I’m over at Seriously Write today, talking about my experience writing my first book.
Come check it out! I make a Serious Shocking Confession about His Forgotten Fiancée, something I’ve never told anyone before now.
Category: Writing
Characters do what they want
There’s a scene in The Man Who Invented Christmas where Dickens complains, “I can’t make the characters do what I want… I’m the author here!”
That reminded me of Shannon Hale’s book, Austenland. It’s the story of a woman who’s becoming frustrated with her inability to find a modern-day Mr. Darcy. In an attempt to overcome her Darcy obsession, she goes off to a resort where guests can interact with actors pretending to be Regency-era characters. And of course, she meets a man who resembles Mr. Darcy, as well as another tempting man.
As I see it, there were three ways that Hale could have ended the story:
- The heroine ends up with the grumpy-but-charismatic Mr. Darcy-type hero.
- The heroine ends up with the lowly-but-charming gardener.
- The heroine rejects both men and ends up with living on her own and feeling good about it.
Reading this story, I had the strong impression that Hale wanted one ending and the heroine wanted another. That sounds odd, but it’s true that sometimes, as Dickens said, you can’t make the characters do what you want. It felt as if the author were pushing the heroine toward one particular potential hero. There were whole scenes where the heroine waffled back and forth about whether she should make that choice. The trouble was, that choice didn’t make sense in the context of the way the story was developing, how the heroine interacted with the two potential heroes.
The ending felt right, and I’m glad the heroine made the choice she did, but I don’t think it was the direction the author had wanted the story to go.
Now that’s what I call a rejection
When a good description turns into bad writing
I love reading the winning entries for the Bulwer Lytton contest. It’s a contest devoted to writing the worst possible opening sentence of a novel. Deliberately bad writing is not as easy as unconsciously bad writing, in my experience. I’m great at writing badly when I’m not paying attention. But reading deliberately bad writing is not only funny, it’s often useful.
Writers are told to include sensory detail. I’ve had a contest judge ding my writing because in one scene I only included sensory detail from three senses (sight, sound, touch) instead of all five. I don’t think the reader notices or cares whether you use all senses in describing a scene. Writers get so focused on including the sensory details that they miss the reason for including the details in the first place.
One day—though this was no average day, it was gloomy; uncharacteristically forecast for mid-July, yet not extraordinary considering the geographic location, on the northern coast of Germany, where drastic changes in weather are indeed quite common although not so common that they were expected yet common enough to leave no one shocked by the small gathering of clouds above their heads—Linda went on a walk down the street.
— Benjamin Matthes, Founex, Switzerland Dishonorable mention, Bulwer Lytton contest
I’ve read stories where the writers devote a page or more of meticulous description in precise detail, for example a clinical description of the taste, sound, scent of eating an apple. The problem with that? Clinical detail, by its very nature, is detached from all emotion. I don’t need to know what eating an apple is like. I need to know what this character feels about it.
Description is an elegant way to tell the reader how the character views their world. It slips information into the scene subtly, providing details in the background while the main action is going on.
She was the most desired object in the room, not unlike the last deviled egg at an Easter Day potluck.
— Christine Hamilton, Atlanta, Georgia
Dishonorable mention, Bulwer Lytton contest
Description is also a good way to set the tone. If you want your readers to know you’re writing a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously, an opening sentence like the following would definitely work.
The elven city of Losstii faced towering sea cliffs and abutted rolling hills that in the summer were covered with blankets of flowers and in the winter were covered with blankets, because the elves wanted to keep the flowers warm and didn’t know much at all about gardening.
-Kat Russo, Loveland, Colorado
Winner, 2017 Bulwer Lytton contest
In praise of repetitive writing
If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart. – Terry Brooks
I’m still working through issues raised by sending my writing through a critique group. Some people objected to any repetition in my writing.
Now, that can be a perfectly valid point. Some people repeat a word several times in a sentence/paragraph/page without noticing they’re doing it. I confess that I have done this once. Or twice. Or… I have to say it… repetitively.
BUT…
It is also true that repetition can be used to set up a rhythm. You know how you can set up a reader’s expectations by playing along, giving them what they expect to read? You can also lure them into reading by setting up a rhythm. George Bernard Shaw did this in Pygmalion (the forerunner of the musical My Fair Lady) when he had a character say, “I’m willing to tell you, I’m wanting to tell you, I’m waiting to tell you.”
This is often used very effectively in poetry. Alfred Noyes, in his poem The Highwayman, used great, galloping repetitions that set up a rhythm of a horse riding down a road.
He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brandAs the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,(O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.
It’s more common when what was written down is intended to be read aloud.
Cicero, for example, one of Rome’s most famous public speakers, told his rapt audiences that the end of a sentence “ought to be determined not by the speaker’s pausing for breath, or by a stroke interposed by a copyist, but by the constraint of the rhythm”.
This was an interesting article on the history of punctuation.
Quote: Orson Scott Card on Inspiration
Everyone walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
-Orson Scott Card
Quote: M.M. Kaye on Writing Romance
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… this form of literature [Romance] isn’t nearly as easy to write as you think… I was writing something I thought was sentimental and saccharine drip, and in consequence, all I produced was exceedingly bad and patently phony drip that no publisher in the right minds would have accepted… You have to believe in it.”
-M.M. Kaye, Enchanted Evening
Quote: Simonton on Successful Failure
XKCD on creating dramatic tension
A dark and stormy life
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
-Vincent Van Gogh
Sometimes, we have to go through storms. I have to remind myself that storms and upheavals are a necessary part of life.
One thing I’ve learned over this process of changing from a hermit to a published author is that you can feel as if you’re on a ship in the middle of a storm. The waves toss you up and then you plunge down into a maelstrom. Over and over again.
Not much to be done about it, apart from stocking up on Dramamine. Just something to be aware of. The alternative is going back into my hermit cave and quitting. That might be more comfortable, but I don’t think it would be nearly as interesting a life.
I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to protect myself from exactly this situation. And you can’t do it ! There’s no home safe enough, there’s no country nice enough, there’s no relationship secure enough; you’re just setting yourself up for an even bigger fall and having an incredibly boring time in the process.
– French Kiss