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!

Natives talking

On Feb 9, 2012, writeforfun wrote, I’m from Indiana. I’ve read a tiny bit of “the Hoosier Schoolmaster,” which is supposedly written with Hoosier dialect, and it doesn’t seem all that abnormal to me. I’ve read other books, even modern ones, that are a little harder to understand because I’m not used to the expressions they use.
I write my characters’ dialogue as though they’re ordinary people, so I use ordinary words, like “pretty big,” “you guys,” “gonna,” “anyhow,” etc., in their conversations even though they aren’t standard.
The problem: Most of my characters aren’t from Indiana, or even the Midwest! Is any of that considered “dialect,” and am I using too much of it? I’ve never noticed if I talk any different from people anywhere else in the country, but I must, right? I want the dialogue to seem real, but I don’t want to be unclear. Should I stop using substandard expressions in their dialogue, or do you think there isn’t any difference? Or should I try to figure out what words are used in other areas of the country – and the world?

Later writeforfun added, I think I’m just a little paranoid because I’ve never left the state, so I have to go on what other people say, and those I’ve talked to who have traveled always insist that we’re very different from other areas of the country. And I remember reading a book series that was written by a British person, and I was baffled by some of the expressions he used.

And the next day E. S. Ivy posted this comment: @ writeforfun – I’m from Texas and we use all those expressions too. But, we do have a few that are different. I started thinking about this when I wanted to write a character with a Southern accent; I found it’s very tricky to do! So one thing I’ve started doing is keeping a list of things we say that I think others don’t. Things such as we say “fixin’ to..” instead of “about to” as in “I’m fixin’ to go to the store.”

Even if you have never gone out of the state, the fact that you read a lot (and likely watch tv!) probably means you have a pretty good idea of how people talk all over.

If you want to write a dialect on purpose, one of the best tips I’ve heard… is that it’s not necessarily writing how the words are pronounced, but in the order your words are said. Writing a different spelling can be distracting, such as I just wrote “fixin'” instead of “fixing.” You might consider using words like “gonna” for only one distinct character.

I’m with E. S. Ivy on word order, a great tip, and also on non-standard spelling, which I’m not crazy about. I see gonna and the like routinely in screenplays, where I think it’s fine because the spelling is meant to inform an actor about pronunciation and the audience will never see it.

Going to may seem formal as opposed to gonna, likewise fixing rather than fixin’. But if you establish the tone of a character’s speech, the reader will infer the colloquial form, as in this snippet of dialogue:

“Little Piggy, what ever are you doing?”

“Why, I’m fixing to head on over to the Hair of Your Chinny Chin Chin barber shop, and once I get there, I’m going to fetch my brother home.”

I’m not Southern, and a genuine Southerner might do better, but I hope you get the feel of this. Without the regionalism, Little Piggy might say, “I’m about to leave for the Hair of Your Chinny Chin Chin barber shop to bring my brother home.” Or a different kind of character might answer, “My intention is to sally forth to the quaintly named Hair of Your Chinny Chin Chin barber shop to persuade my brother to return to the family domicile.”

English is marvelous in the choices it offers! I picked family domicile after considering ancestral abode. But there are other possibilities for each word. For family I could have gone with clan or hereditary or, my desktop thesaurus says, patrimonial, and I’m sure you can think of other options. Same with domicile. They’re not all direct synonyms for one another; shades of meaning differ, and the shades you select will color your prose.

It’s all in the writer’s voice and the character’s voice, which I wrote about in a post in September of 2010 and in a chapter in Writing Magic, both of which you might like to look at.

As for representing a region, naturally not everyone in a certain place sounds the same. I often listen to talk shows that beam out of New York City. Some people who call in sound like caricatures of a Noo Yawka or a Long Gislander (hard G, if you haven’t experienced this). In others the accent is faint. I like to think my own is faint but I hear it loud and clear when I’m traveling.

I’m not sure what expressions, as opposed to accent, signify New York. Well, here’s one: if you don’t live in Manhattan but you do live in one of the outer boroughs, going to Manhattan is called going to “the city,” even though these residents are already in the city. And I just googled “New York dialect,” and Wikipedia reminded me that people in the city stand “on line” rather than “in line,” which is absolutely true. There were other New York dialect sites that I didn’t investigate.

And I googled “Hoosier dialect,” and found an interesting blog that said that Hoosiers say they’re “half-tempted” to do something. Writeforfun, or anyone else, is this true?

So if you want to represent a region, I suggest you google it. But don’t believe everything you read. Go through a few entries for confirmation.

Also, and this is fun, try reading whatever you’ve written in a fake accent. If you’re not British, read a paragraph in a British accent. Then try Irish, Australian, Jamaican, Southern, New York, whatever you can. You may discover that the authenticity will be strengthened if you add a word or change the word order. See what happens.

Here are the week’s prompts:

∙ In my fantasies I’ve given characters accents but I’ve never tried an entire dialect. It’s a great idea, and I want to do it, so look for it in a future book. You can try it now. Your main character, Wendlyn, is behind enemy lines, a spy in the land of the Ruille people. She’s been taught their dialect, but she’s not comfortable with it. Write her conversation with two suspicious natives.

∙ Pick a paragraph in a favorite book and rewrite it at least three ways using different word choice. Change the tone of the passage with your revisions.

∙ Find a section of dialogue in a favorite book or in one of your stories and regionalize it. Turn it Texan or Canadian or Californian or more than one. Use Google or some other search engine for help.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Love’s labor

On Feb 4, 2012, Clare wrote, Romance can be difficult for me to write variations of. My romance is generally all the same, with two people starting out as friends who tend to smack each other a lot and then they fall madly in love through a series of unfortunate events. I currently have an idea for a really good story, but the plot is going to need to be moved forward by unlikely romance.
The relationship between hero and heroine starts out when they need to pretend to be engaged to save the hero from being embarrassed in front of his whole hometown. How could I painlessly move them into actual romance? Would a meddlesome minor character be a good idea?
I really want it to be realistic, and not tacky. I guess it’s difficult when you’re young and inexperienced when it comes to romantic situations. It looks and sounds so good in my head, but I’m having trouble figuring out the execution.

The situation you describe sounds plausible. Van is vulnerable because he’s embarrassed that he doesn’t have a fiancee. We see that Nell is kind because she’s willing to help him out. Pretending to be in love leads naturally to thoughts of actually being in love. And if they’re pretending to be engaged, they would have to be physically close. Let’s imagine the event that occasioned the charade is a high school reunion. Van would probably put his arm around Nell’s shoulder. She might adjust his tie or dab chocolate sauce off his chin. If there’s any physical attraction, these little intimate act, will get the romantic wheels turning. If there’s no physical attraction, the whole thing is probably sunk, so you’re going to need to get into the physical side at least a little. Depending on the kind of story you’re writing, a few hints may be enough: a racing heart, trembling hands.

What’s set up so far may actually be too easy if this story is to be a happy-ever-after romance. If falling in love is just a prelude to separation – they’re divided by war, kidnaping, natural disaster, whatever – and the real story is the adventure that ultimately will end in tragedy or reunion, then you’re set. But if you’re writing romantic comedy or straight romance, then you need to create trouble between the two.

What are some of the possibilities?

A bad romantic history. Maybe the love of Van’s life broke up with him a month ago. Or Nell keeps falling disastrously in love with law school students, and Van is a law school student, so the red flags are up.

Unrealistic expectations. Van’s romantic ideal is an artist, and Nell is as practical and un-artistic as toothpaste. Nell wants her man to be athletic, and Van is gangly and apt to trip crossing a room.

Bad timing. Nell is leaving for two years studying agriculture in Siberia. Van thinks he won’t have time for romance until he finishes grad school.

Or something intrinsic to the situation. Nell helps Van, but she’s a tougher character than he is. She thinks he’s weird for needing to pretend to be engaged. Why can’t he just tell the truth? And he’s so embarrassed by his pathetic plight that he just goes through the motions and doesn’t focus on Nell at all.

The options are endless. Van might need Nell because an old girlfriend will be at the reunion. The girlfriend renews her interest in him, and he dumps Nell. Or another man at the reunion gets interested in Nell and she dumps Van or he behaves badly. It’s fun making these up! There are eggs in the canapes. Nell is allergic to them and breaks out in huge hives, and Van laughs. To make conversation, Van tells Nell about a constitutional case he’s studying, and she feels unintelligent. To combat the feeling, she spouts about agricultural practices in Siberia in the most technical terms.

It’s a juggling act, because, although matters aren’t going well, the mutual appeal has to remain. You need to keep the two apart until the climax when the misunderstandings are untangled or when some event causes the eureka moment that finally unites the two.

For romance to work, we (readers) have to enter the inner life of Van or Nell or both. We have to know their thoughts, feelings, physical responses, and the rationales for the irrational things they’re driven to do. For the POV character, if you’re writing in first person, you have direct access to all of these. For the non-POV character you have actions, dialogue, emails and text messages between the two and maybe Van can glimpse Nell’s diary or something she’s written.

The romance is likely to fall apart if we come to hate one of them. If Nell deliberately disregards Van’s feelings, we’re going to want him to get together with his old girlfriend or to turn into a frog. They can be foolish or awkward or misguided and we’ll probably go along, but hateful or obnoxious behavior may make us jump ship.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that we the readers upon encountering two single characters will speculate about, and most likely wish for, romance between them. A lot of your work is already done just by putting Van and Nell in the story. The suspension of disbelief writers work for is willingly bestowed by readers. When we pick up a book and start reading, we’re eager to enter a new world. If you’re inexperienced at real-life romance, you can lay that inexperience on your characters and we’ll buy it. Van or Nell or both can be doofuses about love.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Write about Van and Nell. Use any of the scenarios that Clare and I laid out. Van doesn’t have to be a law student, and Nell doesn’t have to be an agricultural expert.

∙ Invent a romance between Gretel of “Hansel and Gretel” fame. She’s smart and fearless. He can spin straw and who-knows-what-else into gold.

∙ The craziest romance in all of fairy tales, I think, is in the traditional telling of “Snow White.” He falls in love with her although he thinks she’s dead. She wakes up madly in love with him. In Fairest, I gave them a back story to make it work, but in this case, just try writing their meeting when she wakes up.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Character clamor

On February 3, 2012, CallMeAddie wrote, I also have the problem that I’m trying to make too many of my characters important, and my main characters aren’t feeling so MAIN anymore. Any advice?

The great aspects of this problem are that you (and anyone else in the same pickle) have set up a story world with a lot of complexity and a cast of characters that interests you. You have a problem of abundance, which is much better than a problem of scarcity – but no less frustrating.

(When I say story world I don’t necessarily mean fantasy. Every story, even an utterly realistic one, exists in its own world.)

Of course I understand the impulse to make everybody interesting. We don’t want stick figures walking across our pages. Suppose your characters include five companions, the mother of one of them, the little brother of another, an instructor in the art of making singing puppets, the owner of a lumberyard that sells the wood for the puppets, and a villain who wants to destroy all puppets. The major characters are two of the companions, the instructor, and the villain. Try giving the others no more than two identifying qualities; just one may do. The little brother has a genius for saying the wrong thing. The mother interrupts the companions’ work to offer creature comforts – pie, cookies, pillows, blankets – that nobody wants. The lumberyard owner shortchanges her customers, and the companions always have to check they’re getting the kind of wood they asked for. Etc. Each of these is enough to hint at depth for the reader. We don’t have to do more.

If your secondary characters are stealing the show, could be that the plot as well as your mains is being undermined. After all, it’s the mains’ troubles that drive the story car. If you’re caught up in the miseries and quirks of your secondaries, the car may be wandering on flat side roads rather than climbing the mountain to the story summit.

For most stories mains mean one or two or conceivably three characters. I have two mains in my novel Ever: Kezi, a mortal girl who may soon die, and Olus, the god of the winds, who loves her. The narration alternates chapter by chapter from one to the other. The thrust of the story is the effort to save Kezi. A second very important strand is their growing romance. But some of the other characters intrigued me, especially in Olus’s pantheon of gods, several of whom sleep their immortal lives away, out of boredom. There’s also Puru, the god of fate, who wishes for happy outcomes but can do nothing to bring them about. They’re tragic figures, and I would have liked to explore them, but if I had, my story would have seeped away.

If your minor characters are screaming to be brought to full life, you have options. You can promise them their own stories if they’ll shut up. Then trim them back to definite secondary status in the one you’re working on. If you have to, in order to satisfy them, write a page or two of the story for each. Or you can write these stories completely. There’s no law dictating the sequence of your creation. However, the deal is that in these new stories, the less important characters remain so.

Or consider whether some of the fascinating aspects of these lesser characters (lesser only in terms of your story) can be loaded onto your mains. Maybe the lesser guys appeal to you because your mains aren’t developed enough. Suppose Puru, the god of fate in Ever, bows compulsively in a vain attempt to appease the forces that cause bad outcomes. Imagine Olus picks up this odd practice. He’s seen Puru do it and figures there must be a value, and what harm can it do? Now that the gesture belongs to Olus, we don’t ever have to see Puru do it, we can just be told in a sentence that he does. And Olus’s bowing can become more frequent, deeper, and more frantic as he gets increasingly worried about Kezi. (I didn’t do this in the book; it never occurred to me.)

Or you can press on. Let the minor characters do their things and discover in the writing what you need and what you don’t. Then fix and trim in revision. Maybe you’ll discover as you keep going that you’ve picked the wrong mains, and your story really is about Jeff and Judy, not Marie and Mark.

Can you have more than three mains? Maybe. If you have a proliferation of important characters, you may want to frame the story in another way. Imagine a theater tale, and suppose the issue at issue is the production, not the lead. Maybe this is a community theater and the soul of the town is at stake if the theater goes under. So we see that the director is having a creative crisis and the great lady of the troupe can no longer memorize her lines and may be on her way to dementia. And the male lead, who is really good, has lost his job and may have to relocate. And the set designer and the costume master are feuding. And the building itself that houses the theater needs electrical work and is a fire hazard. Somehow they all have to pull together to save the day. Any group activity will work for this approach. Bat 6 (upper elementary school and up) by Virginia Euwer Wolff is an example of a novel with a big cast of main characters that works amazingly well.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Write the puppet-making story. What do the mains want? What’s the purpose of the singing puppets? Write enough of the story to introduce the mains and at least some of the secondaries, who may not all come into the story right away. You can use the distinguishing qualities I suggested or make up other ones. If you like, keep going.

∙ An interesting aspect of The Wizard of Oz, book or movie, is that the wizard, a major character, doesn’t appear until late in the game. Before then, he’s spoken of, and his effects are felt. Write a story along the same lines. A main character is evident by her absence, but her influence is ever-present (or frequently present). She can be villain or heroine.

∙ Write a collaboration story, like the theater one I suggested. The problem could be an underdog team (any sport, ice hockey, swimming, laser sword fighting) winning a championship. Could be the survival of the human race against aliens, a pandemic, robots. Could be whatever. Introduce quirky main characters, at least five, who have issues that may both help and hurt the joint effort.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Character block

On December 30, 2011, Tisserande d’encre wrote, I’ve been having a problem with my MC. Some time ago I discovered I didn’t know my character at all. We have tried reactions to problems, thoughts and things she likes, but I still can’t discover her personality! Because of this, I’m unable to say how she will react to the situation or how she relates with other people. Nothing comes up to my mind. The first pages were easy to write because I knew her feelings, and ten pages ago I still did. But now she has closed to me. How can you get free from character’s block? I still have a plot, but it feels like I’m having the script in my hands and an uncooperative cast! I thought I knew her, but now it seems I don’t. And that doesn’t thicken the plot, it thickens my worries… Any advice, word, help on this?

Character block! A wonderful expression!

These two terrific responses came in to the blog at the time. This one was from Julia:

Sometimes when I don’t really know a character’s personality very well, I take this personality test (http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp) and answer the questions the way I imagine my character would answer them. At the end of the test, it links you to a detailed description of the character’s personality. I’ve found the results to be amazingly accurate. I hope this helps!
And this from writeforfun:

I have two suggestions that worked pretty well for me when I’ve had that problem before. In one version, I knew the personality at first, but it sort of slipped away as I wrote. So, I read from the beginning to the point that I thought I knew her best, and I tried to get a fuller picture of her at that point, and then I did a little writing exercise with her that was completely different from my story, so that I could see what she was like in a different environment. The other time, I didn’t know my character in the first place, so I decided to pick a stereotype and use that as the personality. The stereotype can be whatever you’re familiar with; I chose a dog. You may laugh, but I made the particular character friendly, optimistic, easily distracted, energetic and forgetful. It worked great, because I love dogs, so whenever I thought “what would he do?” I could think, “What would my dog do if he were human and in this position?”

You can also ask your character directly, in writing, of course, what’s going on. You can say, Bonnie, speak to me. Why are you holding back? What do you think of the story I’ve set out? What are your feelings? And give her time and space to answer.

Another possibility may be to bring in a secondary character to move things along. *SPOILER ALERT* In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, for example, the high-handed Lady Catherine visits Elizabeth, and one consequences of this visit is that Darcy declares himself. In an ancient movie version that I despise, she’s a deus ex machina, but in the book, her effect is believable, subtle, and character-driven.

What pushes a character or anyone to action? Often an intolerable condition, which can be serious or not. We write letters to the editor usually when we’re annoyed. Your secondary character, rather than offering pep talks, can so offend your MC that she flies into high gear.

Or, dropping the secondary character, the intolerable condition can be the driving force of the story. Tisserande d’encre, you may not have hit on the problem that will energize your MC, and you may want to think about what that might be. In my The Two Princesses of Bamarre the intolerable condition is the illness of Addie’s sister Meryl, which so motivates Addie that she sets off to find a cure despite her near crippling timidity and shyness. The intolerable condition doesn’t have to be as big as an alien invasion or a kidnaping. It can be a little thing. Bonnie’s Uncle Steve can call her younger brother Lenny “unpromising,” which can set her off on a campaign to prove him wrong.

In Ella Enchanted, the intolerable condition is internal: Ella’s curse of obedience. When Ella tries to persuade Lucinda to rescind the curse she’s treating it as external, which doesn’t work because the problem is inside her. In Fairest, it’s Aza’s appearance and her own self-consciousness, which is borderline inside/outside. In your story it could be a character trait. Bonnie may be a perfectionist; anything below her standards is a goad to action. Or she may have a super-hero complex; if there’s a wrong, she has to set it right.

As a plot-driven writer, I look for characters who by nature will go in the direction of my story. For example, in The Princess Test, my take on “The Princess on the Pea,” I had to come up with a character who had a shot at a lousy night’s sleep in the lap of luxury, so Lorelei is hyper-allergic and super-finicky. This isn’t very restrictive. She can be overly sensitive and mean or overly sensitive and kind, and smart or stupid and humorless or funny and anything else. She can be as complex as anyone else who has allergies.

Tisserande d’encre, you started with an MC who was defined in your mind. She and the plot meshed at the beginning but then it all blew up. So take a look at your plot. Did it develop in a way that moved away from her inclinations? Maybe you need to redefine her so she can continue to act in your story. Or maybe you should redirect the plot to satisfy her needs that you’ve already established. You may have a character-plot logjam rather than a single character block, and you may have to shift back and forth between the two to bust it open.

You may question if your plot is unified. Is there an intolerable condition that runs through the whole? If it bumps from incident to incident, Bonnie may react to one and be indifferent to another.

Writing isn’t efficient, at least for me it isn’t. You can try a scene one way and then another. Bring in a new character, Charlie, and see what happens. Have Charlie provoke Bonnie. Or make him so appealing that she wants him to think well of her.

Try changing the setting. She may be activated by unfamiliarity, or you may be.

Here are three prompts:

• Bonnie is depressed. Action seems hopeless. Nothing will do any good. Her alarmed parents start making her wishes come true in order to cheer her up, with results that are temporary at best. Give her an intolerable condition that activates her. Write the story. At the end she can be depressed again, or not.

• Allie’s father is arrested for shoddy building practices. People have died at his construction sites. Angry citizens are picketing the house. No one can leave without being hounded by the press. Bonnie wants to live her life, go to the local swimming pool, take in a movie, walk the dog, visit her dad in jail. She has a mother, Mrs. Miscreant, and her brother Lenny. Give her an objective and write her story.

• Bonnie wins the lottery and the prize is in the millions. She is a do-gooder. Get her in trouble with her new life as a helper of others.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Adjective advice

On December 28, 2011, FightingIrishFan1111 wrote, I am one of those people who loves to use adjectives, but I think I use too many adjectives! For example, is it better to say: “Her hair was brown”, rather than “her luscious, long hair was auburn with flecks of dark mahogany”? I think I over-write some characteristics of my characters! Any suggestions about how to approach looks, personality, and other descriptions would be great!

So, “her hair was brown” is dull. “Her luscious, long hair was auburn with flecks of dark mahogany” is over the top, in my opinion. How can we make both of them work?

Marnie is dressing for a party and feeling a shade insecure about her appearance. When she’s done she asks her two goldfish what they think and narrates their answers. Goldfish #1 says, “The bedroom light brings out the flecks of dark mahogany in Marnie’s luscious, long auburn hair and reflects the twinkle in her sky blue eyes.” Goldfish #2 says, “Nothing to write home about. Brown hair, blue eyes like a million other girls at a thousand other parties.”

What’s happened? We hauled in character development. Marnie is balanced in her uncertainty. There’s that positive side that thinks she may actually look great and the negative that’s blaring Ordinary! This is, as they say, relatable.

If we see Marnie from the outside only, whether she’s gorgeous or unremarkable, we’re unlikely to connect. Most readers (not all) want to know what a character looks like, but they want to get acquainted with her inner life as well, and they’ll probably welcome a peek into the intersection of the two.

The adjectives work in this example, too. They’re not coming from an author piling them on, they’re issuing from the mouths of goldfish.

Notice I don’t put Marnie in front of a mirror. She probably does look in one, but mirrors as a vehicle of physical description (and as portals to another world) are so overused that we want to stay away from them unless we can come up with something fresh (as I hope I did in Fairest).

How to introduce appearance?

You can do it directly in narration. When your main character first encounters another character she can note her impressions in her narration. Here’s how Elodie does it in Beloved Elodie when she meets the only other child in the book, Master Robbie:

An artist could have sketched his face almost entirely in straight lines: the head a triangle ending in a pointed chin, smaller triangle for his nose, a horizontal slash for his unsmiling mouth, two angled strokes for the shadows under his cheeks, roof peaks for his eyebrows, curved lines only for his dark blue eyes and for the dot of pink that bloomed at the tip of his nose, caused by chill or a cold or weeping. Weeping, I thought. He wore mourning beads, too.
Take a look at the adjectives here: straight, pointed, smaller, horizontal, unsmiling, angled, roof, curved, dark, blue, mourning. Eleven words out of eighty-five, over ten percent. I don’t know if that’s a lot or not. And the adverbs: almost, entirely, only. Just three. When I started becoming a writer I often read that writers should keep the adjectives and adverbs to a minimum and that verbs and nouns are the strong parts of speech in English.

It’s good advice when it isn’t followed slavishly. We need all our words.

Let’s distinguish among adjectives. Generally I prefer ones that convey information. In my description of Master Robbie mine do; straight, pointed, etc., show him to the reader. I never call him handsome or ugly. I don’t say those dark blue eyes are attractive. Handsome, beautiful, attractive, luscious are adjectives I rarely use unless they’re spoken by goldfish or goldfish equivalents. If a narrator tells me, Marnie was beautiful, I want to know in what way? Who thinks so? What does her beauty mean for the story?

If the story requires it, we may need to tell the reader about Marnie’s beauty. If her beauty is important for developing character, plot, or setting, go for it. You can start your story with her pulchritude, as in, Marnie was Helen-of-Troy beautiful. Paul, owner of the Venus Modeling Agency, stood up unsteadily when she came in. If there was a manual for perfection she’d meet every standard: tall but not a giraffe, thick wavy hair that glowed like polished mahogany, a nose that Da Vinci would have paid millions to paint, and eyes the color of spring. He stuttered, “The d-dermatologist is t-two d-doors d-down, sweetheart.” Even if he couldn’t control his voice he didn’t want her getting ahead of herself with him. Then we see how she reacts to this, and we’re in.

We just saw Marnie through Paul’s eyes, delivered by a third-person narrator. If Marnie is the first-person narrator, Paul can say his bit, and his mother, who’s visiting the agency, can set him straight with, “Are you blind? She doesn’t need a dermatologist. She’s stunning.” The mother can then catalog her characteristics. In this instance, the description is conveyed in dialogue.

In my The Wish, main character Wilma is drawn by a caricaturist and this is what she thinks when the artist shows her the drawing:

The first thing I saw was my teeth, popping out of my mouth, big and squared-off as piano keys. My whole face receded behind those teeth, except for my lips, which smiled insanely around my bicuspids and incisors and molars and fangs and tusks.
Then I saw my shoulders. In themselves they were fine. But they cradled my head. No neck. None. My head was like a golf ball resting on a tee. Like an egg in the palm of your hand. Like a horror movie.
I was mighty proud of this, which is an imaginative description through thoughts.

These are the three description delivery methods I can think of: thoughts, narration, dialogue. Using these, the description can be given by the POV character, by another character, or by a third-person narrator.

Sentence variety also helps to make description interesting. The verb in the two sentences, “Her hair was brown.” and “Her luscious, long hair was auburn with flecks of dark mahogany.” is to be, which gets boring pretty quick. In my The Wish example the verb to be is in there, but I’ve also used receded and cradled.

Here are some prompts using the three methods:

∙ Rebecca has been cast in a play, and she and a few other actors are meeting with the costume director. Show in dialogue the appearance of each. For a twist, if you like, imagine that the entire cast are aliens or mutants, anatomically different from us. Make the reader see them through conversation (they speak English).

∙ Ingrid has a little trouble with her temper, and she’s been sent to a program for teens who need anger management. She doesn’t want to be there, and she isn’t the best-natured person on the planet. Write her thoughts describing the others in her group.

∙ Your narrator is introducing the reader to the Shandler family. As the narration proceeds, reveal character along with appearance. Think about what each one is doing during the introduction.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Hatred, Yay!

On December 28th, 2011, Maybeawriter wrote, How can one portray hatred? It’s such a strong emotion, but so often senseless and illogical. How does one show the difference between, say, dread of talking with somebody hatred, and all-out hate-your-guts Romeo-vs-Tybalt wish-you-were-dead hatred? …How do we justify hatred? Do we even NEED to justify it? Does it make a character less appealing if they can hate?

The tools we have for portraying hatred are the usual: actions, dialogue, thoughts, and feelings. Thoughts and feelings can be directly revealed in only the POV character, if we’re writing in first person, and in anyone if we’re having an omniscient third-person narrator tell the story. It’s okay to state the feeling directly, as in, Annabelle hated Nevin completely. Even her blue-and-yellow striped socks hated him.

Or she can confess her hatred to her pal Wesley: “I hate Nevin so much even my socks hate him, and they’re usually very sweet.”
Notice that bringing in the socks adds liveliness and humor to what would otherwise be a bald, maybe too stripped-down way of putting it. We don’t need humor, though; more serious embellishment will do too, as in, Annabelle hated Nevin completely. If he had grandchildren someday, she’d hate them, too. Or, even stronger, Annabelle hated Nevin. She hoped his dog would die.

Same sentiment can be revealed in thoughts, as in, Annabelle thought, I despise that boy. Every bit of me hates him. Even my socks hate him. Everything that belongs to me hates him.

In action, we can show Annabelle drawing a picture of Nevin then giving him a moustache, then a red rash, then scratching him out with an orange crayon, then taking a scissors to the drawing. The reader gets the message.

What I’ve described so far is that wish-you-were-dead hatred, although our Annabelle might feel bad if Nevin really did bite the dust. Or might not.

A weaker hatred will be revealed by the same means, through actions, dialogue, thoughts, and feelings. For example, the narrator can say, Annabelle hated Paul, but not all the way down to her socks. She hated him down to her knees, maybe, and if he’d stop teasing her, she wouldn’t hate him in the slightest. If she draws a picture of him and gives him a rash she might toss it and redraw it, giving him just a single red spot.

And feelings can be temporary or prolonged or eternal. Even the most powerful emotions can be temporary, maybe especially the powerful ones. Most of us get angriest at the people we love.

Which brings us to the character of the hater. If Annabelle holds a grudge, her hatred may never be temporary, not even if Nevin apologizes and reforms. Nobody gets crossed off her despised list.

Or her feelings may always be in flux. She may be overwhelmed by a flood of hatred one moment and love the next. She may segue in a flash from tears to laughter. Or she may be a more measured character. After the apology she may put Nevin on probation and grant him provisional forgiveness.

Annabelle’s hatred will usually match Nevin’s offense. If he borrowed her pencil and failed to return it, the reader may think it extreme to hate him down to her socks, although she may be an extreme character. Maybe unending hatred is warranted if he wrote something nasty on a Facebook page that will linger forever in cyberspace, definitely warranted if he put Annabelle’s sister in a death camp and annihilated her. If Annabelle can overcome her hatred after that, even if Nevin shows believable repentance, she becomes a truly sterling character. If she can’t, we’ll probably forgive her.

On the other hand, she may hate Nevin for a reason that does her no credit, that makes her the villain. She can hate him because of his skin color or his religion or his tribe. If we leave realistic fiction, she can hate him because he’s a mutant or not a mutant or an alien or friends with an alien or because he’s defending the rights of aliens.

Or she can be entirely evil and hate everyone. The dragon Kyto in my Disney fairy book Fairies and the Quest for Never Land hates everybody until the fairy Vidia comes along. Kyto is almost entirely villainous. Motivation isn’t always necessary, and Kyto has none. He just hates. A character can be purely evil. Usually, this is best set up right at the beginning, as in, Annabelle was born evil. During her first week of life she didn’t cry out of misery, she cried to make everyone else miserable. As soon as she had teeth she bit; as soon as she her nails were long enough she scratched.

The appeal of a particular character who hates depends on the elements we’ve discussed: the reason for the hatred and her response to it and how generally likable she is. The reader can love a flawed character. If Annabelle nurses her grudges but is otherwise delightful, she’ll worm her way into the reader’s heart. Even her flaw may charm us. She holds a grudge against Nevin and wishes him ill: wants his toe jam to build up, his breakfast cereal to taste like fried toad, his dental fillings to transmit Morse code. Is that her worst? Yes.

Strong feelings are interesting, exciting, lively. I don’t want to read about a milquetoast character whose most powerful negative feeling is dislike. I want Annabelle to hate or envy or fear Nevin. Anything less makes me sleepy.

Maybe I went too far. Annabelle’s flaw might be that she can’t hate or can’t feel deeply. Her quest might be for hate. That would be interesting.

Here are some prompts:

∙ Nevin apologizes to Annabelle. (You make up his offense.) Write the apology scene two ways, one as if Annabelle holds grudges endlessly, one as if she’s totally changeable.

∙ Hate can sometimes lead to love. Anne’s hatred of Gilbert in Anne of Green Gables is a fine example, likewise Elizabeth Bennet’s disdain for Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Imagine that Annabelle and Nevin are on opposing debate teams and he keeps wiping the floor with her by fair means and foul. Turn that situation into a romance. Write the story, and, please, let Annabelle get in a few debate licks of her own.

∙ Write Annabelle’s rant about how much she hates Nevin. She can rant alone or to her friend Wesley. Have her go over the top, way over.

∙ There are a couple of fairy tales about a boy who can’t feel fear and wants to. In the more lighthearted one, he marries a princess who pours a pail of wet fish on him, which does the trick. In the more realistic version, he marries a princess and becomes frightened of his new responsibilities. Write a fairy tale about Annabelle who can’t feel hatred and wants to. What happens when she finally does? If you like, expand it into a novel.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Detailing

December 28, 2011, writeforfun wrote, …the thing that I struggle with the most is detail (how much is too much, when do you use less, when do you need more, what details are good, etc.).

While I reread writeforfun’s question, a public service announcement was running on the radio, advising people about licensing their dogs. It was a very short spot, and then the news resumed. But if the organization that sponsored the ad, the ASPCA or whatever, had the air time, details might have sent dog owners flocking to register their dogs: a hundred signs all over the neighborhood for a lost dog, some carefully crayoned by a seven-year old, the sightings (“I could tell people love her, with that poodle cut on a mutt.”), mention of a floppy ear or an exclamation-point tail, the reunion after eight days of worry, how her collar jingles with a shiny new license, and look how cute it is, shaped like a fire hydrant!

This is detail designed to engage our emotions. Advertising is full of ploys like this. I just looked online at historic ads for cigarettes. Predating the Marlboro man was the Marlboro baby, saying, “Before you scold me, Mom, maybe you better light up a… Marlboro.” Doctors appear in tons of ads. In one, a dentist. In another, Mickey Mantle. If you look, you’ll also find scientists, romantic moments, even a young Ronald Reagan.

Of course we need the right details to get the message across. In a dog licensing promotion, we wouldn’t mention that the missing dog snarls at old people or that, Oops!, her owners forgot to get her her last rabies shot, and we wouldn’t put in anything emotionally neutral either, like that she bites her tail.

If a book or story is theme driven, detail delivers the message. For example, Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty to persuade people to treat horses better. The emotional details make the reader identify with a cast of mostly ill-treated horses. After the book became a bestseller, use of the checkrein was abolished.

We use detail not only to engage emotion, but also to reveal setting and character and move plot along, and sometimes, when we’re really cooking, to do two or three at once. For instance, when Addie is taken to Vollys’s cave in The Two Princesses of Bamarre, we discover that the cave is luxurious. We see carpets, cushions, chests, and wardrobes, and we learn that a former captor was a carpenter. Vollys says that his “remains remain” with her. The cave details show us the setting, but also tell us what Vollys’s taste is, and we’re horrified, and in a creepy way we start to like her – our emotions are engaged.

So how do we pick the details?

We think about the purpose of the scene. In this case it’s to reveal the setting, to continue the introduction of Vollys that began in the chapter before, and to make us afraid for Addie. We don’t want details that will work against these goals. We won’t put anything in that makes us feel better, like we won’t mention the shovel that Addie might use to dig herself out (in the book there is none). We won’t let Vollys say anything soothing.

And we won’t lay it on too thick. Once the reader has seen the scene, has formed an impression of Vollys, has gotten thoroughly scared, we can move on. We don’t have to watch Vollys deliberately incinerate a mouse or Addie count the number of human skeletons. But it’s okay if we go over the top in early drafts. It’s usually better to trim in revision than to bulk up, although we can also add detail later.

When I’m looking for the right details I often make lists. Let’s say Val has accepted a dare to enter a haunted house, and we want this not to be a stock scary house, so what can we do? For starters, it doesn’t have to be a house. What else can it be? I just made a little list:

library
museum
tunnel
bedroom
drugstore
airport
dress shop
garden

Each locale suggests a different kind of haunting. I particularly like the museum, drugstore, and airport, because of the variety in each. In the museum, for example, the suits of armor could be jousting. If our character, Simon, gets caught in the wrong spot, he could be skewered. In the next gallery, the Chinese ceramic dragons can spring to life, and, several rooms over, Picasso’s disembodied Head of a Woman can bounce after Simon, clacking her nail-like teeth.

The details we come up with may lead us to discover the reason for the haunting, or vice versa: our knowledge of the reason can determine the details. In the museum example, the haunting might be the doing of a mad art collector who, in life, felt priced out of buying the works she loved. As a ghost, maybe her targets are the new acquisitions, which she believes sold for outrageous sums. Following this thread, who is Simon? Did he merely take a dare, or is he a detective employed by the museum to find out why attendance has fallen off and why more museum goers enter every day than exit.

In Beloved Elodie, many of the characters are suspects, so I use detail to keep the reader off balance about them. For instance, Brunka (defined in the book) Poldie expresses concern for Elodie, who appears ill. A few minutes later, Brunka Poldie is discovered to have stolen three valuable lapis beads.

Sometimes a detail solves a plot glitch. The setting of much of Beloved Elodie is the Oase, a brunka establishment built into a mountain. There are few windows, almost no natural light. People have to shlep lamps everywhere, which get in the way, and sometimes I forget, so I brought in glowworms.

When we introduce details, we should be recruiting all our senses, not merely the visual. Picasso’s Head clacking her teeth is auditory. In Vollys’s cave, the most tense detail is thermal. How hot is it? How much is Addie in danger of boiling? I haven’t mentioned any scent details, but smell goes straight to the emotions.

You can question yourself on your use of detail: Am I making my readers feel an emotion? Am I making them see, hear, smell, feel, touch? Am I making them care? Am I solving a plot problem? A single detail may not produce the desired effect. You may need a bunch working together.

Here are three prompt:s:

• Your villain, who wants people to act a particular way for her nefarious ends, can afford a national publicity campaign. Write a public service announcement putting forward her position on whatever. For instance, maybe she wants to persuade the populace that child slavery is beneficial. Incorporate emotional details that are hard to resist. Write how it works out for her.

• Describe the bedroom of a girl who will one day be the first female president of the United States. If you find it helpful, write a list of possible items to include. Through your details, guide our opinion of her. Write a scene or a story about her early effort to act like a politician. Show how that turns out badly. Keep going.

• Pick one or more of the haunted locales I mentioned above. Describe it. Include all the senses. Begin a story in it. Keep going.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Surprise!

Mending my ways and letting you know a little sooner – I’ll be in Providence, Rhode Island, on June 16th because the library system has chosen Dave at Night for its Kids Read Across Rhode Island. I am so honored! Here’s a link: http://www.newportlibraryri.org/npl/2012/05/06/kids-reading-across-rhode-island/.

Last December M.K.B. wrote, I was curious about surprises in stories. Do you have to give hints of what surprise (I’m talking about in non-mystery stories)? Like in that movie “Tangled” (well, they actually told you she was a princess in the beginning but I couldn’t really think of anything else) they let her see a picture of the baby princess and she recognized her eyes as her own. Do you have to do something like that or can I just hit my readers with the frying pan of surprise?

I love that, “the frying pan of surprise” as an expression! And I love surprises in stories.

There are two kinds of frying-pan surprises. The good kind smacks you, astonishes you, and knocks all the preceding plot elements into place.

The bad kind slams you and leaves you gasping, “Whuh?”

The most effective use of the good frying pan comes throughout the original (I haven’t read the later books) Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. The series was written for adults, but I’d say the three books I read are appropriate for middle school kids and above. The surprises keep whamming you between the eyes and yet they make perfect sense.

The bad frying pan, in my opinion, is epitomized by the TV series Lost (high school at least). Time travel, smoke monsters, polar bears in the tropics, good guys who turn bad, bad guys who turn good, why did I watch this? Nothing adds up. There’s an LOL video summary of all seasons but the last on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC6jcj3V53E, also with adult content. The last season, alas, resolves nothing.

This has come up before on the blog: the temptation, which I feel, too, near the end of a story, to drop a bomb on all the characters or to have an asteroid hit the earth and wipe it out. This is the bad frying pan at its worst.

So how do we achieve the good fp and eschew the bad?

We drop in hints and bury them.

Things happen in real life that are unbelievable, that you can’t put into fiction because suspension of disbelief will fall apart. Here are two minor examples. If you have better ones, please post them.

In the first, my husband, David, was walking in the winter in New York City, icicles hanging from skyscrapers above. He saw a clock in a store window and drew back to look at the time just as an icicle crashed down from thirty stories above. If he hadn’t pulled back, that icicle would have clocked him, so to speak. In fiction, this would seem contrived, the surprise of the icicle canceled by the contrivance.

In the second, my parents and I many years ago visited a sick aunt at her apartment. I was grown up and married by then. David had shortly before had a job interview during which he filled out a psychological questionnaire aimed at revealing his management style. Thoughtfully thinking I’d be interested, he asked for extra copies. When I visited Aunt Harriet, I brought the copies with me to entertain everyone. The test was long, maybe five or six pages. My father took his to another room and spent forty-five minutes on it. My mother breezed through hers in ten minutes, sitting right in the room with me and my aunt. The two of them, my father and my mother, answered every single question the same way, although my parents had such different personalities: my father sunny, my mother worried; my father stubborn, my mother persuadable; my father an appreciator of humor, my mother actively funny. Not credible in a story.

Let’s take the first real-life event and see if we can make it work in fiction with the buried-hints approach. David’s clock radio wakes him to a meteorologist’s warnings about an ongoing ice storm. At breakfast he and his wife (not me, this is fiction now) quarrel about the family finances. The wife’s work hours have been cut back, and David’s been unemployed for a year. Money fights keep cropping up. He’s pawned his watch, and she gave her heirloom china set to the consignment shop. After the argument, they stop speaking to each other. He opens the local paper and reads his horoscope, which predicts a lucky day. Encouraged, he shows the prediction to his wife. They make up. He sets off for his job interview, where he’s given the management style questionnaire, which I’m dragging in from my other anecdote. His style turns out to be emotional, but the company is seeking someone with an intuitive bent, so he doesn’t get the position. He leaves the office building in a black mood, even thinking of tossing himself in the icy river. But more sensible thoughts prevail. He pauses to check the time in a store window to see if he can catch the early train home, and the icicle descends exactly where he would have been if he hadn’t stopped, fulfilling the prophesy and enabling him to apply for another job another day.

The icicle still drops out of a clear blue sky. It’s still a surprise, but now it satisfies, now that we’re set up for it by the horoscope and the pawned watch, which are buried by the details of the argument and money woes. If you were really writing this as a story and not merely a summary, you would do the burying more effectively by including the actual dialogue during the argument, showing the receptionist at the job interview, the office itself, David (poor man) liking what he sees, getting his hopes up, feeling that he’s connecting with the HR person who’s describing what his future duties might be. With all this, the watch recedes to nothing but a trivial detail, and the horoscope hovers pleasantly as a question mark that we hope will take us to a happy ending.

With preparation surprises satisfy. Without, they fall flat. In Fairest (SPOILER ALERT), for example, the creature in the mirror comes as a surprise, but the reader is prepared for something about that mirror for a long while. If the mirror hadn’t been performing tricks, Aza’s arrival inside it would be just weird.

It’s total fun to drop in the hints and set up the surprises, so here are some prompts:

∙ Take one of your own improbable, real-life experiences and fictionalize it so that the surprise works. If you don’t have one, ask friends and family for anecdotes.

∙ Three students at a school for odd children love table tennis and are the most enthusiastic members of the school ping-pong club. Sonja’s special skill is the power to force her voice and words out of the mouths of hamsters. Tom can make his hair stand on end at will. Raymond turns to stone when he’s bored and liquifies when he’s excited. These traits have so far been useless in their game. Raymond even dissolves into an orange puddle at tense moments. Drop in and bury hints that lead to a surprise victory when the team plays against the reigning non-odd champions.

∙ This is your chance to use that asteroid. The Monot tribe and the Hurlens have been at war in the mountains of Ael for decades. Make it satisfying when the asteroid hits and destroys them all (or all but two, if you’re tenderhearted).

Have fun, and save what you write!