Drafting neuroses

Revision is my thing. I work as an editor, after all. Give me a stack of pages and a pen and I'm happy as a clam. But put me in front of a blank screen? Ai-yi-yi.

As a result of my blank screen dread, I do most of my rough drafting in those el-cheapo spiral notebooks you can get 10 for $1 at a grocery store back-to-school sale. The el-cheapo factor seems to cry for messy lists, half-baked plot ideas, random musings that may or may not end up working their way into usable prose. The downside of this dubious system is that I sometimes spend as much time trying to find a nugget as I spent writing it in the first place. Time stealer=bad news for this working mom trying to squeeze in some writing.

I know I need to get over this blank screen phobia, and pronto. One of my critique group friends recommends a software solution, this program called "Write or Die" that monitors how many words you churn out in a given timeframe. Pause too long, produce too little and it metes out punishments (the user can select the level of severity). This sounds kind of big-guns to me. Punative systems, like praise-averse bosses, tend to make me less productive.

Instead, I figured I'd set up a simple experiment and reward myself with library book time/Netflix with spouse if it worked. I had to write raw for 40 minutes. Raw AND autobiographical, the two things that really make me squirm.

It was a pretty successful experiment. I not only filled two pages, but tapped into a powerful memory from my teen years that will make a decent short story if I keep going with it. Take that, stupid phobia!

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Settings find us

Not long ago I had a nice IM chat with a friend my husband and I visited in England in 2006, when I was in the early stages of drafting Bring to Light. It got me thinking about how discovering a captivating setting can open possibilities for plot, theme and characterization.

In early outlines of my novel, I'd intended to include a one-chapter foray to southwest England, where I'd actually lived with a family when I was in college. But this particular vacation morphed into a major research trip changed everything.

The nature of the trip first changed when we entered King's Cross station, the railroad gateway to the north--a hub for rail service to northern England and Scotland. Despite the Harry Potter connection, it's not an elegant station like Victoria or sleek and hip like Charing Cross. This communicated a lot about internal stereotypes among Britons, namely that north England is considered the sticks, and its inhabitants, country hicks. Suddenly a resonant back story on my protagonist's British father began to unfold: Country boy leaves home and culture to seek his fortune abroad, where he'd meet fewer prejudices about his upbringing.

Durham itself was the second great discovery, a rare jewel few tourists ever see. The city is perched on cliffs on a peninsula formed by the rivers Tyne and Wear, with a stunning 900-year-old cathedral its crowning beauty. At the cathedral and elsewhere in the region, we saw evidence of Christianity's long history sunk deep into this land--back to Roman times. The ancient past of the Vikings, the Saxons, the Romans seems nearer here than in the south, where generations have built over the past time and again. This got me thinking about the decision every generation must make: will we examine and learn from the past, or bury it?

Our friends, American transplants to England, patiently answered my thousand and one questions. Unlike natives, they were able to see the jarring differences between the "two cultures divided by a shared language" that my American-born protagonist would also notice. I soon saw how cultural differences--especially American versus British ideas about privacy and emoting--could have interesting consequences within a family dynamic.

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Write it slant

The fiction experts tell us time and again to "show, not tell." It's a useful enough guideline, as far as it goes. But how should one go about showing? Describing physical sensations is one way: throat tightening and eyes stinging shows a character is sad or upset. But a whole page of this sort of descriptions gets tiring to read. Ditto with descriptions of movement and tone of voice.

Tapping into a character's interior world, showing thoughts that are never spoken can be another way of punching up a scene. The real trick is to write "non telling" thoughts. One of the ways to do that came to me, strangely, while editing an essay about Knut Hamsun at work. The author of the piece was from Denmark, and my mind made the association he's Danish...mmm, I could go for a danish. Wouldn't knut hamsun be the perfect name for a rich, eggy dessert bread full of pecans, sultanas and candied cherries? I posted some of these random thoughts on Facebook, and a friend piped up, "you must be hungry." Of course, I was hungry. Ridiculously hungry. Those strange associations said it colorfully and memorably, much more than if I'd made my status "Laurel is hungry."

So when you want to tell it slant in your character's inner monologues, remember "random associations" as yet another way of showing, rather than telling, how you character feels.

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Beginnings

My writing buddy Simon, who really got the ball rolling with our critique group, now has a blog. He's an insightful reader and emerging talent--I look forward to his contributions to the blogosphere.


His initial post on openings got me thinking about one of the most helpful writing books on my shelf: Les Edgerton's Hooked.

This book proved very helpful when I'd been spinning my wheels for months trying to craft an opening for a sequel novel and getting way too bogged down in back story. That alone made this worth the $15. Edgerton uses loads of examples from several genres, which made his advice far more applicable than many other books that advise writers rather generically how to get a story started. His observations about the changing literary landscape also seemed spot-on.

On the minus side, this book feels repetitive. The most helpful, unique advice resides in chapters two and three. The chapters that follow are largely just variation on the themes of these two chapters. I think it would have been helpful to include a chapter about specific genre conventions--what elements are essential for successfully starting up not only literary stories, but also SF, YA, historical, mystery, romance, etc. Readers' expectations for each are quite different, even if on a structural level stories should gear up in a similar manner.

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Would she really ____?

In How to Write a Damn Good Novel, James N. Frey says many plots lack integrity because the author doesn't have her characters acting at their maximum capacity.

What does he mean exactly? When a character hits a problem, some roadblock keeping him from his goal, he'll do everything in his power to reach the goal. Characters who become easily stymied by their problems lose readers' sympathies and their desires and drives won't seem particularly compelling. The Harvard-educated investigator, for example, won't just sit around wringing his hands when he doesn't immediately understand something--he'll make use of all the intellectual tools at his disposal to research and probe. Likewise, even the "cannon fodder" expendable characters should go to a lot of trouble to avoid dying, unless the author has characterized them as suicidal or deeply stupid or proven some motivation for a death wish. "Maximum capacity" will, of course, vary from character to character. An 8-year-old protagonist in a middle grade adventure will have fewer resources than the Navy SEAL/brain surgeon in a techno-thriller. The trick is to know one's characters thoroughly.

In every scene, Frey says your character's actions and reactions have to pass the "would he/she really ____ ?" test. Does the action/reaction fit her personality? Is he making full use of his personal resources, know-how, experiences? I've been amazed at how these lines of questioning open up plot to intriguing new possibilities.

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Check it out!

My "flash fiction" novel excerpt, "Swan Moment" has been published on the e-zine Maternal Spark. You can read it here.

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Excuse busting

Most of the folks in my critique group write short stories--something I haven't attempted or marketed in years. When they ask why, I usually trot out the explanation that the characters crowding my brain have stories that are too big to fit in 25 pages or less.

I'm beginning to rethink that excuse. In reality, I think my evasion of short stories stems from a fear that if I don't spend every ounce of writing energy on novels, I'll never finish. But a novel is a huge commitment with almost no rewards for years and years. The marketing process with novels is so slow and rejection-filled, it's enough to take the wind out of one's sails for good.

Many of the books on marketing novels stress the importance of having numerous publishing credits. I'm realizing now that this is a good idea not just to get one's name out there, but also because small victories are important for morale. And low morale is a creativity crusher.

To that end, I'm looking at retooling some novel excerpts as short stories, and, even better, starting a whole new short piece with a new character in a different genre. Meanwhile, the WIP novel can continue simmering in my subconscious.

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