Writing is rewriting

Guest post by Anastasia Suen

For years I have been saying that writing is rewriting, and now I have a book that shows it quite clearly, my new picture book, Road Work Ahead (Viking 2011).

This picture book is short, like most of my books. It’s only 120 words, but those words have been rewritten over and over again. Yes, this one has been a lo-o-o-ong time coming. I started this book when my son was 2…and now he’s 27!

Picture Book Inspiration

When my son was 2, he loved to look at all of the trucks and machines along the road, so I started snapping pictures for him. I made him a “look book” that later turned into a picture book. I loved the story in that book, so I sent it out to editors, but it kept coming back, over and over. Editors said they loved it, too, but it wasn’t quite ready. So I kept rewriting it and sending it out…and now 25 years later, it’s finally a book you can hold in your hand.

The 6 Ws of Story

So what made the difference? I used ALL of the 6 Ws this time. I made sure the story had who, what, when, where, why and how. Using all 6 Ws made it a story, not just a list of machines along the road. Stories sell, but lists…well, not so much.

New Beginning and Ending. After the story finally sold I thought it was ready to go, but my editor thought it needed something more. She asked me to write a new beginning and ending, so we knew why the little boy was on the road looking at all of the road work. That also added a who, by showing us the little boy before he got into the car.

So I added my mother and her famous homemade oatmeal cookies to the book. (We used to eat them right after they came out of the oven. Yum!) Driving to Grandma’s house for fresh, warm, homemade oatmeal cookies is definitely a reason to keep going despite all of the traffic delays due to the work along the road. And when you get to eat them at the end of the book, ah, sweet reward! Adding 2 short stanzas was all it took.

The change I made was used by the Publishers Weekly reviewer to describe the book.

“A batch of Grandma’s homemade oatmeal cookies beckons, but for this backseat narrator, the sights and sounds along the road to her house are equally compelling:
“Road work ahead./ Move over. Go slow./ Jackhammers crack./ Look at them go.’”

The text quoted in the review was the original beginning of the story. I had jumped too far into the action. What worked better was taking a few steps back and letting the reader know who the narrator was and why he was on the road in the first place.

Yes, writing is rewriting! (And a good editor makes ALL the difference. Thanks, Regina!)

For more on writing and revising picture books, see WriteaPictureBook.com

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Novel Revision Retreat in a Book

This year, there are four debut novels coming out of the retreats and three so far for 2012. (BTW, I”m booking retreats now for 2012, email for details at darcy at darcypattison dot com.)

One reason to revise the workbook is that I’ve slowly added sessions to the retreat, especially a session on Scenes. I’ve written a series, 30 Days to a Stronger Scene and I see what a difference this attention to the details of creating a scene can make. I want to add some practical activities to the workbook on creating scenes.

I’ll also update the bibliography with new reference books. Any suggestions?

What else? What would you like to see in the revised version? What novel writing tasks would you like to have dissected, made visual, explained, doled out in parcels easy enough to understand and DO? I’d love your suggestions on how to make this the most practical and helpful workbook ever. Thanks for chiming in!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Scenes and Narrative Summary

While I’m working on ideas for a new novel, I’m also spending a couple hours a day revising an old one. For this revision, my goal is to make sure each scene is working. Some of the feedback I’ve gotten is that there’s still a bit too much Telling-instead-of-Showing. Sigh.

I agree. After reading the first 50 pages, I’ve found a couple muddy scenes and a couple long passages of narrative summary. So, what is narrative summary and when is it okay to use it? That’s what I’m struggling with this week.

Choosing the Right Scenes

Narrative summary. It is impossible to Show-don’t-Tell everything that happens in a story, it’s a matter of choosing where to zoom in. For example, the story of the 3 Little Pigs might include these scenes:

• Mom and Dad meeting
• Mom and Dad having that special moment
• Mom finding out she’s expecting
• The Delivery
• Multiple scenes from raising those Darling Pigs
• Decision Time: Should they send out DPs into the world or not?
• Telling the Pigs it’s time to grow up and leave home
• Pigs resisting change/excited about change
• Pigs walking out the front door
• Pigs scared of the Big Wide World
• Pigs meeting a Straw Peddlar
• and so on

What scenes do we choose to tell in detail and why those scenes?
The rest of it, we summarize or omit. Most tales of the 3 Little Pigs starts with the parents explaining that it’s time to move on. But you could back up and tell more. You could Show-Don’t-Tell those pigs in a fascinating scene in the kitchen right before Dad announces their adulthood. It could be a scene of characterization, Showing the relationship among the brothers, their attitudes toward Mom and Dad and the BWWorld and the Big Bad Wolf. It would be a great scene, setting up the action to come and foreshadowing their reactions.

But do we need it? Probably not. Certainly, the folk/fairy tale genre leaves it out because it mostly cares about roles in life, not full characterization.

Narrative summary: In The Scene Book, Sandra Scofield defines narrative summary like this:

“. . . that part of a story in which the author tells the reader what happened in a compressed form. Such a passage may summarize a day, a week, a season, a year, or whatever. Narrative summary is especially common in novels, when the author wants to cover a great deal of time economically. . .”

4 Ways to Deal with Narrative Summary

My story is a quest, with the characters embarking on a journey. I sure don’t want to cover the daily tedium of traveling, so I’ve used narrative summary. Appropriate. But too long. I have a couple options.

1. Omit or Edit Narrative Summaries. I’ll be looking to cut the narrative summaries from a page and a half to a mere half-page or less. What is the most important parts to convey and how can I do that economically?
2. Scene Cuts. http://www.darcypattison.com/revision/scene-11-scene-cuts/ I hope to find a couple places when I can just plain skip the summary and go straight to a new scene. It will mean some tricky transitions, but it should tighten the story and get rid of those clunky narrative summaries.
3. Dramatic Narration–Punch Up the Narrative Summary. They aren’t all bad, you know. I expect to keep some of the summaries nearly intact. After all, I need the reader the FEEL as if they, too, are on a long journey. Too many rapid scene cuts will make the story choppy and make it feel shorter. It will be a balancing act. However, when I do keep them, I’ll try to infuse the summary with a bit more drama, adding a scrap of dialogue, a touch of description. It will still be a compressed summary, but it will feel more active; I’ll still need to work to get to the next scene quickly. But it will serve the purpose of bridging two scenes in an exciting way.
4. Expand to a Full Scene. As I work through this revision, I may find a single sentence that really should be a full scene. There will need to be a compelling reason to expand it fully, but there will be multiple opportunities for this. For example, when the 3 Little Pigs meet the Straw Peddlar, it could be a full scene, taking up several pages, instead of the short scene we usually get.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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How Does Your Character Change?

You know your character must change somehow over the course of your novel. But how? And more than that, how do you sync the changes with the external plot? The middle of a novel can suffer from the dreaded “sagging middle” and it’s mainly because you don’t have a firm handle on the character’s inner arc and how it meshes with external events.

I’ve found three approaches to the inner arc, each trying to laying out how the character changes. While these overlap a lot, there are differences in how the emotional changes are approached.

Hero’s Journey: Quest for Inner Change

In the Hero’s Journey, laid out so well in Christopher Vogler’s book, The Writer’s Journey, a character receives a Call to Adventure that takes him/her out of the normal and ordinary world into a world where they must quest for something. One of the key moments in this paradigm is the Inmost Cave where the character faces his deepest fears.

Melanie as an Example

So, we’ve got Melanie who wants more than anything else to get her mother’s approval, but can’t because her mom’s a chef and Melanie can’t cook worth a flip.

In the Hero’s Journey, Melanie might get a Call to Adventure: a challenge to create the world’s largest hot fudge sundae. Her darkest moment will come when she realizes Mom think’s she’s real goof-up and she’s not up to the task. Of course, she wants to give up, but somehow manages to rally (perhaps, recruiting friends to help, learning to make a sundae, etc.) and create something that makes Mom proud.

Iron Sharpens Iron – Friendships

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17
In this paradigm, two characters cross paths in Act 1 and usually hate each other, but Act 2 throws them into a situation where they must act together. Here, the characters’ strengths and weaknesses work to create change. It’s an up and down battle of learning to trust each other and ultimately find some sort of love, whether it’s platonic, romantic or maternal. Key moments are the midpoint when they totally lose faith in one another and a re-commitment to each other as they move from Act 2 to Act 3. Act 1 and 3 focus on the external story, while Act 2 follows how the friendship affects the characters.
For more on this paradigm, read, Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot by Peter Dunne.

Back to Melanie:

Melanie agrees to participate in the Biggest Sundae Ever contest, but as the contest starts she’s assigned a dunce to work with, Phillip RunnyNose. They clash immediately and have different ideas on how to create the required masterpiece: Melanie wants total creative control, while Phillip wants to just take pictures of the masterpiece. During their practice run–about the middle of act 2–Phillip leaves the ice cream out to soften up, but it melts, ruining the practice sundae. Of course, they fight and demand new partners, but that’s denied. Finally, they find that Melanie is great at building the base of the sundae, but Phillip is better at decorating it (characters have changed, because they accept different roles: Melanie does the basic work, Phillip the artistic/creative work– but they are better together than alone.) They go into Act 3 still unsure of each other’s roles, but committed to trying to create that Great Sundae in the sky and eventually Melanie earns her mother’s approval.

Flawed Way of Coping

Jeff Gerke, in Plot versus Character, describes a different way of dealing with the inner narrative arc. For him, the main character has developed a coping mechanism for dealing with a situation and it’s flawed, inadequate. The change that comes through the course of the novel exposes that coping mechanism as flawed and insists that the MC find a new way of dealing with things. It’s a journey from dysfunctional to functional (or at least some improvement in the way of functioning.)

Melanie as Dysfunctional

Melanie agrees to participate in the Greatest Sundae Contest in order to impress her mother, who runs a bakery that is slowing going out of business because of lack of customers. Mel practices once and gets 100 scoops one on top of each other, then stops to take pictures of the project, but it falls apart just as she snaps her pictures. Mom is furious at the mess in her bakery, but Mel’s pictures are interesting and catch the attention of the newspaper, who publish them, resulting in more business.
When Mel tries again, her masterpiece again falls apart when she starts to take pictures; Mom is even more furious; this time the pics get picked up by a state magazine, resulting in even more business.
Mel persists. A key moment comes though, when she realizes she likes the photography process and decides to do more of it, moving into Act 3. She creates the masterpiece, but this time takes pictures of the entire process from start to–inevitably–collapse. (of course, you’ll add lots of conflict: icing on the camera’s lens; dead battery; etc.) By now, though, Mom is excited by the pictures and realizes she’s got a goldmine in advertising revenue. I’m proud of your photography, she tells Mel. Will you photograph me while I decorate a cake and we’ll use it in advertising.
In short, Mel tried to impress Mom with her skill in creating a sundae, when what really impressed Mom was her photography. She’s replaces an inadequate way of coping (impress Mom with her cooking) with an adequate one (impress Mom with her photography).

Comparing the Paradigms for Character Change

Each paradigm comes with different requirements and different key moments that your plot must provide.

Required Characters

• Main Character Alone: In the Hero’s Journey, it’s a lonely quest where the main character changes him/herself. Yes, there are supporting characters, but they are secondary to the internal arc.
• Friends: The Friendship arc requires two people who appear to be polar opposites, but eventually change each other.
• Either: In the Dysfunctional arc, you can feature another character, or it can be against a situation or event.

Key moments:

• Fears. Hero’s Journey requires an Inmost Cave, the moment when the character faces his/her worst fears and comes out changed.
• Difficult Relationship. The Friends arc requires a blow-up in a relationship, with some compelling reason to later recommit to that relationship.
• Coping. The Dysfunctional arc has that moment when the dysfunctional coping crosses paths with the functional coping and one takes precedence over the other.

What I like best about these paradigms is that they give me a way to navigate the difficult Act 2.

What other types of character arcs are there? Probably several. Do you have a favorite way of thinking about the character arc? Do you naturally think in terms of one or another? I’m still trying to think about this whole topic and would love a discussion.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Balancing the Need for Foreshadowing

I’ve been revising a mss, taking a break from doing a new project. Recent feedback told me that my novel was great, except the opening didn’t set up the “magic” of the story well enough. It was too great a shock when it suddenly occurred on about page 50.

Yes, openings should set up what comes later in many ways. Opening are a balancing act, a sleight of hands between the here-and-now and the coming-story. You need to be firmly in the moment. I definitely fall into the camp who wants an opening scene with physical action, and not just a character introduction. I try to write something set in a particular place and time, with a definite goal for the characters. But you must also foreshadow.

Foreshadowing is anything that lets the reader have a hint of what’s coming.

Tone, Mood and Voice. I think I had already done a good job at setting up the tone (the main character’s attitude), the mood and the voice of the story. It has a medieval setting, with a hint of mystery and magic. But that wasn’t enough.

Hints. More than just that, I needed specific hints of what was coming. These hints needed to hook the reader, not by explaining everything but by creating compelling questions in the reader’s mind. In the new opening, I firmly stayed in the here-and-now, and if the main character already knew something, I didn’t explain it. Instead, I let the reader wonder what the main character knew that the reader didn’t.

In other words, I didn’t explain everything. I let some things just stand as stated, that thus-and-so had happened. There were some explanations, but the key here was to achieve clarity in the scene, while still teasing the reader into turning the page.

It’s a delicate dance, staying in the present, yet pointing toward what’s coming. But foreshadowing is one of the goals of opening chapters or prologues.

Here are some tips:

• Make sure you stay in the present scene. Don’t drift into long explanations or flashback.
• Don’t explain everything. If the main character would already know this, think hard about explaining it to the reader. At some point they may need to know this, but you can control the when of the explanation. If the action/emotions of the scene are clear without the explanation, consider holding off.
• Mirror what is to come. Do you need to set up an argument between a husband and wife? Maybe a smaller argument with a co-worker can foreshadow the coming blow-up. Think about how you might do a progression: argument, worse argument, worst argument.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Wise Men Give Writing Tips

For the last few years, Fiction Notes has offered writing tips from famous holiday or winter characters. In keeping with that tradition, we offer this year 7 writing tips from the 3 Kings.

Happy Holidays!

Previous Holiday Writing Tips

Frosty the Snowman’s Top 6 Writing Tips
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer’s Top 5 Writing Tips
Santa Claus’s Top 5 Writing Tips
The Gingerbread Man’s Top 5 Writing Tips
12 Days of Christmas Writing Tips
Download the FREE pdf of Winter Writing Activities.

We Three Kings

1. We three kings of Orient are
   Bearing gifts we traverse afar
   Field and fountain, moor and mountain
   Following yonder star

   Orient the reader. Character, setting and goals are immediately set up here. We know WHO (Kings), WHAT (bearing gifts and following star), WHERE (afar – over many different terrains), and WHY (to follow the star and deliver gifts). When you write, try to orient (pun intended!) your readers right away, so they aren’t confused about what is happening in the story.

2. O Star of wonder, star of night
   Star with royal beauty bright
   Westward leading, still proceeding
   Guide us to thy Perfect Light

   Verbal Play: This refrain or chorus is playful and fun to repeat. Try to find places to play with language as you write.

3. Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain
   Gold I bring to crown Him again
   King forever, ceasing never
   Over us all to rein
   (Repeat Chorus.)
   

   Specifics: It’s important to be specific in a story and give details, The next few verses will give specifics of what gifts are being brought to the newborn King: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

4. Frankincense to offer have I
   Incense owns a Deity nigh
   Pray’r and praising, all men raising
   Worship Him, God most high
   (Repeat Chorus.)

   Use Sensory Details: Even in a song, the writers recognize the importance of including sensory details, things you see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Here, the smell of incense is highlighted. Make sure you highlight other senses, too!

5. Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
   Breathes of life of gathering gloom
   Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
   Sealed in the stone-cold tomb
   (Repeat Chorus.)

   Summarize when space is limited–but do it with verbs. The summary of the life of Jesus is amazingly compressed into about nine words. Notice the importance of the verbs in this compression. Verbs hold much of the action of a story and by emphasizing verbs, you can strengthen almost any writing.

6. Glorious now behold Him arise
   King and God and Sacrifice
   Alleluia, Alleluia
   Earth to heav’n replies

   Epiphany/climax: The word ephiphany originated in religious literature as a moment when God/heaven is revealed in a splash of light and glory. Singing about the resurrection of Christ is indeed an epiphany moment. In your story, did you actually WRITE and climax of your story? It should change everything for the characters involved. Here, Christ’s resurrection changes the world as he offers a new way for men to have a relationship with God and the response of the song is, “Alleluia, Alleluia.” A true epiphany.

7. O Star of wonder, star of night
   Star with royal beauty bright
   Westward leading, still proceeding
   Guide us to Thy perfect light

   Denoument: A final repetition of a chorus is a fitting end. It repeats the verbal play, while replaying for the reader/singer the travel of the Magi.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Getting the Writing Done

Some days are overwhelming with 1000 tasks and ideas competing for attention. How do you focus on what really needs to get done? How to you make sure the “imperative” things (those things that must be done TODAY) don’t take over the “important” things?

First, make sure you know what’s important to you! What are your long-term goals for your career? Carve out the time for what is important. When I had four children at home and I home-schooled them, people would ask where I found time to write. Basically–you do what is important to you. I don’t know how. For sure, I can’t tell you how. But I know this: if it’s important enough you WILL find time. Somewhere.

Second, lists help me a lot. I make a list of things I need to get done and make sure that the list includes those important things, as well as the imperative. It works well for me to cross off things from a list. If something doesn’t get done today, it’s on tomorrow’s list. Well, really, I have a sort of weekly list, a messy piece of paper that sits in front of my computer monitor. I make notes from phone calls and doodle on it. But the list is still prominent. And when that piece of paper gets too messy, I get a new one out and put the current list on it and start again. Shrug. It’s messy, but it works.

Writers write. That next scene may not actually be written on the page at any one time, but believe me, it’s written on the important list in my mind. I always find time to work on something about my WIP novel. Yesterday, I just managed to plan the revision of the next scene. Today, I’ll write that and hopefully, plan the next scene’s revision. But if I can’t get that planning done, I’ll start there tomorrow. I don’t worry so much about how MUCH I get done each day, so long as I’m always chipping away at the task.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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30 Days to Stronger Scenes: Table of Contents

Fiction Notes works to help you write stronger, better stories that will result in a contract! Here are 30 posts about writing stronger scenes.

Get regular updates from Fiction Notes

SCENE 1: What has the Most Potential for Improving Your Writing?

SCENE 2: Elements of a Scene

SCENE 3: Scene v. Narrative

SCENE 4: Plan a Scene

SCENE 5: Beat Sheets

SCENE 6: Keeping Scenes on Track

SCENE 7: Showdown in Every Scene

SCENE 8: List of Possible Scenes

SCENE 9: Scene List v. Synopsis

SCENE 10: Plotting with Scenes

SCENE 11: Scene Cuts

SCENE 12: Avoid 5 Plotting Mistakes by Using Scenes

SCENE 13: Not Worthy of a Full Scene

SCENE 14: Omit a Scene

SCENE 15: How to Salvage a Scene

SCENE 16: Aiming for Bull’s Eye

SCENE 17: KaBlam! Dynamite Scenes

SCENE 18: Special Scenes: Flashback Scenes

SCENE 19: Special Scenes: Openings

SCENE 20: Special Scenes: Big Scenes

SCENE 21: Special Scenes: Set up big Scenes

SCENE 22: Special Scenes: Climax

SCENE 23: Special Scenes: Final Scenes

SCENE 24: Stories that Spaghetti

SCENE 25: 10 Scene Problems Solved

SCENE 26: All Dialogue Scenes

SCENE 27: Love Scenes

SCENE 28: Scene Length

SCENE 29: Dear-Editor Talks about Scenes

SCENE 30: Scene Checklist

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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10 Checkpoints for a Scene

30 Days to a Stronger Scene Table of Contents

Featured Today in Fiction Notes Stores

Does your Scene Pass this Checklist?

We’ll wrap up this 30-day series on scenes with a 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.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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The Stuff Between Scenes

Guest Post by Deborah Halverson

Join us on Facebook for a discussion of scenes.

As you give thought to what happens in your scenes, give thought, too, to what happens between them. There’s a trove of information and emotion lurking in the white space separating the last line of one scene and the first line of the next. You’re the master manipulator of your story—you should know exactly what’s happening in that space.

Magical Leap. Only in fiction can a kid transport magically from, say, a humiliating moment after school to the next morning when he must deal with the fall-out in the school halls. In real life, we don’t get to skip from scene to scene. We must live those in-between moments, going home and dealing with dinner and the family, doing the dishes and brushing our teeth, trying to sleep only to fail or perhaps achieving sleep only to nightmare—or maybe even sleeping soundly and feeling refreshed in the a.m., determined to take down the bully who served up that monster wedgie during the seventh grade talent show. As a writer, you wouldn’t show all that at-home minutiae to your readers because it would hobble your pacing and nuke the tight tension you’ve built up. But you should know what’s happened in that white space so that you can fully understand how one scene’s ending has simmered and stewed its way into the first line of the next scene.

Simmer. Consider that kid who suffered humiliation—he might interact badly with his family that night if he interacted at all, he’d scrub the dishes and forget to rinse, he’d fumble his dad’s favorite mug and get chewed out, he’d cut his gums with the floss and cry. He’d work himself into a real funk, or a real stink, or a downright rage as his day flowed from terrible to just too much to bear. When something rotten goes down in your life, your minutiae seems to gang up on you, doesn’t it? Don’t start a new scene with the assumption that a character’s emotion and state of mind are exactly where they were when you left him a day or even an hour ago. That’s not realistic and it undermines your scenes. Simmering happens. And that simmering takes place in the white space. By the time your character reaches the opening line of your next scene, he’s in an advanced state of emotion or has had time to hatch a plan, as flawed as it probably will be. Fully understanding how his mindset and emotion have festered during the scene jump allows you to fully exploit both of those things in the happenings of the new scene.

Mull. Mulling is an important part of writing, and that’s what this is—mulling the off-stage events that are part of your character even if you don’t share them with your reader directly. And you won’t. Just as you may know a character’s life story but won’t deliver it when you introduce him, you don’t deliver the stuff in between scenes even though you know it. Go there in your mind.

Props and Dialogue. In a practical sense, you’ll use writing techniques like prop manipulation and dialogue interruptions to show the character’s simmered psyche to readers. For example, if exasperation has built up in the white space, your character will be acting on that exasperation as he moves into the new scene, stubbing his pencil point or kicking his brother’s shoes out of the way or blowing off friends mid-sentence or cussing out his combination lock as the scene commences. A humiliated girl might have spent the white space in her closet, digging out the baggiest, most nondescript outfit she could find, only to unknowingly pick something infected with that weird orange mold that afflicts long-buried clothes in houses near the beach, the kind of mold that smells vaguely of vomit. These are the details you’ll know as you go into the next scene, where your character is already dressed and has to go face-to-face with something or someone in that advanced state of mind. And with that funky aroma.

What happens in the jump between scenes, the stuff that readers don’t see, is important to your character. If you know what happens, your readers will feel it.

Deborah Halverson is the award-winning author of the teen novels Honk If You Hate Me and Big Mouth (Delacorte/Random House) and the forthcoming Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies (June 2010) A former editor for Harcourt Children’s Books, Deborah also runs the writers’ advice website Dear-Editor.com. www.DeborahHalverson.com, www.Dear-Editor.com.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win