Real reacting

Before I start, just a word to the NaNoWriMo writers: You are heroes! Sleep, eating, family, TV, normal life are all overrated. Go for it! Have fun!

On July 10, 2011, Lexi wrote, My MC in the real world is kidnapped by some strange-looking people. They kidnap him to protect him, but my MC doesn’t understand that at first so he should be freaked-out by them. The problem is, the characters who kidnapped him are good so I have a hard time making my MC dislike them. How do you make the main react realistically?

I’m thinking a lot about realistic reacting as I’m writing Beloved Elodie, not only for Elodie and the other POV characters (I’m writing from several points of view), but also for the secondary characters.

Of course I haven’t seen your story, Lexi, so I can’t be sure, but you might approach this by sticking close to events. For some reason or no reason, I’m thinking of these kidnappers as aliens, so I’ll give them alien names: Fllep and Yunk. Suppose Fllep and Yunk enter Keith’s house in the middle of the night and tie him to his bedstead. They leave him, and a minute or two later he hears bumps and crashes from his younger sister’s room. The situation seems clear, at least to him. They’re baddies, and, depending on his personality, he’s terrified or angry, or, I suppose, if he’s evil too, amused. Or amused if he happens to have some secret weapon or if he knows his sister can handle an alien duo. The possibilities multiply fast even in the simplest situation.

Now, suppose before leaving Keith alone, Fllep and Yunk bring his stuffed elephant over from the bureau for him to cuddle with. What’s Keith’s realistic reaction to this? Could be confusion. The reader is likely to be unsure how to understand this surprising development. Keith can have other responses here too, depending on his nature. For instance, he could be annoyed that these aliens think he’s so babyish that he needs his elephant – even while he clutches it to his chest.

So, realism depends on action and personality and probably a few hundred other factors, like, for example, what else has been going on in the story. Obviously, if we’re in the middle of the tale, Keith is likely to have some ideas about the aliens.

I often interview my characters to learn their take on events. In this method I might do this:

Me: What do you think of the beings who just broke into your home and strapped you to the headboard of your bed?

Keith: I’m terrified. They weren’t wearing masks so I can identify them. What are they going to do to me? I’m freezing even though it’s warm in here, and I can’t seem to put two thoughts together. I wish I could untie knots with my toes.

Or,

Keith: Some costumes on those dudes! Wait till Sis sees them. She’ll laugh her head off while she’s decapitating them. I hope she remembers to check on her big brother afterward.

If it’s early days for your story and you don’t know Keith well yet, interviewing can flesh him out. He may answer your questions in surprising ways that will help. So you can ask him how he’d feel and what he’d do in a Fllep-Yunk situation.

Interviewing characters doesn’t always work. Nothing works every time, but usually this is a good technique for me. Characters who lie in my story don’t lie in the interview; they know we’re having a behind-the-scenes conversation.

When interviewing a character fails, I can ask myself how I would respond in Keith’s place, knowing what he knows and doesn’t know. If he’s anything like me, I can be a reasonably reliable guide. And I can ask other real people. When I was writing The Two Princesses of Bamarre the character of Addie, who’s very shy, sometimes eluded me, so I would ask my writing buddy, Joan, who’s also shy, and she’d tell me how a particular situation would affect her.

Character responses take three forms, or I can’t come up with more than three: emotional, thinking, and physical. In Keith’s first reaction, he says he’s scared, his emotion. He’s cold in a warm room, a physical reaction brought on by emotion. He says he can’t think, which is thinking, likewise wishing for more flexible toes is thinking. You don’t have include all three each time, but remember the possibilities.

You’ve set up the situation that creates the reaction. A question you may want to ask yourself is whether you’ve given Keith enough information to go on. Maybe the aliens have deposited him somewhere. He’s gagged, blindfolded, and tied up. He’s frightened, yes, and you can write about that, but it can’t go very far without external input. What clues are you giving him (like the stuffed elephant, also possible sounds and smells) to build a response on? It’s these clues, the objective data, combined with Keith’s personality that will get you a realistic response.

And realistic doesn’t necessarily mean predictable. Keith may be happy when one would expect him to be scared. He may be thinking more about something surprising a classmate said that day than about the aliens.

Beloved Elodie, many of you know, is a mystery, and my secondary characters have hidden motives and backstories that are unknown to the reader and to Elodie, and these motives and backstories come into play. What’s more, I’m not entirely certain who my villain is, although one particular character is looking more and more likely. In any given situation I’m asking my characters how they would respond if they’re innocent and how if they’re guilty. I’ve been suspecting that the solution to the whole story hinges on realistic reactions.

Masteress Meenore, the dragon detective, presents a special challenge when it comes to realistic response, not only because IT’s a dragon but also because IT’s brilliant. Can I think of everything IT would? Am I drawing all the conclusions IT would? This is another case of the character’s nature shaping a response.

Enough about me. Prompts time. When you do these, think about including all three kinds of reaction, physical, emotional, and thought.

∙ Let’s start with Keith, tied to his bedstead, elephant on his lap, bangs and crashes reverberating through the house. Write three different reactions for him and make each one believable.

∙ Fllep and Yunk enter Keith’s sister’s room and find her wielding a sword, waiting for them. How does each alien react? Remember, they’re good guys.

∙ Erisette arrives for the second week of her training as a scout for King Aldric and is told that she’s been dropped from the cadre. Write three realistic responses from her. If you like, choose your favorite and keep going.

∙ Victor’s best friend, Caylie, texts him that he’s never there for her, that he’s selfish, and thoughtless, and everyone agrees with her, and she doesn’t want anything to do with him anymore, and he shouldn’t even text her back. Write three responses. Again, if you like, pick one and finish the story.

Have fun and save what you write!

Character in the round

Early in July, M.K.B. wrote, ….Sometimes I feel some of my characters don’t have enough volume and they don’t feel as real to me as some of my other characters. I was trying to formulate a system to create characters. Do you have any suggestions?

And Lexi asked a related question: I know everything about my characters; there are reasons for the jobs I chose for them and backstories that explain their personalities. I just don’t know how much or how to tell my reader. How do you pack in as much information as possible without sounding stilted, and how much is too much?

In Writing Magic I offer a character questionnaire that is a kind of character-development system. (I just looked at it and was embarrassed to discover that, although I asked about appearance, I didn’t specifically mention apparel, a sad omission.) If you answer most of the questions, your character will be quite rounded – in the questionnaire. How to get all that information into your story, and whether you need to, are other matters.

There are real-life people, people I’ll bet you’ve known almost always who still surprise you. An elderly friend of mine, let’s call her Betty, pampered from childhood on, who doesn’t cope well with ordinary vicissitudes, has been battling cancer for the last five years, and about the cancer she is uncomplaining. I would never have guessed. If she were a character I would have had to give her cancer to find out.

And yet we size people up in two seconds. Someone – let’s call her Hetty – called in to a talk radio show I was listening to recently, and I disliked her by the time she’d spoken three sentences. Her hearty voice (too hearty, in my opinion) seemed to my warped ears to proclaim, Look how delightful I am. I didn’t even see her! I don’t know if she kicks her cat or volunteers at a nursing home, and even if I learned she does volunteer and is unfailingly kind to animals, I’d have to recite her virtues in my mind over and over to get past that voice.

So let’s make me and Hetty minor characters in a story. Hetty’s overbearing voice and overconfidence establish her, at least partially. My dislike of a boaster sets me up too – let’s change my name to Bonnie for this post. The reader, Lenny, who knows nothing more about these two, feels that he’s encountered two complicated people. He hasn’t read much about them, but the little suggests that more is there.

If they’re minor characters, that’s all we need. In fact, it may be too much. It’s too much if Lenny is distracted, if he wishes the story would veer off and have Hetty and Bonnie meet in person and develop their relationship. Sometimes all you need is a long, trailing scarf or an interesting name. And sometimes characters aren’t important enough even to warrant a name; male or female and old or young may be sufficient. We don’t want to burden Lenny’s brain with characters he doesn’t have to remember.

Or Hetty and Bonnie may be fine with the amount of detail provided. Lenny appreciates how we populate our stories with intriguing oddballs.

What reveals character?

Hetty has an unpleasant voice, so voice helps define a character. Along with voice, there’s dialogue. What does Hetty say and how does she say it? Does she interrupt people? Does she disagree with whatever is said to her, or does she always agree? How’s her enunciation? Her grammar? And many other speech possibilities.

Bonnie’s thoughts show her to be a tad prickly or sound sensitive; thoughts bring character to light. Of course we have access to the thoughts of POV characters only – unless we’re writing in third-person omniscient.

Lenny may be a writer as well as a reader. If he becomes a character, and if his writing enters the narrative, then it will help reveal him. Introducing a character’s writing, a diary, for example, is a way to slip in the thoughts of non-POV characters.

What else?

Those aspects of appearance that a person can control, which covers a lot of territory. Bonnie, for instance, is short (I am). Does she wear three-inch heels or flats? Does her erect bearing suggest a taller person? Lenny sports a goatee and chooses to wear glasses rather than contact lenses.

Clothing. One could write about this forever. Not only clothing itself, but also about clothing in a setting. Does Hetty wear a suit to the company picnic?

The setting that a character controls, Lenny’s house, his room if he’s too young to have a house (forget the goatee in this case). What’s his taste? Is he neat or sloppy?

These seemingly little things, Hetty’s bedroom with the martial arts posters, the free weights in the corner, the biography of Helen Keller on the desk, or Lenny’s goatee or Betty’s weighty painted beads around her neck and the four bracelets on each arm, suggest developed, deep characters.

Actions, which may be more important than anything else, define character. Hetty listens and calls in to a talk show. Bonnie just listens. Betty calls her son and complains, but never about the cancer. Lenny reads.

Everything is subject to interpretation. Does Hetty listen and call in out of loneliness? She lives alone and likes to hear voices on the radio. Then she gets so caught up she has to respond. Or does she call for some other reason? Does Lenny have a goatee and glasses because he wants to appear professorial? Or is the goatee hiding a weak chin, and he wears glasses because contact lenses seem vain to him? Or a thousand other reasons. If Lenny moves from reader to important character, we may learn what his motivations are. We learn motivation from further action, possibly from his explanations in dialogue, from his thoughts if he’s a POV character.

I’m not sure about backstory. If the backstory doesn’t move to the front story, I think it’s more for the writer to know than for the reader. Backstory will influence a character’s actions, but Lenny doesn’t have to know that Hetty’s father locked her in the cellar when he was in a bad mood – unless the father or the cellar or something directly related comes into the story.

Coming into the story is the key to what character development to put in and what to leave out. If you need it for the plot, then include it. If you don’t and the information makes the story drag, leave it out. If you don’t need it but it’s fascinating in its own right and Lenny doesn’t get bored, it’s up to you and the kind of story you’re writing. You can’t please everybody. Lenny may like an embellished story but his brother Lonny may prefer his fiction stripped down to action action action.

Only one prompt today:

Betty, Bonnie, Hetty, and Lenny, strangers to one another, all attend a reading by the famous teenage fantasist Tammy Millhart. At the end she announces that before the event she hid a talisman, an ebony ball, somewhere in the local amusement park. She chooses three teams, one of one of them comprising our characters, to look for the ball. Whichever team finds it will be given a far more serious mission; the entire population of a mid-size city will be at risk. Write our quartet’s search while developing each one as a complex personality. Do all of them want their search to succeed? Tammy can be an important character too if you like. She can attach herself to your team or wander from team to team. Is she helping or getting in the way?

Description galore

On June 27, 2011, Agnes wrote, When I write a story the writing process goes like this. I have an idea, so I think about it and act it out until my plot has a basic shape. Then I start writing it down, my problem is that my descriptions get way too long. How can I stop this?

Acting your story out is a terrific idea!

I wouldn’t worry about the length of your descriptions while you’re writing them. Just keep going. When you’re finished, you can see what you need and what you can do without.

When you go back, regard your adjectives and adverbs with suspicion. Test your sentences without them. If nothing is lost by removing the word lovely, for example, delete it. Usually, the adjectives and adverbs that we can’t do without are the ones that convey information, like green, hot, wobbly, sparsely.

More general adjectives sometimes have their place. For example, I used the word terrific above in a sentence of less than spellbinding prose. If I had been going for something better I might have written that acting your idea out ensures that your story has tension and feeling. Terrific is a summary word, and in this case I wanted speed. I wanted to convey approval, not necessarily the reason for the approval.

Generally, nouns and verbs should do your heavy lifting. Better than “Don’t eviscerate me with that long weapon,” he said softly would be “Don’t eviscerate me with that saber,” he whispered. Better and shorter.

I’ve said this before: Take care with words that weaken, like almost, slightly, somewhat. Occasionally they’re essential, but often they reflect an unwillingness to take a stand, as in Hilda felt almost jealous. Let’s let her go lime-green with envy.

More broadly, think about what you want your description to do. Description sets the movie going in your reader’s mind, so you need to provide enough to let him see and possibly hear, touch, and smell his surroundings. When Hilda goes into her bedroom and the reader sees it for the first time, he needs to know more than that there’s a bed in there, but he doesn’t need a raft of specifics. He probably should be told if the bed is a bunk bed. Let’s suppose it isn’t. Let’s suppose the room is fussy. There’s a dust ruffle around the bed, which is an antique reproduction of Benjamin Franklin’s bed (I have no idea if this is possible). Roses are stenciled on the bureau. Atop the dresser, real roses fill a rose-colored vase, and under the vase, a doily. The walls are covered with William Morris wallpaper. The floor sports two braided rugs. A quilt in a classic pattern hangs on the wall.

The poor reader doesn’t have to be burdened with all this; a few details will do. But I’d like him to know who decorated the room, especially if Hilda chose everything, and she’s seven years old! Seriously, because then the description reveals character, and that’s cool.

As a sidebar, the reader doesn’t have to know what William Morris wallpaper is. He’ll get the idea, or he can look it up. You don’t have to worry about his comprehension in such a little matter. If William Morris wallpaper is exactly what you want, keep it in. You can even make up a kind of wallpaper if you like, Millicent Popper paper, say, and no one will ever discover more about it than you reveal.

Another consideration is what’s going to happen. Suppose there’s a rocking chair in the room, and Hilda is about to rock so enthusiastically that it falls apart, which will be the last straw for her foster parents, and they’re going to call Social Services. Then the reader has to know there’s a chair, probably before she sits down in it.

Description can convey feeling. Hilda is sent to jail, maybe for bad home decorating decisions. You want your description to convey how bad the prison conditions are: the stink, the chill, the iron bed, the single blanket, the cockroaches. If this is a comedy, the lack of art on the walls. Then Hilda is released. Again, you may want to describe her new situation for contrast. But you don’t want to go too far. Enough to let the reader experience the place, not so much that boredom sets in.

You can use description to heighten suspense. Hilda’s foster parents tell her that she can’t live with them anymore. The scene takes place in the kitchen. Everyone is waiting for the social worker to come. Hilda spends the time noticing the abundance of food in the kitchen, the bowl of fruit, the cake cooling on the counter, the soup pot on the stove, the fridge with its automatic ice dispenser, the spice rack, the branch of basil hanging by the window. The reader gulps and wonders when Hilda will experience such abundance again.

Often we put in a lot of detail so that we know where everything is and we can see the movie. When we revise, we need to ask ourselves what purpose our description is serving.

•    Is it creating the movie?
•    Is it revealing character?
•    Is it making a mood?
•    Is it conveying feeling?
•    Is it heightening suspense?

This may not be an exhaustive list. If you can identify some other objective your description is fulfilling or if it’s serving one of the ones I’ve listed, then it deserves to live. But if not, or if it has a purpose but you’ve gone on too long, that’s the time to cut.

Sometimes we fall in love with our words and it’s hard to give them up. I particularly like the doily under the rose-colored vase, but if the reader wants to shred it and flush the bits, then it’s doing no good, and it should go.

Of course, it can be hard to tell what should stay and what should be deleted. For that, you need the usual resources: time away from the manuscript to give you objectivity, helpful criticism, and experience. The more you write the better you’ll get at this one particular thing. I guarantee it.

Time for prompts:

• Hilda has taken refuge from her foster family with the seven dwarves. It’s two months after Snow White left. The dwarves have gone to the mines for the day, and she’s alone in their cottage. Describe the cottage through her eyes.

• After deliberating a while, Hilda makes some changes to the dwarves’ home. Their cottage can be in the middle of a village of dwarves’ cottages with shops and so forth, or it can be alone in a forest. Describe what she does.

• Describe what happens when the dwarves return.

• Put what you’ve written aside for three days.

• Now look at it all again. What can you cut? What do you need to add? Revise.

Have fun, and save what you wrote!

The Gap

Before I start, hope to see some of you this weekend in Rhode Island. If you haven’t seen where I’ll be, check the Appearances page of my website.

Josiphine, whose first question I discussed last week, had a second: …any tips on rewriting would be extremely appreciated.

In thinking about my response, I remembered a post on the subject and looked it up. My post of November 18th, 2009, is all about revision. If you read it and have further questions, please ask.

Along the same lines, Ella wrote, I’m the kind of writer that plans everything out before I write. When I come to the few spots that I didn’t plan, I skip over them and go on. But now I’m revising and I have to fill in those gaps, and go back and add details and emotions, but it’s really hard. Any tips?
Let’s go to pre-revision. In your next story, which you may be working on now, I suggest not skipping these unplanned parts. Since you’re a planner, when you reach such a place, try planning it out and writing it then and there in your first draft.

It’s possible that these spots don’t fit into your overall story scheme. They may reveal plot problems that get worse if you just soldier on. When you fill in later, the emotions may not feel genuine because you’re forcing your characters to act according to your outline, not according to how they’d actually behave in the situation.

You may discover that these junctures are the keys to your story. They may take it in directions that surprise you but represent, or represent more effectively, your underlying theme.

Now let’s fast forward to revision, to the situation you asked about. You’ve got these gaps. It’s too late for the first draft. What to do?

First off, do you need these scenes? If not, cut them and problem solved.

Do they need to be scenes? Or do they merely represent information that needs to be conveyed, which you can tuck into the narrative or dialogue in another scene? Suppose, for example, that main character Eliot’s uncle has just died, which is important because he was going to pay Eliot’s college tuition. We don’t need the death scene. We may not even need the scene when Eliot finds out. What may be important, however, is his blow-up at his girlfriend Amy because he’s distressed that his education, his hoped-for career, his entire future, is now in doubt. After the argument, during the making up, if he wasn’t too horrible for a reconciliation, he confesses what’s really eating him. Amy and the reader find out together.

If your omissions do have to be scenes, why not plan them even at this late date? (Remember that I’m not a planner and am just guessing how planners make their magic.) Look at where your caesura (If you don’t know the word, look it up!) fits into your outline. Reread what went before and what comes after. Think about how your characters, acting according to their natures, can bridge the gap. How can they express their feelings through thoughts, action, dialogue? What can you find that interests you, that will make the process fun? Is there some aspect of Eliot, for example, that you haven’t explored before? Has the reader experienced his sense of humor or his intellectual side? Can you bring one of these into the new scene? Outline and then write.

Do the new scenes take place in old settings? Can you move the action somewhere else, somewhere you may enjoy describing? Or, can you highlight unexplored aspects of your setting? Eliot will have needs in this scene, or his girlfriend Amy will. Suppose their argument happens in her bedroom. She’s chilly, so she opens the door to her closet where her sweater and tee-shirt shelves are. Above the sweaters is a shelf of stuffed animals that she’s outgrown but can’t bring herself to throw out. She touches the nose of her stuffed penguin for comfort. The stuffed animals and the gesture brings Eliot to his senses, and he realizes how much he’s upset Amy and how adorable and sweet she is.

I’ve exhausted my ideas on this aspect of revision, but I’d welcome follow-up questions.

So, changing the subject. I’m a radio addict. I love to listen to programs that I can learn from, and one of these is Freakonomics Radio, which applies economic theory to surprising topics. I recently listened to a podcast about quitting, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The economists who narrate the show have a position, that quitting is good. They advocate quitting – anything! – and quitting quickly.

I’ve been mulling over the program’s ideas as applied to writing, and I think the good economists left out a lot of complexity. Naturally, they’re arguing against the prevailing idea that quitting – being a quitter – is always bad.

Questions come in to the blog sometimes about not finishing stories, and I always say it’s okay not to finish, because we learn from everything we write, fragments as well as completed stories – as long as we keep writing. Many of you are about to participate in NaNoWriMo, and you’re resolved not to quit. In a month you’ll have a big first draft, and then what?

Since they’re economists, the podcasters talk about costs, in this case two kinds of costs relating to quitting or not quitting. There’s opportunity costs and sunk costs, and they’re kind of opposed to each other. You finish your NaNoWriMo book. Maybe you’ve met your word count, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. You start revising and the going gets rough.

The opportunity costs start beckoning. Every hour you devote to revision is an hour you can’t spend starting a new story – or eating, sleeping, studying for your Physics exam. You think about quitting, but you remember your sunk costs. You’ve sunk a month into this book, a month when you could have been eating, sleeping, or studying for your Physics exam. If you walk away, you may have wasted that time and energy and creativity.

I’ve been working on Beloved Elodie for a dauntingly long time. I’m finally making progress but I don’t think I’m even at the halfway point. Should I have quit, maybe after my second false start?

Possibly, but I guess I’m a sunk-costs type. If I had quit I wouldn’t find out where the story goes. I would find out what other tale was waiting for me, but that other tale isn’t as alive for me as the one I’m butting my head against.

Actually, I did quit. Each time I started over I abandoned the storyline that wasn’t working and I’ll never know if I could have pushed on and made it succeed. This hurts. There were good aspects to each attempt, one in particular that I wish I could have figured out.

I guess this is where I wished for more complexity from the radio. There’s loss when you quit, even when quitting is right. And there’s loss when you continue and don’t write whatever else you might have. And there are gains on each side. We have to weigh one against the other. The only certainty I have is that there’s no disgrace in either decision.

Now I’m quitting. Time for prompts:

∙ Find a time gap in one of your stories, a day, a week, whatever. Invent a new scene that takes place during the gap. When you’re finished, ask yourself if you’ve you discovered anything new that will deepen the reader’s understanding of what’s going on.

∙ Write the dust-up between Eliot and Amy. Decide how he would pick a fight. What’s he like when he argues? Show him at his worst.

∙ Now write Eliot’s journal entry about his uncle’s death and his behavior to Amy.

∙ Think of the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” which we discussed at length in a long-ago post. If you don’t remember the story, look it up. At the end, the soldier chooses the oldest princess for his bride. Let’s imagine that she can accept him or quit being a princess. She’s hardly met him and has hardly been kind to him. Write the scene in which she decides. Write the scene following her decision.

∙ Yes, Cinderella inexplicably continues to obey her stepsisters and stepmother in the original story, not my version, but they also continue to torment her, which cannot be good for their self-esteem. Write a version in which one of the stepsisters decides to do something different, to quit her role. What happens?

∙ Rewrite the tall tale of John Henry and have him quit pounding his hammer and live. What happens next?

Have fun, and save what you write!

Dreams, glimpses, and other tantalizing story morsels

To start, I’ll be speaking and signing books in Rhode Island on Saturday, October 15th, along with a bunch of other terrific kids’ book writers. You can find out where and when on my website. Hope to see some of you!

And, a few questions have come in about my Disney Fairies books and about Writing Magic and others. If you want to ask me about any of my books, please let me know and I’ll answer in a post – if I can. Sometimes I forget what I had in mind when I was writing and sometimes ideas pop out of nowhere and I can’t explain them.

And, puppy Reggie is almost nine months old and got his first haircut. My husband has posted new photos on the News page of my website. My fave is the one with his best friend, Sage, in which Reggie is revealed as a supremely happy maniac.

Now for this week’s post topic. On June 25th, 2011, Maddie wrote, ….I keep on getting very vivid “glimpses” of stories, but I don’t know anything about the characters or plot besides what is in the “glimpses.” Can you help me with this? I think that I can probably start working on a story if I can get past this.
Also, I had a dream a few months ago, and since I wrote it down, I’m thinking about basing a story off it. Do you have any suggestions?

And on July 2nd, 2011, Josiphine asked a related question: ….I’m an aspiring writer and have completed several books. But my problem is making my books book-length. Most people I know say that each time they do a rewrite they cut back so their novel isn’t as long. I’m in the opposite predicament. My books are never long enough, a short story, or a novella at a stretch.
Do you have any suggestions about making my books the right length? I know that my plots have enough meat to last…I just can’t make them do so.

Some fairytales remind me of dreams. Putting a pea under twenty mattresses to test potential princess is dreamlike in its lack of logic. I love to work with these kinds of fairytales. The ones that make complete sense, like (in my opinion) “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” offer less fodder for fooling around. So I say, Maddie, go with your dream.

You can begin with the events that lead up to the dream. These are some questions you might ask yourself:

∙ Who is the main character in the dream? Is it you? Or someone else?

∙ Who are the other characters? Describe them.

∙ What is the world of the dream?

∙ What happens after the dream ends?

∙ What is the conflict?

∙ What scenes can you write to dramatize the conflict, extend it, deepen it?

∙ What concrete, specific details can you include in your scenes to make the dreamscape real?

If you make your reader aware that the story is a dream, he may not get emotionally involved, so I would avoid this. Likewise, I suggest you not end your story by having the main character wake up, which usually results in a reader feeling cheated. In other words, the dream should be the story’s reality.

Same approach for your glimpses. Ask yourself questions to flesh out what you have. What went before the glimpse? What can come next? What’s the conflict? Write the answers in notes. Try writing the glimpse, fragmentary though it is, not in notes but in story form. Just the writing may elicit more.

As I suggested in an earlier post, think about your other glimpses. Can you string them together to make a fuller story? Is there anything else you can bring in? A memory? A myth? A news item?

Suppose you try, and you write part of a story then can’t go any further. I say, count this as a victory. Save your pages, of course. Maybe the fragment needs something for completion that you can’t get to yet, something you’re going to write next month or even three years from now. Or maybe this bit will seed a seven-book series. Or you’ll cannibalize it in five other stories – or for the rest of your life.

Josiphine, my most helpful writing teacher used to say there was no right length for a story, which needs to be as long as it needs to be. I’d add that padding isn’t the right technique for achieving length.

Having said that, my suggestions for Maddie may work for you, too,. Look at your conflict. Have you come up with a variety of ways to reveal and intensify it? In Ella Enchanted, for instance, I kept devising ways to have obedience make Ella suffer. She loses a friend because of it early in the book and then, when she’s older, is forced to give up Areida. The ogres show the physical side of the obedience curse, the parrot Chock the humorous aspect, and so on. If your reader cares, she won’t tire of new ways for your main character to struggle.

Are you including your main character’s thoughts and feelings? Leaving these out will speed up your scenes, but in a bad way, because the action is likely to fall flat. Adding them will probably engage the reader more deeply and may involve you more, too. You’ll know your main better, and that inner understanding may suggest follow-up scenes that you hadn’t thought of before.

Consider your setting, too. Our goal is to start a movie in the reader’s mind. Have you put in enough detail to get the movie going?

Look at your transitions. Have you filled in the movement from one scene to the next? Are there any leaps of logic that leave the reader flummoxed? Are you jumping from plot point to plot point?

Last, you may get the best help from a reader. Ask a fellow writer (the best choice, if possible), a friend, a teacher, a librarian, a relative to read one of your stories. Then ask this person if anything seems to be missing, if your tale seems truncated. Ask her to be as specific as she can be. Then, if you want a second opinion, ask someone else as well.

Here are three dream prompts. First, I offer two of my dreams to turn into stories if you can. For these prompts you’ll need to do a lot of expanding.

∙ This is a recurring nightmare. I’m climbing the subway stairs in New York City and my legs become very heavy. I can’t drag them up. The people behind me are angry and I’m terrified because I don’t know what’s happened to me. That’s it. It hasn’t visited me lately, maybe because I turned it into a pantoum (a poem form), which appeared in a book of short horror fiction for kids called Half-Minute Horrors (because each one can be read in thirty seconds).

∙ I’m at a dinner, a wedding or some other celebratory event. I know that if I eat the shrimp I’ll turn transparent. I don’t serve myself any, but they appear on my plate anyway. Use this any way you like.

∙ Write down your own dreams for a week. Keep a pad next to your bed. Use one or all of your dreams in a story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Threading the Plot Needle

First, here’s a link to an interview with me: http://www.bookshoptalk.com/2011/09/interview-with-one-and-only-gail-carson.html. On the site you’ll find interviews with other authors and lots more for us bookish types.

And I heard something horrifying (in a writerly sense) on the radio in an interview with Patricia T. O’Conner, whose books Woe Is I and Woe Is I Jr. I keep recommending. She said that a question came in on her blog, http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/, a fascinating site, about the meaning of head nodding and head shaking. The questioner wrote that she’d (I think it was a she) had always thought a nod meant yes and a shake meant no, but lately she’d come across instances of the reverse. Pat looked into it and discovered that the meaning had shifted somewhat and the questioner was correct; sometimes a nod means no and a shake means yes. Aaa! Talk about shaking. My world is shook, rattled, and rolled. I’ve always used head nods for yes and shakes for no. Have I confused my readers? Have these neat, quick, formerly unambiguous gestures been taken away from me? And from you, too?

I don’t know what I’m going to do from now on, maybe ignore this bulletin from the front-lines of English usage and assume that most readers will understand my meaning. Or maybe make each nod and shake so clear no one can be mistaken, but, ugh, that will require extra words I didn’t need before. Anyway, I wanted to share the news with you because confusion loves company.

The interview moved on to naming places where a nod always means no and a shake always means yes, like Bulgaria and India, which is interesting, but not particularly worrisome.

Now on to this weeks question. On June 24, 2011, maybeawriter wrote, What’s driving me nutty is that I barely have any scenes for my main story, and the one or two I have are no longer completely relevant to my story. I think my problem is that my storyline keeps changing in notes, conversations and deep thoughts. Not that a changing storyline is a problem, but it’s almost changing too fast. And now I had this new, completely story-changing idea. And now my story is shattered and I have no idea how to put it back together and make something from it, something that makes sense and somehow involves my oldest ideas. Maybe I just have trouble letting go of my old storyline. And maybe I fear the blank nothingness of the unknown, of the ever-changing story where nothing is sure, nothing set in stone, nothing to keep this story, well, this story. If I change too much, is it still the same story, or something new and unfamiliar?

I love to get together with writer friends and talk about current projects because the discussion is almost always reassuring. I’m making up names here, not using real friends: Annabelle says she’s trashing her novel and starting over; she had to write the wrong book so now she can write the right one; this has happened to her before. Randy says he hadn’t been able to write anything for two months but he wrote three pages last week and hopes he can keep going. Inga says she doesn’t know what her book is about fundamentally, which is making the going rough for her. I say I’ve started my novel over five times, once after writing 260 pages.

Nobody I know ever ever ever says, I sit down at the computer every morning without fail and pop out seven glorious pages. Isn’t writing the merriest occupation going?

No, writing is strange and inexplicably hard. It all comes out of our heads. Our materials are ideas, so why can’t we shape them easily? Why don’t they just chink into place?

They don’t, and that’s why it’s delightful to be with other writers, the only people who really understand. Maybeawriter, I don’t have a solution for you. What you’re going through is, in my experience, the writer’s lot. But I have a suggestion, which you may do already: when you’re most miserable, talk to other writers or read writers’ blogs or books about writing. I love the name you’ve given yourself: maybeawriter. That uncertainty is wonderfully honest about the writer’s state.

I glean two questions from you, one about scenes and the other about story direction. Scenes first.

Suppose we have a character, Mallory, who is starting a new school, say it’s magic sculpture school. Graduates create manikins that assist people in subtle ways, physically and emotionally. Mallory’s problems are that she’s brutally honest and has trouble taking criticism. Her strengths are her creativity and her sympathy. The major conflict in this story will revolve around these traits.

We need scenes to show Mallory in action. Where to set them? With which characters? Do we start by getting her in trouble in a small way and build or do we make it bad right away?

This is where I would begin to wander if I were taking this on, because I don’t know how to answer my own questions. Maybe I’ll write a scene with Mallory and her mother. Mallory has insulted her cousin, and her mother is taking her to task for it, and Mallory isn’t responding well.

But the action isn’t going to take place at home, so that scene won’t advance the plot. Probably I won’t use it. Still, I’ve seen Mallory in her home environment, which is informative. Now let me try one at the new school. In this scene we’ll see her creativity and her touchiness and we’ll introduce a character or two who may be important later on.

With luck this second scene moves us into the story and suggests scenes that can follow. Mallory antagonizes one of her teachers but interests another. A fellow student hates her; another falls in love with her. How will the teacher she antagonized react? How will the others? We temporarily forget our thematic ideas in the excitement of the detailed moment-to-moment writing.

Then we stop writing for the day. We walk the dog and ruminate about plot direction. Ideally our ideas support the direction we’ve started in, and sometimes this actually happens to me. But sometimes I anticipate problems based on what I’ve written. I think I need to go back to establish a new path ahead or I see a different route entirely, and I know that’s the way I have to go.

In an earlier version of Beloved Elodie, which finally is moving along, I had madness descend on Elodie’s island of Lahnt. Elodie’s mother is possessed by greed. She imagines herself as King Midas and has no regrets about turning her daughter to gold. It’s a disturbing and powerful scene, and I still love it for its power. I mourn giving it up, which I had to do to take my story in a viable direction. My tale isn’t what I started with, but now it’s one I can write. Maybe someday I can use the ideas in the mother-Midas scene and maybe not.

We have to go with what we can do. I’ve said before that I’m an unconscious writer. This is the way I see it: Our selves below the surface guide what we write. There are layers to that hidden self, which is why we veer this way and that, why the road through a story takes many detours. Although I’m often not happy about how long I need to meander to follow my story thread, I believe the added complexity serves our art. Maybeawriter, “the blank nothingness of the unknown” is where writers operate and where we shape our magic sculptures.

Here are three prompts about Mallory:

∙ Mallory is assigned to create a sculpture that will help a depressed eight-year-old boy. Write the scene in which she meets the boy for the first time.

∙ Write the scene I mentioned above in which Mallory alienates one teacher and interests another, causes a student to hate her and another to fall in love with her.

∙ Write a scene in which Mallory begins to create the sculpture for the boy.

Have fun and save what you write!

Speech!

Starting off with a reminder that I’ll be at the children’s book festival in Tarrytown, New York, on Sunday. The event is held at historic Sunnyside, Washington Irving’s home, a literary destination in its own right.

On June 20, 2011, Jen wrote, ….I am a very introverted person. But I’ve read in a lot of places that self-promotion is just as much a part of being a successful author as good writing is. Do you agree with that perspective? Is there any hope for someone like me that would rather not be in front of people?

I would never ever ever agree that anything is as important for an author as good writing. Success is a separate matter, hinging on many things, including luck and timing. And yes, self-promotion is useful. You, all of you reading the blog, should do some when you get published. If you already are published, you know.

And if you’re already published, I hope you’ll chime in with what worked and what disappointed you.

Self-promotion doesn’t necessarily mean public speaking. There are more ways today to promote your book than ever before, and new ones keep springing up. I’m not an authority on the subject, but there are lots of books that may help. Your library may have some, or your local bookstore may suggest some titles.

I googled “self-promotion for authors” and lots of links popped up. One of them, a fascinating and funny New York Times article, goes over author self-promotion from a historical perspective. To my amazement the practice goes way, way, way back. Many of the examples do not involve speech at all. The article’s tone is adult and may not be right for elementary schoolers. Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/books/review/how-writers-build-the-brand.html.

Luck is luck, and you can’t do much about that, and timing is hard to control too. Your first picture book comes out when the market is down for picture books. Your paranormal novel is released just when the trend is fading, or your historical novel about the San Francisco earthquake hits the bookstores just after an earthquake strikes… somewhere, and interest is high.

The internet is the self-promoting author’s good buddy. You can create a website, a blog; you can tweet, use Facebook and, I suppose, LinkedIn for publicity. You can link to other sites that may link to yours as well. Some literary blogs interview authors, and these interviews are written, no speaking necessary. You can shoot something for YouTube about your book. Some authors develop online book trailers, not cheap, but not a fortune either. A friend has created an e-newsletter for teachers and librarians. She promotes her own work but also offers articles of more general interest.

I have a website and a blog (as you know!). The website is mostly for people who are interested in my books. The blog, obviously, is about writing, and it offers value even if you never read a word inside one of my books. But I do often mention a title or two to illustrate a point and to remind you that I’ve written this book or that one. I don’t do it so frequently that the blog is all about me, but the self-promotion is there, subtly. And of course I want to encourage you to come to appearances, where it will be hard to resist buying a book.

However, the results of promotion are hard to measure unless you score a huge coup, like an interview that is sure to result in thousands of sales. I have no idea how many books have been bought as a result of this blog, but I like writing my posts, so I continue to do it. It’s not worthwhile to promote in a way that makes you unhappy.

I don’t tweet, and I keep meaning to set up a fan Facebook page, but I haven’t gotten around to it, so I could do more. Everyone can do more. We have to choose between promotion and writing or hiking or talking to friends or flossing our teeth.

Off the internet, you can have postcards made and send them to everyone you know and leave them at local libraries and stores, especially bookstores. Your editor will almost certainly give you a PDF of the book cover to use. Heck, the publisher may even go halvsies with you on the cost or may pay for the whole thing. I always do a postcard mailing for my books. If nothing else, the postcards keep me in touch with cousins and friends I rarely see.

Friends can host book parties for you, although I’ve heard that doesn’t do much for sales. Still, a book is an achievement worth celebrating. You can write a press release and send it to local newspapers. If an editor wants to interview you, that will be one-on-one, most likely by phone, and your shyness may not be activated.

You can arrange a signing at a local bookstore and pressure your friends and family to come to hear you talk about your book. You may not sell many, but your supportive audience will give you experience in discussing your work.

Kids’ book writers can visit schools, which I’ve talked about before on the blog. School visits are a direct source of income as well as promotion, because we get honoraria for our visits. Some people who are shy with adults are comfortable with people half their size.

If you’re willing to give speeches or run workshops and if you have a particular expertise that relates to your writing, which might be in writing gothic mysteries for teens, for example, you can develop presentations for conferences and apply to showcase them. Often you’ll get an honorarium for this too.

I like to speak publicly, but it wasn’t always so. I got nervous. I feared that my nervousness showed, and my audience was suffering for me, miserable in the face of my misery. This was years before I started writing. Luckily, management at my job at the time brought in a public speaking consultant to work with me and a bunch of other newbies. He videotaped us (or whatever the technology was at the time) so we could see how we did. My big discovery was that I didn’t look afraid. No one but me knew how scared I was, which put me at ease. Now I regard nervousness as a boon for my energy level, and I never begin a speech as some do by confessing my fear.

If you can get training in public speaking, I suggest you go for it. It’s comforting to know you can handle yourself in from of a crowd. After all, if success does come your way, you may need to make acceptance speeches.

I remember a lot of the public speaking advice the consultant gave us, which I’m happy to share. He was opposed to written speeches and even speeches from notes. He said if you don’t know your topic well enough to talk from memory, you shouldn’t give a speech about it. I’ve taken some of that advice. I use notes to make sure I get to everything, but never a written speech. However, I do practice my speeches in the privacy of my office until I have what I want to say down solid, even to the cadence of my clauses, the expressions I’ll use, a particular wording. Then, except for an occasional glance at my notes, I’m looking at my audience the whole time.

The consultant was against podiums too. He wanted to be able to walk in the aisles and lock eyes with anyone on the verge of falling asleep. An assertive fellow, he refused ever to speak after his audience had had a meal, when they’d be drowsy. I don’t love podiums either, but I speak from behind them when I have to, and I certainly speak after a meal. And I have observed people fall asleep, which throws me off my game a little, but I soldier on.

I don’t remember if these are his techniques or if I’ve come upon them myself: I never use a power-point presentation, although I do project images on a screen when I need them. Power point, in my opinion, like a written speech, lacks spontaneity. If the room isn’t full, I urge my audience to move up to the front rows. I ask for the lighting to be as bright as it can be and still have people able to see the images on the screen. The most distressing speech (distressing for me) I’ve ever given was in a darkened auditorium with lights only on me. Afterwards, I was told it went well, but I couldn’t judge audience reaction and I felt boring and foolish. I know I would have been better if I could have seen a few people nodding or smiling.

The point of the consultant’s advice and my own strategies is to shrink the distance between audience and speaker. It’s that distance that causes the horror, but when you close it, the experience becomes more intimate even when hundreds of people are listening. Intimate is familiar. We often do intimate.

Here are three prompts:

∙ If you belong to a writing group, my guess is that sometimes talk wanders to publishing and even self-promotion. Take turns with group members in giving a chat about your story. Listen to the others. What worked? What didn’t? What can you incorporate into your own presentation?

∙ Write a variant of (part of) Cyrano de Bergerac. Your main character, Bethany, has published her first book. The publisher has set up a local signing, but she’s terrified. So she enlists a friend, Wanda, to speak for her. Wanda, however, isn’t much of a reader. She’s told Bethany that she read her book and loved it, but in truth she got only as far as the first chapter. Write the scene.

∙ Every year the empress of the Ocean Islands judges a poetry competition among her islands. The winning island hosts the empress until the next contest, and her presence brings the people of that island both esteem and wealth. On Parrot Island the judges have chosen Alti’s poem as the one to represent them this year. Alti will have to read the poem to the empress, and his delivery will be part of her evaluation. Trouble is, he suffers from awful stage fright. His teacher, Yora, has been charged with helping him prepare, but she preferred a different poem by another student, and she’s decided to sabotage Alti rather than help him. Write what happens.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Mysterious

First off, for those of you who may live a little north of New York City, I’ll be signing books at a children’s book festival a week from Sunday, on September 25th, in Tarrytown. I’ll just be signing, not speaking, but I’ll be there for two-and-a-half hours, and unless a miracle happens, I’ll have time to chat. This is a wonderful event, with many terrific kids’ book writers. Details are on the website. Hope some of you can come!

On June 16, 2011 AngieBelle wrote, …I have read many mysteries and am always fascinated by how the author ties everything together- even in seemingly simple children’s mysteries, which are usually what I’m reading. How does one come up with all the details that lead to solving the mystery?

I’ve written two other posts about writing mysteries, one on May 27th, 2009, and one on January 6th, 2010, which you may want to look at too. These are additional thoughts. I said in the earlier posts that I’m a newbie mystery writer, and I still am. In fact, I would welcome tips from other mystery writers who read the blog.

In my first mystery, A Tale of Two Castles, I didn’t know who the villain was until I’d written two-thirds of the book, and this worried me, as you can imagine. But then this character did something revealing, and I knew. The advantage of this is that the bad guy’s identity may come as more of a surprise to the reader if it was also a surprise to the writer. I’m not saying that careful plotters and outliners can’t create mysteries that feel unpredictable, only that this is the approach that worked for me, on a single book.

I’m trying it again in the new book, Beloved Elodie (tentative title). I’m making several characters potential villains, and I’ve invented back stories for each that could give them a motive for the crime, the theft of a flask, which, if not recovered, will cause hundreds of lives to be lost.

These back stories can supply the details that pile up in a reader’s mind. In A Tale of Two Castles again, two of my characters were spies, which I didn’t reveal until near the end of the book. Their undercover activity caused them to act suspiciously. I knew why but the reader didn’t, and I could sort the details out because of my secret knowledge.

The back story technique goes something like this: Madame Peppercorn is knifed to death at midnight. Mr. Marjoram is found with a knife. Congresswoman Thyme was seen loitering near the scene of the crime. Professor Basil was overheard arguing with Madame Peppercorn the day before the murder. Madame Peppercorn’s daughter, Miss Allspice, has been corresponding with a lawyer about declaring her mother incompetent. Doctor Nutmeg was prescribing sedatives to Madame Peppercorn for her anxiety. Detective Tarragon finds clues galore, details galore. The reader goes to sleep at night counting spices.

But the author knows the following: Mr. Marjoram had the knife to protect himself from a colleague who threatened him; Congresswoman Thyme lost her engagement ring somewhere near Madame Peppercorn’s estate; Madame Peppercorn demanded an acknowledgment from Professor Basil in his forthcoming book about rich old ladies; Miss Allspice is worried about her mother’s recent memory lapses; Doctor Nutmeg murdered Madame Peppercorn because she threatened him with a malpractice suit, which he knows would cost him his license. He visited her, ostensibly to explain his prescriptions, knocked her out with something that leaves the digestive system quickly (Is there such a thing?), and stabbed her to death.

The author can keep it all straight because he knows who’s doing what for which reasons.

I’m not as organized as the above herbal mystery suggests. I toss in clues and details willy-nilly, hoping they’ll come in handy later, but I do make up the back stories – usually. In A Tale of Two Castles I had a mild-mannered character speak harshly at one point. I didn’t really have a reason, simply that it was late at night and he was alone. My editor asked me to tie up that loose thread and fondly told me she was sure I knew the character’s motivation. I didn’t, but at that point the book was written. All the elements were in place, and I found the character’s reason, and it fit.

It fit because writing is magical or the human mind is magical, which I’ve said before on the blog. We plunk in details to enrich our stories, to flesh out our characters, hoping the details will come do double duty and be useful for the plot, but when we write them in we have no idea how that will happen. We keep writing and find, often enough to be remarkable, that this little thing, for example a character’s fascination with a certain painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, turns out to be the key to the entire story.

Some of what I throw in turns out not to belong, and I waste time on plot points that don’t take me the right way, but these come out in revision, and some points were interesting to explore even if ultimately not right. Writing isn’t efficient, at least not when I do it.

A few months ago I bought a book on writing mysteries, then read only part of it because most of the advice offered didn’t apply to fantasy. But I do remember one rule: neither too many suspects or too few. The author suggested at least three and no more than six, a good rule, I think.

In A Tale of Two Castles, suspects abounded because my victim was despised and feared by many. I narrowed the field simply by authorial spotlight. The people I shined my beam on were implicated; the hundreds of others never entered the picture. The mayor, for example, was present when the crime was committed, but I paid no attention to him, so he didn’t become a suspect.

Is this fair? I’m not sure, but without this technique many stories couldn’t be told.

The crime in Beloved Elodie takes place in an isolated spot, so the number of suspects is limited. Still, a few more characters are present than I can use, so these extras’ time on the story stage will be short.

As readers, we anticipate future events, even in a non-mystery. The writer gives us clues that the story characters can’t pick up on. Watch out! we want to scream to the main. This friend is treacherous!

Mystery readers tend to be extra vigilant about clues. I don’t read mysteries with a pencil and paper, taking notes, trying to figure everything out logically, but I do keep an eye out for the likely villain. This habit as a reader is worrying me as a writer. If, for example, I make Ms. Clove an unpleasant character, the reader may think, It will be too obvious if Ms. Clove does it. She can’t be the thief. Then if I make Mr. Turmeric nice, the reader may think, He’s too sweet to endanger all these people; he can’t be the one. But maybe the author will think I won’t suspect Mr. Turmeric, and he really did do it.

If it turns out that Mr. Turmeric is the villain, the reader will think that’s predictable and be disappointed. If Ms. Clove did it, the ending may feel too easy. The solution has to be layered, surprising characters. I’m working on that, but the predictability factor is on my mind.

Here are three prompts:

• In the mystery of Madame Peppercorn’s murder, write interviews between Detective Tarragon and the suspects. Have the detective discover the meaning behind some of the statements and misunderstand others. (You can pick a different villain if you like.)

• In 1967 silk magnate Jim Thompson disappeared while visiting a friend in Malaysia and was never seen again. Here’s a link to Jim Thompson on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thompson_%28designer%29. The entry goes into the disappearance in some detail, and you need to read that part in order to do the prompt. Your challenge is to solve the disappearance. If you like, you can turn the circumstances into fantasy.

• Now for a children’s mystery. You may know the nursery game, “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?” It’s just an accusation and denial. Turn it into a story and solve the mystery. The trouble, of course, is that the most important evidence gets eaten.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Start-stop, start-stop

On June 10, 2011, Limegreen wrote, I find that most of the stories I don’t finish are because I just start writing. I jot down some random beginning to a story and get a random idea for the story. However, when I do that, I have no idea where the story is going and the plot putters out after a few pages or so. But I also can’t seem to find a good way to outline my stories. I either over plot it and have no fun with the story, or I under-plot and my story putters out too. Any advice on how to fix that?

I’m not an outliner either, as I’ve said many times on the blog. Sometimes I attempt outlining, but when I start to write, I realize problems that didn’t occur to me earlier, and the outline doesn’t accommodate them. I suspect serious outliners spend as much time, or almost as much, outlining as actually writing. They anticipate the issues and also manage not to over-plot. Wish I knew how to do it.

Even without outlining, however, you might restrain yourself from starting your story until your idea gels a little. Write notes instead of actual story. Write what ideas interest you in the beginning you have in mind. Consider where you might go with them, loosely, and put your thoughts on paper. Think (in writing) about a few characters who might fit. I also like to think of real people I know whose personalities fascinate me. Can you put any of your fascinating people in, in a fictionalized fashion?

Then ruminate over how the story might end. Write a few alternate endings. You can commit to one if it strikes you as perfect or you can leave them all hanging out there as possibilities. As you write, keep them in mind. One may become more probable as you move along.

I hope you’ve been saving your petered-out beginnings. Go through them and pick one. Tentatively decide that you just didn’t stick with it long enough. Stare at it. See if you can coax a new paragraph out of the void and then another. What do you make of your main character? Ask yourself questions about him. Who are his friends? His family? What’s easy for him? What’s hard? What tempts him into trouble? Can you move the story toward that trouble? Did you start in the right place? Is it possible that your beginning is really the end, and what you have to do is write toward it?

Ask yourself these questions and any others you can dream up. Then go back to your beginning and see if you can make more progress.

Look over your false starts again. Do any belong together? If you combine them, do they move you deeper into your story? If yes, keep going.

You describe your beginnings and ideas as random, but I believe nothing in writing is random. I say in Writing Magic, and I think I’ve said on the blog that writing comes from a very deep place. Even the simplest, lightest stories do. Let’s take “Little Bo Peep” for example. Here we go:

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
and doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone
and they’ll come home,
wagging their tails behind them.

I may not have broken the lines correctly. Sorry. But there’s profundity to spare here. We’ve all felt the desperation of losing something important, could be homework, money, even trust. And we’ve all (I think) had the experience of letting the lost thing go, and the relief of that. Sometimes the loss is never recovered, but sometimes we get whatever it was back, and it seems that the letting go made the return possible. All that out of a nursery rhyme!

Themes repeat, not just story lines. Look at your beginnings once more. Is there something that unites them? If you can’t find a thread, ask your friends or family to read them and suggest a theme. They may see more than one, which is great.

A frequent story thread I see in kids’ stories is a main character being kidnapped. So what might be going on underneath? You may think of more possibilities, but here are two of mine: the victim, Eloise, is wanted, needed, so desired for some quality (her mind, her lovableness, her beautiful voice, her paranormal power) that the kidnappers put themselves at risk to capture her; or Eloise is in danger of being taken over, of losing her will, even her self, to her captors. Or both. So where can the writer take these themes? How can he play them out? Who are her captors? What are their personalities, flaws, virtues?

In both these examples, Bo Peep and the kidnapping, what chokes off the writing may be the underlying depth. It may be scary to explore, in the kidnapping case for instance, what it means for a main character, the one both reader and writer most identify with, to be so valuable. It reminds me of the sequence in the old movie It’s a Wonderful Life when the angel shows George Bailey what his town would have been like without him. I love that part, but it also embarrasses me – kind of like imagining your own funeral and how much everyone loved you.

Now I don’t mean that we’re aware in the slightest of feeling frightened when we write our failed beginnings. The idea simply peters out. But if we look at our themes, bring them out in the open, that lurking uneasiness may melt away. What we have turns into mere story and we see where we can go with it.

Contrariwise, ordinarily I resist examining my underlying motifs because I suspect that their subterranean natures give my stories power. But these cut-off beginnings are a special case and make the exploration worthwhile.

Here are some prompts:

• If you too have trouble staying with your beginnings, review your false starts. Seek out your themes. Ask friends for help. When you have a few ideas, see where they take you. If a particular thread makes your heart race a little, keep going. If your heart persists in beating according to its ordinary rhythm, keep going anyway.

• Expand Little Bo Peep’s situation, showing her story rather than telling it. How did she lose the sheep? Where does she search? What will the consequences be if the sheep stay lost? Who will be angry? How will Bo Peep suffer? If you like, turn the nursery rhyme into a novel or a series, The Bo Peep Chronicles.

• Look up nursery rhymes, like “Little Bo Peep.” Pick one or two or more and speculate about their deeper meanings. Write down what you think.

•    This familiar lullaby is totally crazy (and creepy), in my opinion:
          Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,
            When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
            When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
            And down will come baby, cradle and all.

Who put Baby up there? Does somebody want to kill him? Turn this one into a story or a novel. If you want to see my silly interpretation, look for it in my book of mean poems, Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, coming out next March.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Who’s on first? Who’s on third?

Just to let you all know, I’m copying the latest comments for the blog that came in to the website here rather than with last week’s post so they’re more likely to be read. Reminder, if you can post directly to the blog, please do because it’s easier for me, but if not, I’ll keep copying your comments over.

Now here goes with two questions about point of view (POV). On June 3, 2011, Rina wrote, I have a question regarding first-person narrators. In one story I’m writing, I worry about how I can possibly get my narrator to observe everything important to the plot. She’s not the most useful or important person. Should I use another narrator, change to third person, or just try to have her hanging around whenever something important happens?

And on June 10, 2011, ToNature wrote, …I usually write from first person but I decided for a new story I’m working on… that I would try to use third person. My problem is that though I’m writing about a person, my story sounds more like a dry biography than anything. I’ve read excellent books from 3rd person and have found it just as easy to get to know a character as when an author writes from 1st person, but I’m having trouble doing this myself. Do you have any suggestions?

Choice of POV character is one of the most important story decisions we make, and I sometimes take a long time making it. When I wrote Fairest, I couldn’t get the POV right. I wrote about 300 pages from each of two wrong first-person POVs and another 300 from an omniscient third-person narrator before I found my final first-person POV character.

I wouldn’t wish this 900-page misery on anyone, but sometimes we have to fumble around for a while before we get the POV right. In Beloved Elodie, which I’m working on now, although I know that Elodie is my main first-person narrator, I’ve recently decided to add a few more first-person narrators who will chime in now and then. Part of my purpose is to solve exactly the problem Rina mentions. These other narrators will be able to report on events Elodie can’t be present for. However, until I thought of using other narrators, I didn’t plan for there to be important action at a distance from her.

Additional narrators can not only inform the reader of what takes place elsewhere, they can also provide another perspective. In Ever, the chapters alternate between two main characters. Sometimes they’re separated, but often they’re together, and the reader (and I as I wrote) experiences what happens through two different sets of senses.

I’ve mentioned before that I love Terry Pratchett’s novels. He sometimes tells snippets of his story from his villain’s POV. These are usually teasers and don’t tell much, but the reader gets a glimpse into an evil mind, and the tension is heightened.

So using multiple first-person narrators is one way to present plot moments to your reader when your first-person narrator can’t be there. Writing in omniscient third person is another, of course. You can take a stretch of your story and try one way and then another. You need length for this, say fifty pages (maybe less), so you can narrate a few events and see how the perspectives work for you. Testing may bring clarity.

Rina writes that her POV character isn’t the most important in the story, and this is another decision to consider. A narrator who’s on the periphery can be fine. It works in The Great Gatsby and in the Sherlock Holmes tales, for example. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby doesn’t seem reflective enough to tell his own story, and there is the matter of the ending. In the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories, author Arthur Conan Doyle may have decided that there would have been no suspense if Holmes himself had narrated. Doyle may even have tried to make Holmes the narrator. He may have attempted third-person, too, and may have torn out chunks of his hair deciding. I’m not a Sherlock Holmes or Arthur Conan Doyle scholar. Maybe he knew what he was doing from the start, or maybe he struggled like the rest of us.

If we choose a peripheral character’s point of view, however, there are challenges. This character may not be as emotionally engaged in what’s happening as the major players are, and she may have less at stake in the outcome. Then the reader will have less at stake too, and we may lose him.

It’s likely to be awkward to force our first-person POV character to be on the spot whenever plot developments happen. Luckily there are myriad other ways to keep her informed. If you’re writing a contemporary story, you have snail mail, email, texting, tweeting, cell phones, land-line phones, Facebook and the like, as well as news reports on radio and television. You can even make blogs convey information. If you’re writing a historical novel, you can use period methods: telegrams, messengers, smoke signals, whatever. If your genre is sci-fi or fantasy or the paranormal, the options are legion, and you can invent more. In Ella Enchanted I gave Ella a magic book to clue her in about events she wouldn’t know of otherwise.

A character’s absence can ratchet up the tension. Say for example that Marcus is under house arrest. His cell phone and computer have been confiscated. He found out just before his detention that his friend Michael is a spy. He needs to warn his pal and secret cellmate Millicent, who is to meet Michael this afternoon – but he can’t. Will she reveal secrets Michael shouldn’t know? Aaa! She’ll endanger everyone and their cause. Marcus worries and the reader worries.

What’s more, in terms of tension, the main character can question the reliability of the intelligence he’s getting. Marcus sends a verbal message to Millicent through his neighbor’s young daughter. The daughter returns with a note from Millicent. Marcus is surprised that Millicent would put anything in writing. He wonders if the daughter actually delivered his message or delivered it to the right person, Millicent.

ToNature, I’m assuming you’ve chosen third person for plot reasons. You might try switching back to first person for the beginning of your story so you can get into your main character’s thoughts and emotions. Then, when you’re comfortable in her skin, translate what you’ve got back into third and keep going. If the writing gets stiff again, revert to first. If you have to, you can write a whole book in this back-and-forth way.

Or, you might pick a different first-person narrator, as I suggested before. Try choosing one who feels strongly about your main, an interesting character in his own right who can bring your story to life with his particular take on your main.

It’s also possible to shift between a first and third-person narrative. For those parts when your main can tell her own tale, let her. But when she can’t, have your third-person narrator step in – or a different first-person character.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Read or reread a Sherlock Holmes story; some are short. Tell it from Sherlock Holmes’s POV. He has a strange mind and is probably not a linear thinker. Reflect his thought process through his voice. What does he think of Dr. Watson?

∙ Continue the story of Marcus, stuck in his house while events swirl around him. Help him find out what’s going on and influence events.

∙ Tell the fairy tale Snow White from several points of view: the evil queen, the hunter, a dwarf, Snow White’s father, her pet gerbil, as reported in the castle gazette. Or pick a different fairy tale and other points of view. As I suggested before, rewrite a swath of one of your stories from several POVs.

Have fun, and save what you write!