War, in which the slaves’ speech was written out exactly how they’d sound. (It’s been a while since I read those, so I don’t have any examples.)
I’ve also read a book where a character was Irish or Scottish, and whenever he said “you”, it was written “yu.” It took me a while to figure out that it was supposed to be pronounced with a short u, not a long u, but once I did, I think I could hear his accent better.

Anyway, I’m not sure about just mentioning it a few times. I think I’d wonder why a character started out talking differently, then began speaking normally. I’d probably consider it a mistake on the author’s part.

And carpelibris wrote, I’m from the “Use dialect like hot pepper” school of thought. Put in a dash where it’s needed, but don’t overdo it.

And Elisa wrote, I don’t especially like lots and lots of funnily spelled words. You might mention it a couple times, or something, but don’t over do it. If he has a speech impediment, don’t make him talk a whole lot. If he can’t talk correctly, then have him be sort of embarrassed about it, and try his hardest not to say anything with R’s in it. Or every now and then do this: “It was red, really bright red.” he said. (Only it sounded like he said: It was led, eally blight led.) and put the pronunciations in brackets. I do that with one of my lisping characters. I’m not sure if people find that annoying, but I don’t do it that often; maybe once every three chapters or so, just to remind everyone.

And writeforfun wrote, I have a character in my books who can’t pronounce s’s properly, and I read the “mention it a few times” advice before I wrote it, so that is what I did. I discovered, however, that before long, even I forgot that he had a lisp! I’m still trying to figure out just how to fix it, so I appreciate these comments, too!

Finally, Rosjin wrote, An author I enjoy, Brian Jacques, had a habit of giving his characters very distinct (and sometimes heavy) accents. At first, I couldn’t understand a word one group was saying, but it was really fun to read. After the first book, it was much easier. I love them. It’s so fun to try and read them out loud, or listen to the audio books to see how they sound.

The only drawback is that some people end up skipping the heavily accented dialogue. They never learn to read it, and may end up putting the book down.

I say a balance is needed. I probably wouldn’t write accents as heavily as Mr. Jacques, but I would want it to be present. If a character has a lisp, I think you should write his dialogue with a lisp. If it seems a little overdone when you’re finished, then smooth out a few parts.

Here, played out on the blog, is one of the delights of being in a writing group. Members’ perspectives vary, and that variety broadens our choices. If people disagree, maybe we don’t get clarity, but we get complexity and freedom.

When I was starting out, the advice I got from teachers and read in books was to use dialects, accents, and speech oddities sparingly, as carpelibris suggests. I’m still in that camp. In Ever, for example, the gods and people of Akka pronounce their p’s as b’s. Here’s how I introduce it:

“Pardon me.” He has an accent. His p sounds like a b. Bardon me. I don’t know anyone who speaks with an accent.

And that’s it in the beginning. I don’t care much if the reader remembers the accent. My purpose was twofold: to set the two civilizations apart, the city-state of Hite and rural Akka; and to show how sheltered Kezi is.

Later in the book I remind the reader of the accent when Kezi meets another Akkan god:

“I… am… Puru… I’ve come to help you find your destiny.”
His accent is the same as Olus’s. I hear Buru and helb.

Puru has another speech peculiarity, slow speech. Here’s where I introduce it, in a scene from the POV of the Akkan god Olus:

When he speaks no constant breath pushes his words, so he stops after each one. “Olus… will–”
“Hush, Puru,” Hannu says, frowning.
“He’s too young to hear about his fate,” Arduk adds.
Puru says, “Olus… will… have… no happiness until he gains what he cannot keep.”

Notice that I put ellipses (dots) between the each of the first few words in his sentences but then I stop. I tried putting them everywhere, but it was irritating to read, even for me.

So one way to remind the reader of a character’s unusual speech without constantly reproducing it is to have him meet someone new, as when Puru meets Kezi. The new acquaintance may ask him to repeat himself or may simply not understand. The situation can turn funny if the mispronounced word sounds like a different word. My husband and I once saw an example of this in print, because of the problem that Chinese and Japanese speakers sometimes have with the letter r. (I may have told this before on the blog. Forgive me!) We were in Chinatown in New York City and saw a billboard for a movie. The title was there in Chinese characters along with the English translation: Love on a Foggy Liver!!!

Almost anything can be a tool for character development, and a speech peculiarity can be, too. Elisa suggested something along these lines. Let’s give a name to our character who has trouble with his r’s – let’s call him Marc. He’s teased about it when he’s little, and as a result he becomes a quieter person as he grows up. More self-conscious, too, and less spontaneous. He rarely bursts out with speech because he’s always thinking ahead to where the r’s may come up and looking for synonyms.

Pamela, on the other hand, could go the other way. She doesn’t mind the way she sounds. In fact, she exaggerates it. Or Theo doesn’t like his r’s, so he becomes obsessive about overcoming them. The first money he earns he spends on speech therapy, then on a voice coach. He develops a news anchor voice, deep, rich, unaccented, perfect on his r’s, except that on occasion, under stress, all his training evaporates.

Secondary characters can be revealed, too. Inez, not the nicest person in the world, delights in trapping Marc into saying words with r’s in them. In their Public Speaking class she gives her speech on speech impediments, and she delivers it directly at Marc. She tries this once on Pamela, but never again. However, she finds a way to trigger Theo’s funny r, and she takes great delight in doing it again and again.

Another secondary character, a kind one, can be revealed by her treatment of Marc, Pamela, and Theo. And we can get to know Theo’s speech therapist and his eccentric voice coach.

The odd r can become a plot element. The three journey together to a distant kingdom where the inhabitants have been waiting for three strangers who can’t say r. A native prophesy says that these strangers will discover how to open an ancient secret vault. In this case, with the r so important, I think we’d probably want to show it every time.

Here are three prompts:

• Write about the kingdom that expects three strangers and how our r-challenged heroes figure out how to open the vault and what turns out to be in it and what consequences follow.

• Write a scene that takes place on Marc’s sixteenth birthday. Show the kind of boy he’s grown up to be.

• Inez manages to make Theo think he loves her. Write their third date, during which all his speech training falls apart. If you like, he can triumph in the end.

Have fun, and save what you write!

On Picture Books

On March 21, 2013, thelightwells, or Charlotte, wrote, You mentioned that if you’re writing poetry, you don’t need an agent. What about picture books (just the text)? Also, I don’t think you’ve done a post on picture books yet… any thoughts there?

First off, to Charlotte: If you can’t post on the blog, you can always write to me on the guestbook on my website and I’ll copy the comment over. This goes for anyone else, too.

Starting with the first question first, I think you need an agent for picture books as much as you do for novels for children and young adults – which is not absolutely, not in every case, but these days, most often. When I was writing about poetry, I meant poems for adults. As I wrote in my post about agents, many children’s book publishers don’t accept unagented unsolicited submissions. You can get around this if you meet an editor at a conference and she wants to see your work, but otherwise, probably not. If this is the aspect of Charlotte’s question that interests you most, I suggest you read or reread my post on agents. Just click on the label on the right.

However a comparison with poetry is apt. Many picture books are poems, whether they rhyme or not, because of the demands for conciseness that picture book length imposes on a writer. We snip here, snip there, and find simple ways to present complex ideas, and the result, ta da!, is often poetic.

I’m not the best source for picture book advice, because I have only two published picture books, and the sales of the second one were abysmal. I have a great idea for a third in the series, but the failure of the second has killed it, at least for the time being. In general the market for picture books is down right now, I believe, unless it’s turned around and nobody told me (entirely possible).

But the market shouldn’t stop you. Picture books are still getting accepted and published every day. And they take a long while to be published after acceptance, because they have to be illustrated. First the illustrator has to be chosen (by the publisher, not the writer), and then she has to fit the book into her schedule. By the time all this happens, the market, which is cyclical, may have changed in favor of your book.

If you write and illustrate, it is fine to present both text and art to a publisher (generally through an agent). However – if you’re willing – you should let the agent or publisher know that the two can be separated. If the publisher likes the text and wants to find a different illustrator, you’re okay with that. Likewise – if this is true – make clear that, if the publisher loves your art, you would be happy to illustrate other projects and let your text go.

If you just write, the text is all you should submit. Don’t find an illustrator on your own and submit the two as a package. Editors and art directors collaborate to pair your words with an illustrator. Most writers I know are happy with the results.

As you write, you may have instructions for the illustrator. You can include these, but keep them to the essentials. The illustrator will have ideas of her own. Along the same lines, in picture books almost all setting detail in the text is too much detail. You can indicate the setting in your notes for the illustrator, but leave it out of your text, by and large. The illustrator will show it. Words are precious in picture books.

The illustrator shares the creative role with the writer in a picture book. The publisher considers the creation a fifty-fifty split. Accordingly, you’ll share the royalties equally, too. (This isn’t the case with the cover of a novel or with occasional spot illustrations in a chapter book. In these instances, the artist is paid a fee.)

When I started writing, I was afraid of the novel and I stuck to picture books for several years. No one would publish them. The only one that got published as a picture book was Betsy Who Cried Wolf, and that was after Ella Enchanted, and I had to revise it big time. Another picture book became The Fairy’s Mistake, the first of the short novels that make up The Princess Tales series.

At that time, the popular wisdom was that a picture book should be under 1,000 words. I agree with this. When I see a lot of words on a page in a picture book it feels wordy to me. However, many are published with a much higher word count, so I’m not sure. And my two picture books, which have many word balloons, may be over the line! We’re in territory now that I don’t usually inhabit and don’t often visit. What follows are ideas that you should check out further, and if blog readers have more experience than I do, please speak up.

Picture books cover a big age range from board books for babies to story books for kids as old as eight. And nonfiction picture books can skew even older, into middle school, I believe. There are wordless books that may nonetheless have an author as well as an illustrator. In such books, the author tells the story in instructions to the illustrator.

One of the charms of picture books is their range. A picture book can be about anything. There’s a lot of room in novels, but even more in picture books. For example, Kate McMullan’s very popular I Stink is about a garbage truck.

The best preparation for writing picture books is reading them. Read lots of them in your local library. Visit a bookstore and see what’s new and which books became classics.

Back to my beginnings. My favorite guide for writing for children, including picture books, was Barbara Seuling’s How to Write a Children’s Book and Get It Published. I read it so many times that the glare from my eyeballs lightened the print! It’s been updated, and you too may find it helpful.

These prompts are themes from some of my never published picture books. See what you can do with them. Tell the story in under 1,000 words just to feel what that’s like. Then try telling it in under 500 words. Under 200 if you can. Once you’ve done that, if something longer suggests itself, that’s fine, too.

• Because of a curse, the people in a particular kingdom have forgotten how to sleep.

• A girl believes her earlobes are shrinking.

• A boy wreaks havoc by blowing the world’s biggest bubble.

• A girl’s nose itches, and the meaning is interpreted by everyone she knows.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Lip stuck in the details

On March 4, 2013 Jasmine Smith wrote, …how detailed is TOO detailed? I mean, I know there are some events that are just not included in stories. Like getting your lip stuck in your braces. Would you tell about that happening to your character? Or does it just not matter?

Along the same lines in the latest post, Bug wrote, When I write, I try to write in as many details as I can. This produces one of three things: a) too much detail; b) not enough detail; c) just right, but this doesn’t happen much. Then again, I’ve had people tell me there is no such thing as too much detail. What do you guys think about this? How do I avoid a) and b)?

And Michelle Dyck replied, Try to have your characters interact with many of the details, in order to mix the descriptions with action. (For example, one character may run her hand along the ugly, floral wallpaper, another may walk across the fuzzy carpet, and a third may sneeze at the dust on the furniture.) I guess balancing the right amount of detail, though, comes with practice. You have to decide what is necessary to draw the reader into the setting and what can be cut out without making the story suffer. You’d be surprised, however, how few details are necessary to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. They can fill in a lot. On the other hand, you don’t want too few details, otherwise the readers might feel they’re floating in a featureless grey cloud.

I agree completely with Michelle Dyck, and I love the idea of integrating detail and action. Action as it occurs in real life is loaded with detail. Right this minute, for example, I’m on the train to New York City, typing on my laptop, in a window seat on the sunny side of the train because they tend to crank the air conditioning up too high and I want the sun to mediate the cold. It’s early in the trip, so the seat next to me is empty. And so on. The conductor just strode past my seat. Oh, there he goes again. I could fill in with myriad other details: the scenery outside my window, the condition of the train, what I’m wearing. It will all get boring very quickly, because there’s no tension. The train isn’t about to derail, I hope. None of these travel details will get us anywhere (oops, pun!).

But in fiction, action and its attendant details are the building blocks of plot. Let’s take Jasmine Smith’s detail of our MC’s lip getting stuck in his braces. (British blog readers: Please post to say if this is also the British term for orthodontia wires on the teeth. If not, what do you say?) I think it’s a great detail! Suppose Martin is about to give a speech at his youth group, a speech he’s practiced for a month, a speech that’s meant to quiet unrest in his village. He’s so badly stuck on his teeth that he can’t speak, and his lips start bleeding uncontrollably. He has to go to the hospital. In his place, his friend Wanda leaps onto the stage to speak in his place, but she’s much less persuasive than he is. In fact, she offends her audience and riots break out.

Wow! A lot comes out of that one detail, when we combine it with the action of trying to give a speech.

Let’s go back and fill in with more details, because so far we have a quick summary. Martin starts bleeding and soaks his tissue immediately. A young woman on his panel gives him her handkerchief to stanch the bleeding. He’s surprised that she has an actual cloth handkerchief, which is delicate and flimsy and not much use. As he raises it to his lip he sees a blue rose embroidered in the corner, the symbol of the secret society for the liberation of mutated foxes. He sees the same symbol tattooed on her impossibly slender wrist, and her eyes, an intense blue-black, bore into his when he looks up.

Lots of detail here, and they all draw us into the gathering plot.

What would be too much detail? Suppose we have Martin look down and see another rose on her ankle. Well, we already know about the wrist and the handkerchief, so the ankle may be overload – unless ankle skin must be kept unadorned by order of the Tyrant.

So detail becomes overload when it piles on what we already know – even if it’s clever, even if we have a great time writing it. We can enjoy ourselves and lay it on thick, but then we need to snip the excess out in revision.

Unless we’re writing humor and the point is the overabundance of everything and it’s really funny and the reader will laugh, or some readers will laugh. Then the more the merrier.

Let’s go back to Michelle Dyck’s suggestions: one character may run her hand along the ugly, floral wallpaper, another may walk across the fuzzy carpet, and a third may sneeze at the dust on the furniture. Our details don’t have to set off major plot events. They can work to set the scene. In this one, we can imagine that three young women are looking at a house they may rent together for their junior year in college. When we bring in dialogue and the thoughts of the POV character we begin to enter the story. June, our MC, hears the sneeze and worries that April may not be able to tolerate Mary’s cat. Someone else can be dismayed that the place hasn’t been kept up. And so on.

The point is that detail, when it’s working well, folds into everything else: character, action, plot. If our detail does that, we’ve got Bug’s option c) every time.

Here are a bunch of prompts:

• Write the story of Martin and his bloody lip. Use as many of my details as you like.

• List three other consequences of a caught lip that could give rise to a story. Pick one and write.

• Pick another of your stuck lip plot possibilities. Make the consequences include one or more of these: the downfall of a civilization, a flowering of the arts, the invention of flying.

• Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger a week after she got her braces. Write the story.

• In a story, make my train derail. Use some of the details that I provided and bring in lots of your own.

• Write the story of the three young woman and the house.

• Use Michelle Dyck’s details in a different story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Revision methodology

On February 13, 2013, Requien wrote, I was wondering if you have any advice on self-editing. This past NaNoWriMo, I cheated a little and finished my previous manuscript. After deleting my midnight-German rants that ended up just being word count boosts, the novel is hovering around 92-94k words. There are several passages that need expansion, and some details must be added in.

However, I’m not really sure where to start: do I add in the passages and lace it up, or edit the strange, awkward layers first? As an extended note, I have three different perspectives from the third person omniscient- would this be considered acceptable in a writing community, or strange?

First off, congratulations on finishing your NaNoWriMo novel, whichever year it belongs to! This is a big accomplishment. Kudos to you!

Let’s start with the last question. I don’t know of any monolithic writing community that rules on acceptability. Writers worth their salt know that each book is unique; each book demands its own treatment and requires of the writer whatever approach is best for the story.

I’ve said this before on the blog: the primary writing objective is clarity, unless we’re writing experimental fiction. I don’t mean instant clarity. We can blow smoke in the reader’s eyes now and then. We can write an ending that’s open to interpretation. But the reader should finish a book believing that it was coherent, that he understood what he read. (Careful attention to grammar and punctuation will help this along.) If three different perspectives are needed to tell the story clearly or interestingly, then that’s the right way to go.

I’m a little confused, though, about three third-person omniscient perspectives. Omniscient means all-knowing. When we write in third-person omniscient, we can dip into the thoughts of any character. The god of the story is narrating, and I’m not sure how there can be three of them. However, as I’m writing this, I’m thinking, maybe… Sounds fascinating.

We can certainly have three non-omniscient third-person perspectives. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings trilogy adopts this approach throughout. By turns we see events unfold through the eyes of Samwise, Frodo, Pippin, Aragorn, even Gandalf, and I’m sure I’ve left out a few. I’m alternating third-person perspectives in Stolen Magic, and I’ve done so before in my Princess Tales.

Requien’s question comes at a good time. I’m more or less close to finishing the second complete first draft of Stolen Magic, and I’m thinking about how to approach revising. But before I talk about me, let me say that people revise differently, and you may find your own method as you go along. Some begin with a plot edit; then maybe a character edit; a dialogue edit; a setting edit; and, finally, a word choice, grammar, and punctuation edit. There’s no right way.

Usually I just start at the beginning and work my way through, fixing everything at once. And then I do it again. And again. But I’m going to go about the process a little differently this time. I have edits from my editor on the middle section, which I haven’t addressed, because I wanted to get to the end first. So I plan to start with her notes.

(If she had objected to anything structural, anything that would have called for a complete overhaul, I would have stopped my forward momentum, and addressed her issues.)

Then, I have notes and line edits from my critique buddy, the terrific middle-grade and young adult writer Karen Romano Young, biding their time in a pile in my office. My second step will be to review her big-picture notes and then address her line edits as I page through the manuscript, making my own changes and those of hers that seem to fit. (I don’t do everything that either my editor or Karen wants, although I take their comments very seriously; most of all, I need to please myself.)

So, Requien and anyone else who’s reached this point, it may be helpful to show your rough first draft to someone you trust, preferably another writer, who will know how ungainly a first draft can be. That person’s comments may help direct your revisions.

But even before that, I’d expand whatever needs expanding and add the required details, so that your reader gets the full story.

If you feel the manuscript is too much of a mess and allowing other eyes to see it will reduce you to a trembling, anxious jellyfish, I’d suggest listing the issues you see as major and keeping the list visible as you revise. For example, Requien’s list might start with “strange, awkward layers” and continue on to other major problem areas.

Then, when you get your manuscript into more acceptable shape, consider letting some trusted other take a look.

One thing I always always always do when I revise is delete. To me, good writing is succinct. As my book goes on a diet, it gets tighter, clearer, and more pleasurable to read. A great resource to help you toward concision is Stunk and White’s The Elements of Style, a short book that packs a potent punch. And when I say “delete” I don’t necessarily mean whole chapters, although sometimes I do cut that much, but more often I’m snipping within sentences, excising a word here, a word there, that doesn’t add anything to meaning or rhythm.

Here are three prompts:

• Take a page of a current story or an old one. Cut fifty words, more or less.

• Take a page of the same story or a different one. Find a spot that you can develop more or in a new direction. Turn your one page into three.

• Your main character acquires a magic revising wand – you decide how. Excited, she applies it to her story, and the result is a masterpiece. As she’s rereading it and marveling, her dad calls her to dinner. She brings the wand with her to show everyone. After she’s shown it, dinner progresses. Her brother says something annoying. Her mother reminds her she has homework due without even asking her if she’s already finished it, which she has. Her dad tells a truly dumb joke. Believing that the wand revises only the written word, and to express her irritation, she waves it at her family. Everything changes. Tell the story. You can take this beyond the family and explore the effects of the wand on the family dog, people at the supermarket, the supermarket itself, the local park – wherever you want her to wave it.

Have fun, and save what you write!

When?

I’m announcing, proudly, that I’ve had a poem published in each of these two anthologies: On the Dark Path, An Anthology of Fairy Tale Poetry, and the cancer poetry project 2. The first is probably appropriate for high school and above. My poem, called “Becoming Cinderella,” presents an entirely different version of the story from Ella Enchanted. I love that the fairy tale can accommodate both interpretations. The cancer anthology is also for high school and above, but I think it will be most meaningful if you at least know someone who’s struggled with cancer. My poem, “Because,” is in the “friend” category – I don’t have cancer.

Now for the post. On February 13, 2013, Athira Abraham wrote, I had a question that involved voice. My story might be from the middle ages or 1800s or something like that, but I also wanted to include things that were modern, like a camera, a café (yes, a café, not a bakery) and also events like Valentine’s Day, but I’m not sure how I would express it in the story to myself and the readers. I’m also finding it hard to include religion, like a church, if my story is a fantasy and includes a witch, or a sorceress, because some religions can be against this. How could I express these things in a story without making it sound too complicated?

Several subjects are wrapped up in here. First, time period. The middle ages and the 1800s are vastly different, politically, technologically, culturally, even religiously, and probably more. If we really want to give an impression of a particular period, it’s worth doing a little reading. There are books about the daily life of just about every period. I have two on the middle ages and one on ancient Mesopotamia. I usually read the chapters that have bearing on my story. For example, I’m always interested in food and the home. If we’re writing fantasy, we don’t have to stick slavishly to the information, but it’s helpful to have a general idea. In addition to daily life, it may be useful to google geopolitics for the period just to get a sense of what was going on.

And our research pays off delightfully in the details that we come across that inform and enrich our story, details we never would have thought of on our own.

It is possible to write a story that pulls in bits and pieces from all over the time line. Terry Pratchett is a master of this in his Discworld series. If we’re going to do something like that, we need to establish it very early in our story, certainly in the first chapter, so our readers don’t get confused.

If we’re not going to hop all over the historical map, let’s back up to consider why we pick a particular period. The answer doesn’t have to be deep, but, in my opinion, we should have one. Maybe we want a medieval story because we want the action to take place in a castle, and we don’t want to write twenty-first century people who are renovating a twelfth century castle. That’s good enough for me.

Generally, we need a reason for everything! Let’s take the three Athira Abraham mentions: a camera, a café, and Valentine’s day. It’s not good enough, in my opinion again, merely to like these elements. They need to fit into our plot. We can like one of them, say Valentine’s Day and what happens on that day, and decide to build a book around it. That’s fine. But then we need a reason for the café and the camera. Maybe our lovebirds meet at a café and ask a stranger to take a photo of them, and the photo falls into the wrong hands, because one of our MCs has been hiding from her great enemy, the powerful and vicious Earl of Eagleton. Cool!

These three elements may suggest our time period. As I wrote in my comment to Athira Abraham when she posted on the blog, the camera (not the digital camera, not a phone camera) has a pretty long history, and its forerunners go back even further. But in the old days you couldn’t just point and shoot. Taking a photo took time. Look it up.

Valentine’s Day goes way, way back, I discovered in my quick peek into Wikipedia, but the traditions evolved. Look it up, too.

Often etymology (word origin) will give you a sense of when something came into existence. According to Dictionary.com, the word café came into English at the end of the eighteenth century, so there probably weren’t cafes before then. If you’re alarmed about how long research will take, this filled about twenty seconds.

Suppose we decide to set our story in the middle ages. Valentine’s Day, in whatever form it took then, works. Cameras and cafes don’t. What to do?

We need some sort of substitute. Maybe for the camera it will be an artist who excels in recording impressions in charcoal on parchment. Or maybe, since this is fantasy, it’s a certain kind of owl that fixes images in its eyes. If you feed it a mouse and say the magic words, the moment you wanted to preserve will appear in the owl’s eyes. For a café, we’ll need to dream up something else, a gathering place of some sort.

Onto religion. We can have witches and sorceresses without mentioning religion – my opinion again. But if we need religion, this is fantasy, and it can be a fantasy religion. We can invent gods, demons, witches, sorcerers, sorceresses, cherubs, half-gods, creatures that are lower than humans in the creation hierarchy, whatever we like, whatever serves our story. The more different our fantasy religion is from actual religions, the less likely we’re to offend anyone. If our main god is in the shape of a dishwasher or, since this may be a medieval fantasy, a pot of porridge or even a unicorn, it’s unlikely to be connected by readers to their beliefs.

But, and I’ve written about this on the blog before, we may offend someone or more than one, and the anger may be for something we entirely did not predict. It may have nothing to do with religion (or it may – the religious aspects of Ever have bothered some readers). Maybe it has to do with the knights’ code of chivalry, which we expected would please everybody. The point is, if we worry about offending people, we may as well stop writing – and speaking, and leaving our bedrooms!

Here are four prompts:

• Put Valentine’s Day, the café, and the camera into a story set 200 years in the future. Each one has changed. Invent what they’ve become and decide how they fit into your tale.

• Research an aspect of life in the middle ages, could be market life, or costume, or cooking. Put your MC in the middle of it and give her an objective and obstacles to fulfilling it. Write the scene.

• Make her a modern girl in this medieval situation. Write the scene again, including her mistakes and her bungling good luck. A book I adore along these lines is Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – funny and exciting.

• In the middle of an escape from the villain, both your MC Mallory and your villain Hamilton wander into a religious ceremony unlike any either of them have known before. Mallory’s goal is survival; Hamilton’s is destruction. But nothing in this religion is as it seems. There are hallucinations, mazes, smoke, weather events, disembodied voices, and whatever other mayhem you want to toss in. Write the scene. If you like, continue and write the story or the novel.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Pickles

If you’d like to see spring in all its glory at our house, just click on my husband’s website on the right. And scroll down to see the latest (two) photos of Reggie. The second one shows his maniacal glee in a play fight with his BFF Demi.

On to the post. On February 11, 2013, Kenzi Anne wrote, I have trouble finishing stories because I get my characters into pickles and I’ll think “wow! this is great!…snap, now how do they get out of it?” In other words…I’m not clever enough to get my characters out of their pit. If I’d been in most of my characters’ situations, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do, and probably would have just thrown up the white flag–not a very interesting story! So I guess my question is, how do I write a character that’s cleverer than I am?

And writeforfun replied, I tend to have that problem, too! My current story is a spy novel, so I have to get my characters in and out of pickles all the time, and it gets tricky! Lucky for me, I have a genius brother who can usually think of a way out when I can’t. So, although this may not be an option for you, my first piece of advice would be to find someone you can trust (that won’t tell you “forget it – this is terrible!”) who could help you brainstorm a way out. Another method I’ve found is to give the characters objects in advance that will help them out of the tricky situation. I have one character who always carries a file with him (long story), and when he was put into an old jail, he used the file to break out. It would have been weird if he had been in the jail and said, “Oh, well would you look at that? I have a file in my pocket!” but he’s been carrying around a file since he first showed up in my last book. Since it was already there, it doesn’t make you think, “Seriously? A file?” but rather something like, “Wow, who would have thought that would actually come in handy?” It seems that if you mention the thing (or person, or animal, or whatever) that will help them out BEFORE they actually need it, it seems clever instead of cheesy. And, if all else fails, I usually alter the situation a tad so that my impossible situation has one little escape hole in it to work with. I know, all of these suggestions might not necessarily help – maybe even none of them will – but I hope this gives you some ideas. Good luck!

I’m entirely with writeforfun. I don’t have a brother, genius or otherwise, but I do use her other two ideas: arm my MC in advance with something that will get her out of trouble, and build an escape hatch into any pickle I put her in.

You don’t have to see ahead to do either one. If she doesn’t already have a file in her pocket, you can go back fifty pages and give her one. The file in writeforfun’s example works especially well because it was planted in an earlier book, so it’s really well established.

It’s particularly nice if the instrument comes as a surprise, if it’s not obviously a weapon or a means of escape. For example, suppose our MC, Rona, is wearing a ceremonial sash that has to be tied in a particular way, and it’s very long because it has to go over her shoulder, around her waist three times, and over the other shoulder and then hang behind her almost to the ground. The reader has seen the tying-of-the-sash ceremony and worried with Rona that it will slip off her shoulder and trail through something disgusting. There may even be taboos about this. In the next chapter, she’s imprisoned. Despondent, she thinks of hanging herself with the scarf until her own thoughts frighten her, and it occurs to her to use the sash as the means of her escape. There’s a grate overhead and one in the floor, and the window is barred. Plus, the guard comes in once a day to bring her bread and water and remove the chamberpot, and he has a neck the scarf could wind around and – mnah hah hah – tighten.

This scarf has more charming possibilities. Suppose Rona, in preparation for her ceremony, whatever it is, has learned The Dance of the Sash, which involves snapping it, making it ripple in the air. She could even have mastered tricks that cause the sash to tie itself into knots in the air, potentially weaponizing it.

Or maybe she’s even been taught how to turn it into a python!

But we don’t want to make things too easy for her, either. The snake may do that, unless the reader knows that it’s just at likely to strike Rona as her enemies.

Or the escape hatch. Rona is imprisoned in a cell with a tin roof, solid wooden door, solid plaster walls, and windows too high to reach. No scarf. Nothing that could be a weapon, not even a spoon. Through the high-up windows, she sees the sky darken. Rain starts, and the cell ceiling leaks a lot. She realizes this has happened many times before, and it occurs to her that the floorboards may be rotten. She takes it from there.

We writers have one advantage that enables us to write characters who are cleverer than we are. It’s time. Our characters can snap out sharp comebacks in an instant – because we’ve taken hours to think them up. They’re definitely smarter. In real life we could never answer so fast.

I bump into this constantly with my dragon detective, Masteress Meenore, who is totally brilliant, which makes IT great fun to write. I’m always figuring out ways to make IT shine. IT’s teaching my MC Elodie to deduce and induce and use her common sense, and when IT questions her, she often gets a headache.

Here’s an example from Stolen Magic. The background is that this item, the Replica, has been stolen from within the Oase, which is like a museum, with many rooms of shelves and cupboards. If the Replica isn’t found the consequences will be terrible. I won’t say what they are. This little bit includes Masteress Meenore, Elodie, and another character her age (twelve), Master Robbie. The three are in a stable outside the Oase. Masteress Meenore is the first speaker:

“When you return, do not waste your energy searching shelves, although there are many and a month could be spent combing them. Let others do it, because it must be done, but the thief, who is no fool, will not have hidden the Replica there, not even in the most shadowy corner of a cupboard in the most distant chamber. Why is that?”

Can you think of the answer? Close your eyes to think, think, think.

You may have come up with something else, but this is my solution:

The two were silent. Master Robbie’s face wore a strained look, which Elodie recognized.
“Think, Lodie, Master Robbie!”
She wanted to be the one to realize. Think! she thought. Prove I have an original mind!
Ah. “Because, Masteress, the thief couldn’t guess where the searchers would look first. Anyone might stumble on the Replica in an unlikely spot just by luck.”

We’re forever giving our characters powers we don’t have. Ella in Ella Enchanted has an amazing talent for languages. I don’t. Areida in Fairest can throw her voice beyond the ability of any ventriloquist. Why not intelligence?

Here are four prompts:

• You were expecting this. Imprison Rona and get her out using nothing but her sash.

• Try an underwater rescue. Your MC, who doesn’t know how to swim, is tied up in the trunk of a car that goes off a bridge into a river. Write a preceding scene or two to set up what will make her able to survive, the escape hatch or her special ability. Then get her out of there by her own efforts and have her save herself. I mean, she can get an octopus on her side, who can open the trunk and untie the knots, but she has to persuade the octopus.

• This one is sad. Write an argument between two characters, maybe they’re romantically involved, maybe they’re siblings, whatever. One of them feels betrayed; the other feels falsely accused. Make them both brilliant, much smarter than any of us. The fight never gets physical, but have them wound each other emotionally, because neither holds back. Depending on where you want to take it, you can bring them to reconciliation, or they can wind up estranged.

• Too bad Easter is over. This is an armchair Easter egg hunt. You have rivals or two teams of rivals. Twelve eggs have been hidden. The challenge for the contestants is to write down – without going to look – where each egg is hidden. The winner is the one (or the team) who predicts the location of more eggs than the loser. You can make the stakes high even though they’re just eggs. A life may hang in the balance. You probably should use a setting you know very well, either a fictional setting you’ve been writing about or a real place. The place will help your characters guess and so will the nature of whoever is doing the hiding, but the contestants will have to be very clever.

Have fun, and save what you write!

On Being a Writer

Thanks again to Jane Collen for her informative blog post on intellectual property!

Sarah wrote this on the website in January: I’ve loved writing stories for as long as I can remember. Even before I could write actual words, I’d draw pictures and make up stories to go along with them. I’ve always hoped that one day I might be able to be an author.

Now, I’m in high school, and I still love writing. I’m getting to a point where I need to begin thinking seriously about what I want to do. I’d still like to be an author, but I’m not sure that’s possible. I write all the time in a journal, and love it, but I’m hesitant to share my writing with anyone else, because I’m scared of what others might think. I know that when someone sends something to get published, it’s very likely to be rejected. I guess I’m afraid to pursue a career where I might never get anything published and never be successful. So, my question to you would be, do you think I should pursue a writing career, or continue to enjoy writing for my own enjoyment but look into a different career. Any advice you could offer for an aspiring writer would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Let’s start with careers. If your goal is to be a novelist, few people who aren’t very wealthy can graduate from college and devote a year or two or four to writing without some other source of income. During the ten years it took me to get published (nine to get an acceptance), I worked for New York State government. I wrote mostly on the train during my very long commute. So I think it makes sense to prepare for a job while you also continue to write. I’m not a career counselor, but I am certain that good writing is an asset in almost any job. If any of you reading the blog know something about this, please weigh in. You may want to prepare for a career that will use your writing skills directly. Public relations, grant writing, technical writing, and advertising leap to mind. I have no idea what the opportunities are in those fields. There must be more fields for writers, too. If there are career counselors at your high school or college, I suggest you consult them. And again, if you’re reading the blog and write on the job, please tell us what you do.

I say, look for a field that interests you, that you think will be fun to do most days. And – I hope this isn’t presumptuous – cultivate in yourself the capacity to have fun in whatever you’re doing. One of the charms of being a writer, professionally or not, is the ability to stand outside what’s going on. You can satirize it or dramatize it. You can invent backstories for the players, your fellow toilers, the boss, the boss’s boss. You can imagine the meetings that led to the insane employees’ manual.

You may need to decide whether you want the kind of career that will engage you fully, that will demand sixteen hour days of you, or the kind that will let you go home at night and write. There are pluses and minuses of each.

I must confess that I did no such planning. I graduated from college during a recession, and I had been a philosophy major, and I took the first job I could get, which was with an economics research firm, a very bad fit. I took a test for a government job and began to work for the long-defunct WIN Program, placing welfare recipients in jobs. I loved it, because it fulfilled a need in me to be helpful. But it really was dumb luck. Then I got promoted out of what pleased me, and the second fifteen years of my twenty-seven years in state government were only intermittently satisfying. I stayed because I needed the security – not a good reason. However, my job didn’t demand much overtime, and I started writing in my last ten years there, and you know the rest.

The point is, life is full of surprises. The path you start down may be the right one, but if not, you can veer off, change your mind, do something else. I was almost fifty when Ella Enchanted was published.

Onto success. I am extremely lucky (because of the Newbery honor, the movie, the Disney books, the confidence that HarperCollins had in me from the start) to be able to earn my living as a writer. Not many writers do, and they are still successful. Let me repeat that: They are still successful. In the arts, where competition is extreme, success needs to be defined in other than monetary ways. If you’ve written an entire novel, that’s a measure of success. If you’ve gotten something published that is success too. If someone – one person! – has read your work, has been moved by it, even changed, that’s success. You don’t have to have the whole enchilada to be successful. And no matter how much success you do accumulate, someone else will have more.

An aside. You may be thinking that the Newbery honor wasn’t luck because I’d written a good book. But plenty of good books don’t get the recognition they deserve. I once judged picture book texts for a contest. My fellow judges and I had to come up with one winner and, if I remember correctly, one runner-up. The book I loved the most didn’t appeal in the slightest to the other judges, so it was out. From the other ten that I adored it was almost impossible to choose which was best, and yet we had to. If I had eaten a different breakfast on the morning when we decided, if one of the judges had seen a different movie the night before, if the day had been rainy, we might have made a different selection. There was definitely an element of luck.

And now onto, criticism, which is everyone’s lot in life. I confess that I can tolerate writing criticism much more comfortably than I can take criticism of my character or of the stupid things I sometimes do or the thoughtless remarks I sometimes make. Being called up for those really makes me cringe. If the criticism is on target I endure a period of miserable shame.

Some writing criticism I actually like, if it shows me how to improve my work. If it lights a path to a better story, if it inspires new creativity, I’m ecstatic.

And some writing criticism I dislike. If I start to feel that my whole effort was a failure, I find that as hard to tolerate as the personal criticism. But once I see how I can make my story better, the pain fades.

For most writers criticism is essential. Few of us bang out perfect prose, and few of us can see all our flaws. We need an objective eye.

If writing criticism is intolerable to you, I’d suggest you reassess your position. Try to take the criticism in, in a way that’s less painful. You might read some of my other posts on criticism and rejection. However, if you try and you just can’t deal with it positively, then writing professionally may not be for you. You may be happier keeping it as a hobby.

From criticism to rejection. We all experience it, as writers and not as writers. In ordinary life, we get rejected by our first choice school or by a crush or by a potential friend. In writing, rejection is as common as the flu and just as welcome. I’m still experiencing it. Not too long ago my editor turned down a picture book project I wanted to do. And my poetry is garnering more rejections than acceptances. It’s hard not to take it personally, but writing rejection is affected by many factors. One, of course, is the quality of the work. But others may be the market or similarity to something else the publishing house is putting out or the personal preferences of the editor. The problem is, you may never know what the real reason is. It may be impossible not to feel bad, and it’s fine to wallow in your misery – but not forever. It’s important, probably crucial, not to let a rejection make you dislike your work. The trick is to send it back out and keep writing and using criticism to get better.

Whew! Time to get off my soapbox! Here are two prompts:

• Write a journal entry about yourself and your future and your attitudes toward success, criticism, and rejection. Assess yourself. Consider what you think will make you happy in your professional life. Write about what you need to do to get there. Do not heap criticism on yourself in the process!

• You know The Rule of Three? Cinderella goes to three balls. The queen in “Rumpelstiltskin” guesses his name three times. The evil queen in “Snow White” visits her in her home with the dwarves three times. That’s three examples, but there are lots more, because three seems to be a satisfying number. Write a fairy tale about an aspiring writer using The Rule of Three. If you like, turn her into a toad (or anything else), bring in a dragon, an actual fairy, a talking wolf.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Copyright, the Double-Edged Sword

Here is the promised guest post on copyright, very kindly contributed by Jane Collen, who asked me to add the website of her law firm, where you’ll find more information: http://www.collenip.com/. I visited the site and found it most helpful to click on “News and Events” and then on “Podcasts and Blogs” and then on the blog on copyrights. It’s wonderful for those of you who have a legal bent and like getting into the weeds.

If you have questions about the post or about other aspects of copyright or about projects you’re working on that make you wonder about copyright, you can get in touch with Jane directly in the ways she suggests at the bottom of the post, or you can post your questions here, which I’d prefer for this week, so we can all learn from them and from Jane’s answers, because she’s going to keep an eye on the blog and respond. Ta da! Here it is:

I had the pleasure of meeting Gail at the recent Author’s
Tea in Chappaqua, NY. We began chatting
and I mentioned I was a lawyer practicing in the field of Intellectual Property
– patent, trademark and copyright law, and she mentioned her readers had a lot
of copyright questions. I quickly
volunteered for the honor of doing a guest blog – two of my favorite things,
which go hand in hand: writing and copyrights!

COPYRIGHT PROTECTION – AUTHORS SEE THE DOUBLE EDGE OF THE
SWORD (which is still not mightier than the pen (word processor))

by Jane F. Collen,

The right
to a limited protection of the fruits of our creativity is so fundamental that
it is guaranteed by our Constitution.
This blog post is meant to serve as a primer on how to capture those
rights bundled into Copyright, without inadvertently trespassing on anyone
else’s rights, and does not serve to provide legal advice.

Beginning at the source, Article 1
Section 8 states “Congress shall have Power. . . To Promote the Progress of
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times, to Authors and
Inventors, the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

In order to
be protectable by copyright, a work must be an original work, fixed in any
tangible medium of expression. The
protection covers the work – whether it is a novel, a picture, a photograph, a
motion picture, a dramatic work, a dance, sculpture, music, sound recording or
architectural work—it does not cover the idea behind it.

There is no
way to protect the idea with a copyright. (That is the job of patents – a much
more complex form of protection.) We can
protect what we call it (that is the brand or the source indicating language by
a trademark registration), how we present or perform it, how we write about it
and how we manufacture it. But we cannot
we protect the title of a book, or characters.
You CAN protect the brand of a series of books (I am working on book
three of the Enjella™ Adventures) but not the title of a single creative
work. Nor can you completely protect the
plot of the book.

Therefore,
sometimes it is not easy to establish if the work is an “original work of
authorship”. To be original, the work
must be produced by “the author’s own intellectual effort,” as opposed to
merely copying a preexisting work. But
it does not necessarily have to be novel (meaning new, innovative); it just
must have an appreciable amount of creative authorship. Usually, however, the level of creativity
required is exceptionally low. You
can’t protect a one word “composition” or a short bumper-sticker phrase. But
just about anything else you write will be original, as long as you’re not
copying the writing of someone else. The
best example of work which may not qualify for originality purposes may be just
compiling a list, for instance. As the courts see it, “the sweat of the brow”
that you put into your work won’t necessarily make it original. But writing just about anything in your own
words satisfies “originality”. The gamut of protection runs from courts finding
a compilation of non-protectable facts is copyrightable if it “features an
original selection and arrangement of facts” to finding even an original
expression not protectable “when there is essentially only one way to express
an idea”.

Copyright protection
actually conveys more than just one right.
The author has the right to reproduce her work, prepare derivative
works, distribute copies of the work to the public (by sale, or lease, or
rental or lending), perform the work publicly, display it publicly and perform
it publicly by means of digital transmission.
As you can imagine there have been all kinds of lawsuits concerning the
definition and extent of these rights. The
Copyright Law was recently revised (1998) to make the rights clear in the digital
millennium. In fact the revised law is
called The Digital Millennium Copyright Law.
(Our forefathers did not foresee ebooks – as omniscient as they seemed
to be.)

            “For how
long do these rights last?” you ask.
For works created on or after January 1, 1978 for individual authors,
copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. (This term was just recently extended from
author’s life plus 50 years by the 1998 revision).   For corporate authors, the term was extended
to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication.

The author
owns the copyright. Simple, right? Not so fast!
What about your web site that you paid a graphic designer to create copy
and art for? Do you own that? Are you sure?
There is such a thing as a “work for hire” if someone is explicitly
hired to prepare a work, then the employer, or person who hired the author owns
the copyright. But sometimes it is
difficult to establish that the arrangement truly is a work for hire.

A work for
hire usually is defined as a work prepared by an employee within the scope of
his or her employment; or a work specially commissioned for use as a
contribution to a collective work. Are
you thinking author/illustrator? Well,
you are right, but unless the parties agree in a written instrument signed by
each party that the work shall be considered a work for hire, the illustrator,
even if hired by the author, probably still has the right to make derivative
works and reproduce the illustrations apart from the published book.

And to add
to your agita, websites created by independent contractors are NOT considered
works for hire, so if you don’t want anyone else to have the same logo as you
and the same web design, you must be sure to require a written copyright assignment
from your web designer.

Gail
recently featured an interesting audio clip from NPR about the fact that the
song Happy Birthday still enjoys copyright protection. Even though the music, originally composed by
the Hill sisters who were savvy enough to obtain copyright protection, just
recently went into the public domain, the words are still protected since the
copyright was assigned to a publishing company.
Which leads me to my point – copyrights are transferable by written
agreement.

These days
it is possible to claim copyrights in a work simply by putting the author’s
name and the date on the (ideally) first publication or public
display/performance of the work. Unlike
the old days, it is not necessary to register the copyright with the Library of
Congress. But registration brings
additional rights, and makes the copyrights more easily enforceable. Hence the double-edged sword – be careful
where you garner your ideas and your material – there are only limited
circumstances that allow you to use copyrighted material without permission of
the author, like for educational purposes, news, or parody. You cannot use any copyrighted material for
your own economic benefit. The simple
rule: Always make sure your work reflects your own creative intellectual
effort.

Any questions? Gail has invited me to stay tuned to help you
process this information. And you can
always reach me through the website for my Enjella™ children’s book series – www.enjella.com, or jane@enjella.com.

Robin’s Merry Band of Secondary Characters

I recently met an intellectual property attorney (patents and copyright) at a fund raiser for a book festival. We started talking – she’s writing for kids, too – and I told her about the blog and the questions that sometimes arise about copyright, and she offered to write a guest post, so that’s coming up in the next few weeks.

Now for today’s post. On January 26, 2013, Anna Marie wrote, I let a very close friend of mine read a story I wrote and she has recently gotten back to me. One of the things she mentioned was character development, she says I could go a little deeper. I totally agree, but I’m not sure how to effectively and smoothly go about adding deeper details about my characters. The story is in first person present tense, and it switches between two different characters. I’ve tried to tell the story in easier ways (3rd person, 1st person past only one character, etc.) but I keep coming back to the way I’ve got it. Very much like your story EVER which I hadn’t read when I first started but have read since (I must say, it’s pretty awesome). Can you give me any help? It’d be much appreciated.

The problem is with my other characters, my friend said that my MCs came to life very well, but that the others were still just words on a page. My story is a flip off Robin Hood, my MCs a female Robin and a boy who joins the band. The story jumps between their points of view. My trouble is in working character descriptions into the story through them. If that makes any sense whatsoever…

One of my favorite moments in Ella Enchanted, which is told in first-person, past tense, comes when Ella, Hattie, and Olive are in a carriage chased by ogres, and Hattie shrieks, “Eat me last!” If she were in the book for only that moment (she’s not), the reader would still know her: selfish, self-centered, self-involved, self-important, self, self, self.

One trick is to give your minor characters the opportunity to express themselves. Ella could be so frozen with terror in the carriage that she’s oblivious to what’s around her. Instead, she’s scared but she’s thinking about a way to save herself, and the one she comes up with requires the help of her stepsisters. Thus she gives both Hattie and Olive the chance to be their horrible selves.

Another trick, which I think is critical, is to make your MCs observant. If you’ve got an MC who isn’t (that’s fine), you may need to write in the third person – or your reader is going to miss a lot.

Elodie in A Tale of Two Castles and Stolen Magic has to be observant for her job as assistant to a detective dragon. Plus, she’s an actor, and acting calls for observational skills. Addie in The Two Princesses of Bamarre is fearful, and fear calls for heightened alertness. When she goes off to save her sister, her survival depends on her observations.

Power relationships affect the observations of people, and this works for characters, too. We watch those who have power over us the most closely. Teachers and bosses are the victims of this hyper-vigilance. If a teacher, for example, habitually adjusts her bra strap, or if he rubs his nose, or she pulls her ear, pupils notice. They notice everything. If they don’t like the teacher, oy!, these mannerisms become the butt of jokes.

In the Robin Hood story, the boy who joins the band, let’s call him Thomas, may be low in the hierarchy. Say he wants to be accepted, so he pays sharp attention to everybody. If a chapter is told from his POV, he’s going to think about who says what, how it’s said, how the others behave, how they relate to Robin, and his thoughts are going to show up on the page.

The first three out of these five tools of character development – dialogue, action, appearance, feelings, and thoughts – are available for non-POV characters. Suppose the band is walking through Sherwood Forest and we’re in Robin’s POV. She notices that Simon is stepping carelessly as usual and Jack is falling behind. She wonders if Jack’s fever is back. She sees that Melanie’s lips are pursed, which means she’s whistling in her head. These are actions that reveal character, filtered through Robin’s perspective.

Dialogue next. Let’s take careless Simon. The band reaches the safety of their hideout. Robin says, “Simon, if the sheriff had been within a mile of us, he’d have heard us and we’d be trussed up and on our way to the dungeons.”

What Simon says is an opportunity to reveal him. Here are some possibilities, but there are a million more:

“You’re dreaming. I was as quiet as a clam.”
“Your whipping boy at your service. Who would you pick on if you didn’t have me?”
“Sorry, chief! I didn’t mean to.”
“I’ll get it. You’ll be proud of me next time.”
“I can’t keep my mind on my feet. I try. You know I try, don’t you?”

If I were Robin, I’d probably find the last one the most annoying.

More action: Is Simon meeting Robin’s eyes? Is he blushing? Folding his arms across his chest? Tapping one foot? Each is an opening into his character.

Onto appearance. Let’s move into Thomas’s POV, because a character who’s new will have the freshest perspective on everybody else. He’s in the hide-out for the first time and seeing the band at their leisure. Maybe he’s thinking, What am I getting into? This is the legendary band that gives the sheriff apoplexy if even its name is mentioned? Simon is so knock-kneed it’s a wonder he can walk at all. Jack looks like the first strong breeze will blow him away. And I don’t like how caved-in his cheeks are. The band may be short one merry man by next week. I don’t see what the sheriff doesn’t like about Melanie. A smile permanently glimmers in the corner of her mouth. Nothing menacing about such a round, jolly face.

The POV characters can speculate about the thoughts and feelings of the secondary characters, too. If Robin knows that Simon is sensitive, she can think about his easily hurt feelings and couch her criticism in a way that doesn’t distress him – or that does. And characters can say how they feel and what they think. Not as direct a source as actually being in the head and heart of a POV character, but useful.

If you think about these tools, you’ll find yourself building them in, and your secondary characters will put on depth and weight.

Three prompts:

• Maid Marian is being held in the sheriff’s jail. The band that I’ve described needs to get a message to her without being discovered. Write the scene from Thomas’s POV. You can make them succeed or fail.

• Write the christening scene in “Sleeping Beauty” from the POV of one of the fairies. Use her narration to reveal the characters of the king and queen and at least two other fairies. Everyone is trying to keep the evil fairy from doing her worst.

• The next time you go to the supermarket or any big store, watch everyone you see. Notice how they reveal themselves and think what you would do with them if you put them in a story. When you get home, imagine some crisis in the store, whatever you like. Maybe there’s a large rat or a thief, or the power suddenly goes out. It’s night, and it’s suddenly dark outside and in and the power doors won’t open. Or somebody has a heart attack. You pick. Write a story.

Have fun, and save what you write!