Fast out of the gate

On May 20, 2012, Jillian wrote, I always like stories that aren’t slow and get going quickly. But now I look back at my story and am thinking, It’s going too quickly. I have had my friends read it and they understand the beginning completely. I even have backstory in there but it’s just very quick. Is there such a thing as too quick a beginning?

I wasn’t sure I understood, so I asked for clarification, and Jillian answered with this: Continuing my last comment, I guess it moves quickly in that I feel like most beginnings have parts where the narrator takes its time in explaining what’s going on. Like in Ella Enchanted in the beginning she talks a lot about her mom to give backstory. But in my story I give backstory, but it’s slipped in here and there, and the events move quickly one after the other, making a very short exposition. Is there such a thing as too short?

Hard to tell. My favorite writing teacher used to say that a story, and this would go for a beginning too, is the right length if it’s as long as it needs to be.

Let’s consider what the beginning is, because that may be part of the confusion. In Ella Enchanted, to take Jillian’s example, is the beginning those first two paragraphs about the fool of a fairy, Lucinda? Or the first few pages, in which the curse of obedience is explained? Or does the beginning continue through the funeral of Ella’s mother?

I’m not a student of story arcs and rising and falling action, although maybe I’d have an easier time if I were. So I’m not sure. If the beginning is just revealing the curse, very few pages are involved. If it includes Ella’s mother’s death, then it’s two chapters.

Maybe it will be more productive to think about what a beginning needs to do. I mean a final beginning, not the beginning that gets us writers into the story, but the beginning after we’ve reached the end of the entire tale and done all the revising.

First of all and most of all, a beginning needs to engage the reader and make her care enough to keep reading. There’s no such thing as too quick for that. I don’t mean that there has to be a crisis on the first page. Some authors are leisurely about drawing the reader in. It’s gradual. But there has to be enough from the start to intrigue. Why are we examining the wallpaper in an ordinary bedroom? What’s going on? That curiosity may be enough.

Everything else pales in comparison with the imperative to make the reader want to read.

A beginning also acquaints the reader with the world of the story, which is different for every book or every series. Two books set in a contemporary suburb, for example, will still be in different worlds. The characters will differ, their families, their friends. One character is home schooled; another attends an enormous high school. One character likes to buy from thrift shops, another favors big box stores. One lives in a condo subdivision, another in an old house that was built by her great-grandfather. And so on. Both may mention the antique clock tower by the train station, where the trains no longer run, but that’s it.

Familiarity with the world may take a while if POV or time period or setting shifts from chapter to chapter. The reader may be four chapters in before she feels completely at home. In the novel I’m reading right now, Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund (high school and above), all three change. Some sections are told in first-person, others in third. Time and setting move around too. I have to pay attention! But the story is strong enough to keep me interested.

The beginning also introduces the voice of the story, or voices if the POV shifts, and if it does, the beginning will also be prolonged.

There’s nothing wrong with either approach, consistency or variation. The same voice, same time period, same narrator all the way through are absolutely fine. They’re just likely to shorten the beginning.

Some stories require more set-up than others. If there are aspects of the world that the reader needs to know going in, we’re going to have to spend more time getting started, which is neither virtue nor vice, only a little harder, because while we’re doing the set-up we still have to engage the reader.

We can make the reader care about main character Kira right on the first page. She rescues a puppy then gets hit by a bus and then says something endearing to the EMT who’s loading her on a stretcher.

But we don’t have to. We can lead with the wallpaper. There’s a spot where it’s torn, and the tear is in the shape of a crescent moon. The surface of the dresser is dusty, and in the dust someone has drawn a five-pointed star. The area rug has a pattern of suns. So far the reader has seen only setting, but she’s curious. Why all the celestial symbols?

The thing that would make a beginning feel rushed to me is an absence of detail. If we start with the rescued puppy, the reader will want to know the circumstances. Is the puppy being abused? Or is it alone in a cardboard box on the street? Did whoever left it also leave a few dog biscuits and a toy? How cute or un-cute is the puppy? And then there’s Kira. Does she love dogs? Is she afraid of them? Allergic? Does she have time to pick up the puppy, or is she making herself late for an interview for the internship she’s wanted for five years?

In the wallpaper example, I’ve given a few details but the reader will certainly want to know if anyone is in the house. And what’s the smell? Is there silence? Is the electricity working, the water running?

Without detail the reader can’t enter the story.

Let’s try some prompts.

∙ Now I’m curious. Write the beginning of the puppy story. If you like, keep going.

∙ Write the beginning of the wallpaper story. What is going on in that house? Delay the entry of characters for as long as you can while still maintaining the reader’s interest. Continue and make it a story.

∙ In a new version, combine the puppy story and the wallpaper story. Switch settings and POVs and time frames. The EMT, the puppy, the rescuer can all have their own chapter. The house with the wallpaper can come much earlier or much later.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Off we go

On May 9, 2012, Kelly wrote, I was curious to see if you had any ideas on what to do when you don’t know where to start when you begin writing. I have a great plot, and do-able characters–but I can’t decide where I should start. Anybody have any ideas?

I usually find my beginning in notes. As I’m jotting down ideas for how my story might go, a first scene drops into my head, so I start writing. This first scene may not ultimately be the first scene by the time I reach the end, and it may change again as I revise, but it’s enough to get me going…

which is all we need. The beginning we begin with is no more precious than any words that come later. It needs only to move us further into the story. If we give it too much importance we’re likely to freeze up and never get beyond a few paragraphs written and rewritten until we want to snap our pens in two or pour molasses on our keyboards.

The famous advice, to begin in medias res, in the middle of things, is one way to go. Suppose your plot involves Julie’s quest to establish her independence, a need she doesn’t recognize at the outset. She tends to rely on other people and rarely asserts herself. We can start with action: Julie is doing something foolish on a dare that a more self-possessed character would have refused to take on.

But that’s only one option. We can begin with setting. Say Julie lives in a model housing development for a repressed minority group in the totalitarian kingdom of Ambur. We might start with a guided tour for the free press of the nation’s democratic neighbor, the republic of Guma. If we see Julie at all, she’s merely one in a chorus of teenagers brought out to sing a paean to tyrannical King Stanil. This beginning focuses on setting. We show the small, neat houses where the grass is always kept three inches long; the box-like school with its tiny, barred windows; the community vegetable garden, where space is not allowed for flowers. And because we want to introduce a little blip of tension, we have a rock-and-roll song (considered degenerate by the king) waft out of an upstairs window, which causes the tour guide to take out her notebook and jot down the address of the offending house. (Later we can learn that the house belongs to Julie’s family.)

Or we can take on an explication of the era with a page or several pages from a history book about the reign of King Stanil the Terrible. The excerpt may include the housing complex,.

Or we can start with character. Julie is in the bedroom of her friend, who’s showing off her new leggings in a pattern of tiny mice and rats. Julie’s real reaction is Yuck!, but she expresses only admiration.

Of course there are many ways to begin with character. When we started with action before, with the dare, we were also revealing character. Thoughts are another option for a character start. Julie is trying to fall asleep, but she’s worrying about a dispute between two of her friends and planning how she can position herself so that each one feels her support and both continue to like her.

If we don’t want to go the thoughts route, we can put this rumination in her diary and open with that. In this case, Julie doesn’t have to be the POV character. The next chapter can show our POV character, Mel, reading the diary. Or the next chapter can be Mel’s diary.

If beginnings make you choke up, you can jump right into a scene further along and write the beginning later. When you’ve gotten going you’re likely to discover scenes that come before the one you’ve written. At that point you may know exactly what’s needed, and your beginning may sail right out.

Let’s imagine that Julie discovers that her neighbor Mel is an informant for King Stanil. We write the scene, imagining the circumstances, but we realize the emotional impact on the reader is blunted because the relationship between Julie and Mel hasn’t been shown. So we write an earlier scene between Julie and Mel. Maybe we show Mel being kind to Julie and Julie being a little afraid of him. Now we’re wondering what Julie’s going to do later about the informing and we decide we need a scene that will shed light on her thought process. In this scene, which also takes place before the informing has been revealed, Julie asks her older sister if she ever finds Mel scary. Her sister says, “Mel has been nothing but good to this family. If he could hear you he’d be so disappointed. We’d be shamed, all of us.” When Julie discovers Mel’s perfidy she’s going to have to take her family’s obligation to him into account. Maybe she’ll even decide she should spy along with him.

Taking another tack, it’s possible that the problem in entering a story that has a fine plot may be blurriness about the characters who will put it into action. Suppose we know there’s a despotic monarch and a network of domestic spies and a downtrodden population who will rebel led by a young girl, but we don’t know who the girl will be. We haven’t imagined Julie yet or given her her personal struggle to act independently. We’re certain we need a leader of the spies but we haven’t imagined him either. And every despot is despot in a different way, but we haven’t fleshed out King Stanil.

Once we figure out our cast of characters we can think about how they might rub against each other. We can imagine King Stanil in his royal chamber with his chief counselor while his barber cuts his hair. How does he behave? We can show Mel walking through the housing complex, taking mental notes. We can have Julie’s mother set her a task and watch the way she carries it out. From this, from thinking about who else we may need, we can start writing.

These prompts come from Julie and the kingdom of Ambur:

∙ Write the scene between King Stanil, his barber, and his counselor. Consider not only Stanil but the others too, and how they may figure in the coming drama.

∙ Put Julie in the middle of the quarrel between her two friends. Write the scene and make both of them get mad at her. Use this as the beginning of a story.

∙ Write Julie carrying out the foolish dare. Get her into trouble. Write the story that follows.

∙ Write the scene in the model housing development. Have King Stanil come along in his armored vehicle and motorcade of security guards.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Double, double toil and trouble

On April 19, 2012, Chloral Florderoy wrote, An author told me once that there comes a point in the writing process when the characters start talking to you. I mean, you know what they would do/say in a situation because you’ve spent a long time with them and you feel as though you know them. Does this mean that it’s hard when it comes time to write their deaths? How have you dealt with making bad things happen to your characters, or is it fun for you?

Every writer is different. My characters don’t talk to me unless I start the conversation, generally on paper. I may interview them to find out what they’d do in a particular situation. Otherwise it’s rare for one of them to chime in when I’m out and about in the world.

But recently a friend described a close friend of hers, someone I know a little, and his flaws sounded like one of my character’s flaws. That was a nice moment, when my character came to life in life.

As for making bad things happen, depends on the character. If it’s my main and I love her, then it’s hard. If she suffers, I suffer. And a particularly bad kind of pain is the self-inflicted kind. If my character behaves foolishly or inappropriately or hurts someone because of her faults and suffers the consequences, and she knows she’s to blame, then ouch! I squirm and writhe along with her. In Fairest, for example, Aza’s desire to be beautiful gets her into trouble over and over again.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling for our characters. If our emotions are engaged, the reader’s likely will be too.

When I killed Ella’s mother in Ella Enchanted I used some of my own feelings from when my mother died, which had happened about six years before I started writing the book. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. My writing was more authentic, and my grief for my mother no less real. If you’ve never lost someone you love, you can remember the loss of a pet or even a beloved object. It’s not the same of course, but you can still use the sadness.

On the other hand, killing a bad character is fun. In Fairest again, I enjoyed doing Skulni in. In The Two Princesses of Bamarre, knocking Vollys off was a pleasure too. She has redeeming qualities but she’s evil and I reveled in ending her in a melodramatic way. I didn’t kill Hattie in Ella Enchanted, but it was a delight to make trouble for her. She’s so self-satisfied that I always wanted to take her down a peg or two.

But killing is only an extreme case of getting our characters into trouble, which we have to do constantly. At the beginning we may not know them well enough to predict what they’ll say, do, and feel, so we have to throw them into situations, and initially we have to dream up responses for them, responses that are expressed in the ordinary way, through action, thoughts, feelings, dialogue, and occasionally setting. Each response narrows the possibilities for the next situation. A character who jumps whenever he hears a loud noise probably won’t be calm in the face of a snarling Rottweiler, possibly not even in the face of a snarling toy poodle.

But anxiety isn’t enough to make a complex character. Maybe as soon as the dog showdown is over, our character texts twelve of his closest friends. We’ve learned something else. And suppose he apologizes to the dog’s owner for being snarled at and rushes to the pet food store to buy a treat for the dog. Put all this together, and pretty soon your characters will be talking to you, too, and going with you when you walk your own dog.

Suppose we toss Jack into a new environment. He’s into fencing, so at the start of our story his supportive parents enroll him in a fencing club.

Some people and characters are fine with strangers. They know just how to fit in. They put others at ease. But we want to make trouble for Jack, so we start developing his character in a direction that will make this new situation torture for him.

We can make him shyer and more solitary than a turtle. But that’s not the only option. He can be socially awkward. He speaks too loud. He assumes that everybody shares his sense of humor. What else? As a prompt, think of five other ways that Jack can fail in a new social situation. Use one (or more) in a story.

Suppose we want to write an interior kind of story. Everything is fine in Jack’s life. He doesn’t have to go to fencing club. His family is wonderful; he has friends; his studies interest him. But we need a story and we want it to be Jack’s struggle with his inner demons. What can they be?

Well, let’s give him some faults. Maybe he’s a tad paranoid. He’s suspicious of his good fortune. There’s a worm in the apple of his life, and he’s going to find it, by gum! His friends and family, at first amused by his mistrust, begin to be annoyed, then angry.

Or he’s easily bored and deliberately sets out to shake things up, with unfortunate results.

I recently read William Styron’s Darkness Visible, his short and interesting memoir of his depression (high school and up). Styron’s descent into madness (his term) hit him hardest just as he was collecting a literary award, when everything was going splendidly.

So, as the next prompt, think of five more ways that a character with a great life can fall apart. Make a story out of one or more of them.

I’ll end by stating the obvious: Even if it’s hard to bring misery down on our complex, interesting, beloved characters, the solution is neither to spare them nor to make them not complex and not interesting.

Here are two more prompts:

∙ Marie is helping her best friend Peony get ready for a little party. Four friends are coming over. One is a boy Peony likes. Nothing has ever happened between them but she has hopes. The two girls are baking a cake for the occasion. Marie has only the best of intentions but she keeps creating disasters. Write the scene. Continue onto the arrival of the boy, and keep the trouble coming.

∙ In Perrault’s version of “Cinderella,” Cinderella forgives her stepsisters, and they marry lords. Rewrite the ending, and punish them. Be harsh.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Unoriginal sin

On March 22, 2012, Inkling wrote, My book is the same genre as Lord of the Rings, and I’m having trouble being original. All books of the fantasy genre are takeoffs (not sure if this is the right word) of LOTR because Tolkien created the genre, and I’m afraid of my book being just another takeoff. The plot isn’t the same (far from it) and I’ve tried to add big differences, such as my Elves mainly being samurai-ish unlike most fantasy books where Elves are pretty peaceful, but I’m still afraid of not being original. I’d let my dad read it (his picture is under the definition of blunt), but most of the book is still in my head since I tend to plan my stuff out before I write. Can you help me???

I’m not sure I agree that Tolkien invented fantasy as a genre, although he certainly was a major figure and has influenced lots of writers. I just looked at a Wikipedia article, and here’s the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fantasy, that discusses the roots of fantasy, which go back to antiquity. The article defines modern fantasy as taking place in an invented world beyond the ordinary or tucked into the ordinary. It credits Tolkien as the founder of the sub-genre of epic fantasy. Maybe, although I think there are Arthurian tales that are pretty epic.

Originality is at least as slippery a topic as the origins of fantasy. I wrote a post that also addresses the subject, which I suggest you visit. Just click on the label Originality. Then come back because I have a few more thoughts.

First off, there’s the question of outright infringement, that is, appropriating someone else’s creativity. We’re in danger of that if we copy word for word or if we put another author’s characters into our stories, not merely their names but also their essences. Fanfiction routinely uses other author’s characters, which I think is okay (I’m not a lawyer) when the writer is open about it and not profiting.

Even without infringing we can be unoriginal. If our story revolves around the rediscovery of a lost object of great power we may be in danger. LOTR isn’t the only example of this. Think of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark and even stories about the search for the Holy Grail, and there must be many more. Then suppose the forces of good and the forces of evil are both vying to get to it first. You can write the rest in your head. Many struggles, many battles, and good wins out but at great cost.

But we can take this framework and still be original. Our characters can be so unexpected that they surprise the reader at every turn. We can spoof the prototype and exaggerate everything until the reader is laughing so hard he’s gasping for air.

In your example, Inkling, why do your characters have to be elves? If you’re worried about originality, why not invent a new kind of creature with a samurai sort of culture? Maybe your creatures have long heads and short bodies and their limbs are extraordinarily flexible. In my Disney fairy books I came up with tiffens, who are smaller than people and whose ears are thin and floppy like elephant ears and who debate everything and accomplish little beyond banana farming.

In writing there are a zillion candidates for fretting, and worry about originality may just be one of them. Writing a quest, say, or a conflict between good and evil doesn’t mean you’re unoriginal. There must be thousands of novels that involve one or the other or both. Some are tired and predictable, but many many take a fresh approach. Both are archetypal plot structures that probably will never get used up.

But if you’re still worrying, go through your story or review your conception of it. In every spot where you’re unsure, list at least five other possible ways to go. See if one of them pleases you more than your first choice. But also keep in mind that your fears very likely are exaggerated. You’re you and not this other author. Your choices will be your own. Your uniqueness will infuse your tale.

Oddly enough, another place to go for originality is real life. I wrote in an early blog post that when I want to describe a new character, in particular a character character, like a character actor, not beautiful or handsome, I like to look at photographs or portrait paintings from the art books on my shelves. Seeing actual faces moves me beyond the standard elements like hair and eye color, complexion, smile, into shape of upper lip, length of jaw line, forehead furrows – elements I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Likewise, the real life attitudes and struggles of actual personalities involve so many variables and quirks that we can never run out of ideas. We can recast the efforts of a friend to get along with a sibling as a the challenge of a new initiate to establish herself in society of warrior butterfly hunters while hanging on to the actual idiosyncratic approach our friend takes.

Here are four prompts:

∙ Invent a new species of creature different from elves, ogres, giants, fairies, and the like. Imagine that their habitat, which may not be a forest (a forest is unoriginal), is threatened. Invent a character who is such a creature. What happens? Write it!

∙ Retell “Beauty and the Beast,” setting it in the future and making all the characters robots.

∙ Turn something difficult, a struggle in your life or in the life of someone you know into an epic. For example, from my life, finishing Beloved Elodie was tough. If I were going to dramatize it, I might cast my editor and my critique buddy as guardian angels battling along with me and I’d incorporate aspects of their personalities into the story. There could be a swamp, a mountain, certainly a desert. Maybe a mine would need to be explored or a tunnel dug.

∙ As an exercise, which may turn into something more, chart out the story of LOTR. At each plot point, imagine other directions the story might have gone. For example, what if Sam had chosen not to go with Frodo? Write what might have happened. Keep going. Suppose Sam had gone along, but Strider wasn’t at the inn in Bree? What then? And so on. If you get to a point that intrigues you, write a new beginning that plunged your characters into this fix, replace the cast with your own creations, and keep going. You’ve got a new, original story on your hands.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Stalled in Slow Gear

First off, a follower of the blog got in touch through my website and asked me to announce this free event, and I’m happy to oblige. Here’s what she wrote:

“…the Newbery Honor Winner and author of over 80+ books for children, Marion Dane Bauer, will be doing a FREE, LIVE teleconference call entitled “The Basics of Writing Successful Picture Books.” It will be held on Wednesday, September 19 at 7:00 EST, and her readers can go to http://www.writingforchildrenlive.com/Marion_Dane_Bauer.html for more information. She will also be offering a FREE, LIVE Webinar on Point of View in Fiction the following Wednesday, September 26, 7:00 EST.”

I plan to attend or tune in later. My picture book skills could use work.

And – you are among the first to know – I sent Beloved Elodie to my editor two weeks ago. I was afraid to announce that in case she despised it and told me to start over, but she called me, and looks like the manuscript will actually be a book! …after I revise and mostly trim. She does not like the title, so, after I bang my head against a wall a few hundred times, I may come to you guys for help again.

One more thing: I’ll be signing books at Children’s Book Day at Sunnyside in Tarrytown, New York, on Saturday, September 15th, from noon to 2:15. Hope to see some of you there! Please let me know if you found out about the event on the blog.

Now for this week’s question. On March 19, 2012, writeforfun wrote, In my last book, the beginning was really good. The conflict is introduced on the second page. For 15 pages, it’s all exciting and keeps the reader’s interest. After that, it goes downhill. The first 50 pages cover one week. During that week the MC never leaves the apartment he’s in, and the only action is his conversations with the others that live in that room and the secrets he learns about them (of which there are many). The reason for that is because he’s been kidnapped, and I needed all that time to learn about the kidnappers, who become co-MC’s, and to make them seem likable, as they are actually good guys. The trouble is, readers start to get bored. They tell me that they like knowing all this about the kidnappers, but it seems a little dragged-out, although they can never tell me what I should omit. I guess all I’m asking is, how do I know what to cut, and how do I keep the reader’s interest until AFTER the 50 page mark, when the action kicks up again?

To start, congratulations for soldiering through the gluey part, where the action is stalled. For me, when I sense the reader’s boredom the going gets tough. Writeforfun, if you’ve finished your story, by now you may already have figured out what to cut. For the rest of us, often we can get perspective on the parts we need and the parts we don’t only after we’ve written “The End.” As the plot works itself out, we develop our characters and discover what they’re driven to do. When we’re done we realize that some of the incidents, sometimes entire chapters, we thought were crucial have become unnecessary or actually impede progress.

But if you have finished and you still can’t tell, here are my ideas:

Consider whether all the secrets are necessary. Maybe you’re giving the reader too much and she’ll never keep it all straight as the plot progresses. If you can slice out a few story strands the pace may pick up. Or maybe some secrets can be revealed later, after the characters leave the room. You may be able to work in a few pauses for exposition, a break for a meal, a fireside chat before your characters go to sleep.

The message that the kidnappers are good can be conveyed economically. I gave an example of this in my post of November 2, 2011, in which Fllep and Yunk, aliens from another galaxy who don’t speak English, enter Keith’s house in the middle of the night and tie him to his bedstead. However, before leaving him alone and going on to the rest of the household, the aliens bring his stuffed elephant over from the bureau for him to cuddle with. From this single gesture, the reader gets the idea, at least provisionally, that these beings with a single eye and hands that look like spiders, may not be so bad. Follow this up with a couple more indications, and the reader is likely to be won over. The dog may be following them and wagging his tail; the cactus plant in the window may suddenly break into flower. A few sentences may be all that’s needed.

However, going the other way, I’m not sure that cutting is required.

If the characters are stuck in a single room, the setting may start to feel claustrophobic. I had that problem in Beloved Elodie. For most of the book many of the major characters are confined to the Oase, a residence and museum inside a mountain. I love being in caves, but even I started to twitch after a while. One approach I took was to shift POV to characters on the outside. Another was to have Elodie explore parts of the Oase beyond the great hall. In writeforfun’s setup there’s just one room, but there may be ways to create private, separate areas, perhaps a closet or bathroom that could be its own environment. Or maybe there could be a screen; or two characters might barricade themselves behind a piece of furniture. Or, getting imaginative, two characters might have a way to communicate that the others don’t understand, a secret language or hand signals or something else.

*Warning!* I’m about to use a word concerning the afterlife that may offend some of you. If you’re worried, skip this paragraph:

There’s a great play, Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (definitely high school and above) that might be worth reading if you have this problem. For those of you below high school level, it’s about three souls in hell (literally), and their hell is a single room, a modern room, like a hotel room, no torture devices. The hellishness is that the three have been chosen because their company and their combination will provide each with unending torment. The setting doesn’t change but the audience or reader is never bored.

If all your characters are in a single room, dialogue still isn’t the only option. There can be action. For instance, a fight can break out; there can be escape attempts. Depending on who’s there, the characters can engage in a project that can break up the talk. They can play a game – rummy, Scrabble, Monopoly, whatever – which may reveal goodness and evil and power relationships.

I also wonder why the reader has to find out right away that the kidnappers are good. Doubt increases tension, always a plus. Their virtue can emerge gradually in the course of the action. Sometimes, because I like my good characters, I don’t want anyone to think ill of them for even a page. I may mire my stories in mud just to shine their halos – I need to remember that there’s no way I can actually hurt their feelings!

Here’s another approach, it’s possible that the story starts too late and a better beginning would have begun earlier. The secrets that are revealed may more properly be shown in action when they happened. Let’s imagine that Allura, one of the kidnappers, was tortured by the terrible regime in power. Under torture, she revealed the true identity of one of those held in the room, who doesn’t even know who he really is. Now she’s got to protect him. Why not start the story with the torture?

Or, suppose another of the kidnappers, Borick, is there because he had a vision. Why not begin with the vision?

Here are three prompts:

• Nora, Nate, and Nina are trapped in the basement of Nora’s suburban ranch house during a tornado scare. When they judge that the storm must have passed and try to leave, they discover they’re trapped. Write the story, and don’t let it get boring. Create tension through their desperate situation (little water, no food, no bathroom, no cell phone reception), their personalities, their attempts to free themselves, the secret that Nate has been keeping from the others, and any other harrowing factors you invent.

• Nora, Nate, and Nina discover they’re not alone. Write the new story. Unknown to Nora’s family, homeless Norton has been living in the basement for a month. Norton is bigger and older than the others. Give hints that confuse the others and the readers about his intentions. Make him seem evil one moment, good the next until you finally resolve how he is.

• Although the entire story takes place in a modern basement, find ways to vary the setting. Write a scene of exploration. Write a scene of privacy for one or two characters.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Again again

On March 8, 2012, Lynn Weide wrote, In my novel, the same tropes/situations seem to come up all the time. For example, I have at least two instances of each of these: where the MC is listening in on someone else’s conversation to learn something crucial, or where she is chased by a “bad” guy, or where a character uses incriminating language to get someone else to confess something…You get my drift. These scenes feel so important and are good ways of advancing the plot, but I was wondering how much repetition of *basic* plot elements a reader is willing to accept and/or notice. Sometimes it feels almost impossible to make every situation unique in every way. Do you have any thoughts about this?

I’m guessing, but I imagine Lynn Weide’s repetitions happen in suspense stories with a mystery element. I’ve been grappling with the same problem in my mysteries, and I used the overhearing device in Beloved Elodie. In Elodie’s case she drinks a potion that enhances her senses of sight, hearing, and smell.

It’s hard to keep coming up with new ideas! For example, our hero, Mack, is in trouble. We may know Carmella is the villain and exactly what she’s plotting, but we can’t lay her plan bare or the fun will be over. Or we may not know, and we’re discovering along with Mack, and we have only the same means of investigation that he has, and they seem pitifully few. This is generally my plight; I’m in the dark along with my characters.

I’ve been watching the television series The Wire, definitely high school and above, excellent for the writing, the character development, the exploration of the effects of poverty. Anyway, the police unit the viewer cares about relies a lot on the use of wiretaps, hence the title of the series. When the detectives don’t have a wire they have to scramble for other ways to get information, and it isn’t easy. The poor writer is in the same bind as the police.

In fantasy although we can’t wiretap a phone, since there probably are no phones and no wires either, we can invent an equivalent. Terry Pratchett in his Discworld series (upper elementary, I’d guess, but check with a librarian) is a genius at coming up with nontechnological equivalents of our high-tech gizmos. So that’s one approach. For instance, Mack doesn’t have to overhear a conversation. He can find out from his pal, Prunella, the telepath. If you’re not writing fantasy, you can consider other ways of getting information; for example, your main can do an online search in newspaper archives.

Whenever you are on the verge of repeating a technique you’ve used before, try what I do: switch over to notes and list ten other ways your main can find out what he needs to know. For example, you might consider who else is likely to be privy to the info or where physically the answer might be discovered. Your ideas, of course, will be shaped by the conditions established in your story. In A Tale of Two Castles Elodie has to find out who poisoned the king. To help her I used story elements I’d already set up: she grew up on a farm and she loves to act and knows all the major plays in her world. The farm acquaints her with the common poisons and the tragedies with the exotic, expensive ones. She’s familiar with the symptoms of each and how quickly the poisons take effect.

I don’t feel like a master of the mystery, having written only two, but here are some devices I’ve either used or can think of to unravel a mystery. Please feel free to post your own suggestions on the blog.

∙ We can switch points of view. One character knows a little piece of the puzzle; another knows something else. Or Carmela can do some of the talking from her POV, and we can tantalize the reader with tidbits from her.

∙ The nature of the crime itself can lead to the criminal. If it involved great physical strength or, going the other way, tinyness, some suspects will be eliminated. (Or clever Carmela may use these limits sneakily to direct the investigation away from her.)

∙ We can give Mack particular abilities that help him figure things out, tailored to the situation of the story. And we can also handicap him in some ways to heighten tension.

∙ The nature of the victim can also lead to the perp. This is the obvious question asked by detectives: Who benefits? But there are more questions. Who hates this character? What made her be a victim? In A Tale of Two Castles the king is odious, but he’s most awful for one character in particular.

∙ Physical evidence of course, which we, in our wisdom, can plant. But we don’t want to make Mack’s job too easy.

As for readers, if we do recycle our methods, some may notice the repetition, some may not. But if we notice, we’ll probably feel more confident if we can expand our repertoire.

Regardless, we can comfort ourselves that there are other virtues beyond ingenuity. If the reader cares about our characters, if the writing is well-crafted, if the action zips along, if her emotions are captured, then she is likely to forgive a little repetition.

Lynn Weide’s instances of repetition seem significant. Overhearing is in a way what we do when we get lost in a story. We overhear events we’re not party to. And overhearing’s brother is self-incrimination. People reveal themselves without meaning to and without wanting to be found out, and we overhear their inadvertent admissions.

And the chase! The stuff of a zillion nightmares, possibly rising right out of the primordial soup, when we were chased by mastodons and saber-tooth tigers, oh, my! Naturally there’s power there and plenty of force to advance a plot.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Mack’s poodle has been kidnapped while Mack was at school and his parents were at work. The house has an alarm system which was not set off. A ransom note was left on the kitchen table. Write the investigation.

∙ I haven’t read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but let’s invent our own take-off on Jane Austen’s masterpiece. Elizabeth’s sister Mary (the studious, pompous one) is found murdered. This is during Mr. Collins’s visit, so you have an additional character. The killer is one of Austen’s characters, and the detective is, naturally, Elizabeth. Write the scene in which Mary is discovered and plant a clue. If you like, keep writing.

∙ Veering wildly from Little Women, Beth, home alone, hears noises. Mack, now an escaped slave on the underground railroad has taken refuge in the house, and his slave owner, improbably named Carmela, of course, is on the way. Write what happens, and if a chase ensues, write it.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Fiction on the couch

Before I start, I want to draw your attention to a new box on the right, a link to the pottery website of my husband’s sister Betsy. A click will be rewarded by the sight of a profusion of beautiful pots, and, while you’re admiring, you might spare a compliment for the site itself, designed and executed by Betsy’s big brother, my husband, who also created my website and designed the look of this very blog.

On to the post. On March 6, 2012, Jenna Royal wrote, Well, I’ve been really interested in all the psychological parts of books lately, and how they affect the characters and the reader. I’m interested in how the characters’ pasts would affect them, and how a series of events might cause them to behave or think in one way or another. From a reader’s standpoint, I’m interested in how you can use a book to convey a deeper message or idea – basically, how you can reach a reader on a deeper level. I love books that trigger a passionate reaction, either a question or a feeling or a resolution. Books that inspire, or heal, or encourage, or support. It’s so interesting to me. I want to know if you have any thoughts on the subject, or any experience – it’s something I want to know more about.

You’ve sent me back to memories of my adolescent reading. Two books about characters in mental institutions meant a lot to me then, David and Lisa by Theodore Isaac Rubin, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg. I haven’t read either in decades. Both were redemptive. I suspect David and Lisa would feel dated today, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden would probably stand up to the test of time. Both, by their subject matter, are psychological studies. I’m guessing they’re high school level and up, but they may be okay for middle school (check with a librarian).

I read Only Children by Rafael Yglesias as an adult, also decades ago. It’s a novel that follows two couples and the way each cares for their first child in its infancy and early childhood. The book is kind of a morality child-rearing tale, and by the end the message is clear, but it’s a great, interesting read, also high school and above.

More recently I read Miri, Who Charms by Joanne Greenberg again, which was published in 2009. High school and up again. This novel takes the reader through the childhood of two friends and into the raising of the daughter of one of them, a very troubling and compelling story. In terms of craft, it’s also a fascinating example of successful telling rather than showing. Of course there’s some showing, but on balance telling predominates, and the technique succeeds. (Take that, all you dogmatic writing instructors, who drum, drum, drum, Show! Show! Show! Don’t tell!)

My historical novel Dave at Night is loosely based on my father’s childhood. You may already know that my father was an orphan who grew up in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum from the time he was six to sixteen. He said very little about it, and I think the experience was sad and bad, but my father was the most joyous person I’ve ever known. I wrote Dave at Night after he died, in part at least to explain his happiness, so it is a psychological exploration book for me. The answer I came to in the course of the writing is that friendship got him through, but I suspect that he was also graced with natural resilience.

How to go about a psychological exploration in a story?

Naturally, if the setting is a mental institution, the task is easier. The characters see a therapist and the reader reads the proceedings, including the childhood traumas and the family dynamics. The difficulty in this kind of story, in my opinion, is different from what we usually encounter. Ordinarily, we wonder why. In a mental institution we may wonder how. It’s why is Gerald so mean to his best friend versus how does he act to his best friend? Or, possibly more likely, why does Gerald pull the wings off butterflies versus how is Gerald going to behave with them from now on, after facing the memory of being teased unmercifully when he wore his Halloween caterpillar costume at age seven? A mental institution is like a laboratory and we wonder how our character will be afterward in real life.

Other than a therapy situation, we can show and tell the events as they occur in our main character’s life, leading up to the story crisis. I did this in Ella Enchanted. The reader meets Ella at her birth and then reads important childhood moments until the story advances to the time when most of the action takes place. This approach is linear and straightforward.

We can use flashbacks to provide the backstory. I like flashbacks, which give a layered feel to a story. The difficulty is that they interrupt the forward action. When we come out of them it’s sort of like emerging into daylight from a dark movie theater.

Character history doesn’t explain everything or even nearly everything. Not all the children who grew up in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum came out joyous. The sleeper in the bed next to my father’s may have become a sad adult or a nervous one. So another approach is to invent complicated characters without delving into their pasts. Gerald can be mean today, and the Halloween hazing may never have happened. I loved the books I mentioned above, the ones that did take a psychological approach, but that’s not the only possibility, and there are dangers in being too overtly psychological. We can descend into psychobabble and even stereotyping, as in, Gerald is cruel to butterflies because his father beat him or his parents divorced or they didn’t spend enough time with him, and our own prejudices about proper upbringing can roar into overdrive, which does not make for subtle writing or interesting reading.

I talked to my friend Joan about Jenna Royal’s question. Her mind flew to a writer’s understanding of what a character is likely to do and what he would never do. For example, Gerald finds a wallet on the sidewalk. What will he do? We may not know at the start of writing his story, but if the wallet shows up in the middle, we are likely to know at the very least what he absolutely would not do. That knowledge comes about because Gerald has some depth by now. We can guess what he’s likely to think. There’s psychology in that with or without his backstory.

I’d also like to distinguish between psychological factors and a character’s emotional life. The first is explanatory, and may be fascinating; the second is what he experiences and feels and what the reader experiences and feels through him. If there’s a range, if Gerald responds unexpectedly – maybe he weeps during funny movies and laughs during serious ones and tenderly presses flowers in the dictionary, a different flower for each letter, and doesn’t want the radio to be played when he’s in the car – then he begins to come to life.

Here are prompts:

∙ Write a therapy session between a psychiatrist and as many of these as you like: Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes, the evil queen in “Snow White,” Helen of Troy, Cupid, Napoleon, Typhoid Mary, anyone else you choose from literature or history.

∙ Write a childhood scene for one of the above.

∙ Write the scene in which Gerald finds a wallet on the street.

∙ Have one of the characters above find a wallet or something precious.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Inseparable

We’re continuing with last week’s questions, so here they are again:

Then last week TsuneEmbers wrote, I’ve been having way too much trouble w/ my own writing lately, as in it won’t come out and actually get anywhere. This makes me sad since I love writing stuff. I think I kinda lost my drive there, when I realized that one of my ideas was way too complicated, and not working at all. =/ I tried simplifying it out to a more workable form, but it still doesn’t actually feel like it can work yet.

I am toying with another idea of mine though, but of course, my usual plotting problems bit that one, so I’m currently stuck with not writing anything. I have a few major characters in my head already, and a vague idea of what I want to happen to them, but that’s about it. The vague idea could be considered a plot in a sense, I guess, but it doesn’t give me any idea over where to actually start the story. Not to mention that the word plot tends to make me scared every time someone mentions it, because I’m really more of a character person, and I don’t get this plotting thing as well.

Let’s start with a prompt similar to one in Writing Magic. Let’s take two classics I hope you know well, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, and switch heroines. If you haven’t read them, now may be the time. Then come back and try the prompt, which is to rewrite the scenes in each book where heroine and hero first encounter each other. In Jane Eyre this is when Rochester’s horse throws him, and in Pride and Prejudice it’s at a dance, but a scene at Bingley’s house when Jane is ill might be even better. If you like, after you finish the scene, keep going.

What you’ll find, I hope, is that plot changes when character changes. The two can’t be teased apart. If you continue with the prompt you’ll have an enormously changed story on your hands. Maddi and TsuneEmbers, your separate problems may be just as entwined.

Maddi, you have your plot, but you may not have figured out what sort of character will go in the direction of your story. Let’s imagine that a heroine, Iola, lives with her parents and her brother Osiah in the village of Ewark. She’s out gathering firewood, and when she returns, she finds her village destroyed by the savage Rindik clan. Her parents have been killed, but one of the few survivors tells her that her four-year-old brother has been taken. In the plot plan, Iola, after many trials, saves her brother and becomes leader of her clan. You (obviously this you isn’t you anymore, Maddi, just an anonymous writer trying to find her way) know what the trials are and how the triumph comes about, but Iola seems to be sleepwalking through it all. Characters come and go, saying their lines woodenly. You are having a harder and harder time sitting down to write.

What to do?

Well, there are lots of questions to ask yourself. Here are a few: What’s Iola like? Is she naturally brave? If not, how does she persuade herself to take on the task ahead? If she is brave, brave how? Is she foolhardy? Does she overestimate her abilities? Why was she fetching firewood at the fateful moment? (Maybe she stamped off after an argument with her father. Maybe she offered to get the firewood to avoid being stuck with watching her brother. Either of these could make her feel pretty guilty.)

Here’s another prompt: Write down at least five more questions about Iola. Notice that I’ve been choosing questions that may increase conflict, that may give her a harder time achieving her goals. But some questions (and answers) may help her.

Now consider a secondary character. Suppose Iola needs an ally. Let’s imagine that she has to win supporters to her cause, but, although she’s a sterling person, good to the core, she puts her foot in her mouth whenever she opens it. She needs honey-tongued Ennio to be her ambassador. Now you need to ask questions about him. Why is he willing to endanger himself? Why would he throw his lot in with Iola, of all the other leader possibilities? Why is he willing to be subordinate to her? (You may need to think more about Iola to answer some of these.) A third prompt: more questions about him.

And a fourth: Based on your questions and your answers, write the first scene in your story between Iola and Ennio.

And a fifth: If you’re Maddi or are having a problem like hers, return to your own story now and ask questions. Rewrite a scene, then come back to the blog.

Now that you’re back if you went away, another way to make a story less mechanical is to ensure the reader cares about the stakes, which in this case may involve making the reader love Iola and her little brother Osiah and possibly her parents. Which suggests more questions. What is Osiah like? What was his relationship with his big sister? Same for the parents.

Again, a prompt. Write this scene: Iola is making her way across rough terrain. She may be tracking the Rendik or hurrying to the nearest village, but she has time to contemplate. As she’s figuring out what to do next, include her feelings and a few thoughts that will illuminate her relationship with her family. You can go to a full-blown flashback, but you can also just drop in tidbits. For example, maybe she’s thinking about how her mother taught her outdoor survival techniques and her father used to joke about her mom’s methods and Osiah would laugh along without understanding the meaning of any of it.

This contemplation while traveling is just one example, but including thoughts and feelings regularly (almost constantly) helps bring a character to life and engages the reader too.

TsuneEmbers, you think you know your characters. But maybe you know them in a static way and you don’t know what they’ll do. You might review your main character’s profile and, based on it, list ten things that could happen to him that would give him trouble, funny trouble or serious misery. Let your mind go. See if one or more of your ideas begins to suggest a story. See if you can incorporate a few of the problems into the story. Ask yourself what your main wants and also what he definitely, absolutely under any circumstance does not want, which, naturally, you can give him.

Let’s take Iola again. Suppose she’s been sheltered, a little over-protected, by her family, which she’s resented since she turned twelve, but there’s been an effect. She’s not sure of herself, because she hasn’t been tested. Deep down she wonders if her parents protected her because they feared she wasn’t capable. Let’s say, along the lines I already suggested, she speaks her mind forthrightly and often offends. Then, when she offends someone and realization hits, she feels doubly bad, embarrassed about the way she expressed herself and awful for the person she criticized, whom she believes must be mortified. Let’s make her generous and stubborn and give her an impish sense of humor. And anything else you want to throw in. Or, of course, you can make her entirely different from what I’ve laid out.

Final prompt: Knowing what you’ve invented about Iola, write the scene when she returns to the village and discovers the massacre. If you like, keep going.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Inspiration deprivation

On February 29, 2012, Maddi wrote, I’m having some trouble getting “inspired.” I have my plot worked out, I’m just having problems with the in-between stuff like character development and other small events. I’m not even sure if I can make it into a good quality piece of writing. I’ve been turning to Legend of Zelda fanfiction. It works, but I want to produce something that is my own idea. Lately my spelling has been really off, even though I’m a pretty good speller. Any ideas?

Then this week TsuneEmbers wrote, I’ve been having way too much trouble w/ my own writing lately, as in it won’t come out and actually get anywhere. This makes me sad since I love writing stuff. I think I kinda lost my drive there, when I realized that one of my ideas was way too complicated, and not working at all. =/ I tried simplifying it out to a more workable form, but it still doesn’t actually feel like it can work yet.

I am toying with another idea of mine though, but of course, my usual plotting problems bit that one, so I’m currently stuck with not writing anything. I have a few major characters in my head already, and a vague idea of what I want to happen to them, but that’s about it. The vague idea could be considered a plot in a sense, I guess, but it doesn’t give me any idea over where to actually start the story. Not to mention that the word plot tends to make me scared every time someone mentions it, because I’m really more of a character person, and I don’t get this plotting thing as well.

Any advice? This whole thing has just been frustrating me here for a while now.

Creative work, writing in particular, is peculiar. We writers love to write. We feel complete when we’re doing it. And sometimes – sometimes often – many of us, including me, hate it. At these times I’d rather go to the dentist than write.

I feel most understood in the company of other writers, because almost all of us struggle with the same demon. An enviable few relax into writing. If you’re among them, count yourself lucky.

I have a theory about why writing, or any creative expression, is so hard. When we create we confront ourselves but not directly. If the confrontation were direct, we’d have an easier time. After all, we do difficult things all the time, take on new challenges, carry out unpleasant chores, speak hard truths. But when it comes to fiction, we’re confronting ourselves indirectly. We’re making something out of nothing, and what if we come up empty? What if we disappoint ourselves?

It’s scary. I wrote about this in Writing Magic, that when I’m writing a first draft and inventing my story I feel as if I’m locked in an iron cell without doors or windows or furniture. After a while a little moisture condenses on a wall, which I scrape off, and that’s an idea. I use it and wait for more condensation, the next idea.

How pleasurable can it be to inhabit a cell like that, to have to depend on our mind to come up with the moment-by-moment of a story but not to be able to force it to produce? No wonder we get frustrated. No wonder we occasionally despair.

The solutions the writers I know employ are mechanical. Some write at a certain time. The hour arrives, they sit at their desks and hope that routine will prime the muse’s pump. Some free write before they enter the “real” manuscript. Some edit the work of the previous day before they pen or type a new word. Some start before coffee, some only after their blood is fifty percent caffeine; some eat their way through an entire book (carrots and celery, to be sure).

My method is to keep track on paper of the time I spend writing. My goal is at least two-and-a-quarter hours of writing a day, so I write down my start times and stop times. I may write for twenty-three minutes and stop to answer the phone. Before I pick up the receiver, I note the time.

Often I do reread a little of my work from the day before but generally not much. And I don’t do the free writing or eating, and I’m not a coffee drinker. But I do rely on notes. When I can write nothing else I can write notes, which are sometimes unappealingly full of self pity. The nice thing about them, though, is that they don’t have to be carefully crafted. There’s no threat, no disappointment in notes.

My other assist is the knowledge that I’m a writer. Writing is my obligation, my duty, and I’m dutiful (my curse, just like Ella’s!). I’m not talking now about earning my living, because I felt this way during the nine years it took me to get published.

The point is that mechanics, not inspiration, helps us soldier on, and the soldiering on eventually earns us inspiration. Habit – I can’t emphasize this enough – keeps us going. Those of you who participate in NaNoWriMo may understand. For the month of November, writing is your job, and you do it no matter what – whether or not you make your word count at the end.

Forgiveness also helps. Sometimes I don’t make my time goal, and I forgive myself, because heaping coals on my head does no good. The coals burn! And they make getting started the next day even harder.

I don’t mean it’s all joyless. In the writing, in getting something right, in surprising myself, there’s sharp pleasure, which, underneath everything, keeps us going.

Please notice I haven’t said a word about quality. We talk about craft constantly here, but the global term, good, rarely comes up. I try to keep that word and it’s opposite, bad, out of my thinking. In my stories I work at characters, dialogue, action, setting, expression, all that, but I avoid as much as I can asking if what I’m doing is good or bad. Leave that to the critics.

So my advice is:

1. Establish writing habits, whatever they are, a particular time to write, a number of pages that have to be written, a time goal. If you choose my method, the time goal, write it down as you go. Don’t let it be vague.

2. Know that you are a writer and your obligation, possibly your calling, is to write. Writing is your fallback position.

3. Forgive yourself if (probably when) you fall short.

4. As much as you can, avoid judging your work. When you find yourself doing it, shift your thoughts elsewhere. Remind yourself that you’re really good at setting the table or walking quickly, and confine your judging to that.

Maybe I went into a rant here, and there are specifics in both Maddi’s and TsuneEmbers’s questions that I didn’t address, so I’ll continue next week. In the meanwhile, here are some prompts, which come from the summer writing workshop, which Agnes from the blog has been attending:

∙ Hope is the daughter, or Harold is the son, of the king’s highest advisor in the Kingdom of Kestor. She (or he) has been warned that there is a traitor who is plotting against the throne. She’s been invited to tea at the palace of the king’s youngest brother. She has reason to suspect that one of the other guests is the traitor. Write the tea and make the reader suspect several guests by showing them through Hope’s or Harold’s eyes.

∙ Now write the tea from the point of view of the character who is actually the traitor.

∙ Now make the traitor a good character.

∙ Use all of this in a story or a novel or a seven-book series.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Talking to the reader

On Feb 22, 2012, unsocialized homeschooler wrote, What do you think about writing in questions in books? Like if a story was in third person and at the end of a paragraph I write something like “could this be true?” or “well, what would you do?” or something to that extent, like a narrator almost. I do that a lot in my writing without thinking, and I’m not sure if it’s cheesy or if it sounds silly or not. If it does, is there a way to avoid this?

I certainly don’t think your practice is cheesy or silly. It’s a matter of choice and voice and distance. When you ask these questions, your narrator, who can be first person as well as third, is addressing the reader directly. This speaking to the reader can be in the form of statements, not just questions, as in, You will soon learn the after-effects of the smart slap Duchess Claudette delivered to the cheek of Master Rex.

If you decide to address the reader, you need to do so early in your story or book and be consistent, not in every paragraph, which would likely be annoying, and maybe not even in every chapter (although possibly), but at least once in every, say, fifty pages. If the reader hears from the narrator for the first time on page 368, he is likely to be startled and possibly confused.

(I can’t remember if Charlotte Bronte ever speaks directly to the reader before she says **SPOILER ALERT** near the end “Reader, I married him.” If she didn’t, well, she’s doing it in the wrapping-up, when the reader is already disengaging. You may be able to do that, too, once, right at the end. Try it, if you like. And, although this is a lame excuse, she is Charlotte Bronte and might have even gotten away with tossing a few kangaroos into a novel set in England!)

I suspect you can also talk to the reader in a prologue and not again, because the prologue is a little separate from the story that follows.

Speaking to the reader acknowledges that there is a reader and that this is a book or a story. The question or statement addressed to him takes him out for a beat. I’m not saying this is bad or good; it just is. If the story has him by the throat, he’ll dive right back in. If the story isn’t engaging, whether or not you use this device, he’s likely to wander off.

This technique often has an old-fashioned tone, but that’s not necessary. If the voice of the story is contemporary, the words to the reader can be too, or can be consistent with the time period. J. D. Salinger manages it in a contemporary way in Catcher in the Rye. A narrator in a 1960’s novel might say to the reader, “You dig?” A first-person narrator in love with science fiction might ask, “You grok?” A modern, casual narrator might say, “Get it?”

In Beloved Elodie or whatever it’s going to be called, one of the POV characters, the dragon Masteress Meenore, is itching to address the reader, but I’m not letting IT because I haven’t done so anywhere else and I don’t want the reader spending even a second in thinking Huh? Why can IT do this and no one else? (The others don’t want to.)

Which leads to a question worth asking yourself: What kind of narrator am I writing? Even an omniscient third-person narrator has a voice and an implied personality. Compare some books you have that are written in third person, both classic and contemporary. When you’re making the decision about speaking to the reader or not, consider whether the voice is comfortable talking to beings outside the book.

Here’s a prompt: If you’re in the habit of speaking to the reader, try deleting those sentences. How does your story read without them? If you decide to put them back in, consider whether you might phrase the statements or questions in a new way. If you never speak to the reader, try it. See how you feel.

You’ll likely find that a narrator who speaks to the reader has a strong presence. He, she, or it, has an attitude toward the story. If you want your story’s events to unfold naturalistically, you may want to steer clear of this kind of narrator.

This blog takes a conversational tone. I do speak to you, and occasionally I struggle with perspective. Sometimes my we refers to the reader and sometimes to the writer. Sometimes my you is to the writers out there and then I worry that maybe I’m being condescending, since we’re all writers, but I do it anyway if it seems to suit the topic.

Still, I might take a more academic approach and never talk to you. Let’s look at the beginning of my second paragraph as an example. Instead of this:

we’d have this:

When an author decides to address a reader directly, the technique will be most effective if begun early in the narrative and consistently applied thereafter, not constantly, which might annoy, but frequently enough…

I’d probably lose most of you.

Here are some prompts. Think about which you enjoyed writing the most and which worked best. I hope you don’t commit to any future voice, but just experiment.

∙ Retell an anecdote from your life, preferably a funny one, from the POV of an irreverent narrator who speaks to the reader.

∙ Retell it straight, using an invisible third-person narrator who doesn’t intrude on the story.

∙ Retell it yet again in your own voice as if you were telling a friend or relative who knew nothing about it.

∙ Fictionalize the anecdote and introduce an embarrassing element. Make it not have happened to you if that helps. Have your narrator tell it in narration to a disapproving reader.

∙ Pick a fairy tale to tell straight in an old-timey fairy tale voice, including asides to the reader.

∙ Tell the fairy tale as if you were a stand-up comic, performing the tale in a nightclub or a one-person play.

Have fun, and save what you write!