More on Starting a Novel

Reading a wide variety of mss, I find this to be one of the weakest areas: openings. Striking just the right note is difficult. What do you include just as the curtain opens on your novel?

Typical advice:

• Start with something exciting.
• Grab the reader by the throat and never let them go
• Jump right in.

Yes, yes. I know.
But what’s missing in many openings is a character to care about. And I am confused about where I am in the story.

Why Should the Reader Care?

A helpful book in this regard is Reading Like a Writer, by Francine Prose. She encourages writers to consider the appropriateness of each and every word. With a class, she’ll often read a novel’s opening and the class considers alternatives to almost every word.

Taking a page from her, here’s a couple openings of my WIP.

“Eliot Winston! Come here.”
That Mrs. Lopez, her voice cut through even the jumpy music from the loudspeakers. I was sure her voice could cut through anything, even concrete. “Yes, ma’am,” I said and steered Marj toward The Voice.

In this opening, we know the main character right away. We assume that Mrs. Lopez is also a main character (incorrect: she’s only a supporting character). We’re in a place with loud music and there’s another character named Marj there, but we have no idea who she is. From the sentence construction (That Mrs. Lopez, her voice. . . ) we get a touch of the character’s voice and understand that maybe he’s jumpy. Jumpy, concrete–these two words are perhaps setting up the emotional context of the story.

The main problem with this opening is that Mrs. Lopez is highlighted too much and it’s unclear where we are. It’s confusing with three characters introduced so rapidly. Where should the reader focus? In spite of the demanding tone of Mrs. Lopez and the questions raised, mostly, the reader is confused.

Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.
Standing outside the gymnasium doors, a drum beat throbbed. Yellow light streamed from the second story windows, the ones Toby and I looked out of when we sat at the top of the bleachers. I couldn’t hear the music’s melody, just the drum beat: ba-boom, ba-boom.
The Back-to-School party at Wilma Rudolph Elementary School had already started.

Tension is set up right away with the drumbeats; perhaps the character’s heart is also beating hard, an implication that certainly works. It’s very clear that we are outside a gymnasium at a back-to-school party. There’s a sense of anticipation, of wanting to know what will happen when this character steps into the gymnasium and this party.

It’s a quieter opening in some ways, but the anticipation of entering the party will carry the reader a few more paragraphs. So, I have those paragraphs to make the reader CARE about what will happen.

Toby is mentioned now, and he’s the character’s best friend. It’s better to introduce him indirectly at the beginning than to introduce Mrs. Lopez.

Where Does the Engine Start?

Sol Stein, in Stein on Writing has another hint at what works in writing openings to novels. He asks, where does the engine get started? By this he means where does the reader’s interest sit up and take notice, the point at which “the reader decides not to put the book down.” And often, it’s with a single word or phrase.

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below. — opening of The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.

Wow, what a lot gets accomplished in this snippet. Time, location and conflict. It’s the contrast between finest bridge and precipitated that catches my interest. Why did the finest bridge break?

Write the Opening Last

It’s said that Richard Peck, the great YA writer, works on his whole novel, then circles back to write the first chapter last. By the time you finish writing a whole novel, it’s often true that the opening that please you so much at the beginning is no longer appropriate. Sometimes, you need to write or rewrite extensively the opening to match the what the novel has become. Either way, the opening is extremely important and worth several looks before the novel mss is sent off to an agent or editor.

It's Here.

Sometimes when I read the opening of a manuscript, I’m totally confused.

Trying too hard to grab the reader. These openings start with something startling. OK. Nothing wrong with that, except that often the event comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. It’s only there for shock value and the reader is left wondering where we are and why we are there. And why s/he should care.

Not enough context Part of the problem is the reader isn’t oriented. Where are we? Think of time of day, time of year, geographic location, stage of a relationship.

Action/reaction sequence out of order. Finally,the events can be out of order. The normal sequence of events is action-thought/emotion-reaction. In an attempt to catch a reader’s attention, though, writers are tempted to give the reaction first.

Terry screamed.

The reader has no idea why someone screamed and in order to explain, you must backtrack. Not good.

Walking down the wooded path, Terry tripped. She screamed.

Now, the reader has the action-reaction in a clear sequence. Not confused and just as hooked. Notice that we also have a hint at setting.

If you want, you can add an emotion.

Walking down the wooded path, Terry tripped. Falling, she thought of her new ballet slippers waiting for tonight’s rehearsal. She screamed.

Now, events are in correct time sequence, we know where we are, and why we should care.

It's Here.

Welcome Mat: Your Novel’s Title

When you are brainstorming titles, think of it as a welcome mat. A title’s job is to bring readers into your novel, story, or picture book. This is why the title is often changed by the marketing/publicity department: they have their fingers on the pulse of the audience and have a better idea of what will be appealing.

Improved Titles

Here are some titles, as originally proposed. Fortunately, these lame titles were changed! See if you can match them to the well-known title below. (See answers below.)

• 1. The Mute?
• 2. Private Fleming, his Various Battles
• 3. To Climb the Wall
• A. The Red Badge of Courage
• B. The Blackboard Jungle
• C. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Sol Stein, in his book, Stein on Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies, emphasizes that titles are sales tools, an invitation to the world to enter your story. He recommends finding an apt metaphor for the story, preferably one in iambic pentameter.

Titles look outward to the audience and tease. They lay a Welcome mat before the threshold of the story. Today, try writing 20 different titles for your story and then mix and match the words from the 20 until you have 20 new ones. Read them to friends and ask which title makes them want to read the book. Anytime you’re stuck on a revision, play with titles.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

My daughter suggested the title for my teacher resource book on prewriting activities for students. She was thinking about brainstorming and storms and writing with pen and paper and came up with this: Paper Lightning. The editor loved it and the title stuck.
Answers: 1C, 2A, 3B.

It's Here.

Have Your Pity Party: But Then Get to Work

When you get the letter from an editor about a revision, what do you do?

Frankly, I get mad. How dare that misguided editor diss my perfect mss?!

Only 3 days. For novels, I give myself the luxury of three days of being mad before I get down to work. For 3 days, I get to gripe to my journal, to my DH, to myself. NEVER gripe to anyone else, of course. NEVER jeopardize a great editorial relationship by expressing your frustrations to the public.

Embrace the emotions–then move on. I think it’s important to let these emotions have their play and not deny them. Writing a novel is a bit of an ego trip anyway, don’t you think? I mean,who am I to think that I could tell a story that would hold an audience enthralled? Who am I to think that some world and some characters that I make up from my imagination–well, do you hear all the “I” and “my” in what I’m saying?

Writing a novel is an ego-trip. And when an editor gives “feedback,” my pride says that I don’t need their feedback and they are wrong anyway, because they just didn’t get it.

I’ve expressed this frustration here, too: I Don’t Want an Honest Critique

REALLY read the letter. Of course, three days later,when I have a bit of distance,I REALLY read the letter and, of course, they are right and I wonder why I didn’t see it before.

In the end, you must get over it! And get to work.

2 Common Revision Issues

Audience. I’m dealing with a couple revision letters right now. One is mostly a matter of audience. I’m working on a book for teachers about writing and the editor continually makes minor corrections that will make the material work better for teachers. Audience is everything in these revisions.

If you’re writing a mystery, you must know your audience. Picturebook? What age level child are you writing for? In every type of writing, the audience will determine much of the revision.

Clarity of Communication. A second project is more about fine-tuning the story, making the characters a bit sharper, providing a better ending and probably making the language sing a bit more. Here, it’s story, characters, story arc, and language. Either way, the editor’s goal is better communication.

I do take time to let my ego have it’s pity party; but then, I cut that short and get to work. How long do you allow for a pity party before you get down to work?

It's Here.

Character Revision: 8 Ways to Jumpstart a Make Over

You have a first draft, but you realize that your character needs work. How do you retrofit a character when you revise?

I don’t think of a personality transplant. Instead, I try to add to and enrich a character. Here are 8 suggestions on how to revise your novel’s character.

1. Change the name. The apocryphal story is that Gone with the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara was named Pansy in the first draft. Sometimes a simple name change will resonate throughout a text.
2. Change the gender. Yes, a basketball player can become a female and a cheerleader can become a male. Sometimes this change will create a unique character with lots of nuances as they work against gender stereotypes.
3. Give the character a more interesting job/role/activity. In my Creative Writing for Children class, one common problem was that students concentrated on developing the character relationships to the exclusion of anything else. They did a good job of laying out the emotional conflicts of the story. But the characters were boring because they weren’t DOING anything. For example, one YA story had a young man who was being bullied by football players. When I suggested that the main character become the sole male on the cheerleader squad, the story took on a vibrant tone. The character had something to DO, while the relationships were happening. Another student had a family in the throes of divorce and step-parents became an issue. When she gave the main character a goal of winning a title showing horses, the story became concrete and believable. The horse story became the backdrop and the mirror for the family story.
4. Create internal conflicts. What does your character want or feel? What is the opposite of that? Can your character want both things at the same time? Depending on your mss’ length, find several specific spots where you can add this type of conflict. For example, one of my current characters is bathing at a lake and takes mud and smears on himself. Then he gazes at himself in the still waters. He’s ashamed of who he is and wants to become someone greater–which is in direct opposition to his usual pride in himself.
5. Create zig-zags in the emotional pacing. If I look at the first 100 lines of Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty,

   I find these emotional zig-zags: surprise, disgust, fear, argue with Mom, defiant, sarcastic, misery at heat, annoyed, thinks of father, mother sighs, rejected, ignored, longing, stranded, misunderstood, lonely, annoyed, bored, satisfaction, hope.

   That is, in the margins of the book, I noted what emotions the main character was feeling. Many authors make the mistake of letting the character feel one overriding emotions. For example, anxiety that their father is sick. Most people, though, feel a much wider range of emotions and your characters will be more fully developed, if you give them a wide range, too. When I did this exercise for one of my mss, I found that I had about the same number of emotions in 100 lines, but not the same depth of emotions. Bray?s book had bigger zigs and zags, more variation and deeper variation. Better emotional pacing.

6. Give your character larger-than-life qualities. What would your character never say or do? Of course, they MUST say or do this very thing. And do it with memorable lines. One of my characters knows his place in his world and it’s a humble place. So, when he says he’d be Emperor some day, it enlarges his characterization.
7. Slow down. Big emotions, big scenes, big thoughts–these all require space to develop. Give your characters several pages (and lots of emotional zig-zags) to properly express the development of these Big things. The climax scenes should take up more space than any other scene in your story. Give blow-by-blow accounts of what is happening. Let us feel the emotional tensions as fortunes swing wildly.
8. Raise personal stakes. What’s at risk in the story for your character? What would make the conflicts mean more? What could raise stakes to the highest plane? This is a place where you write down 20 things and throw them out. Write down 20 more things and you might finally be past the cliches and have something worth keeping. Dig deeper to understand what really motivates this character. Why do they care about the outcome of the story? How can you make the outcome matter even more? Put more at risk. Give the character an unanticipated loss. Extend the problem to a different front, from public to personal, or vice versa. Kill off a close ally. Give the character a close call, a mini-disaster, a preliminary loss. Take away a physical asset. Undermine the character?s faith. Or the faith of a supporting character. Set a clock ticking?time is running out. In short?push characters to the edge. Other suggestions?

It's Here.

Notes from the Field

If you’re revising a novel or picture book, one step is to look at the dialogue of your characters and sharpen it. Tom Chiarella, in his book,Writing Dialogue suggests recording dialogue — yes, you get to EavesDrop! — around you for a day. At least for a couple hours. If you only use full-sentence dialogue, it can be stilted, boring and can create awkward rhythms. We convey so much in just a few words and often mean several things at once with those few words. So, here are my notes from the field for a couple hours, recording exactly what I said. Notice how MUCH you can tell about the events and what others are saying just by the snippets of dialogue. (Names and phone numbers XXX-out to protect the innocent.)

Getting daughter out of bed

I don’t have time to be gentle.
That helps.
No, you can’t consistently count on it. It’s not your car.

Before and During Breakfast

He’s not up yet.

I’ve been in there once or twice.

I need to eat.
I’ve messed around too long.
Could you clean up the kitchen, do the things you haven/t done in two days.
Where? What?
It would be easier with a comb.
Too late now.
We gotta remember to take the trash out.
Nothing.
Oh, man!
Mine.
Both of you stop.
It’s not just her. It’s you, too.
Stop! XXX, don’t take that in your room, please!
Ok.
No. No. It’s a mess.
Whose spoon is this?
Just ’sec.
Tell MMM she has e-mail.
Five?
What is it, oh, a Pokemon?
ZZZ, work on that kitchen now.
It used to be a road.
What?
Wow. How much?
$15 isn?t bad at all. Who’s sponsoring it?
Cool. It’s not bad.
I’m gonna shower.
I’m gonna shower.
Fix–transmission?
Huh? I’m totally lost.
Oh, OK.
OH, well.
Gimme kiss.
Yes. To school?
No. Gimme kiss.
Lots more than that. I’ll be in the library today. At noon. XXX has to stay ?’til 4. So we?ll just stay.
You might as well read.
Good.
Yep.
Have a good day.

Taking truck to shop

Last night, we lost 3rd and 4th gears. You can put it in gear but you have to hold the stick. 1st, 2nd & 5th are OK.
OK.
Oh, and he said to change the oil and a nut on the valve cover is missing.
Pattison. I-s-o-n. Not e-r.
We also have a Sienna van so we should be in the computer.
Let me give you his number. XXX-XXXX.
OK.
A second number XXX-XXXX. But I’ll be gone a lot, so try him first.
And give us an estimate. Just give us an idea of how long would help.
He’s coming to get me, so I?ll just go in the waiting room.
Don’t change the oil first. Let us know how much on the transmission first.
Is that all you need?

Driving to work with DH

She said she’d call you with an estimate. It’ll probably take over night.
Where’s my glasses?
My headache is coming back.
No, on the other side.
Yep.
Yeah.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
So, which do you like?
What is all that?
Huh?
Yep. That’s the one you said I could have? I could put it on my business cards?
That’s weird.
Strange. I gotta call XXXXXX. About YYY.
Where’s the check book? I need one for this doctor’s visit.
Bad time for a vacation with all the other guys messed up.
Wow. Must be nice.
Yeah. He’s the best marketer.
Which one?
That’s good.
By who?
I should be able to make it to the doctor by nine. I was hoping I could go be the house and eat, though. I need to go by and see XXX and then–I need to buy crickets. (Note: to feed the lizards.) And I?ll bring you the car just before 12.
Okay. I know.
Helicopter.
Where?
Yeah.
Kinda misty on the river today.

Yeah, I know.
It was weird yesterday.
Yeah. Like what?
I haven’t heard of him.
What are they building over there?
Boy, that looks terrible. It’s big. Well–it’s just big. Wow. That’s amazing.
I have my keys. I need a check.
Was it on the table?
That’s right. Love you.

Saying Hi to Neighbor

Good morning.
Pretty good.
Already in a rush.

It's Here.

Classic advice to beginning fiction writers: Show, Don’t Tell. I taught several sessions to teachers last week and they all nodded. Great advice. But how do you DO that in practical terms? How do you teach students to Show, Don’t Tell?

Show, Don’t Tell: Why?

In the old days of storytelling, it was fine to just say something like this:

The cat was cuddly.

But in today’s fiction, we usually want that fleshed out more. Novels and picture books try to put readers in the immediate situation. Generic or cliched descriptions like that give only a surface experience, rather than the sensation of being in a situation. Of course, sometimes that statement is fine, depending on how much attention you want to give the cat and the fact that it is cuddly. But if the cat is important and its tendency to cuddle even more important, you must do better.

Verbs and Nouns

One hint is to do away with as many “to be” verbs as possible. In our sample sentence the “was” indicates a state of being; instead, we want action.

The calico cat purred in the hammock, snuggled on the couch, and when I slept, she curled on my chest.

My general rule is no modifiers UNTIL I have the most exact verb possible. Get rid of wimpy -ly adverbs, in favor of a precise verb.

Likewise, use the most exact noun possible. Only then, may you add modifiers. In this case, just naming the type of cat seems enough for me, because the rest of the text does the expansion.

Sensory Details

The information that we, as humans, receive from our senses can be used to revitalize tired prose. What you see, hear, taste, smell and touch (temperature, texture and kinesthetic) should be included whenever possible. Visual details are the easiest and most common to add. Fine. Use them. But try to add at least one or two other senses to your prose.

The calico cat purred in the hammock, snuggled warm on the couch, and when I slept, she curled on my chest and her soft fur tickled my chin.

Dialogue

Finally, you can often turn a flat narrative into dialogue, thus bringing to life the situation. The problem here is to make the dialogue dynamic. You don’t want to go into long monologues when snippets will do.

I dangled my hand. “Come.” Obedient, the calico cat leapt into the hammock and settled down to purr. Later, when I watch TV, she snuggled warm against my thigh. And when I slept, she curled on my chest. “Quit tickling,” I murmured and pushed her away from my chin. I’d never had another cat who liked to snuggle as much as this calico.

As you can see, the problem with Show, Don’t Tell is that it adds length to a story. You must weigh the importance of the cat and decide if it is worth the extra space.

It's Here.

My daughter is getting married next week, so I’ll be scarce for the next week or so. Hope your writing is going well – send me your good news! I love to hear it.

It's Here.

When you revise your novel or story do you look at what you wrote before or start totally from scratch?

Revise Previous Text

Usually, I’ll work with the text that I already have written. The idea here is that I’m close, but it isn’t quite there yet. In this case, I’m refining the text and story as I go. The story gets minor improvements in specificity with more Show-don’t-Tell sensory details. Or, the pace is quickened or varied more. The text itself is revised to eliminate extraneous words, while listening carefully for the rhythms of the paragraphs, the exactness of word choice — in short, for voice.

Searching for Someone

Keep the Idea, but not the Words

The revision I’m doing currently is a drastic revision of a story. A reader liked my story line, but not the voice of the piece. I’m not sure I agree that the voice is in need of improvement. But I’m always willing to experiment.

In this case, I’ve written out one sentence for each major scene. Now I’ll put away the old draft and re-envision the story. I’ll start by writing ten different openings. Hopefully, number six or seven or eight or so will jump start a totally new voice. I also expect the story itself to change, because voice dictates so much about pacing and events in a story. But it’s a good place to start. I also expect to do a good many of the previous kind of revision before this story comes together with its new voice.

Of the two, I think the hardest revision is to keep the idea and search for a new voice, a new way of telling the story. But all writing is a risk. Who knows if this new approach will work? But ya gotta try.

It's Here.

This is my grand-daughter. I’ve gone to welcome her baby brother into the world. Back in a week or so!

It's Here.