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Taming the Beast: What to Do with That Frightful First Draft

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by Kirt Hickman

You’ve gotten your first draft onto paper, but it doesn’t look anything like the novel you envisioned. Somewhere along the way, it took on a life of its own. It became grotesque: overblown, disorganized, and rife with inconsistencies. Your writing is flat, your characters are boring, and your plot contains so many dead ends it resembles a maze for some masochistic lab rat. Somehow it got so out of control that you can’t imagine now how to rein it in.

While this article doesn’t address all of these problems, it will answer this question: What now? Before you examine the structure of your scenes or the tautness of your narrative style (see “Revising Fiction: Ten Tips To Tighten Your Narrative Style“), you’ve got to tame the monster you’ve created. You’ve got to trim the fat and organize the rest.

Scene Cards

To organize, create an index card for each scene. Give each scene a name and number and write it on the scene’s card. Then read through your manuscript and make the following notes on the cards:

1. Scene Purpose

Each scene must have a purpose; it must advance the plot or develop character (preferably both). Any scene that doesn’t is either a digression or it just conveys information. Delete it. Find another way to provide the necessary information. Make a note on the card of any scene you plan to move information to. Ideally, each scene that you keep should also show conflict between characters, create suspense, and show how the day-to-day life in your world is different from your reader’s life. Jot down ideas to enhance these characteristics of each scene.

2. Type of Scene

Is the scene an action scene? A romance scene? A dialogue scene? Something else? Write it on the card. Don’t string too many action scenes in a row. You want to excite your reader, not fatigue him. Similarly, don’t put several passive scenes together; you’ll risk boring your reader.

Color-code the title row of your scene cards with highlighter markers (pink for action scenes, yellow for passive, orange for others) and lay the cards out on a table with the highlighted title showing. This will give you a good visual display of the distribution of the action. Look for scenes that you can move to create a better balance.

3. Inconsistencies

As you wrote your first draft you may have made decisions that created inconsistencies in your characters or plot. If so, decide how best to resolve them, and in which scenes. Note any necessary changes on your scene cards.

4. Suspense Elements

A suspense element is any question you’ve raised in your reader’s mind, any loose end you need to tie up in another scene. On your scene cards, note the suspense elements you introduced or resolved in each scene.

Then go back through the cards. On a separate sheet of paper, list each suspense element. Next to it, write down the number of the scene in which you introduced it and the number of the scene in which you resolved it. Did you resolve them all? If not, tie up each loose end. Either find a scene in which to resolve it, or don’t bring it up in the first place. Make notes on the appropriate scene cards.

Rewrite Your Scenes

Before you rewrite your scenes, save your manuscript and begin working on a separate draft. If you decide later that you need something you’ve altered or deleted, you’ll be able to retrieve the original.

During this rewrite, you’ll throw whole scenes away, write new scenes, and revise some so extensively you’ll have to start them over from scratch. Every scene will need some form of revision. Don’t let this discourage you. You must trim the fat from your first draft and bolster the weak or missing elements. You already know what changes you need to make; you’ve noted them on your scene cards. Now rewrite each scene using these notes as your guide. When you’re done, review your notes to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Now your manuscript is ready for the more detailed editing required to clean up your scene structure, narrative style, and dialog. Those topics, however, I’ll leave for future articles.

WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the March 2009 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



From Idea to Story II: Climax & Resolution

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by Chris Eboch

AdvancedPlotting200

In my article “From Idea to Story: Situation & Complications” I talked about turning an idea into a story by breaking it down into four main parts: situation, complications, climax, and resolution. I covered the first two parts in that post. Now we get to the climax and resolution.

Can She Do It?!

Your character has faced complications through the middle of the story. Finally, at the climax, the main character must succeed or fail. Time is running out. The race is near the end. The girl is about to date another guy. The villain is starting the battle. One way or another, your complications have set up a situation where it’s now or never. However you get there, the climax will be strongest if it is truly the last chance. You lose tension if the reader believes the main character could fail this time, and simply try again tomorrow.

In my new romantic suspense novel, Rattled, the climax comes when the heroine is chained to the floor of a cave by a villain threatening to kill her and her friends. If she can escape, maybe she can stop the bad guys and save her friends. But the penalty for failure is death—the highest stake of all. Short stories, different genres, or novels for younger kids might have lesser stakes, but the situation should still be serious.

Tips

  • Don’t rush the climax. Take the time to write the scene out in vivid detail, even if the action is happening fast. Think of how movies switch to slow motion, or use multiple shots of the same explosion, in order to give maximum impact to the climax. Use multiple senses and your main character’s thoughts and feelings to pull every bit of emotion out of the scene.
  • To make the climax feel fast-paced, use mainly short sentences and short paragraphs. The reader’s eyes move more quickly down the page, giving a sense of breathless speed. (This is a useful technique for cliffhanger chapter endings as well.)

Happy Endings

The climax ends with the resolution. You could say that the resolution finishes the climax, but it comes from the situation: it’s how the main character finally meets that original challenge.

In almost all cases the main character should resolve the situation himself. No cavalry to the rescue! Today, even romance novels rarely have the hero saving the heroine; she at least helps out. We’ve been rooting for the main character to succeed, so if someone else steals the climax away from him or her, it robs the story of tension and feels unfair.

Here’s where many beginning children’s writers fail. It’s tempting to have an adult—a parent, grandparent, or teacher, or even a fairy, ghost, or other supernatural creature—step in to save the child or tell him what to do. But kids are inspired by reading about other children who tackle and resolve problems. It helps them believe that they can meet their challenges, too. When adults take over, it shows kids as powerless and dependent on grownups. So regardless of your character’s age, let your main character control the story all the way to the end (though others may assist).

Although your main character should be responsible for the resolution, she doesn’t necessarily have to succeed. She might, instead, realize that her goals have changed. The happy ending then comes from her new understanding of her real needs and wants. Some stories may even have an unhappy ending, where the main character’s failure acts as a warning to readers. This is more common in literary novels than in genre fiction.

Tip

How the main character resolves the situation—whether she succeeds or fails, and what rewards or punishments she receives—will determine the theme. To help focus your theme, ask yourself:

  • What am I trying to accomplish?
  • Who am I trying to reach?
  • Why am I writing this?

Once you know your theme, you know where the story is going and how it must be resolved. For example, a story with the theme “Love conquers all” would have a different resolution than a story with the theme “Love cannot always survive great hardship.”

The next time you have a great idea but can’t figure out what to do with it, see if you have all four parts of the story. If not, see if you can develop that idea into a complete, dramatic story or novel by expanding your idea, complications, climax or resolution, as needed. Then readers will be asking you, “Where did you get that fabulous idea?”

BanditsPeak150Chris Eboch writes fiction and nonfiction for all ages. In Bandits Peak, a teenage boy meets strangers hiding on the mountains and gets drawn into their crimes, until he risks his life to expose them. The Eyes of Pharaoh is an action-packed mystery set in ancient Egypt. The Genie’s Gift is an Arabian Nights-inspired fantasy adventure. In The Well of Sacrifice, a Mayan girl in ninth-century Guatemala rebels against the High Priest who sacrifices anyone challenging his power. Her writing craft books include You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers and Advanced Plotting.

Learn more at www.chriseboch.com or her Amazon page, or check out her writing tips at her Write Like a Pro! blog. Sign up for her Workshop newsletter for classes and critique offers.

Chris also writes novels of suspense and romance for adults under the name Kris Bock; read excerpts at www.krisbock.com.

This article was originally published in the May 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



What the Right Comparison Can Do for Your Story

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by Kirt Hickman

A picture is worth a thousand words (pardon the cliché, but it’s true). Good fiction draws the reader away from his mundane life and transports him to a world of wonder wholly different from his own. Whether this difference is physical, cultural, psychological, or situational, metaphors and similes can help bring your fictional world to life.

Description

When you use these comparisons, you draw a mental picture that relates an element of your story to something within the reader’s realm of experience. In the following example, several characters in my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder, cross an open expanse of the Moon’s surface.

…the four of them made a dash for the building. They ran side by side. In the Moon’s gravity, they rose slowly with each stride and returned to the ground just as slowly, only to bounce again and again until they reached their destination.

This passage contains a detailed description of how my characters run in low gravity. It tries to invoke an image that will bring my setting to life and show how the Moon is different from Earth. The problem is, I’ve used so many words that by the time the reader gets to the end of the description, he no longer cares about the image. He just wants to get on with the story. Comparing the characters’ motion to something familiar can invoke the desired image more clearly, and with fewer words, than literal description:

…the four of them made a dash for the building, bounding up and down in a ragged line, like so many horses on a merry-go-round.

Taking the merry-go-round out of context, putting it on the Moon, and using it to describe running makes the comparison unexpected. I’ve used a familiar object to show how my setting differs from the reader’s here and now.

Yet I can improve the passage further. The word “building” lacks description. How big is this building? What does it look like? I’ve missed an opportunity to remind the reader that I’ve taken him to another world. In an earlier scene, I described the building like this:

The habitation dome was maybe a hundred meters in diameter with the semi-cylindrical protrusion of the equipment garage on one side, the only obvious entrance to the structure.

Can you picture the building? What if I add this sentence:

From afar, it looked like a giant igloo on a vast stretch of dirty ice.

The comparison solidifies the image. In Worlds Asunder, I refer back to this description in the merry-go-round scene by changing the word “building” to “igloo”:

…the four of them made a dash for the igloo, bounding up and down in a ragged line, like so many horses on a merry-go-round.

Emotion

You can use comparisons to invoke emotion. The following passage describes the wreckage of a crashed space ship:

…the fuselage came into view, jutting skyward from the flat terrain, surrounded by sparkling debris.

Perhaps this invokes an image, but a couple of well-drawn comparisons will enhance the emotional impact.

…the fuselage came into view, jutting skyward from the flat terrain like a solitary tombstone in a garden of glittering metal.

When the fuselage becomes a tombstone in a garden, it forms the emotional image of death. It reminds the reader of something he already knows: a body lies here, probably inside the fuselage. The viewpoint character is approaching a grave.

Viewpoint

Comparisons can express an idea or a character’s viewpoint more effectively than direct narrative.

…a tremendous pop reverberated through the cavernous hangar from the huge doors in front of the cockpit window. The squeal of the unused rollers filtered into the cabin like a scream of protest against this change in military posture…

This passage doesn’t specify what the change in military posture is. Nevertheless, when I use “scream of protest” to describe a simple sound, I don’t have to tell the reader how the viewpoint character feels about the change.

Use Comparisons Carefully

Look for opportunities to use comparisons in your fiction, but don’t overdo it. A well-placed comparison that invokes the right image, at the right time, will enrich your story. But if every paragraph contains one, you’ll force too many unrelated images upon the reader. Your own world will get lost among them.

Beware misused, imprecise, or cliché comparisons. Misused or imprecise comparisons can confuse your reader, and cliché comparisons will have no emotional impact.

WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the February 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Human Motivations: Fodder for Fiction

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by Olive Balla

Olive Balla245

Some say when a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the earth, the air moves on the other side. That’s more than just an ancient saying—it’s physics. Science tells us for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s a law of the universe. We writers make use of that law of cause and effect in establishing motivation for our characters. We pair up needs and desires with the actions taken to fill them. The more needs and desires, the more layers to the plot.

But what catalysts will result in any given human behavior? Why, for example, would one of our characters smash his car into a roadblock? Why does our protagonist wash his hands every fifteen minutes? How can we make the actions of our villains believable?

No problem. Just review the pyramid of human needs as identified by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, fill your shopping cart, and proceed to the checkout counter.

According to Maslow’s theory, we must satisfy the needs at each level of the pyramid before moving up to the next higher level. The catch is that humans may choose to fulfill those needs through positive or negative means. How your characters meet their needs is up to you.

  1. The lowest stratum of the pyramid covers biological and physiological needs such as air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, and sleep. Science tells us that when humans undergo prolonged deprivation of any of these needs, such as might be experienced in a concentration camp, the need for food and sex are the last two drives to go, and then only just before death. The struggle to secure these needs may result in love triangles, jealousy, and theft, to name a few. Or it may result in marriage, a good work ethic, ambition and striving to excel.
  2. The next level deals with safety needs such as security, order, law, limits, and stability. Recognizing that there is safety in numbers, every culture has developed rules by which its inhabitants must live. Even anti-social groups have established ground rules, laws, and norms. Just ask anyone who’s been in prison—or worked in one.
  3. Once we have managed to deal with the first two levels, we can move up the ladder to the next one dealing with the need to belong and love. Humans are a gregarious lot. We need relationships. The family unit was established to meet these first three needs. So were gangs. Like the old Three Dog Night song said, one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
  4. The penultimate level of need includes self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, and prestige. This need may lead to entrepreneurial ambition, and the drive to learn new things. It may also lead to manipulative, controlling behavior, and obsession with money and/or possessions.
  5. At the top of the pyramid are the self-actualization needs. Humans are built with the drive to realize their personal potential: they seek fulfillment, personal growth, and peak experiences. At this level we find altruistic behavior, mentoring, heroism, and religious fervor.

Because humans are creatures of endless complexity, we may fulfill more than one of these levels at a time. For example, the CEO of a charitable non-profit may not only be fulfilling his need for self-actualization, but for wealth and status. And the school bully (or even the physically violent parent) might be fulfilling the need for dominance and control.

Psychology tells us every human behavior has at its root the goal of survival. And that doesn’t apply only to physical survival. Humans do strange or even horrible things to survive emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and socially. Find someone suffering pain from the loss of any given need, and you’ll find someone willing to do almost anything to find relief from that pain or fear. Enter self-medicating behaviors such as alcoholism and other substance use and abuse in an effort to reach and then maintain what science calls homeostasis, or balance.

According to New York’s Gotham Writer’s Workshop, every character must have a desire he struggles to fulfill. The grandness of that desire is not as important as how badly the character wants it. It could be anything as mundane as the desire to quit smoking. Or it could be as dark as the desire to get rid of a rival. The absence of desire makes for flat characters.

So, look over Maslow’s amalgamation of human needs and drives. Choose one or more, spoon in a dollop of desire, and you’ll have the makings of a deep, multi-faceted character worthy of your writing time.

AnArmAndALeg72Olive Balla, author of suspense novel An Arm and a Leg, is mother of 3, grandmother to 13, great-grandmother of 4, a retired educator, and part-time professional musician. Having been everything from secretary at a used car dealership, a university student, and a high school Spanish teacher, Balla states her characters are, in part, amalgamations of people she’s met. Living with her husband Victor in the Albuquerque area, she spends her spare time in a small woodworking shop designing and building everything from breadboxes and wine racks, to a porch bench. Visit her website at omballa.com.

This article was originally published in the June 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Revising Fiction: 13 Ways to Show Character Emotions, Part 3

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by Kirt Hickman

This month’s column completes a three-part look at techniques that can help you show your characters’ emotions effectively. So far, we’ve learned to:

1. Use emotional honesty.
2. Convey the source of the emotion.
3. Avoid clichés.
4. Use metaphor.
5. Use concrete details.
6. Use internal monologue.
7. Use dialog.
8. Show physical response.

Additional techniques include:

9. Have the character respond to the emotion in an unexpected way.

Snider pulled Chase aside. “That was a lovely exercise,” he spat, “but you haven’t answered the basic question: Why?” Veins bulged in his forehead as he said the last word. His eyes, crazed as though he was on the verge of a breakdown, spoke of the unbelievable pressure that he must be under. Chase had thought he’d understood, but matters were apparently worse than he’d imagined.

“Look, Morgan.” Snider dropped his voice. “You must answer that question. And soon. I’m getting to the point where I don’t even care if it’s the right answer.” He looked Chase in the eye. “You hear what I’m saying?”

In this example from my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder, Snider responds to his stress by essentially telling Chase to lie. This is surprising, because Snider’s primary concern has been his own reputation, which could be ruined by such a lie.

This technique can be tricky to employ because the emotional response must be believable, even though it’s unexpected. The key is to make it specific to the character. I do this here by incorporating one of Snider’s tag lines: “You hear what I’m saying?”

10. Use one emotion to express another.

The following day they received a broken transmission from Snider, crackling through a faulty connection in the comm gear. A pair of geologists had arrived on the scene and found Herrera’s bodyguard dead in the cabin. Chase swallowed hard and bowed his head for a moment…

“Everyone else is missing,” Snider finished.

The news was good and bad. It reminded Chase of the fragility of life and the cold ruthlessness of space. And he mourned the loss, even though he hadn’t known the man. But according to Snider’s report, the rover was still moving. Somehow the others had found the means to endure without the protection of a ship or habitat.

In this example, I talk about mourning over the man found in the wreckage, but because Chase didn’t know the man, there’s no basis for his grief. What he’s actually feeling is hope for those that still live. The mention of mourning is a way to express Chase’s hope by contrasting it with another, dissimilar, emotion.

11. Use external setting to mirror your character’s emotions.

In the following example, Bill has just awoken from a coma. Dana has stepped away from his bedside to allow the nurse to assess his condition. Notice how I use the sunlight in the hospital room to reflect Dana’s feelings.

The sun warmed the room through the durapane window, suddenly now bright and cheerful as if it had just risen. Dana returned to Bill’s side and kissed him again, this time on the mouth. “I thought I’d lost you.”

12. Use character action.

Gerri threw the contract onto the floor, snatched up her coat, and stormed from the room.

This example uses Gerri’s actions to show her anger.

13. Express the emotion in a way that is specific to the character.

[President Powers] felt like she had when she was twelve, when she and her friends were playing in the surf off the South Carolina coast. She’d waded in too far and a large wave had washed over her, pulled her under.

China armed in Earth orbit and the United States ignorant. She couldn’t breathe. A cold pressure squeezed in around her, holding her down while she was powerless to prevent it. She heard Norton slam the table through the muffled sound that filled her ears. They were arguing, Norton and O’Leary, but only Norton’s voice penetrated the president’s consciousness with the words incompetent and consequences.

Finally, like it had when she was twelve, the wave receded and she came up for air. She banged her cane on the hardwood floor to bring civility back to the meeting.

In this example, I use a specific event from President Powers’ childhood to express her sense of being overwhelmed in a way that is specific to her.

The techniques in this three-part column are valuable tools to master. If you’d like to see a more in-depth treatment of this topic, I recommend Creating Character Emotions by Ann Hood.1

Read the first two parts of Kirt Hickman’s series:
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 1
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 2

1Ann Hood, Creating Character Emotions, Story Press Books, 1998.

WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the October 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



From Idea to Story: Situation & Complications

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by Chris Eboch

AdvancedPlotting200People often ask writers, “Where do you find your ideas?” But for a writer, the more important question is, “What do I do with my idea?”

If you have a “great idea,” but can’t seem to go anywhere with it, you probably have a premise rather than a complete story plan. A story has four main parts: situation, complications, climax, and resolution. You need all of them to make your story work.

The situation should involve an interesting main character with a challenging problem or goal. Even this takes development. Maybe you have a great challenge, but aren’t sure why a character would have that goal. Or maybe your situation is interesting, but doesn’t actually involve a problem.

For example, I wanted to write about a brother and sister who travel with a ghost hunter TV show. The girl can see ghosts, but the boy can’t. That gave me the characters and situation, but no problem or goal. Goals come from need or desire. What did they want that could sustain a series?

Tania feels sorry for the ghosts and wants to help them, while keeping her gift a secret from everyone but her brother. Jon wants to help and protect his sister, but sometimes feels overwhelmed by the responsibility. Now we have characters with problems and goals. The story is off to a good start.

Make sure your idea is specific and narrow. Focus on an individual person and situation, not a universal concept. For example, don’t try to write about “racism.” Instead, write about one character facing racism in a particular situation.

Ask why the goal is important to the character. The longer the story, the higher stakes needed to sustain it. A short story character might want to win a contest; a novel character might need to save the world.

Ask why this goal is difficult. Difficulties fall into categories traditionally called man versus man, man versus nature, and man versus himself. You can even combine these. Your character may hunt bank robbers (man versus man) during a dangerous storm (man versus nature) when he is afraid of lightning (man versus himself).

Even if your main problem is external, give the character an internal flaw that contributes to the difficulty. This adds complications and also makes your character seem more real. For some internal flaw, see the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.

GeniesGift150Test the idea. Change the character’s age, gender, or looks. Change the point of view, setting, external conflict, internal conflict. Choose the combination that has the most dramatic potential.

If a character solves his goal easily, the story is boring. To keep tension high, you need complications.

For short stories, try the “rule of three” and have the main character try to solve the problem three times. The first two times, he fails and the situation worsens. Remember: the situation should worsen. If things stay the same, he still has a problem, but the tension is flat. If his first attempts make things worse, tension rises.

For novels, you may have even more attempts and failures. In my first Haunted book, The Ghost on the Stairs, I made sure each ghost encounter felt more dangerous. As Tania tries to get closer to the ghost in order to help her, Jon worries that she will go too far and be injured or even killed. With enough variety, you can sustain this kind of tension indefinitely (witness the ongoing battle between Harry and Voldemort in the seven-book Harry Potter series).

You can worsen the situation in several ways. The main character’s actions could make the challenge more difficult. In my new mystery set in ancient Egypt, The Eyes of Pharaoh, a young temple dancer searches for her missing friend. But when she asks questions at the barracks where he was a soldier, she attracts dangerous attention from his enemies.

The villain may also raise the stakes. In my Mayan historical drama, The Well of Sacrifice, the main character escapes a power-hungry high priest. He threatens to kill her entire family, forcing her to return to captivity.

Secondary characters can cause complications, too, even if they are not “bad guys.” In The Ghost on the Stairs, the kids’ mother decides to spend the day with them, forcing them to come up with creative ways to investigate the ghost while under her watchful eyes.

Finally, the main character may simply run out of time. At her first attempt, she had a week. At her second attempt, she had a day. Those two attempts have failed, and now she has only an hour! That creates tension.

For each turning point in the story, brainstorm 10 things that could happen next. Then pick the one that is the worst or most unexpected, so long as it is still believable for the story.

Coming next month: how to build the climax and finish your story.

BanditsPeak150Chris Eboch writes fiction and nonfiction for all ages. In Bandits Peak, a teenage boy meets strangers hiding on the mountains and gets drawn into their crimes, until he risks his life to expose them. The Eyes of Pharaoh is an action-packed mystery set in ancient Egypt. The Genie’s Gift is an Arabian Nights-inspired fantasy adventure. In The Well of Sacrifice, a Mayan girl in ninth-century Guatemala rebels against the High Priest who sacrifices anyone challenging his power. Her writing craft books include You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers and Advanced Plotting.

Learn more at www.chriseboch.com or her Amazon page, or check out her writing tips at her Write Like a Pro! blog. Sign up for her Workshop newsletter for classes and critique offers.

Chris also writes novels of suspense and romance for adults under the name Kris Bock; read excerpts at www.krisbock.com.

This article was originally published in the April 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Travel Essays: Your Inner Wanderer at Large in the World

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by Teresa Cutler-Broyles

ADreamThatKeepsReturning169In 1987 I attended a writers’ conference in San Diego, California, and one of the most engaging speakers was a travel writer who spoke in big words about the romance and excitement of a travel writing career—the free flights, the scrumptious food, the exciting experiences and exotic people. Immediately, I decided that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I bought magazines with travel articles and studied them all, I sent query letters to all the right people, I stole all the in-flight magazines I could get my hands on…sure that all it would take to be a travel writer was my desire to do it.

Alas, that didn’t actually work, and it wasn’t until 1992 that I wrote my first travel piece, a little essay about an art gallery in New York City I’d discovered as I wandered through the city on vacation. It was published locally in Albuquerque, in a small publication called Women’s Voices. Since then I have steadily published travel pieces over the years, and I have learned a few things along the way.

A quick note is necessary here: travel writing comes in many forms, many of them based on information—giving a reader a basis he or she needs when visiting a place—from The Ten Must-see Museums, to The Five Best Restaurants, to How to Find the Best Shopping, How to Avoid the Worst Tourist Traps, What Roads to Take, What Not to Do, What’s New in Miami or Paris or Minsk, and so on. These kinds of travel articles are less about emotion and connection than are travel essays, in which your emotion, your memories, your personal experience come into play. And travel essays are where a writer will build a devoted audience, readers who wait for the next published piece and who will line up to buy the book that comes out of them.

Travel essays are harder to write than how-to or must-see articles; instead of gathering information, organizing it and writing it up, you must be willing to let the reader in to the part of you that no one gets to see, and open up the secrets you don’t normally share with anyone. Travel essays are about putting yourself into the piece. Readers are far more likely to read, enjoy, and want to read more of an author’s work if that author has connected with them on an emotional level.

This connection with a reader is more than talking about how happy or sad a place makes you feel, or how full of joy and excitement you are to be there. It’s more than telling a reader how delicious or terrible a particular meal was, or that the streets in Rome are loud. It is all those things, and it’s also about you.

How do you feel when you’re in Rome, or New York, or the mountains of Montana, or the horse show in Spain? What memories do the sounds of the sea or the roar of the subway bring up? What do you feel as you eat the cookie baked by the corner baker that tastes like the ones your grandmother used to make? What half-remembered childhood dreams—or future hopes—do the sounds of children playing in the park in London or the local zoo bring to mind, and how does that affect what you do next? These are the moments travel essays explore. They’re hard to find at first and sometimes we must wait for them, but they happen and when they do we must capture them for our readers as well as ourselves.

None of us travels in a vacuum. We bring with us our expectations of the place, our hopes of what we will see, our frustrations at our jobs, our desires to escape or to discover or to lose. None of us travels without learning and coming back with something we didn’t have when we left. Often it comes in a revelation, engendered by our encounters with new people and places and food and sounds. Sometimes it doesn’t happen until we return. And sometimes it is the moment of writing about our travels that the revelation occurs.

Whenever it happens, it is that essence we must learn to capture and it is in the moment we impart that essence to others that is the magic of writing travel essays.

If you are wondering how to do this, the best advice I have is—in the unforgettable words of my first college writing professor—“just write.” There are no secrets that are more important than that: just write. As you travel, write the mundane—where you go, what you see, what you do, who you talk to. And write the next layer—what you felt when you saw, did, talked. And then dive deeper and explore those emotions, the memories they evoke, the moments they bring forth.

And then trust that when you write about your journey, all of that will coalesce into a beautiful essay that captures both place and personal, both out there and inside. When you can pull readers in to your heart and let them mingle with all those elements, and then let them back out into the world with this new perspective, you will have succeeded in creating a piece of writing that will keep them coming back for more. You will have indeed tapped into the romance and excitement and wonder that is writing travel essays.

Now, where are you going—and can we come, too?

OneEyedJack150Teresa Cutler-Broyles is a local Albuquerque writer who has published professionally since 1992. She writes short fiction, novels, travel essays and nonfiction pieces for both print and online venues. Her small book of travel essays, A Dream that Keeps Returning, is available on Amazon and through her website, and her YA novel, One Eyed Jack, is available on Amazon as well. Her upcoming historical novel set in 1570 Italy will be available in early 2016.

She teaches in the Film, Peace Studies, and American Studies departments at the University of New Mexico (UNM); at the Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy during the summers; at UNM Continuing Education; and with the Story Circle Network online.

Teresa runs TLC (travel/literature/culture) Writing Workshops, and Hero’s Journey Tours, in Italy; upcoming dates are May and October, 2016. Visit her website for more information: tlcwritingtours.com or herosjourney-italy.com, or send her an email: teresa_intrepid@yahoo.com.

This article was originally published in the May 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Writing Verse Novels

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by Caroline Starr Rose

Blue Birds200Have you ever considered writing a novel in verse? Verse novels are stories told through unrhymed poetry. If the format sounds interesting, here are some things to keep in mind:

Is the subject matter right for poetry?
Some topics lend themselves more easily to poetry than others. Some subjects refuse to be written as prose. While many stories can and will work as poetry, ask yourself if this medium is the best way to tell your story. If not, I’d advise you to take another approach.

Is the protagonist right for poetry?
Often (though not always) verse novels are told from a very close first-person point of view. Such writing calls for a lot of introspection on the protagonist’s part. If this isn’t your character, it’s best, in my opinion, to avoid verse.

Can you sustain the intensity required to write a novel this way?
Sometimes writing in verse feels really natural. Other times the close-to-the-bone nature of poetry is hard to sustain.

If you are someone who can knock off thousands of words at one sitting, verse novels are going to hurt. Word counts will more realistically be in the hundreds. Entire novels are usually under 20,000 words.

Can each poem stand alone?
Each poem in a verse novel must capture one moment, scene, idea, mark of change in your character’s life. Poems should also be able to function separately from the rest of the story.

Does each poem contribute to the whole?
When I worked through my own verse novel, I kept a quilt in mind, treating each poem like its own square of fabric. Each patch had to be able to function separately while at the same time contribute to the whole. I trusted that if certain patterns and shades in my story quilt were repeated (think themes or story strands), eventually the inter-connectedness would surface–a much more organic approach than is normally taken with prose.

Vary the length of poems
Some scenes flow, some end abruptly. Some thoughts wander, some jab. Use this knowledge to your advantage in composing your poetry.

Vary the length of lines
Are there key phrases or words at the heart of your poem? Play with the way you arrange words on the page to determine what look best “speaks” the poem.

Within your poem, group similar ideas as stanzas or allow key lines to stand alone.

Structure
Because poetry is both visual and aural, let the structure of your work communicate to your reader your protagonist’s emotional state.

Is she frightened? Think of how this feeling looks structurally (little punctuation? words tightly packed together?).

Is he in a hurry? How can you express this on the page?

You can also use specific types of poetry (sonnets, for example), as Pat Brisson did with her book, The Best and Hardest Thing. In writing about Sylvia Plath (Your Own, Sylvia), author Stephanie Hemphill chose to mirror several of Plath’s poems, giving her readers a sense of the poet’s style, subject matter, intensity, and character.

May B150A sample poem from May B.

I play a game inside my head,1
counting plum trees that dot a creek bed,2
rabbits that scatter at the sound of wagon wheels,
clouds that skirt the sky.
For hours, that is all
and grass
always grass3
in different shades and textures4
like the braids in a rag rug.

Miss Sanders told us that lines never end,
and numbers go on forever.
Here,5
in short-grass country,
I understand infinity. 6,7

Verse novels aren’t books with strange line breaks. They are stories best communicated through the language, rhythm, imagery and structure of poetry. Don’t be afraid to experiment to see if your story might work within this unique genre.

_________________

1Much of the story is told through thought, not dialogue. We have a real sense of May’s internal life.
2Verse allows for the opportunity to play with language. Here’s a bit of rhyme.
3Repetition for emphasis.
4Poetry should be visual and figurative language fresh, even unexpected.
5Line break for emphasis.
6The two stanzas mirror each other in appearance, reinforcing the visual aspect of experiencing poetry.
7Notice the poem is about place and uses measurements/counting as a way to make sense of things. The few trees and rabbits are a contrast to infinity. The poem fits into the overall story–May leaving for a new place–but can also stand alone as a poem about the short-grass Kansas prairie.

OVERINTHEWETLANDS_jacket.inddCaroline Starr Rose was named a Publishers Weekly Flying Start Author for her debut novel, May B., which was an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book. She is also the author of two books released this year, Blue Birds, and Over in the Wetlands: A Hurricane-On-The-Bayou Story. Caroline spent her childhood in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and New Mexico, camping by the Red Sea in one and eating red chile in the other. She has taught social studies and English, and worked to instill in her students a passion for books, an enthusiasm for experimenting with words, and a curiosity about the past. She lives in New Mexico. Visit her at www.carolinestarrrose.com.

This article was originally published in the January 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Backstory: TMI (Too Much Information)

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by Sarah Baker

OnlyAmelia169Some of you may have come into this fantastic world of writing by a logical path; you aced junior high grammar, paid close attention to high school composition instructors, earned degrees in creative writing, and then wrote your first novel. For the rest of us, the whole experience has more closely resembled a headfirst dive into Alice’s rabbit hole.

I started writing fiction on the internet in the mid-’90s, and went to work on my first novel a few years later. Between the time I saved chapter one of “Book One” on my laptop in 1997 and this past year when I signed my twentieth book contract, I learned lessons in ways I wouldn’t want to repeat. I’m still learning lessons daily, but few of them leave as many bruises as those first dozen or so.

One thing I discovered is that we, as writers, tend to share too much information. I don’t mean about ourselves, necessarily, but about our works. When someone asks what you’re working on, they are rarely looking for a detailed outline of your novel. They expect a sentence or two. A paragraph at most. This is especially important to know when the person asking is an editor or agent.

In the same way that you’d never start a pitch to an editor with, “My main character, George, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he had a normal childhood, even though his father was a little strict, and when he was eighteen, he left for college…,” you don’t want to start your book with everything there is to know about your characters. One of the joys of reading is discovering the hidden parts of a story, the delicious history that motivates characters to do what they’re doing. If you reveal all up front, there are no surprises left, and readers will quickly lose interest.

But loading a manuscript with backstory is natural. We’re excited about our new story; we want to explain everything right away. The tough part—the part that comes with experience—is recognizing backstory and knowing what to remove. Was George convicted of killing his college roommate because he was framed by another student who thought George had witnessed a major drug deal? Don’t tell me in chapter one that George is innocent. Maybe you don’t even want to tell me that George was in prison. Let me guess why he won’t answer questions about his past. Make me worry about Susan when she’s alone with him. You’ll keep me interested.

Equally as important as knowing that you must sprinkle backstory throughout your book, is understanding how to do it. Less is better, and showing is better than telling. Are you ready to divulge that George was in prison? (Disclaimer: I’m not saying this is great writing. These are only examples.) “Metal bars clanged into place. George bolted out of bed, his hands clenched into fists and his heart racing,” will be more effective than telling me, “George had spent fifteen long years in San Quentin. Even after all this time, he still woke to the horror of the door sliding shut on his cell.” While there’s nothing technically wrong with the second excerpt, it lacks the feel of action of the first one.

We, as writers, not only want to tell you everything about our characters, we also want to use all our wonderful research. If George grew up in Albuquerque, would he really be thinking about the fact that Sandia Crest is 10,678 feet high as he’s driving around town? Or that the population was 535,239 in 2010? That would be a little absurd, wouldn’t it? But maybe he would tell Susan, a newcomer, that Sandia is always on the east side of downtown, or that the city is home to about a half-million people. If your character doesn’t have a reason to consider something, don’t force it on your readers. They won’t appreciate it.

The first editor I spoke to about my first manuscript told me my story started in chapter eight. I was hurt and horrified, but realized before long that she was right. I had way too much backstory and no action in the beginning of the book. I feel better now when my own first edit is full of red ink where I’ve sliced away all that extra information.

My advice to relatively new writers? Question every line; be brutal with the red pen. There’s nothing more wonderful than putting together a page turner. And practice a one-paragraph pitch. You never know when you’re going to run into an editor or agent who is looking for your book.

Good luck out there, and enjoy the next Mad Hatter’s tea party.

ReturnToMarshallsBayou3_200Sarah H. Baker is the author of more than 20 novels, with publishers ranging from Kensington to Harlequin to small presses. She holds an MS in engineering and works full time, but also writes fiction under three pen names: S. H. Baker, Sarah Storme, and Lydia Parks. The first book in her Dassas Cormier Mystery series, Murder in Marshall’s Bayou (Zumaya Publications, 2009), was recommended for an Edgar Award. Return to Marshall’s Bayou (Siren Audio Studios, 2010) is the full-cast audio version of this first mystery and was a finalist in the Audie Awards. Sarah enjoys sharing her experience with other writers and teaches courses for the University of New Mexico’s Continuing Education Department. Visit her at shbaker.com.

This article was originally published in the September 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Revising Fiction: 13 Ways to Show Character Emotions, Part 2

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by Kirt Hickman

Last month we began to look at creative ways in which you can show your characters’ emotions effectively. To recap, we learned to:

1. Use emotional honesty.
2. Convey the source of the emotion.
3. Avoid clichés.
4. Use metaphor.

This only scratches the surface of what you can do. Wherever you see the name of an emotion in your writing, question carefully whether you’re showing the emotion to the reader, or simply telling him about it. Here are more ways to show your characters’ emotions.1

5. Use Concrete Details

Not bugs, but locusts and flies. Not flowers, but crocuses, pansies, or marigolds. If your character is drinking soda or wine, name the brand (real or fictitious). If she’s reading a book or listening to a song, name it. Choose details that reflect your character’s emotional state.

Consider the following passage, from an early draft of my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder. This shows Dana McKaughey’s first glimpse of Bill Ryan in the base trauma center after he’s been in a terrible accident.

Tubes and wires ran everywhere, to machines and equipment whose purpose she could only guess at.

Does this passage let you feel what Dana is feeling? No. It shows her ignorance of the equipment sustaining Bill, but it doesn’t convey emotion. Because she’s not familiar with the machines, I can’t describe them by name and function, but I can give details to the extent that she understands them.

Tubes and wires ran everywhere, from his arm, mouth ,nose, chest, and several from beneath a blanket that had been pulled down to his waist. Each connected him to equipment in his headboard.

Meaningless numbers and graphics lit the display. She heard the hollow pump and hiss of a respirator and a series of beeps with the rhythm of a steady heart, but she’d cautioned herself against false hope for too many hours to draw encouragement from the disembodied sounds.

Instead of wires just running everywhere, they now run from specific parts of Bill’s body to equipment in his headboard. Instead of settling for “machines and equipment,” I describe what Dana sees and hears in a manner that reflects her emotions.

6. Use Internal Monologue

This example is from Bill Ryan in Worlds Asunder:

Why couldn’t he share that part of her life? Whenever he tried, she was just responsive enough to make him think he had a chance. But in the end, she always kept him at arm’s length.

But Bill had resolved years ago not to psychoanalyze her behavior. He reminded himself of that pledge now to prevent his mind from slipping into that self-destructive mire of a woman’s emotional logic. Women’s prerogative, he repeated over and over again to make himself believe it. Some days it got to him more than others.

This shows more about his emotional state, and about him as a character, than words like frustration or loneliness could possibly convey.

7. Use Dialog

Consider this example from a critique submission.2

[Ian] reached the table just in time to get the last slice of mushrooms, olives, and green chili, much to the annoyance of his sister.

The author could have used dialog to show the girl’s annoyance.

[Ian] reached the table just in time to get the last slice of mushrooms, olives, and green chili.

“Mom,” Kasey yelled in her most whiney voice. “Ian took the last piece of good pizza.”

“You’re a kid. You’re not even supposed to like these toppings.” Ian made a show of stuffing half the piece into his mouth in a single bite.

“Mom,” Kasey yelled again.

The second passage reveals both characters much more clearly than the first, which simply tells the reader that Kasey is annoyed. The second passage shows, through dialog, how both characters respond to her annoyance.

8. Show Physical Response

The bodies, when he found them, were nothing more than a partial set of scorched bones and ash, incompletely cremated, with a few melted personal effects. Bile filled Chase’s throat and forced him to turn away. God damn it! Nobody was supposed to be in there. The death count was now at six, and Chase had known some of those people. He swallowed the vomit that rose in him, fortified his resolve, and looked again upon the victims. Both skulls remained intact, their bony grins mocking him from the ruins of his investigation. He imagined the perpetrator doing the same from somewhere nearby.

This passage from Worlds Asunder uses the involuntary response of Chase’s body to express his revulsion. Without it, the scene contains some macabre imagery, but it’s emotionally lifeless.

Read the rest of Kirt Hickman’s series:
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 1
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 3

1Ann Hood, Creating Character Emotions, Story Press Books, 1998.
2Excerpts from critique submissions are reprinted with the permission of the original author.

WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the July/August 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



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