Monthly Archives: May 2010

One of the big rules in fiction is: the main character must change over the course of the story.  Another big rule is: characters must act in a believable fashion – they must stay in character.  Okay, now we have two rules that seem to oppose each other at times, but must play together within our manuscripts.  Or maybe these two rules aren’t opposed, but are the start of one rule explained in multiple parts.

A character must reflect reality – real people.  We, real people, learn and grow, stumble and try again, are good at some things and weak in others, and all have something beautiful in us as well as something ugly.  Everyone has a history as well as a future, and we dread some potential futures even as we look forward to others.  We may or may not act as expected all the time, but we have our reasons.  We change, but rarely from something strictly within, rather from an external influence: a rumor, a lesson, an observation, an experience, a conversation, a tragedy to ourselves or someone we know, a hardship, a blessing, a baby, a death, or even something small that sparks a realization – these small things are often the most meaningful over time.

When writing a character, I try to make her/him change only after an event, even a small event sparking a larger realization.  In between these changes, the character is static – almost predictable.  Fortunately, change is a constant in real life, so it happens often to my characters.  The trick to writing a believable character over the course of a novel is to establish the character early and show the events triggering each change.

Since I joined the Chris’ small group, I have started to hone my craft at a different level, much the same way my writing improved at FSFW.  Between learning new rules, researching writing, spending more time critiquing, and thinking more while writing and editing my own work, I have seen drastic improvements in the work I am producing.  This wouldn’t be possible without the help of Chris, Paula, and Julie, who have been helpful and patient. 

I have started to notice trends in my work, and theirs as well, which are simple fixes.  Sometimes, when I point out a troubling trend in their work, they will turn around and show that same problem in mine – which is both irritating and funny.  These are simple problems with easy fixes.  I hope you can learn from our mistakes and improve your writing.

• Telling is not the most basic of problems because there are various viewpoints on what telling is.  Some people view telling as ‘what you tell’ while others view it as ‘how you tell it’ – there are disagreements within those camps.  I have already posted on this topic, so I won’t address it again.  In the end, both versions need to be addressed to make the piece well rounded.
• Teaching and summarizing – easy traps to fall into when writing science fiction and fantasy.  Some things need to be explained, but in a way that doesn’t feel like a textbook.  Some spans of time need to be consolidated into a few paragraphs without making the reader feel like they were shorted.  These are hard things to balance, too much versus too little, bringing the reader along or leaving them behind.
• “That” is a horrible junk word.  More and more, I find myself hating THAT word.  It has its good points, places where it has to be.  However, many times it is used where it just doesn’t belong.
  • Good: “Look at that guy.”  In context, this points out a specific person.
  • Bad: “I can’t believe I let that scare me.”  That guy, that action, that day?  Even in context, this can be a little confusing.
  • Worse: “Some people think that human cloning will become a reality in the next 20 years.”  ‘That’ is a pointless word which can be removed and the sentence will flow with more ease.  This usage of the word ‘that’ makes up the majority of instances in my group (including myself).
• ‘-ly’ adverbs are another form of junk words.  I don’t think all ‘-ly’ adverbs should be removed, and I don’t have any problems with other forms of adverbs, but the overuse of ‘-ly’ adverbs leads to weak verbs, summarizing, telling, and alliteration issues.  A few ‘-ly’ adverbs are evil in writing because they defeat the purpose they were written for: suddenly, quickly, immediately, instantly, and abruptly.  There are more, but those are the ones I can think of right now.  They are meant to speed up the action, but they slow the flow.  “He immediately shot the villain” takes more time than “He shot the villain.”
• Repeated words and poor sentence structure seem to go hand-in-hand.  Short choppy sentences tend to bring the repetition of “I,” “he,” “she,” or “they.”  Long winded paragraphs often have the same verbs or nouns in various forms.  Trying to address one issue will sometimes help with the other.
• Motivations are not explained well enough, so the characters are unbelievable or an action is out-of-character.  I have a whole line of character posts, so I won’t elaborate here other than this: if you show your characters motivations and allow the reader to connect, anything is possible – short of that, anything is questionable.

These are common problems in my writing, my group’s writing, and possibly the writing community as a whole. They are my group’s current hot, push-button errors.

I would love to know what comes up in your groups, please share.

• Everyone needs to take a break – even from their breaks
• A sleeping baby is a good baby
• A smart stray cat is an evil stray cat
• Our perception of the magnitude of problems is proportional to the percentage of sleep we have missed
• It is impossible to write while the Backyardigans is on my TV
• Good friends stay close, even when they are far away

I recently had a birthday.  I haven’t been excited or fearful of my birthdays in the past; however, I was blue for the whole day of my party (2 days before my birthday) and also on my birthday itself.  I told people I was tired, which wasn’t a lie, but that wasn’t the problem either – I was depressed.  It could be because I am the oldest of my current writing group, or the fact that people younger than me are complaining about being old, or just that I’m a father now and my priorities have changed. 

Last night and this morning I’ve been thinking about life goals.  I hate to admit it, but I’m getting old enough to think ‘old people’ thoughts.  So I created a series of questions for myself, based loosely on things I heard in a college class – 15 years ago <sob>.

What are you goals for:
• 1 Year
• 3 Years
• 5 Years
• 10 Years
• 20 Years
• Lifetime

What do I have to do:
• Today to accomplish my 1 and 3 year goals?
• This week to accomplish my 1 and 3 year goals?
• This month to accomplish my 3 and 5 year goals?
• Within six months to accomplish my 5 and 10 year goals?
• This year to accomplish my goals?
• Within three years to accomplish my goals?
• Within 10 years to accomplish my goals?

I have already started answering these questions myself, and I might share at some point, but I wanted to share the questions with you (in case you are tackling the same problems I am).  Feel free to share your thoughts as well.

Sometimes the best way to get to know a character is to find out what they want – what motivates them.  I’m not going to elaborate too much today, but I will give a small example.  I will let you see a little of my wishes, and from there you might be able to guess a little of my priorities, and my past.

If I had a genuine genie lamp, my three wishes would be:

3. To have the fan base of J. K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer without all the critics or stalker-type fans.

2. To be the perfect input-output machine.  Meaning, to:

• accumulate and retain information like Johnny 5 in Short Circuit
• access and process that information like Bean in Ender’s Shadow
• apply that information like Albert Scherbius
• articulate that information like Gouverneur Morris

 1. To be wealthy enough to spend my time traveling with my family, writing, and reading.

Do you see enough there to build a character profile?  Is there enough consistency to see a common thread yet enough variance to be multidimensional?  -I hope so; it’s me we’re talking about after all.  Feel free to make a character based on me – I would probably be honored… depends on the character, I guess.  You can also leave a few notes about your wishes, dreams, or goals.  Who knows, someone may make a character based on you.

To my wife on her first Mother’s Day, my mom, sisters, sister-in-law, extended family, friends, blog readers, and everyone else who has cause to celebrate, happy Mother’s Day!

Mariah posted a great little Mother’s Day video on her blog: http://mariahirvin.blogspot.com/2010/05/happy-mothers-day.html

I have seen a lot of blogs talking about what it’s like to be a writer.  Some are funny, hit the mark about some aspects, show the complications of being in school or having kids, or capture a day of someone established.  What I haven’t seen is a blog that depicts what it’s like to be working fulltime (out of the home) and struggling to pick up writing.  Well, it isn’t easy.

To start with, I write for me, because I love it and it’s fun and because if I don’t, the stories will eat my head away from the inside out. 

I edit with the hope of making money someday and because I want other people to read my stories.  Editing is work – it can be difficult to know where to take a story after negative feedback: this isn’t moving at the right speed, that character had a misstep, this whole scene fell flat.  It’s even more of a struggle to go through it four, seven, or even ten times.  I wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t a potential payoff, like being published and even making a little money.

Got it?  I write for me, but I edit for the hope of money and because I want other people to read it.

There are a few constraints on my time that are probably pretty typical:  job, family, chores, church, etc.  I take part in a critique group which also takes up a fair amount of time also.  As you can see, I already have full 24 hour days each day of the week.  So where is the time to write?

Scrounging for writing time is the hardest part about the whole process.  If you work and have a family, you have to work to find time.  Here’s some of what I do:

• Each week I dedicate 40 minutes of four lunches plus 4 breaks to writing – almost 4 hours. 
• I get to work 15 minutes early and stay 15 minutes late – add 2 1/2 hours a week.
• Live TV does not exist anymore.  Thanks to the DVR, I have the ability to skip past commercials, intros, endings, etc.
• My wife and baby go to bed a little before I do.  On good nights, I get in an hour to an hour and a half, but sometimes this is used for critiquing other works.

Here’s the problem: lately I’ve been getting about 10-14 hours of writing/editing per week but I want to get in at least 20.  Where do the other hours come from?

The big chunks of time, about eight hours a week, will have to come from hard decisions:

• Do I need sleep tonight? 
• Can my wife and baby do without me this morning or evening? 
• How much will it hurt to put off the yard for another week? 

They’re hard decisions because I know there are consequences for each and I’m not the only one who suffers.  This last week, I made the hard choice to ignore my yard and cut off my family for two three-hour blocks.  And while I missed them, I love the progress I made, the story that is developing, and the whole process of writing and editing.

I write because I love it, I edit because I want other people to read it, and scrounge for time wherever I can.  This is the life of one working writer who aspires to be a published author.

People commonly accept that there are five senses: smell, taste, touch, sound, and sight.  We know this, and yet many of us (me included) choose to ignore many, if not most, of the senses in our descriptions.  We prevent our readers from fully experiencing our characters when we do this.  Other less known senses include: balance, acceleration, direction, and possibly (not really a sense) perception.  Those can be important as well.  I’m going to try to describe something without ever telling you what it is.

I focused the camera on the bright pink scar hidden behind black hair, which almost distracted me from the black eyes that were focused directly at me.

Okay, we have a start.  Don’t know if it is male or female; human or animal; alien, fantasy, or earthly; old, young, or somewhere between; or aggressive or passive.  However, we do know that we have its attention and it was recently injured.

A guttural growl exploded from its mouth.  It dropped to all fours and charged much faster than I could hope to run.  I stood my ground, hoping to call its bluff.

Now we have a sound, a growl.  We also know that it can stand upright and move on all fours, which is another visual.  We also judged acceleration and direction.

Its head rocked back and forth and plums of dust rose whenever it exhaled.  I wanted to run.  It smashed its paw into the ground, throwing clumps of earth and rock and causing vibrations under my feet.  My knees nearly gave out.

Now we know it is an animal.  Many of you might be able to guess at the kind.  It is large enough to make a person tremble, can cause the earth to vibrate, and it takes deep, intimidating breaths.

Two cubs walked into the clearing, whining.  It reared up and growled in my direction.  Pieces of spit and undigested food splattered over my face.  The last thing I remember before I fainted was the overwhelming smell of rotten fish.

Okay, if you pictured a bear, without me actually telling you, then I described it well – although I did cheat by using the cubs.  I used everything except taste and balance.  I could have used taste, but I didn’t want to go there.  Now we can go back and replace the word ‘it’ with ‘bear,’ ‘her,’ and ‘animal.’

I focused the camera on the bright pink scar hidden behind black hair, which almost distracted me from the black eyes that were focused directly at me.  A guttural growl exploded from the bear’s mouth.  It dropped to all fours and charged much faster than I could hope to run.  I stood my ground, hoping to call her bluff.  The animal’s head rocked back and forth and plums of dust rose whenever it exhaled.  I wanted to run.  The bear smashed its paw into the ground, throwing clumps of earth and rock and causing vibrations under my feet.  My knees nearly gave out.  Two cubs walked into the clearing, whining.  She reared up and growled in my direction.  Pieces of spit and undigested food splattered over my face.  The last thing I remember before I fainted was the overwhelming smell of rotten fish.

I chose an animal for this example, but the concept applies to aliens, fantasy creatures, people, and even to animate objects.  Try it yourself, using as many senses as you can: smell, taste, touch, sound, sight, balance, acceleration, direction, and perception.

Friday, as I was driving home from work, I thought, “I have about 20-24 hours of work to do on my manuscript to have it ‘submission ready.’  I also have my query letter ready, but I need a synopsis – however long that will take.”  [yes, I think that way - full sentences with single quotes in the middle]  That was Friday evening.

Between Friday night, Sunday, and Monday, I spent about 16 hours on my manuscript, The Open Door, and only got about a forth to a third done – so much for my quick timeline.  Well, revised estimate: 40 hours to go plus the synopsis. 

It seems like 40 hours of editing should blow by in just a week and a half, but it won’t.  Ever since Donovan was born, I have had trouble getting in more than two hours of writing or editing per weekday and three hours each weekend day – and I don’t edit on Wednesdays because of other commitments: critique group and weekly blog post. 

I was really hoping to submit in mid-May, but I know quality is more important than a made-up target date.  The true goal is being published.

Wish me luck!

Oh, by the way, if you have any good online resources for writing a synopsis (including good and bad samples), I would love to know the links.

I continue to struggle with homonyms – words that sound the same but mean different things.  Ones that continue to bite me are: “site” and “sight”; “deer” and “dear”; “riffle” and “rifle”; “lightening” and “lightning”;  “principle” and “principal”; “then” and “than”; “steal” and “steel”; “past” and “passed”; ridged and rigid; and I am sure there are many more that I (and my critters) haven’t caught.

To be honest, I had to look up “past” vs “passed” to see what obscure rule I was breaking.  The rest of the homonyms… grrrr!  I shouldn’t be making the mistakes that I am – I know these words.  Worse yet, I shouldn’t be relying on my critters to find these errors.

My next New Year’s Resolutions – or belated ones for this year:

• Type what I mean
• Catch simple errors myself