Writing books

Hooked, by Les Edgerton

***

In the first few pages of your novel, you are trying to do a number of things simultaneously.  You want them to get a feel for the world, sense the genre, come to sympathize with the main character, see internal and external conflict, inform the reader that your work is unique, get your main character active instead of just being acted upon and put the reader under hypnosis.  The list goes on and on.  It was a dark and stormy night isn’t just a bad opening because it’s cliché and a stupid weather report.  It’s also bad because it poses no questions and answers even less.  Les Edgerton has written two hundred pages on what might go through an author’s head before penning that first paragraph.  Sure, it’s unlikely that all of the things on the list get addressed within the first page, but writers need to be aware of what is and isn’t checked off the list by the time the reader turns the page.

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King

*****

The title really should be what you need to know so that you don’t have to edit 99% of your story before it’s worth publishing.  The book skims a lot of topics, but all the right ones and dead on at every turn.  If I was teaching a class on writing, this book would be required reading.  In fact, if I did, all I’d have to do is say, “Read the book?  Great.  I’m confident you’re all twice the author you were before you started this class.  Class dismissed.”

Noah Lukeman, everything, but in particular, The First Five Pages and A Dash of Style

*****  ****

The second book I’d require for the class is The First Five Pages.  It hits lots of topics in an easy to read format that will guarantee to make your writing better in two days of reading.  A Dash of Style puts a whole new spin on what punctuation is all about.  Put your grammar book in the closet.  This makes it simple and converts punctuation into a tool authors can enjoy.  Good to read The Elements of Style too, to put it into perspective.

Writer’s Guide to Fiction, by Cathleen Rountree

**

I mention this book because I read a portion where the author said that most new authors write pure omniscient point of view.  Then it went on to say that most fiction was pure omniscient POV.  The first part of that is right because almost everybody starts out doing it wrong.  The second part of that is just stupid.  I don’t think I’ve ever read a published work of fiction (excluding one self-published item that was a total mess) that was pure omniscient.  So, good book, but the POV section seems to have been written by someone who hasn’t read anything since the Bible.  The operative word there is anything.

How to Write a Damn Good Novel, by James Frey

***

Classic stuff, covering lots of good topics that will make any writer better in two days of reading.

How to Write a Damn Good Novel II, by James Frey

***

Same as the first book, only different stuff.  I only disagree on one of his points about POV, where he contends that 3^rd person limited is not the only way to do 3^rd person.  He’s right.  And, he’s wrong.  He’s right if you know POV.  If the writer has never handled 3^rd person limited right, however, I think it’s pretty automatic that they can’t handle something fifty times more complex.  That is kind of like saying, one can do calculus and doesn’t have to do arithmetic.  Sure, do calculus.  But, if you can’t do arithmetic, uh, maybe we should take a second look at what we’re saying here.  I’m sure James would agree, but our debate on this is obviously not in the book.

The Power of Point of View, by Alisia Rasley

***

I mention this book because it crawls all over the topic of POV.  And, like most books devoted to the topic in depth, it models the topic in its own way, and lays out full explanations on every possibility.  I have seen POV broken down into a dozen different categories by several authors.  Good to know all that junk.  Also dangerous.  Contrast this to the way Self-Editing for Fiction Writers deals with it.  Renni Browne simply says, there are three possibilities, 1^st person, 3^rd person limited, and omniscient, and for anybody who isn’t a master, the number of options are two, 1^st person and 3^rd limited.  I get that.  It makes infinite sense for just about everybody.  So anyway, POV by Alisia Rasley tells you lots of detailed stuff that is good to know, but mostly not all that applicative to the craft.

Write Great Fiction - Dialogue, By Gloria Kempton

***

Dialogue is really a matter of finding a way of living in your characters’ skin.  Of course, Gloria helps you try to get there.  The part on structuring credits is very nice.  If your dialogue isn’t moving you forward in plot on a continual basis, read this.  It will help you along.  Then you still have to find ways to crawl into your characters’ skin.  You know you’ve arrived at this place when you can get rid of all of your credits and readers still know who is talking and acting on the stage.

On Writing, by Stephen King

***

Okay, here is a guy who is worth hundreds of millions of bucks, who writes 4000 words, without a plot outline, every day, while sitting at a desk by the trash cans in the corner of his garage.  He put his family through poverty while sending out hundreds of enquiries, and somewhere after his tenth or so novel and ten years of finger numbing work, someone noticed that he was good enough to print.  It might be worth knowing what authors do.  The part about alcoholism is worth the read.  I cannot believe how much I agreed with his comments on writing techniques.

Your Novel Proposal: From Creation to Contract by Blythe Camenson and Marshall J. Cook

***

If you want to sell your work, you might want to read a good book about how to do it.

Gary Wedlund, a little note on OPENINGs

Just a little note to let everyone know what I'm currently working on.

I'm doing two novels at once.  This is kind of new for me, and it requires a bit of head maintanence.
The first novel is a sequel to Satan's Daughter Goes to Pittsburgh, called, Satan's Daughter Walks to Portugal. It's an urban fantasy, maybe paranormal romance (depending on my final direction). Let me give you the opening lines on it:

 

The police lady did a spectacular job ignoring me as I tapped echoes off the marble floor with my candy-apple, Christian Louboutin booties. She stood behind a humongous, donut-shaped counter, scanning pages on a clipboard, not saying anything, even though we were alone. It was three in the morning--which was chill and dark and pretty nice without annoying humans running into me and honking horns--or would have been if I’d not been trailing sulfur plumes out my ears.

The second one is a zombie novel, completely different, and much more somber, and for a different audience:

  

The blast knocked down Ernie Johnson’s corn. All of it: Whoosh! It’s lying out there, pointing north, in the direction of county road like a hundred thousand one-way signs; I can see it past the lee of the hill. Some caught, but patches of ground were still wet from a lucky morning shower, and the flames didn’t stick past an acre. Soon as it quit, I sent Marla out there with the pickup, hoping to fill the bed with two-week-early ears. She just drove back, went straight for the garage, dented the back wall with the bumper and dropped the door.

Oh, and at Context, in a week, at 2:00, on Sunday, I plan on being on a panel, speaking to the issue of how to open a novel.  Just thought you might like to see some of the openings I'm currently working on, and maybe come to Context to hear the comments on how to pull one off.

Creating Characters

Denise shares some thoughts on creating memorable characters:ednesday, August 17, 2011

Creating Characters

Creating Memorable Characters


I thought I might share some thoughts on creating characters. In writing My Fearful Symmetry, I had to stretch the creative muscles in bringing to life a character far outside of my personal experience. This is the kind of challenge that makes me tick as a writer. Writers are often told to stick to the familiar in creating characters. This is true in some senses and a good starting point for the new writer. However, speculative fiction is always stepping outside of the norm of experience. The author’s task is to build a believable world out of the alien, and this includes characters that are often vastly different than human beings.

The third book in my urban fantasy series is written from a different POV than the first two. The first books have an Italian-American female protagonist. She is a young actress in New York City. Her ethnicity and profession are somewhat similar to my background–but she was born in 1930 and becomes a vampire. Whoa, now the imagination must kick in. Then, out of nowhere, another character was born in my head and begged to step into the spotlight. He took me on a pretty wild ride.

I’m a heterosexual, American, all-too-human female, yet in this third book I write from the first-person POV of a bisexual, Scottish, vampire male. Is this too far out of my sphere of experience to write? Well, I don’t know any genuine vampires. That one is probably out of nearly everyone’s experience. Can an American truthfully render a person from another country? Do I, a female, have the right to get inside the male psyche? Does a straight person understand how a gay person feels?

The answer is yes. Every character written is part the author, part research and part pure imagination. I happen to think “typical” people don’t usually make for interesting characters. It is the extraordinary person that often becomes the hero or heroine of the book, even if he or she appears to lead a rather ordinary life. Jane Austen wrote about acerbic, critical Lizzie Bennett, not sweet, obedient Jane Bennett. Tolkien chose to write about the restless Frodo and Bilbo, not the peaceful Hobbit folk of the shire. The writer must find that person who for some reason stands out from the pack.

My training is in acting. The master acting teacher, Stanislavski, speaks of something called the “Magic If”. In other words, what would I do in if thrust into this character’s given circumstances? All people share common experiences and desires that allow us to empathize. Even if the writer is dealing with a fantastical creature like an elf, alien or an android, the character must be approached as a person with an internal conflict.

The trick in writing someone so “different” from oneself is to thoroughly think out what this character is all about. Stanislavski also said, “generality is the enemy of all art.” Make your character’s traits, likes and dislikes, and deeply held beliefs very specific. A character’s religion or lack of it tells a lot about that person. Give him or her a ruling passion or obsession, a family history and lots of emotional baggage. Everyone experiences these things.

First off, I create back-stories for all of my major characters. All of this is for my personal use and only bits will show up in a book. How the personal history impacts the character is the important thing. For example, I have a character in my series, Kurt Eisen, who as a teenager was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. He lost his entire family and did some unsavory things to survive. His vampire master ultimately gives him immortality. This all adds up to a heavy burden that Kurt carries with him for a half-century. It fills him with a sense of wanting to right wrongs and spurs him to fight injustice.

There a many good exercises for developing well-rounded characters. I tend to fall back on those I learned in acting and keep a character “notebook”. This is always fun for me. I ask myself all sorts of questions about my character, even if the information never ends up in the book. It helps to do a lot of research. I also look for images, art, mythology, poetry and music that relate to this character. These I keep in a file, along with my research notes. Research need not only come from books. For my last novel, I watched a several TV shows featuring British teenagers to get the slang and rhythm of the speech. I then had a British beta reader check my manuscript for accuracy. You may not want to keep a detailed character notebook on incidental characters, but they deserve to be given a thorough look to give them some interesting traits in a brief appearance.

There are some who feel what a character looks like isn’t important. Wrong. While long descriptive passages of narrative slow down a story, a hint of the physical appearance of a character and his garb can speak volumes about who he or she is. Mother Teresa didn’t dress or behave like Lady Gaga. The way other characters treat your heroine because of her appearance says a lot about character relationships and informs conflict. A beautiful person takes for granted advantages that a plain person would love to have. Conversely a beautiful person may feel his mind and abilities are unappreciated. These hints come out in dialogue or action. Instead of saying the hero is very tall, let him drop that information by having him looking down to talk with a friend. The way a villain speaks to a woman he desires will be very different than one he hardly notices.
Another important consideration to keep in mind is gender, sexuality and race. These come into play in a person’s development through both nature and nuture. We all experience the difference in how the sexes are socialized. There are differing views on how men and women are hard wired, but as a writer it’s important to remember that not every man or woman will behave in the expected way. Every character, like every person, is an individual. A person’s sexual and racial identity is very important in determining that person’s place in a culture. Sexual and racial minorities face daily conflicts that the majority doesn’t. Experience will affect how a person of a different race or sexuality responds to conflicts. Things a heterosexual person takes for granted, like holding hands with a lover in public, becomes a taboo in many places. How a minority is treated a given environment may highlight the prejudice of characters.

An interesting way to define your characters is to give them a “job”, even if they are creatures of fantasy realms. This can add a lot of texture to the story and uncover conflict. Say you’re writing historical fiction or fantasy. If your character is a servant or courtesan in the royal court, it gives him or her a different perspective than the king’s closest advisor or a general of his army.

One final point I’d like to touch on is the character’s flaws and weaknesses. Don’t be afraid of a few warts. A character can be sympathetic and yet sometimes behave cruelly or like a complete ass. He or she can show poor judgment at times. Nobody is perfect. Don’t forget odd quirks and pet peeves. Remember that you want to show your character’s growth. I had a writing group member read an isolated, early chapter in my third book. She commented that she hated the hero for acting stupid and immature toward a woman who was teaching him. Well, in the chapter she’d read, this nineteen-year-old boy was acting like a spoiled brat. He was definitely cruising for a bruising. I took the reader’s comment and amended the chapter to show the teacher dealing the boy a well-deserved comeuppance. However, this group member hadn’t read an earlier chapter where we see the hero suffering through a low point in his life. He garners sympathy in the previous chapters through his struggles. There is a learning curve where the character faces obstacles and starts to care about the plight of others around him. The young man with a mission at the end of the book is very different than the vain, selfish boy in that early chapter.

In a story, the journey is the thing. Getting there is all the fun.

Denise's website

context

Context is about to happen.  Ren, Denise and Gary will all be there, on panels, and selling books. 

Welcome to Free Writing Workshops of Ohio!

Welcome!  Ren Garcia, Denise Verrico and Gary Wedlund are three published authors from Central Ohio. We will be offering free writing workshops to libraries, schools and organizations starting in September.  Also, we will be posting writing tips, links and helpful info for authors new and experienced.  Please check back for updates!

The site is under construction currently. For more information, please contact us through the blog email.  Thanks!