Pursuing Water

“When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.”
- Kurt Vonnegut

Tell me what your character wants in your first chapter.

What is their basic want, the one that propels their actions for the first fifty pages of your work?

My main character, Mary, wants a little bit of peace. That’s all she’s asking for. Can it really be that hard, finding peace?

The important thing about this is that I don’t allow peace of any sort to come anywhere near Mary. In fact, I throw more demands on her so she’s not likely to find peace for the entire book.

What is your main character looking for? What about your secondary characters? Your romantic hero, if you have one?

I know there are a number of you reading this blog but for some reason are reluctant to comment…so I’d love to meet you for the first time through this exercise!

Because We Must

I run great risk of failing. It may be that I shall encounter ruin
where I look for reputation and a career of honor. The chances are
perhaps more in favour of ruin than of success. But, whatever may be
the chances, I shall go on as long as any means of carrying on the
fight are at my disposal.

 - Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) English Novelist

I love this quote. As creative persons (a.k.a. writers), we continually run the risk of failing, and failing miserably.

There will be readers who e-mail us, not to praise us, but to complain that the ending was horrible, that no man would ever say those words, that no woman would ever react that way. They will tell you that your facts are wrong, that trains didn’t exist then…even if your pile of research books sitting beside you as you politely type a response say otherwise.

There will be agents who say your work simply isn’t publishable at this time. Not because it isn’t good writing, but because you missed the trend train, and your topic has “come and gone.” Still other agents will request a partial, or even a full, only to back out for some reason which cuts your heart in two.

Your publisher, should you find one, may put a Fabio-like beast of a man on your cover, despite your claims that you’re writing a sweet romance. Why do they do this to you? Because they know, really, they know, that sex sells. Even to people that don’t want to see sex on the cover. Even if the book doesn’t have an ounce of actual sex within it. Go figure.

So why do we keep writing? Why do we pursue a published career? Why do we do this to ourselves?

Because we must. It’s what we know, it’s what we breathe (sometimes), it’s what drives us through the Writer’s Block and Purple Prose and 2D characters. We have a story to tell, we writers, one that cannot be silenced by external distractions, or doubts.

Continue to write, despite your fears you’re not as good as you think you are. You’re only right if you stop writing, stop practicing, stop reading. Everything will fall into place, and you’ll find yourself with a work that shines. Always know that you have at least one person in your corner rooting for you, and her name is Worderella.

Anthropologic Laboratory

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: what is human existence?
 - Milan Kundera (Czech writer)

Fellow novelists, do you feel as though you question the foundations of human existence in your writing?

Perhaps this may not be so for romance writers, or not felt as deeply.

Or perhaps it is felt deepest by romance writers, as they often deal with humanity on an intimate level, in terms of emotions and heartbreak.

I read this quote days ago and have been mulling over it since. You see, while re-typing First Draft B into the Second Draft, I’ve come upon a snag in which I feel like I’m writing crap. Which is heartbreaking and odd, as I’m very much in love with this novel as a whole.

In my quest to Show Not Tell, I’m afraid I’ve written a chapter of talking heads. It may be the most dynamic way to get the information across, but is dynamic the best way, after all? I’ve striven against relying completely on my narration, but it is my narration which I often find to be my strongest bit of writing at any given time.

In any case, my lack of sleep as I transition into graduate school has not helped my editing process, as my sour mood only makes my work look amateur when a month ago it looked shiny, enthusiastic, and sincere.

I’m thinking of cutting my posting schedule back from twice a week to once a week in response. As much as I love discussing writing as a whole, I need to do some actual writing if this book is to be seen by someone other than myself.

And I still search for a beta reader, as it seems I’m past the point/not entirely in the market for a critique partner (grad school and all). Which is unfortunate, for I was beyond excited about Crit Partner Match. This is why it’s best to do one’s research before jumping in.

So tell me: do you ponder human existence in your work? Is that the underlying question to all our writing?

On Writing the First Three Chapters

Crazy as it may seem, I don’t worry about the first three chapters. Wait, I take that back. I do worry. I worry about them a lot. But at the same time, I’m not too worried about them.

See, the thing is, and I hope Jaye is reading this…

I almost never keep the first draft of my first three chapters.

“What?” you cry. “How is that possible? They are the foundations to your plot! They set up everything that will come, and has most recently been, in your work!”

And that is an excellent and valid point. To which I respond, “Yes, but since you wrote them first, most likely, I bet they’re a pretty bad example of your writing style, in comparison to later chapters.”

Your later chapters are almost always better, at least in terms of the first draft, because you…

1. Know your characters better
2. Know your plot better
3. Know the overall purpose of your work better (a.k.a. theme or thesis)

So what do I do? I force myself to move past chapters one through three. When writing a first draft, or even a second draft, I focus on the end goals: Can I finish this work? Will it accomplish the themes, plot twists, emotions, and subtle messages I’m trying to impart?

What I really obsess about is the ending. It is the ending, I feel, that defines the beginning. To me, the ending is that sometime-heartbreaking goodbye to a friend. And when we say goodbye to someone, what is one of the first things we start to do? Reminisce about how that friendship began. We want to remember where we came from. That is how I know where my beginning should start. I need to know the ending before I can really understand and write the beginning.

Perhaps that doesn’t make any sense. So here is something else that you should always do with your beginning: Start with action. In fact, you should always…

Start with the action that jumpstarts all the other actions in your work.

This typically means meeting the hero for our heroine in romance. Or our detective finding our murder victim in a mystery. Or something catastrophic that will end the world as we know it in a science fiction.

So once you’ve finished writing the ending, go back to the beginning. Does the beginning make sense, in terms of the ending? Does the ending correlate/follow from the beginning? If not, you need to rewrite those first three chapters.

Does this help? Have I made any sense at all? I wrote this post in reponse to a question Jaye had about his first three chapters, both how to do them, and how to get past them. So if you have suggestions for Jaye, let us know in the comments.

How to be a Computer-based Beta Reader

Please excuse another post off the Tuesday/Thursday schedule.

From August 22 to August 31, I’ll be without ready access to the internet and I need guest bloggers! If you would like to be a guest, contact me by Thursday, August 21, with your guest post. Guidelines here. If I don’t use your post that week, don’t worry. I’ll definitely use it later and will notify you the week I use it.

Now that we’re all connected using Crit Partner Match (if you haven’t joined, you should!), it occurred to me that many of us are computer-based beta readers, which can be a monumental task. So today’s tidbit will provide useful tricks in Microsoft Word 2003 to help you become a more efficient and productive beta reader. If you use a different program, comment with your reviewing hints to help your compatriots.

First: What is a beta reader?

I’ll admit to not knowing what this term meant even a year ago. A beta reader is the new term for a critique partner, it seems to me, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Wikipedia states that a beta reader is a reader who looks over a written work with a “critical eye with the aim of improving grammar, spelling, characterization, and general style of a story prior to its release to the general public.”

Some beta readers do more than others. Some refuse to edit your grammar, because that’s basic stuff. Others will get so nitpicky you’ll want to tear your hair out. So make sure to discuss your writing and editing styles with whomever you pair up with (and this can be a one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many relationship).

In comparison, the alpha reader is the writer or author of the written work.

Now onto the editing.

Microsoft Word 2003 is the software I’ll talk about today because it’s the one I have the most expertise in. For the record, Word 2007 has the same features, but the buttons to use them are in different locations (the ribbon).

Track Changes: Deletion

Sometimes when you’re reading through the work, you have to delete a sentence or paragraph. But how do you do this so the alpha reader knows the change you made? There’s this awesome module called Track Changes that will note every change you’ve made to the document by adding a sidenote that you can hide or show at will. See an example screenshot. To use Track Changes, do the following:

1. Click View » Toolbars » Reviewing in the menu bar. This will give you a new toolbar that gives you the option to make comments, track changes, and highlight.
2. Click the little icon that looks like a piece of lined paper with a tiny sun in the top left corner and a pencil in the bottom right on top of it. If you hover your mouse a little tooltip should appear saying “Track changes.” This is what you want.
3. Now, any change you make to the document will be recorded.
4. If you don’t want to see the tracked changes, you can click the Show button which allows you to select what is visible and what is hidden.
5. If you hit Track Changes again, it will stop recording all your actions after you hit the icon. It does not get rid of the changes you made previous to hitting the icon, however, so don’t freak out.

Track Changes: Rewording, Reorganizing, Adding text

Follow the same steps as the Track Changes: Deletion section. Tracking the changes will also note any additions you make, and I think will also note if you move something. Maybe. If it doesn’t, then you always have the option to comment.

Commenting on the Work

This is my new favorite toy in Word 2003/2007. Using the same Reviewing toolbar, you can comment whatever text you’ve selected with your mouse. It adds a rounded rectangular bubble to the right of the page with a line to the text that you selected for the comment. See an example screenshot. To comment, do the following:

1. Click View » Toolbars » Reviewing in the menu bar. This will give you a new toolbar that gives you the option to make comments, track changes, and highlight.
2. Click the little icon that looks like a yellow/tan-colored Post-it note with a tiny sun in the top left corner. If you hover your mouse over the icon, a little tooltip should appear saying “Insert Comment.” This is what you want.
3. Now, a bubble should appear to the right of your text, with a blinking cursor.
4. Type your thought.
5. When you’re done, click outside of the bubble. Now, if you hover over the text you selected to comment, you should see the bubble highlight itself. You might also see the text from your comment hovering above the text…it depends on how you do it.

The really neat thing about this is that if someone else opens the same document with your comments on their computer, and they start to add comments, Word will tell there is a difference. To account for this difference, the colors of the comment bubbles will change depending on the computer/owner of the Word program.

You can also navigate through the document based on previous/next comment. Pretty cool, huh?

Networking for Writers: Crit Partner Match

Hi all, I know I’m disrupting my posting schedule, but this is too cool to pass up. Zoe Winters, our guest blogger today, clued me in on a new networking opportunity that is both fun and useful, too. It’s called Crit Partner Match, and the premise is that it’s like eHarmony.com or Match.com… but for writers looking for a critique partner. I’ve already set up a profile and wrote my introduction in the Historical forum.

So join us at http://critpartnermatch.ning.com/. I hope to see you there, no matter your genre!

And make sure to read Zoe’s wonderful post on changing your mindset so you can acually accomplish your goals.

“Going to” not “Want to”

A guest post from a new writing accomplice, Zoe Winters. She writes to encourage you to find your dream and follow through, using the television show The Biggest Loser as a classic example. So read on, and tell us your dreams!

One of my heroes is Ali Vincent.  If you don’t know who this is, she was the winner of the last season of “The Biggest Loser,” a weight loss reality show.  Midway through the season she was eliminated, though the show planned to bring back a couple of contestants from home who earned it.

In the elimination room right after she was eliminated she said: “I am going to be the next biggest loser.”  And she said it with such conviction, that though most of us thought she was loopy, we believed her a little bit.  She became the underdog.  When she was brought back on the show, she became a favorite for the win.

As it got down to the wire, both she and Kelly desperately wanted to be the first girl biggest loser.  Kelly talked daily about how badly she wanted to be the first girl to win and how cool it would be.  But she never said any more than that she wanted it.  No one doubted that she wanted it.  And she worked hard for it.  But she didn’t get it.  Ali did.

Between the two, I can only find one difference.  Ali kept saying “I am going to be the next biggest loser.”  Going to.  Not Want to.  It stopped being a dream and started being a goal.  Of course saying you are going to do something, doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen.

If Ali had failed she would have had “I’m going to be the next biggest loser,” hanging over her head forever, because she said it repeatedly on national television.  Some people thought she was “too cocky,” but I don’t see it that way.  She was single-minded.  This was her goal and it was happening one way or another and if it didn’t happen she would go down fighting.

If she had failed she would have picked herself up off the ground and kept going.  “The Biggest Loser” was a one time opportunity, but she would have found something else impossible to do and would have done it.  Because that’s who she is.  We need more Ali Vincents in the world.

When approaching your writing, what are your goals?  Do you see them as just dreams?  Things you “wish” would or could happen?  Things that would be really cool if they happened?

Do yourself a favor, decide what you’re “going” to do.  Take your dream and own it.  There are no guarantees that this will get you where you want to go, but when you take control and subtly shift a dream to a goal, it shores up your belief in your ability to reach that goal.  And with strong belief comes creative ways to start moving toward the prize.

Zoe Winters writes paranormal romance.  She can be found at http://zoewinters.wordpress.com  Her novella, Kept, will be released as a free e-book from her website in October.  Her novel, Save My Soul, will be released serially as a free podcast, release date to be announced.

What Happens to an Author When She Finishes Editing?

Last week, I finished the paper edits of First Draft B. Cue the fanfare, tears of happiness, and confetti. Now it’s time to pull off the gloves and re-type the entire thing with the new edits to see what we’ve got. And so begins the Second Draft.

Now, there are multiple things an author feels once she or he gets past another stage in the writing process…

• Fear that what you wrote stinks beyond belief.
• Elation that you finished it, you really finished it.
• Depressed that at some point, you’re going to have to let someone else read it and tell you exactly what they think about it.
• Proud that, upon reading over it, you like more than you hate.

I know some of you are reading this now because of my editing workshop, and I bet you’re wondering if I followed my own advice.

Yes, I did print it out, put it in a binder, and not look at it for a month.

The month I finished First Draft B, I graduated from my engineering program, moved back home for a summer internship between undergrad and graduate school, and visited with family for two weeks. So I didn’t have time to edit.

Lack of time didn’t stop me from lugging the binder everywhere in the desperate hope I’d sneak an edit in, though.

I was brutal with edits.

As soon as I had to read something twice, I either cut it out or re-wrote it. I cut an entire chapter because it dragged the plot and made Mary look whiny, which she isn’t. I re-wrote at least three chapters because they head-hopped, were disjointed, and didn’t make sense.

My biggest writing vice is that I tell too much.

This is a problem because I write historical fiction, and I know more information than will show up in the final product. I had paragraphs that sounded like I was channeling a history professor. Yikes.

To combat this, I read a number of books set in the same time period to see how other authors handled the problem.

I then went through a quick bout of depression because I felt like I couldn’t do it as well as the other authors. Turns out I needed more sleep, because once I got a good nine hours, I was ready to edit again.

I wrote First Draft B, a whopping 99,899 words, in present tense.

Yes, Trentwood’s Orphan is historical fiction. Yes, I know “history” implies “past.” No, I was not dropped on my head as a child.

I wrote in present tense because I couldn’t get into Mary’s head. She’s the opposite of my last heroine, Veronica, who was impetuous, a bit ditzy, funny, and determined to get her way. Mary, on the other hand, is quiet, cautious, analyzes everything, and does her accounting when she’s stressed. I’m more like Mary than Veronica, so Mary should have been easy to write. She was surprisingly harder. By writing in present tense, I felt the immediacy and was able to gauge Mary’s reactions much better.

I also wrote in present tense because it cleaned my writing. There is no “had had” syndrome in present tense. The action either happened, is happening, or will happen. But now that the experimentation phase is complete, I need to re-write the entire thing in past tense.

(Need help discovering passive writing? The Writer’s Technology Companion wrote a tutorial to highlight passive writing in Microsoft Word 2003.)

What are some of your writing rituals? Do you have a trick that you use to improve your writing? Are you finally convinced I’m insane? Let us know in the comments!

Focus on those Nitty Gritty Details

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
Finding Nemo

I hope you’re following Dory’s advice and staying persistent… just keep swimming (writing)!

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed yet, but editing really is my favorite part of the creative writing process. I know I might be alone in this, and that’s ok. My goal this week was to help you see that editing is not as hard as it seems… it just takes patience, persistence, and motivation. Today I want to leave you with some ideas to help you edit on a very detailed level. Beware, those faint of heart and annoyed by long posts, as this just might be my longest ever.

Timeline

Set up a timeline for editing your book. Do you want to finish editing a chapter a day? Whatever it is, make a pact with yourself to go through your draft once only. Be determined to catch every mistake the first time through. This will keep you focused and efficient.

Give yourself a break if life gets in the way of your editing timeline, too. There is nothing worse than feeling guilty about not working, and worse yet, the more upset you are with yourself about not working, the more your guilt will build. To the point that you won’t want to edit. Always, always, always avoid feeling like you don’t want to touch your work.

Editing the Beginning

This is by far the hardest and most frustrating part of the book to edit, it seems. Therefore, I’m going to apply this week’s editing tips to the introduction of my first book. That way you can see an example of how I’m thinking, and hopefully find similarities in your own work to know how to edit.

I started my first book, Catching the Rose, with narrative description because I read classics when younger and that’s what I was used to. It never occurred to me that reader preferences would change in 100+ years.

Silly me. Today’s readers expect to begin with action, whether by/to the main character or by/to a character who will affect the main character later. So let’s see an example of what my first paragraphs were, and what they would be if I were writing the book now.

Tell Me, Don’t Show Me

Here is a conversation I hope I never see in your work, ever.

“Hi Belinda.”

“Hey Marcie. What’s up?”

“Nothing much.” Marcie sighs into the phone. “Making dinner. Hubby’s coming home soon and he gets grumpy if I don’t have it ready.”

“Oh man,” Belinda murmurs. ”What’re you making? Spaghetti? Gotta love spaghetti.”

Snore, snore, snore, right? How many of you have heard a conversation like this while walking around a store? A conversation about nothing that annoys everyone else who has to hear it? Don’t force it on your readers or they’ll throw your book against the wall.

As important as showing is, telling is equally important when used at the right time

Let’s define some terms, first. Exposition is when the author stops to describe something to us, say, a house. We need to know what this house looks like because the main character is about to sneak inside, but it doesn’t forward the plot at all. Narration is when the description forwards the plot along, often by describing emotions or thoughts, or when transitioning from one scene/location to another.

As you can see, there isn’t a big difference here, so I’m going to collapse both terms into simple ‘narrative.’

Now, narrative is imperative for prose fiction: it’s what defines prose from poetry (among other things, of course). But how do we know when to show and when to tell?

Use narration to set the scene.

Do this quickly. You don’t want to disrupt your reader too long, which is what you’re doing whenever you rely on narration. This is the most traditional way to use narration, because it works. A simple paragraph describing the scene does more than a page of dialogue talking about the trees, the sky, the buildings, and the characters’ moods. Let’s see an example:

It was night, not that Belinda could tell the difference with the blindfold on. Her hands pulsed with a dull ache thanks to the rough rope knotted around her wrists. She had lost feeling in her legs hours ago. Her cheeks were sticky with tears, and the old sock in her mouth choked her.

There it is again. Heavy footfalls shuffling up the wooden staircase toward her.

This narration tells us everything we need to know. What time of day it is, that Belinda is panicked, tied up, has no idea where she is, and dreads the sound of heavy footsteps coming toward her.

Use narration when you need to cover a block of time or a boring conversation.

We don’t need to know every detail, just tell us the information we need to know to keep up. This includes generic introductions between characters, or when a couple of days go by in your plot timeline that don’t have any real action or events to maintain interest. Never do extended flashback scenes if you can help it. Going back to my opening example:

A week went by before Belinda called Marcie. The phone rang four times before Marcie picked up, and there was a definite hesitation in her voice. Belinda ground her teeth as they wasted time talking about how Marcie was making dinner for her husband. Forget your husband, Belinda wanted to scream, and get out while you still can.

I could have written this narration two ways: Marcie upset about her husband’s demands, or the way I wrote it with Belinda not understanding how her friend can stand her husband’s demands. Or a third way, with the husband coming home and wanting to know why Marcie’s gabbing on the phone instead of making dinner.

Use narration when you’re switching locations, moods, characters…

This is the smoothest way of letting your reader know that something is shifting. For example, you can end a chapter with your character saying, “I bet Frank’s sneaking his way into the girl’s locker room again.” And then start the next chapter with a teacher dragging Frank by his ear out of the girl’s locker room. You gave a hint about where Frank will be the next time we read about him, and not only is he there, he’s making us laugh that he got caught. Silly Frank.

Use narration when you’re giving your reader information that your characters don’t have.

This is used all the time in romance, as well as political thrillers, mysteries, suspense… We as readers know that when the bad guy promises not to do it again that he’s lying, but the hero believes him for some reason. We know that when the romantic hero says he doesn’t care about the heroine that he does, it’s just that he probably doesn’t realize it yet. Foreshadowing is a great example of this as well.

The Point

The only time you shouldn’t use narration is when it is better to use action and dialogue. The only time you shouldn’t use action and dialogue is when it is better to use narration. Sounds like a vicious cycle, doesn’t it? Here are things to keep in mind when deciding to show or tell:

1. Always and only tell your reader what they need to know for the plot and characters to make sense.
2. Don’t distract the reader with your writing mechanics. Too much narration, description, or dialogue will throw your reader off, so try to maintain a healthy balance.
3. Don’t summarize important conversations, only the ones that don’t cover anything new.
4. Always reveal something new. Never rehash what you told your reader earlier, they’ve seen it already.
5. Don’t let the narrative run away from you. If it goes longer than a paragraph or two, take a step back. Does your reader really need all that information? Or can you see them thinking, “Come on, already!”

Comment with your thoughts on ‘telling’ to enter the free Worderella critique contest. Do you have trouble integrating narration into your action without slowing the plot too much? Does telling come easy to you, but showing is hard? Or vice versa?

Books to Buy: Strunk & White’s Elements of Style (free online version)

Links to reference: Why nouns and verbs are your friends, Active vs passive verbs, Using modifiers objectively

This five part series is my participation in Lynn Viehl’s Left Behind & Loving It (LB&LI) convention. I’ll tackle a different facet of editing each day:

1. Monday: Put that shitty first draft away
2. Tuesday: Be brutally honest
3. Wednesday: Show me, don’t tell me
4. Thursday: Tell me, don’t show me
5. Friday: Focus on those nitty gritty details

Read more for details about winning a free Worderella critique at the end of this week!