{"id":1001,"date":"2018-10-10T09:09:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T13:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2018-10-10T09:09:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T13:09:38","slug":"quick-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/10\/quick-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the post: Ogre Enchanted<\/em> will be out on October 16th\u2013in six days! Hooray! I\u2019m not touring this time, but I will be doing several events close to home. If you\u2019re in the southern New York-Connecticut area, check them out here on the website by clicking on In Person<\/em>. I would love to see you!<\/p>\n

And this: Since the Myers-Briggs Personality Test has come up here more than once as a character-development tool, I was interested to hear a report on it on the radio. Here\u2019s a link to the episode for anyone who\u2019s interested: https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2018\/09\/22\/650019038\/how-the-myers-briggs-personality-test-began-in-a-mothers-living-room-lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On August 9, 2018, Sunny Days wrote, I have a question about my novel. Most of the plot involves my MC trying to save a city from destruction. Because it\u2019s so important to the plot, I\u2019m trying to find a way to make the readers feel connected to the city, but I don\u2019t have a lot of time to introduce it. Also, I can\u2019t find a realistic way for the MC to care about the city. She\u2019s lived there for two years, but she has no family members living there and her closest friend comes on the quest with her. However, the city symbolizes a safe haven for her. Does anyone have advice for making the readers feel for something they have only just been introduced to?<\/em><\/p>\n

A back-and-forth followed:<\/p>\n

Melissa Mead: Where did she live before she came to this city? You could contrast the old place with the new one: warm terracotta roofs versus gray slate, cheerful chatter versus shrieking trains, the smell of bakeries and stables versus a tannery\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Sunny Days: The city is themed around a medieval castle, but it\u2019s placed in the Rocky Mountains. My MC grew up in a small town in Colorado.<\/em><\/p>\n

Carley Ann: Maybe readers would fall in love with your city quickly if the people who live in that city were good people. You know, flawed, imperfect, but the kind of clever humans a reader would want to be with. The city could be like a haven of sorts?<\/em><\/p>\n

Song4myKing: Being and symbolizing a safe haven is a pretty strong reason for the MC to care, and it could be for the reader as well. Details are important, I think, especially the pleasant, homey details that give a sense of connection. And don\u2019t forget the people. Even if she has no family or super close friends in the city, there are sure to be other people she\u2019s interacted with in the last two years. Even if she hasn\u2019t thought about liking them until now, she\u2019s sure to hate the very thought of the city being destroyed with them inside. If the reader can get just a few glimpses of ordinary life in the city, and meet a few of the people \u2013 ordinary, working people, that you\u2019d see every day, but with little quirks that drive home that fact that these are individuals \u2013 they\u2019ll care.<\/em><\/p>\n

I know I\u2019ve seen it done well, but I can\u2019t think of a good example right now. I think it also helps to establish this setting before bringing in the threat. You probably can threaten it first if it works best that way, but when I\u2019m introduced to something in a story that I know is possibly gonna end, I\u2019m tempted to hold it at arm\u2019s length and not get attached to it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Samantha: Flash backs! Try writing a few scenes from the MC\u2019s point of view that are laced with memories of her time in the city. They don\u2019t have to express her love for the city, but they could instead express her viewing other people\u2019s love for the city. For example she could have a memory of seeing a mother outside her house with her daughter and the daughter is running around skipping pebbles across the street and the mother is doing wash or some such everyday task. She could reflect on how much this city means to other people and how their lives are completely tied up in the city, even if it has no sentimental value to herself. Make the reader feel for the people of the city and fear their home being in danger. The people that live inside a house make it a home \u2013 the same thing goes for this city. When the reader realizes that there are actual characters inside the city they feel for them.<\/em><\/p>\n

These are terrific!<\/p>\n

A friend who has lived in New York City all his life is very uneasy in the subway, while the subway is one of the places I feel most at home, although some unpleasant things have happened to me down there, one of them completely gross. But the subway, despite delays, is usually the fastest way to get from x to y. When I was a kid it gave me independence. At ten, I was allowed to ride by myself. It took me and my friends to museums, to ice skating in the winter, to the beach in the summer. Because of the subway, the world was my oyster!<\/p>\n

And I have a couple of powerfully good memories. One is of falling asleep on my ride home from work. I lived at the last stop, and when I woke up, the car I was in was empty, and my purse was no longer on my lap. There it lay, on the floor, five feet away, with everything inside: wallet, money, ID. If I had a credit card, it was there, too. Cell phones and the Internet were far in the future. Obviously, this was a long time ago. My husband and I were just starting out. Losing twenty dollars would have hurt! And the knowledge that I deserved the loss would have hurt, too.<\/p>\n

Even earlier, when I was thirteen, I took an art class a subway ride away from home, and I always returned during rush hour, when the subway cars were so crowded you couldn\u2019t raise your hand from your side to scratch your nose. In such a car, I managed to drop my carton of forty-eight crayons, the maximum back then\u2013<\/p>\n

\u2013and strangers contorted themselves to get down to the floor to help me pick them up. In my memory, which may be flawed, not a crayon was missing at the end.<\/p>\n

I treasure these memories of \u201cthe kindness of strangers,\u201d and they overshadow the bad ones, which are inconsequential in comparison. They connect me, not to all of New York City, but to the subway.<\/p>\n

We can use these sort of events to create our MC\u2019s love for a place, and we can do it in a hurry. The two main criteria are:<\/p>\n

\u2219 my MC\u2019s character\u2013what she needs and what\u2019s important to her;<\/p>\n

\u2219 that the event has an emotional impact.<\/p>\n

We can ask ourselves what our character needs most, what she\u2019s desperate for. We can make a list! Here are a few ideas that might go on it:<\/p>\n

\u2219 friendship;<\/p>\n

\u2219 someone who listens;<\/p>\n

\u2219 money;<\/p>\n

\u2219 a doctor;<\/p>\n

\u2219 a snake;<\/p>\n

\u2219 a can of tuna fish;<\/p>\n

\u2219 to catch a break.<\/p>\n

A reminder: we let our minds go free when we make lists. Nothing is stupid.<\/p>\n

Now we can list occurrences that might, at least temporarily, meet her need. Suppose she needs to catch a break, here are three things that might go on the list:<\/p>\n

\u2219 She runs for a bus, which she really has no hope of getting to in time, and the driver waits for her.<\/p>\n

\u2219 She finds a twenty dollar bill in a park, and no one is around to claim it.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Without her knowledge, her backpack has come more than half unzipped. Her prized letter of recommendation is about to fall out when a stranger warns her. Minus the letter of recommendation, this has happened to me more than once in one of my favorite cities, New York City.<\/p>\n

I recommend continuing until we have, say, ten bullet points to choose among. In my opinion, we can expand two of them in our story. More, and the reader will feel we\u2019re stacking the deck.<\/p>\n

Last, we have to connect the events with the place, to make it feel good for her, and this, too, goes to her character and the way she frames the world. If, for instance, she understands her life as being controlled by fate, she may think that the bus driver who waited for her would have waited in any city, because he was destined to, or that he waited because today is her lucky day. In that case, we have to direct her attention to the fact that this good thing and one other did happen here, and her fate may be bound up with the city. We can make a list about how to do that, using her fatalistic world view. Just saying, sky writing would be on my list.<\/p>\n

To summarize, to create an attachment to a place quickly and economically, we should know\u2013or make up–the needs of our MC and then create events that satisfy those needs. Naturally, the satisfaction takes place in a small way\u2013we don\u2019t want to solve our story\u2019s main conflict. After that, we have to make sure the events are linked in her mind with the location, in this case a city,\u00a0where they occurred.<\/p>\n

The key is emotion. Events that trigger feeling rise to a level of importance beyond the ordinary.\u00a0Of course, this works for ill as well as good. We\u2019re not likely to think fondly of the place where something bad happened.\u00a0And it works for people as well as places. We\u2019re inclined to like the bus driver who waited for us without knowing anything else about him. First impressions are powerful and fast.<\/p>\n

Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219 Think of a memory, or more than one, in your life that ties you in a good way to a place: a house, a park, a street, a store, a whole city. Imagine a character for whom the occurrence would be meaningful, but in a different way and for a different reason from the way if affected you. Write the scene when it happens.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Go back, using the above, and write a scene from your character\u2019s earlier life that demonstrates why the occurrence means so much to her.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Pick a need from my list or yours of needs and write a scene in which that need is gratified. Include the way your MC understands what happened. Extra credit if a medieval castle is involved!<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the post: Ogre Enchanted will be out on October 16th\u2013in six days! Hooray! I\u2019m not touring this time, but I will be doing several events close to home. If you\u2019re in the southern New York-Connecticut area, check them out here on the website by clicking on In Person. I would love to see you! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1002,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions\/1002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}