Character Emotions MUST Spill Out into Big Actions

Characters, even supporting characters, should be bigger than life. No flat characters. Fiction demands round, “fleshed-out” characters. I’m working on a revision and I know this. Yet, when a friend read my revision, her response was that I needed big actions for my characters.

In the revision, I had noticed that the supporting character (Father) didn’t have much reaction to the main character (Laurel). I revised, adding in actions. But the actions were small: fist clenched, raising eyebrow, turning away.

Nothing wrong with those actions if Matt Damon was doing them on the big screen. There, the small actions would mean more. But think of him as Bourne and you’ll remember the BIG actions.

Revise for Emotions that Spill Out into Action

Revised: now, Father picks up a blanket and shakes it, snapping it up and down. He throws it onto a bed and when it falls off, he wads it up and throws it at the wall. It’s not the huge actions of an action-thriller, but in the context of the current scene, these are big actions. (Make sure you keep everything relative and in context!)

Even supporting characters need big actions. So, why didn’t I use them before? I think it’s because I’m a very restrained person myself. I keep a tight rein on emotions, not letting them spill out into big actions. That means for my characters, I need to push them to build emotions so strong that they MUST spill over into big actions.

And yes, the revision is much stronger. My early readers report that the Father is starting to come alive. Hello, Dad!

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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30 Days to a Stronger Scene Table of Contents

Featured Today in Fiction Notes Stores

When I teach Novel Revision Retreats, I need a variety of ways to explain this thing called “revision.” Lately, two ideas have helped.

Scenes: Have you Hit Bull’s Eye

When I evaluate a scene, I’m always asking myself, “Have I hit bull’s eye?”

Especially when talking about revising scenesl, a metaphor that helps me is to think of a draft as an arrow that hits a target. The first draft is way off bull’s eye. The second draft hits one ring closer to the center because you focused on selecting great scenes, revised those scenes, layered plot layers and subplots, all the while avoiding the most common pitfalls. Successive drafts should sharpen your aim, until you’re hitting in the red circle. Many stories sell successfully when they just hit that red circle in the middle; the really great stories hit smack in the middle of the bull’s eye. It’s worth that last revision to try to hit exact center.

Now an EBook

It’s worth the effort to check each part of the scene to make sure you’ve hit the exact center of the Bull’s Eye!

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Develop Your Character Inside and Outside

I’m working on a revision of an older story and am finding that my character is flat, lacking emotion.

Here’s what should happen: action, reaction, thought and/or emotion.
Here’s what is happening: action, reaction.

Of course, there’s lots of variation and times when either might be appropriate. But overwhelming, I’m finding that I try to imply the emotion by the reaction, but it’s not always working.

There’s this tension in writing between Telling and Show-don’t-Tell.

Telling

The tendency is to tell: he was upset.
This type storytelling was popular before the invention of the modern novel, when storytellers created as much by their own voice and body language as anything.

The storytelling mode allows you to tell something and leave it at that. Listeners expected little else.

Show-don’t-Tell.

But with the novel, we are able to delve deeply into a characters thoughts, emotions, psyche. That’s why novels will never be replaced by film, because you can’t go deeply inside a character in any other way. Telling may still be used in bits and pieces, to summarize unimportant parts of the story.

But now, we expect thought and emotions to be forefront. Even more than that, though, we expect novels to be full of action and for that action to demonstrate the emotion/thought, so there isn’t so much telling going on.

Novels, then, go deeper into story by delving into the thought and emotions of a character; but also, by demonstrating those thoughts and emotions with concrete actions. It’s the concrete actions that create the Show-don’t-tell parts of storytelling.

Full Zoom: Inside and Outside

One way to think about it is that a scene is where the “narrative camera of words” zooms in. You get the full sensory details of the story situation and full details of character emotions/thoughts. In other words, the inside and outside of the story are in full zoom.

For sensory details, you must fully imagine being the character in this situation and what they would see, hear, smell, touch and taste. For emotions, we should know intimately what s/he is going through.

For me, it’s not Show-don’t-Tell; instead, I like Show-then-tell-some.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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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?

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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As I’m working on the plan for this new novel, creating characters and trying out voices, I’m trying to strengthen my weakest areas.

My Weakness is Character

My weakness is character. I can plot fine, but creating characters with plausible character growth is hard for me. I think I’ve got it and my friends tell me that I’m still way off.

This time, I’m majoring on the character’s emotional life. I won’t actually start writing until I have charted the ups and downs of the character as she moves through the events planned.

In James Frey’s book, How to Write a Damn Good Novel II, he gives an example of the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. Frey uses the idea of a premise, or a short statement about the overall story. For Samson, he uses the premise: Repentance leads to a glorious death.

Frey says that a premise isn’t the same as a moral, and doesn’t have to match up with what we would normally call moral or right or ethical. Instead, it’s a summary of what THIS STORY is saying; it’s intrinsic to this one and only story.

What I liked was when Frey expanded upon the premise:

God’s love leads to a great strength, which leads to heroism in battle, which leads to haughtiness and arrogance, which leads to temptations of the flesh, which leads to betrayal, which leads to defeat and disgrace and blindness, which leads to repentance, which leads to a restoration of superpowers, which leads to a glorious death.

He says the premise, “Repentance leads to a glorious death” is merely a shorthand for the longer version.

Well, I’ve got the premise down! What I’m trying to do right now is to expand it (hindsight is always easier!) so that I can see the character arc better, especially the emotional arc. I love that Frey’s expansion had character qualities: haughty, arrogant, disgrace.

I would like to make it even more tied to those, so it will help me write a better character story:

God’s love overwhelms, which leads to devotion to God, which leads to surprising gift of great strength, which leads to courage, which leads to a heady success in battle, which leads to haughtiness and arrogance, which leads to less devotion to God, which leads to passion and love for Delilah, which leads to betrayal and heartache, which leads to defeat, despair, disgrace and blindness, which leads to repentance, which leads to a renewed awe and devotion to God, which leads to surprising gift of super strength restored, which leads to ultimate sacrifice for sake of God, which leads to a glorious death.

Well, maybe not that much different, but I like–and need–that emphasis on character.

While I’m developing character conflicts, I’m also working on this emotional arc. When I know the arc, then it will be easier to test plot events to make sure they are related to this emotional arc.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Are you in Pain? Question for your character.

So, I’m sitting at the hosptial, waiting for my husband to follow in Harry Smith’s footsteps and get the Couric Procedure (screening colonoscopy). Every wall has a sign asking, “Are you in pain?

• 0 No Pain/Happy face
• 1-3 Mild Pain/straight line mouth
• 4-6 Moderate pain/small frown
• 7-9 Severe pain/big frown
• 10 Worst pain/deep frown and tears

Of course, it made me think about character pain.

Physical pain may or may not be present in a story. But it’s the emotional pain that creates strong stories.

No pain. In general, a character should never feel a 0 on the Pain Scale, even in the opening; well, maybe in the conclusion, but even there, characters often has residual pain.

Mild pain. This is appropriate for the opening of a story, before the conflict which sends the character into act 2. It’s also appropriate for the conclusion, where the story is wrapped up. You’d never want this for the middle of the story or especially the climax.

Moderate pain. Act 2 should be characerized by at least this level of pain throughout, with mild or severe pain for places of emotional rest or stress.

Severe pain. Act 2 and 3 should have spikes of severe pain, as the emotional crisis of the story heats up.

Worst pain. This would normally be reserved for the climax of the story.

Subjective Scale

The pain scale is a subjective scale, asking a patient how much s/he hurts. My husband has a higher pain threshold than I do, for sure. And my number 10 is about his number 5. Likewise, there are stories with severe pain scales and some with mild pain scales. A pain scale for a children’s picture book is very different from a pain scale for a horror story.

Pain Scale Determines Main Character

It’s also helpful to consider the pain scale when thinking about which character is the main character. In general, the character who hurts the most should be the main character. Ask each of your characters to rate their pain at key points throughout the story. Which one has the most pain? Could the story be stronger with a different main character? If there characters with no pain or only mild pain, could you either delete that character or find a way to add emotional pain?

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Shrunken Manuscript Technique Helps Visualize Problems

Following my directions for shrinking, marking and evaluating a novel, here are some recent examples:

• MJ Diems shrank her Precious and says, “Color coding a single spaced 8pt draft by setting and character is hard work, people! All that capping and uncapping. But it means I get to spend quality time with My Precious.”
• Joyce Ray spots weaknesses in her novel. Hurrah! No sagging middle.
• Ann Finkelstein Shrank, Vacuumed, Colored, Laid out and Evaluated with a creative key that includes an emotional scale of Yawn, Squirm, Bite Nails and Heart Pounds.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Does your Scene Pass this Checklist?

1. Where/When. (Setting) Did you orient the reader at the beginning of the scene? Does the reader know where this takes place: room in house, city, state, country, etc? Does the reader know when this takes place: time of day, season of year, place within chronology of story? If the answer to where or when is no, do you have a firm reason for leaving the reader disoriented?


Do NOT Pass Go Until You've Passed this Check List

2. Stakes. Are the stakes of the scene goal clear? If the protagonist fails, do we understand the consequences? Are the consequences substantial? Can you put more at stake, or make it matter in some way?
3. Structure. Is the structure clear, with a beginning, middle, pivot point and ending? Is the chronology of the scene clear (did you use transitions such as then, later, before, after, etc.)?
4. Actions. Are the actions of the scene interesting, and told with active verbs and great clarity?
5. Emotions. Are the emotions clearly stated or implied? Can the reader empathize with the characters? Does the reader weep or laugh, even when the character can’t or won’t?
6. Dialogue. Does the dialogue move the scene forward or is it empty chit-chat? Are there minor conflicts embedded in the conversations?
7. Language. Are you telling or showing? Does your storytelling have clarity and coherence?
8. Voice. Does the language create the proper mood, tone, voice?
9. Transition. Does the scene make a smooth transition to the next scene? If you use a scene cut, does the reader have enough information to follow the cut without getting confused?
10. Cohesive. Do all the elements work together to create a gestalt, a scene that is better than the sum of its parts?

Where does your scene fall down? Revise. You know the drill.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Anatomy of a Scene

If you dissect a scene, what do you find? Sandra Scofield, in The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer lays out a simple, yet insightful discussion of this concept and it’s usefulness to a novelist.

Here are the basics of a scene:

1. Event and Emotion: Something happens and it makes the reader feel something. We’ll say it again: novels are made up of external events, not interior thoughts and feelings. Yes, novels are distinguished by their ability to take a reader inside a character’s head and show us their thoughts and feelings. Yet, paradoxically, the scene is the solid framework of events to which the character reacts.




2. Function: Hey, why did you write this scene and include it in your novel exactly here? For example:
   • Character: character entrance, develop character’s qualities, build relationship, complicate relationship, argument, making up, romance, etc.
   • Plot: conflict, twist, surprise
   • Technical stuff: foreshadowing

   The question is always, do you need this scene, or could you skip it or just summarize it?

3. Structure: There should be a beginning, middle (including a turning point, or as Scofield describes it, a focal point), and end.
4. Pulse: This is the emotional content of the scene, the underlying emotions, whether expressed explicitly or implied.

I could spend pages explaining each of these, but a demo will work better. Tomorrow, we’ll look at a film clip and see if you can identify each of these in the clip.

Meanwhile, read Scofield. Her explanations are so good, you should get it directly from the master.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Memoir of a Successful Book Trailer in Six Words

by guest Lisa Gottfried of DigitalWeavers.com

NOTE: Lisa did the editing for my retreat video. She spoke at the San Rafael conference and I was interested enough to try her services, for which I paid. This is an invited guest post and she speaks here as a professional working full time on video promotions.

Thanks to the editors at SMITH magazine, the popular mini-memoir book “Not Quite What I was Planning,” is full of incredible pieces, all only six words long, some uplifting, some intellectual, some tragic, some incredibly accessible, but all what I would consider to be successful.

It got me thinking about the economy of communication and how that translates to book trailers. If I were to edit a book filled with only links to book trailer videos, which ones would make the cut and which would not? Could I narrow down the critical elements of a good book trailer into six words? Here’s what I would write.

Memoir of a Successful Book trailer by Lisa Gottfried

Economic Focused Editing; Authentic Emotional Entertainment

If these ideas can be met and done well, no matter whether an author has a budget of $200 or $2,000, a book trailer can be successful, i.e. move a viewer to get excited about the book, share the trailer with friends, write an on-line review of your book. Let’s look at the six key ingredients to a successful book trailer.

Economic – 30-90 seconds

On-line audiences are interacting with their computer, not passively watching a TV. You either get the message across in a short time, or your viewers are moving on with the click of a button. We all know this.

But keeping communications brief and to the point is an art form. The length of a book trailer should be thirty to ninety seconds. You might get away with two minutes, but an eight-minute trailer needs the eyes and ears of a good editor, no matter how famous the author.

Think billboard. You’ve got 10 seconds as the car drives by to get your point across. Think, big, bold and simple. Leave an impression, don’t tell the whole story. Steer clear of special effects unless they are used sparingly. Like they say on “Top Chef,” if the food is on the plate just for looks and doesn’t add anything to the taste of the dish, it shouldn’t be on the plate. Focus, focus, focus.

Edited – balance and blend text, images, audio.

Every piece to the book trailer puzzle needs to fit perfectly. The music needs to go with the words just right, not be tacked on. If you use subtitles or printed words, the pace needs to be slow enough to read and take in the background images, but not so slow that it’s excruciating to watch.

I highly recommend using a voice over artist to speed things along, but if you don’t have the budget for one, subtitles can work. Keep your sentences and phrases under six words at a time. It’s also tempting to put the entire review on your trailer. Here’s an example of how I would edit a review for a trailer for “The ABC’s of Writing for Children,”

“Pentacoff provides a most fun and readable book, packed with insights and inspiration about the children’s book field from the people who know best–the authors and illustrators.” -Andrea Brown

The pieces I would include on the trailer might be:

“…most fun and readable book….”
“…packed with insights from the people who know best…..”

It makes sense that authors want to be wordy. This is their craft. With book trailers you need to move in what might feel like a counter-intuitive direction, where less is more, a LOT less.

Authentic – be real

Web viewers have a lower threshold for BS (your Basic Story). Don’t try to be something you are not because viewers will sniff you out in an instant and be on to other things faster than you can say “boo.” People know when they are being “sold” to and there is less tolerance on-line for the tactics used on TV commercials. Your message needs to be more down-to-earth, user friendly.

You can provide something more home-grown and people will be more receptive to the message. However, home-grown does not mean cheesy. Production value still needs to be there.

Emotional – look for teasers

Find a place in the book where there is some emotional pull and concentrate your efforts there. You want to offer a teaser, a trailer that gives the viewer the essence of the writing while using the emotional moment as the vehicle to deliver that content. Trailers are not simply fancy announcements of your upcoming book. If viewers can emotionally connect, they will buy your book. Remind viewers of their humanity. Grab them by the heart strings.

Entertainment – make ‘em laugh; then make ‘em cry

Here is where I am amazed that writers seem to forget the basics of, well…writing. You start a novel with some interest. You don’t tell the reader, you show them. The same holds true for book trailers.

Is there an interesting piece of dialogue you can lift from your book? A moment when things seem really charged? Where is your book entertaining? Grab a piece of that pie and serve it up.

Your name and reputation is on the line and if the trailer is not done well with a certain standard of sound, images and final product, don’t bother putting it on the web. Poorly done book trailers can hinder sales and ruin reputations. Instead, a great book trailer serves as the place where a potential reader flips open the book and randomly reads a page. Why not make it choose a juicy and entertaining page?

Lisa Gottfried runs her own book trailer, digital video, and website business, DigitalWeavers.com. She brings over fifteen years of experience to the video and web marketing field and specializes in children’s book author promotion. Lisa is available for speaking engagements around the San Francisco Bay Area and around the nation.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

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